Category: Entertainment Editorial

Two literary novels with a sci-fi angle that are more interesting than truly successful…   The Teleportation Accident by Ned Beauman…This book has already been described as a “cult hit,” which means that most people probably won’t like it very much. Sadly, I’m in that category. It is occasionally brilliant (a man in 30’s Germany wonders about…

Ready for a round-up of books that came out last year or a few months ago? No…well, too bad…   Bringing Up the Bodies by Hillary Mantel…This book came out last year and pretty much everyone who was going to read it already has, but I thought I would weigh in briefly on this (slightly)…

It’s time to think about summer movies, and I humbly submit some (most of them smaller films that could get lost in the shuffle) films for you to consider… Most Anticipated… 10. “The East” and “Shadow Dancer”…Two smart, sleek looking indie-thrillers. “The East” is about corporate espionage, and “Shadow Dancer” stars Clive Owen as a…

Note: Two books that experiment with narrative, both looking (on the surface) like something wildly different than novels…   How to Get Filthy Rich in Fast-Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid…This clever novel takes the form of a self-help business book, a popular hybrid usually written by some rich-guy/scam-artist that promises to make people rich through…

Two books, two thrillers, both of them better than average, and both with a snake on the cover…   The Andalucian Friend by Alexander Soderbergh…An unassuming nurse treats (and falls for) a patient that just so happens to be the heir to a notorious Spanish crime family currently in a fight for its life against…

Note: Both of these books are from last year, so I won’t review them in-depth. Most people who will read them probably already have, BUT don’t worry, I’ll have reviews for several newer titles throughout the day…   The Twelve Tribes of Hattie…Nearly perfect. It follows “the African-American experience” through Hattie and her children and…

Last Thursday brought the devastating news that the country’s most iconic film critic, Roger Ebert, had passed away after announcing only the day before that his cancer was resurgent. It’s hard to explain the impact Ebert had on movies, but he has unquestionably had the most influence over the shape of film criticism over the…

Last Monday, I reviewed the majority of what the Academy Awards considered the best documentaries of 2012, and yet…I don’t think a one of them would have made my list. Only The Invisible War would even be close. So what would make the cut? Runner-Up: Mansome…Morgan Spurlock’s dissection of what makes a man in the…

The Good Wife is supposed to be set in Chicago (it’s really filmed in New York) and is a pretty realistic depiction of politics and power in that city. And yet…black recurring characters are few and far between, odd for a city that is known for having a strong base of African-American influence (Obama said…

Over the years, I’ve always rolled my eyes whenever people bring up media violence being too extreme. I grew up during The Matrix/Natural Born Killers/Doom era where anyone and everyone seemed like a potential school shooter if they enjoyed a Terminator film. All of it seemed overblown to say the least. So I never thought…

[Note: There’s no review of The Gatekeepers since, well, I haven’t seen it. It’s also the only one still in theaters, so it’ll be the hardest to get access to for the majority of people who’ll miss these films until they hit Netflix or Redbox.] Searching for Sugar Man…This was the winner of the Best…

None of these are new books, but they were recently made available in paperback and are some of the best reviewed books of last year. Maybe I was a bit negligent in compiling a Best Books of 2012 list without reading all of them first, but even though I did really enjoy two of them,…

Best Supporting Actor: Tommy Lee Jones Best Supporting Actress: Anne Hathaway Best Director: Steven Spielberg Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis Best Actress: Jennifer Lawrence (unfortunately, I don’t think Jessica Chastain can pull it out) Best Picture: Argo   So boring…