If you’re in the mood for some scares—it is Halloween after all—check out these five thriller or horror books… Final Girls by Riley Sager…A group of “Final Girls” (women that are the sole survivors of horrific mass-murders) are rocked when one of the three dies in a shady suicide. The book’s best sections are the flashbacks…
Category: Entertainment Editorial
Book Reviews: Boundless, My Favorite Thing is Monsters, Everyone’s a Aliebnb When UR A Aliebn Too
Illustrated books for adults are becoming more adventurous than ever, and these three graphic novels (though two may not be considered novels) all push the form in one way or another. In celebration of the art-form, I’ll keep these reviews mercifully brief… Boundless by Jillian Tamaki…An interesting collection of short stories that also–to me–felt a little…
Book Reviews: Lincoln in the Bardo, Chemistry, Anything is Possible, The Animators, Misfortune of Marion Palm
Is there anything more subjective than the literary novel? At least with movies and TV shows, there’s some broad criteria I might use to determine what’s good and what isn’t, but with literary novels (vastly different in prose, styling, plot–or lack of, and personality) it might really just boil down to your own personal connection with the…
Reviewing the end of “Episodes” and Ranking the Seasons
It’s extremely difficult to rank the five seasons of Showtime’s recently departed “Episodes” partly because the seasons are fairly consistent in quality (you might argue that not enough changes over the course of the five seasons spread out over seven years) and also because I suspect I might be the only person who even watched…
AMC’s Long-Suffering (For the Viewer) “TURN” Finally Ends, & Ranking the Seasons
Why did I watch all four seasons of AMC’s “TURN?” A stubborn mix of pride and because the show’s premise—following American spies during the Revolutionary War—is unique and intriguing enough to keep me hooked on the idea that it could become excellent…or better-than-average…or non-frustrating. And, to be fair, some episodes were very strong. It just suffered from…
Why Are Entertainment Journalists Happy Netflix is Cancelling Shows?
A weird trend has been taking place lately in regards to news coverage of Netflix. And I don’t just mean that the Netflix has started cancelling series. In fact, I was pretty unaware that the network had a reputation for not cancelling series. But don’t worry because many, many headlines made me aware of this fact by loudly trumpeting…
In Memorandum of Cinemax’s Terrific “The Knick” and “Quarry”
I’m not sure what’s worse: that Cinemax cancelled the two best series they’ve ever put on the air or that the news was so low-key most fans of the series (like myself) didn’t even know they had been cancelled. Although I think there might be something even worse: Cinemax’s casual mentioning that they would no longer even…
Ranking All Pixar Films from Worst to Best
Note: Really, even “the worst” Pixar film is worth seeing, and after I got to about the mid-point of this list I realized I was just ranking different degrees of excellence (the difference between an A- and an A or even an A and an A+). It’s truly remarkable what this studio has accomplished, that an…
Reviewing Every Episode of “The Leftovers,” and Ranking the Seasons
Note: I’m only reviewing each individual episode in the third and final season, but I’ll have reviews of Season 1 (not so great) and Season 2 (a masterpiece). I chose not to write reviews of each episode in those seasons because it would be tedious, episode quality is more uniform in those seasons, and to be brutally honest,…
In Defense of Real Time: Bill Maher is Awesome
Let’s not be Republican pawns and turn on THE toughest, most consistent anti-Trump voice in The Resistance. Here a “Real Time” superfan who’s seen every episode defends one of the best voices on TV for criminal justice reform, freedom from religion, and especially the environment. [People may have missed that Bill’s interview with Ben…
Why Simone Biles Didn’t Win “Dancing With the Stars” Even Though She Should’ve
People are funny. They are “shocked” Simone Biles didn’t make the “Dancing with the Stars” Finale over lesser dancers like David Ross. The judges “couldn’t believe it” after they had judged her harshly. The host couldn’t believe it after he had told her to smile more just last week. And the media write-ups keep using…
The Most (And Least) Anticipated Movies of the Summer
To me, this Summer seems much quieter than previous years and it seems more full of shoulder shrugs than sure-things, with almost half my “Most Anticipated” list coming out in August, traditionally the sleepier period of Summer. We may finally be seeing the affect of studios greenlighting fewer movies to release bigger tentpoles, a strategy…
The Best Movie Mothers
I didn’t even want to put “of all time” in the title of this posting, because I realized that if there’s anything harder than coming up with a list of Bad Movie Mothers, it’s limiting my list of Good Movie Mothers. There were so many to choose from, this list is going to be a…