Just…enough What Works: For me, there is just not much to recommend here. I guess the few brief flashes of fun are mostly found on Eva Green’s cartoon campy face (which you’ve now seen in several other fantasies) and a handful of cool visuals, but mostly this is a huge wash. What Doesn’t: Other critics are saying…
Episode 42–Are Our Elections a Big Business?
Hot on the heels of the 3rd and (mercifully) final debate, we take you inside “the Election Industrial Complex.” We find that Trump is right about our elections being rigged, but—of course—not in the way he means. Why are incumbents more likely to die in office than be defeated? Why does the candidate who spends…
Episode 41–What is Corruption? And Free Don Siegelman
We spend the first half of the episode making sense of Big Don’s implosion, tallying the numerous scandals and recapping his second debate performance. Then we ask “What is Corruption?” in 2016, and notice that a lot of American corruption seems to be how corruption is prosecuted and investigated in the first place–i.e. along party…
Reviews: Creative Control, The Invitation, High Rise, Cop Car, Green Room
Several indie-thrillers have slipped through the cracks this year, until now… Cop Car…Technically, this film came out in 2015 but it’s theaterical release is a small fraction of the people who’ll watch this at home and perhaps years later. It’s about two boys who run away from home only to stumble upon a (seemingly) abandoned cop…
Quick Reviews: The Mermaid, The Wave, The Last Man on the Moon, Everybody Wants Some
Every once and a while, a movie slips through the cracks, and that’s when it’s time for “quick reviews”… Everybody Wants Some…Richard Linklater (“Boyhood,” “Before” trilogy, “Dazed and Confused” of which this movie is a spiritual sequel to) has built a career out of the tricky feat of making naturalistic indies that are actually enjoyable…
Live-Blogging the Second Presidential Debate…
This is the only presidential debate on a weekend…ehhhh… 6:00 P.M.–A quick look at the audience makes it seem like the entire crowd could carpool home in an SUV. My God, where are the people? 6:02–Looks like NBC has gone with showing a football game—priorities are right, I guess—so I’m forced to watch this one…
Episode 40–How Do Democrats Lose? The Southern And Northern Strategy
Can the Democrats take back the white working class? And how did they lose them in the first place? Tricky questions that we attempt to answer by looking deep into the history of the Democratic Party–which contained MLK and George Wallace at the same time–and how the Southern Strategy cost them the white working class decades…
Live-Blogging the VP Debate
This should be a real event. A boring guy with white-ish hair vs. a boring guy with very white hair… 6:00 p.m…even the pre-debate montage of these guys makes them look boring. I can almost hear the editor of this clip package “Hey guys, you can’t make a turnip sexy.” 6:05…A debate moderator I’ve never…
Episode 39–Are We Poisoning Ourselves? Food and Other Addictions
Our big things trilogy might be finished, but we still found another big topic to tackle: food and various other addictions. Americans eat too much of it, and we dive deep into: why is there a political divide in food? Why do red states associate freedom with things that kill them? Is sex addiction real?…
Live-Blogging the First Presidential Debate
The pre-debate montage on NBC might as well say “brought to you by WWF” and a “let’s get ready to ruuuuumble!” 6:00–Savannah Guthrie tries to be even blander than usual, while Chuck Todd talks about competing visions of America in a way that makes Trump’s sound worse. I can’t wait to see Trump’s mean tweet…
Please Watch My Short Film “Falling Towers”
First completed short film under the Alabama Liberal YouTube Channel (subscribe please), Playlist One Man Movies, movies made by one person, filmed in one day, from idea to finished film in one week, on a budget of no more than one dollar… Please watch, like, and comment
Episode 38–How (Not) to Make It in the Media
Really and truly folks, how many podcasts could give you everything you wanted to know about the media in just one episode? I’m talking Brody’s adventures trying to make movies in Alabama, getting cast in things in Los Angeles, trying to publish books in New York, and striving to crack that ever-elusive club of bloggers…
Episode 37–Are Fossil Fuels Holding Us Back?
In the second part of our “Big Things” trilogy, we look at the biggest thing: climate crisis. After debunking the various (cough, bullshit, cough) climate change denials, we look at getting rid of fossil fuels and what that would really mean. Questions asked (and answered) include: Is climate crisis contributing to terrorism? Is it more…