I know it has already been a week, but I'm still thinking about the Oscars. Not the fashion (boring!! predictable!!), or the hostess (boring!! predictable!!) or the winners (boring!! predictable!!), or the speeches (ok you get my point)- but rather a short list of...
Everything is awesome! But I do wonder if the song from the Lego movie (see below) is not just a secret appeal to irredentism: "Everything is cool when we are part of a team!" So, everything is...
Hollywood’s solution to intractable interstate conflicts This is what happens when you write in the area of Japanese-Korean relations. Pretty much everybody hates you, because you don’t tell them...
"This is what winning looks like" I have to confess, I was late to watch "Zero Dark Thirty" (ODT). I read a handful of reviews and blogs about the movie, had arguments with friends about its...
The James Bond movies aren't the first place most would look to learn about masculinity; it's an action movie, the special effects are always amazing, and most of us just leave the gender analysis at home...BUT just humor me for one scene. In my view the best part of an otherwise mediocre movie (sorry super-Bond fans!) is when Bond is confronted by the ultimate villain, Silver (played spectacularly by Javier Bardem). Silver is a unique antihero, he meditates, he often speaks in a high pitch voice, he giggles, in many ways he is- well- effeminate. In his intro scene he snuggles up to a...
I guess I should not be surprised at this news that the Pentagon did not cooperate with Marvel Studios to make The Avengers movie (h/t to Jacob Levy for pointing this piece out to me). After all, immediately after seeing the movie, I enumerated the many principal-agent problems illustrated in the movie, and the military abhors P-A problems. It turns out that the Pentagon found unrealistic not the part about the Norse Gods, the large green rage-machine (best depiction yet by Ruffalo and Whedon), nor the un-icing of a Super-soldier. Nope, the unrealistic part was:“We couldn’t reconcile the...
<img alt="" galleryimg="no" onload="var downlevelDiv = document.getElementById('4050f2d5-ac8f-40e4-b01c-f6efcd5c7932'); downlevelDiv.innerHTML = "";" src="https://lh4.ggpht.com/-VryqPXZd3y4/T6JAfRaoJBI/AAAAAAAAALU/5Zngh2TsXvw/video1be4ce2ddc1c%25255B12%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800" />Video Games as the Fear-Mongering Pop Adjunct of America’s post-9/11 ‘forever wars’Even tea-partying righties should be pretty shocked at this shameless, exploitative (and wildly inaccurate) manipulation of Americans’ post-9/11 paranoia as a marketing gimmick. And you...
The 15th Century take on ShrekA friend of mine linked to a fabulous post by Lindy West at the Guardian “The Five Most Pathetic Female Film Characters of All Time”. Okay, not the most inspiring International Women’s Day post. But if I’m honest with you, I think she’s spot on with her list (although I haven’t seen Twilight so I can’t really judge that... but it seems to confirm everything I’ve heard about Bella.)There is nothing worse than a horrible female companion/character/lead in a film. I find it like being on a long car ride with a whiney companion. And that’s the very least damage they...
Up front, I'll admit that Michael Moore movies appeal to me. My politics lean left, I embrace populist sensibilities on many issues, and I strongly believe that humor can be employed to levy an effective critique of politics."Roger and Me," which told the dismal story of the relationship between General Motors and Flint, Michigan, was a personal story for Moore since it concerned his hometown and was a strong beginning for his career as a documentary film maker."Bowling for Columbine," which used the infamous Colorado high school shootings by two teenage boys to examine America's love affair...
I know Dan and Charli have been diligently (and quite helpfully) blogging about war, but it's the weekend and I went to see "Dark Knight" yesterday. After it ended -- and if you've seen it, you probably already know why -- I kept thinking that every Batman and his villain antagonist(s) simply reflect their times. In their own way, they are social constructs. If this is true, what, exactly, is this latest Batman film trying to say about post-9/11 America? If you want to read about Russia's latest war, skip this post. You might also want to skip over the remainder if you haven't yet seen the...
In my world -- currently Acting Department Chair -- PTL stands for "part-time lecturer," not "praise the lord."I'm looking forward to May 22, when the ultimate part-time lecturer returns -- to the big screen: "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull." Apparently, the plot concerns...According to MTV's Shawn Adler: 1:26: The biggest spoiler of the trailer: a shot of a box with the words "Roswell, New Mexico 1947" etched on the side in white paint. Assuming that Lucas has decided to follow the tradition, here, finally, is indisputable evidence as to what the powers of the crystal...