‘The Great Gatsby’ And The Great American Whiteness


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I’m not really all that jazzed up about the Baz Luhrmann adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby that is puking up all over my social media and news streams right now. I’m probably going to be in the minority here, but I know – even without having seen it – that Luhrmann’s lush re-imagining of [...]

Just What We Didn’t Need: Sony To Release ‘Angry Birds’ Movie in 2016


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Some works of art have long been thought to be unfilmable. Marcel Proust’s In Search Of Lost Time. David Foster Wallace‘s Infinite Jest. James Joyce’s Ulysses. Pac-Man. But that hasn’t stopped Hollywood from trying, and occasionally it’s led to some fairly decent results: Michael Ondaatje’s difficult, non-linear novel The English Patient was pretty good, John [...]

Help! My Kid Can’t Stop Throwing Word Grenades [Essay]


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It was just like you’d expect. S l o w  m o t i o n. My casual manner while chatting with the preschool director and a new teacher’s aid transforming to sphincter-tightening horror as my 4-year-old daughter steps toward the aid, puts her hand on the woman’s protruding stomach and – OH FUUUUUUUUUUUUDGE -  [...]

Detroit’s ‘Robocop’ Statue Nears Completion – What Movie Monument Belongs in Your City?


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Robocop, the 1987 Paul Verhoeven film starring Peter Weller, is probably one of my favorite movies of ALL TIME.  As a child of the 80′s, it was one of those movies where I wore out several VHS tapes watching it for the blood and ‘splosions.  Later on in life, I’ve purchased 3 separate digital editions [...]

Joss Whedon’s ‘Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ Gets A Full-Series Order AND A Trailer. So Why Am I Nervous?


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COULSON LIVES! See? There he is! Front and center in this promo pic for Joss Whedon’s new ABC series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.! Well, at least it looks like he lives. Knowing Whedon, this could be a ploy – Coulson’s fellow agents carry around his corpse to make the bad guys of the Marvel Universe think [...]