Today, we debate an issue very near and dear to my heart (not really, but it’s so high-profile I really should give a shit about it): the legalization of marijuana. This is an issue with so much youth support, it was a struggle to find someone to argue against me, but, luckily, I come from…
HBO’s “Treme” Does the Impossible: It Makes New Orleans Seem Boring
By now, you either love/hate/or have never heard of HBO’s Treme, David Simon’s ode to post-Katrina New Orleans the way The Wire was his love-song to Baltimore. People that love the show are probably tired of defending it, and people that have never heard of it would probably hate it. I started off thinking the…
TV Review: Boardwalk Empire’s Third Season
Boardwalk Empire is a show that I should love, but don’t. It’s a show I want to like more often than I really like. And it’s a show I root for more than I really look forward to. That’s because I know the show has been right on the edge of being a great show for so…
Why Django Unchained Flopping Would Be Good for Quentin Tarantino
“Quentin Tarantino is a genius, a singular artist and visionary that is unrivaled in movies today. He can do no wrong.”–The consensus. And it’s true for the most part, or, at least, it was true when Pulp Fiction came out. The problem with all the talk of Tarantino’s genius is that it’s become clear he…
Movie Review: Killing Them Softly
I liked this movie, and it gets a little better the more I think about it. [Disregard the ultra-harsh F cinemascore rating, if people knew what a good movie was, Taken 2 wouldn’t have gotten an A.] While you’re watching it, there may be a certain impatience that sets in as you watch hitmen, thieves,…
Movie Review: The Silver Linings Playbook
I really liked this movie. Will you? That all depends. Depends largely on how much you like the style of sometimes dramatic/sometimes-comedic director David O. Russell (I Heart Huckabees, The Fighter, Three Kings) who’s fully operating in dramedy mode, criss-crossing between dramatic scenes that are hilarious and comedic scenes that are maybe trying just a…
Mom Jokes: Grandfathers Don’t Know Everything
Hunter was 4 years old and was staying with his grandfather for a few days. He’d been playing outside with the other kids, when he came into the house and asked: “Grandpa, what’s that called when two people sleep in the same bedroom and one is on top of the other?” His Grandpa was a little…
TV Review: Why The Walking Dead’s Third Season was its Best Yet
The Walking Dead has never had a season as good as the (half) season they just finished, with the rest of the third season airing in February. Honestly, the second season (which found them stuck on a farm and really stuck with the same basic dialogue in every episode) was so tedious and stagnant and…
Like Tonight’s 60 Minutes Story on North Korean Political Prisoners? Read The Orphan Master’s Son
Tonight’s episode of 60 Minutes (hands down the best news magazine on television and arguably the best journalism on broadcast TV) featured a harrowing story of survival for a North Korean political prisoner. He was born, raised, and would have died in Camp 14 (a prison camp that could have more than 15,000 prisoners in…
November’s Book of the Month Club Pick is…Aravind Adiga’s Last Man in Tower!
Am I a day late and a dollar short on picking out November’s Book of the Month Club? Absolutely, and I apologize profusely for that. Even worse, I’m posting it on a Saturday, where many of the people that would really want to see it probably won’t, but I thought the sooner the better… Anyway,…
Movie Review: Lincoln
I loved this movie. This is the type of rousing, sharp, entirely perceptive big-studio drama that Hollywood almost doesn’t make anymore. [It’s telling that a man many credit with “ruining” the adult aesthetic of the 70’s, Steven Spielberg, is now making some of the most mature and sophisticated films out there.] Some may think it’s…
Movie Review: Life of Pi
This is the rare movie I wish I had seen in 3D. [I’m told it has some of the best 3D since Avatar.] And even in two dimensions, Ang Lee’s latest wildcard is visually stunning. The problem I have is that the look of the movie wowed me but it kept me at arm’s length…
Movie Review: Red Dawn
For those that don’t know, this is a remake of the 80’s Charlie Sheen/Patrick Swayze macho-fest where the Russians take over a small town in Colorado, and a ragtag group of misfits (is there any other kind?) fight an insurgency campaign against them. Now, this is a really interesting idea for a movie and it might…