So this weekend I performed a rite of passage for anyone interested in serious junk food (we’ll call them “junk foodies” no, no, no, too gay, how about “fudge packers?”) and went to Coney Island, New York’s version of an extremely dirty Six Flags. I didn’t much go on the rides, since I don’t often…
Author: Alabama Liberal
Movie Review…”Ice Age 4: Keep the Paychecks Coming”
By now, the Ice Age films have lost pretty much all place in the culture at large and are really only about getting a paycheck every three years (like clockwork). Hey, the films still make money, so why not milk this cow ’til the udders bleed? But will you really enjoy yourself at these movies anymore?… What…
Movie Review: Katy Perry, Part of Me
You know how sometimes you know a movie won’t be for you but you go watch it anyway? No…well, uhhh, this is awkward…Well anyway, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t enjoy this movie as I’m almost entirely neutral on the subject of Katy Perry (a lot of her soaring pop anthems might as well be…
Movie Review: Savages
I came to Oliver Stone’s new movie with a different perspective than some of the audience, since I actually read Don Winslow’s book “Savages” on which this is based. The two projects aren’t all that different, but they differ in hundreds of small ways that add up (like the fact that Salma Hayek’s cartel head…
Movie Review: Red Lights
Another independent movie you’ve never heard of to go along with Beasts of the Southern Wild and To Rome with Love lol, and one even less worthy of your dollars. What Works: The movie is about two professors (Cillian Murphy and Sigourney Weaver) who tour the country debunking “supernatural phenomenon” but eventually run foul of…
Movie Review: Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter
Alright so this movie’s kind-of stupid right? Problem is, it may not be stupid enough. The weirdest thing in this movie is that they play the story entirely straight, and there isn’t a drop of irony in having the 16th president of the United States swing a giant axe on top of a vampire’s skull. It’s…
Movie Review: Beasts of the Southern Wild
This is a really, really divisive film and you have to be a very specific kind-of audience to watch it and in a very specific kind-of mood to like it. It doesn’t have a “plot” so much as a loose story and how much you like it will probably depend on what you go to…
Movie Review: To Rome With Love
There are really two schools of critics when it comes to current-day Woody Allen. There are those who are just thankful the legend is still alive and still making roughly a movie a year (not unlike an auteur version of James Patterson). And there are those that think this approach has really, really caused the…
Mom Jokes: Bad Teacher
My son was kicked out of school for letting a girl give him a hand job. I said “Son, that’s three this year. You’d better stop before they don’t let you teach anywhere.” [In honor of Breaking Bad’s return.]
TV Review: Breaking Bad’s Final Season Premiere
The best show on Television (right now) is back and all is right with the world. Some fans (and non-fans) may have seen the season 5 posters of TV’s most complicated lead character ever, Walter White, sitting in a lab with mountains of cash and meth around him, and the tagline “All hail the king.”…
Petty Issues Turns Positive: Burning Love’s Greatness, Breaking Bad’s Return, and Barney Frank’s Marriage
I had an especially great weekend, and rather than the usual-usual, I decided to keep the positivity going by counting down just a few things I love this week. 5. The GOP congressmen wasted yet more time and taxpayer money by having their thirty third vote to repeal “Obamacare” and lost yet again. But the positive part…
Working Class Economist: Scranton, Pennsylvania…the New Republican Dream and Everyone Else’s Nightmare
Scranton, Pennsylvania—-the notoriously dumpy/depressing rust belt armpit that is the setting of NBC’s The Office—-is now famous for an entirely different reason. They have become the first city in the country to slash 400 government employees pay down to minimum wage. [That’s 7.25 an hour, otherwise known as “a joke” for a working adult to be…
Entertainment Editorial: The 15 Best “Breaking Bad” Episodes
Well, it’s that time again. Time to get ready for another season of the best show on television, AMC’s Breaking Bad. In order to prepare both the uninitiated and the die-hard fans alike for the new season, I thought I’d list what I consider to be the 15 best episodes of the series so far….