Over and over on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, we were told that it was a day that forever changed America. And that’s absolutely true, especially if you’re part of half the country that lives in a city. But what if you don’t live in L.A. or New York or Washington D.C. or even Tulsa,…
Author: Alabama Liberal
Entertainment Editorial: In the Audience for Anderson Cooper’s New Show
So I got to be in the audience for the first episode of Anderson Cooper’s new daytime talk show last Friday. [It aired today even though it was filmed last Friday afternoon.] And I thought it might be somewhat interesting to list some observations about the experience for anyone who hasn’t had the (dis)pleasure of…
Mom Jokes: The Veterinarian
One Sunday, in counting the money in the weekly offering, the pastor of a small church found a pink envelope containing $1,000. It happened again the next week! The following Sunday, he watched as the offering was collected and saw an elderly woman put the distinctive pink envelope on the plate. This went on…
Monday Morning Movie Review: The Whistleblower
After independent films too broad (The Guard) and perhaps too small (Higher Ground) comes this just right film about a real life Whistleblower. It stars Rachel Weisz as a Nebraska cop who went to work for a private defense contractor working with the United Nations to rebuild Bosnia’s police force after their civil war. Once…
Movie Review: Higher Ground
This complicated, interesting-if-not-satisfyng indie movie is directed by and stars Vera Farminga as an evangelical Christian struggling with her faith after a long period of drinking the Kool Aid. This is one of those indies that lives in the small moments (a slight glance of frustration here, a tiny moment of displeasure there) that slightly…
Movie Review: The Guard
This indie dud came and went last month with so-so reviews and box office, but I can’t say I’d recommend it to anyone looking to escape the big budget, brain dead summer fare. This movie (about Brendan Gleeson’s “unorthodox” Irish cop getting paired up with Don Cheadle’s straight laced FBI agent to stop a drug…
TV Review(s): Series Finales of Rescue Me and Entourage
Two once edgy cable comedy-dramas (although Entourage was supposed to be a straight comedy, Rescue Me was often funnier) crawled to a close last week after 8 years on the air. Of course I would love to kick the skeletons of Rescue Me and Entourage, two shows long past their peak and that both started…
Sunday’s Sermons: 9/11 Tributes, Emotionally Appropriate or Milking It?
That potentially infuriating title isn’t meant to signal that I already know the answer (unlike most pieces on this site), and I want to say upfront that I legitimately don’t know. On the one hand, it is the ten year anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, a massive event that ripped a hole…
Monday Morning Movie Reviewer: A Good Old Fashioned Orgy
The title mostly says it all. This movie is about Jason Sudekis trying to get all his friends together to perform, you guessed it, a good old fashioned orgy. It’s got some sporadically funny parts, but mostly this is a somewhat good film to watch in about a year when it’s on HBO (or, more…
Monday Morning Movie Reviewer: Colombiana
Colombiana is a strange movie. Not strange in terms of content–it’s standard revenge film stuff–but strange in that I KNOW it is “technically” the worst movie I’m reviewing today, but I actually would recommend this before My Idiot Brother or Fright Night. You won’t see a thing you haven’t seen before in this (except exactly…
Movie Review: My Idiot Brother
I have to be honest right from the beginning, and say that out of the five movies I’m reviewing today this was the least good. On a technical level, maybe it’s “better” than Colombiana, but I didn’t like it as much. In fact, by the end of it, I was actively rooting for the main…
Movie Review: Fright Night
This movie doesn’t suck and that’s about as nice a compliment I can muster up for the 600th vampire movie/tv show to come out in the last decade. I can’t say there’s anything all that fresh here–by now vampires are as cozy as Santa Claus, so familiar they are to us–but the movie does what…
Movie Review: Rise of the Planet of the Apes
This movie’s been out for almost a month but Labor Day provided a good opportunity for me to catch up on all the ones that slipped through the cracks over the summer. I really wasn’t going to see “Apes” but it has become such a sleeper hit that I would be almost derelict in a…