Variety has an actually non-excruciating article, about the results of the WGA Strike: The Writers Guild of America called a strike one year ago today, declaring that the streaming boom had created an existential crisis for writers. The WGA got most of what it wanted from the strike, though it took almost five months for the studios and streamers to come… Read More The End of Infinite TV
I’m a fan of both Blood Meridian and the Coen Brothers film of No Country for Old Men, both by Cormac McCarthy, without fully understanding them. They are dense pieces of uncomfortable art that transgress what is expected, that show the world as it is, happy endings be damned. Over the long weekend, I happened… Read More Explaining Cormac McCarthy
Anyone who’s still a Star Wars fan after the last 25 years of garbage product deserves this. Oscar-winning filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is attached to direct an upcoming “Star Wars” film, making her the first woman to helm a film in the iconic franchise—but right-wing critics are blasting the movie as “woke” after Obaid-Chinoy said it’s… Read More Viral Anti-Marketing at Work: The New Star Wars Director Said Some Things. Get Mad, Nerds.
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is one of those movies that I mildly disliked upon first viewing, but has come to grow on me. It is based on a Canadian comic book series that I have never read. I recently watched the first four episodes of the new animated series, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, which… Read More Things That Annoy Me About Scott Pilgrim
It’s become a commonplace that streaming services are treacherous. You put your faith in them to provide you with content, and they pull it according to bean-counter whim and puritanical outrage. Physical media is the only way to preserve culture! Even directors are getting in the act: Christopher Nolan recently made headlines when he humorously urged fans… Read More Looney Tunes, Fandom, and physical vs. Streaming
My experience of this film, which I just went to see, perfectly mirror’s my experience with Oppenheimer: with the earlier film, I was bored with the idea and impressed with the result. For Napoleon, I was excited that it was made, and just spend two and half hours sitting through it, wishing I had done… Read More Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” is a Dense hard Slog Through Mud
Bluebird of Bitterness lays out the forgotten history of Guy Fawkes: In light of this history, Fawkes is a strange choice to be the face of hacker activists like Anonymous and other anarchist movements. We’ve all seen that stupid mask, the one that looks like Gomez Adams just did it with Morticia. Fawkes, after all, was… Read More Remember, Remember the Dorks of November
I don’t know why October 3rd is Mean Girls Day, and I have no intention of finding out. Such things have become loathsome to me (especially Star Wars Day, which was funny once, and is now agonizing, especially when the deeper dorks pair it with “Revenge of the Fifth” on Cinqo de Mayo. No one… Read More Stuck Culture, the Microcosm: Variety Writes about Mean Girls Like It just Came Out.
I wish today, for no good reason, to write about Captain Beefheart. I am not, or at least not yet, an affirmed fan of Captain Beefheart, and given my stands on the concept of fandom in general, I am unlikely to become one (especially if there’s a tribal name attached to it, like “Beefheads”… the… Read More Radar Station Blues – Let us now Praise Captain Beefheart By Slapping His Fat Face
Where’s it written a fella can’t change his mind? Back when this beast was announced, I poured snark on the idea, as the art-house version of The Imitation Game, and because I’m heartily sick of films about WW2: Additionally, and I think we’re all starting to feel this, the World War II well is feelin’… Read More Oppenheimer Does Not Suck.
