I first saw Wicked on Broadway near the end of Idina Menzel’s run with the show. I thought then that the show was interesting technically, well-acted, had quality songs, and that I didn’t engage with the story in any way. Recently I watched the film of Wicked, Part One, and got pretty much the same… Read More The Thing With Wicked
TrueFansTM always find reasons to retain their devotion: I almost never comment on YouTube videos, but I did on this one, because the assertion that the Prequels merit critical rehabilitation, as a consequence of the audience having the Wrong Expectations, needs to be smashed with a hammer. When people are Fans of a thing, they… Read More The Prequel Effect Is Just Fandom Coping
Not really. I think I had that in mind when I conceived the episode, but when it came time to do the recording, we were far more even-handed. Kevin Smith has moved beyond his View Askew films from the 90’s, and although he’s done other things the universal critical consensus is that he’s never really… Read More Shallow & Pedantic 13: Let us Now Abuse Kevin Smith
Carl Schmidt was a German jurist and political philosopher of the Weimar and Nazi eras. True to the time, his writings contain very strong critique of what he called “the liberal critique of politics.” He phrased it that way because to his mind there was no such thing as true liberal politics, as the essence… Read More Doing Things For a Reason: Miller’s Crossing and the Friend/Enemy Dynamic
Never meet your heroes. I’ve mentioned Red Letter Media before. They’re a YouTube channel that discusses film in a serious way, but with lots of jokes – spoonfuls of sugar to make the medicine go down. They’re different from most cinema nerds on YouTube in that they’ve actually undergone the process of making movies themselves… Read More William Shatner, Red Letter Media, and What Everyone Gets Wrong About Fandom
It was boring. There. Actually, let me be fair. The first half is kind of boring. The second half describes the conflict between the mob and Jimmy Hoffa, and it’s more interesting than you’d think. Obviously it was dumb for Hoffa to get in bed with organized crime, and obviously that was only gonna end… Read More Quick Review: The Irishman
People always make the mistake of thinking art is created for them. But really, art is a private language for sophisticates to congratulate themselves on their superiority to the rest of the world. As my artist’s statement explains, my work is utterly incomprehensible and is therefore full of deep significance. -Bill Watterson Modern art is… Read More Quick Review: Velvet Buzzsaw
Making a movie is hard. Making the crappiest B-movie requires thousands of man-hours and and Sisyphean struggle. Making a moderate cheeseball popcorn flick for a major studio, such as Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again is a huge undertaking, from which humans rightfully earn a hefty salary. So I accept the “Get Over Yourself, Shut… Read More Why I’ll Continue to Dislike Mamma Mia
You’ll read these for the reason they are making their way ’round the internets: bad reviews are themselves a form of entertainment, and a necessary corrective to the fear that we are drowning in the swill that pop culture produces. It is thus both pleasing and useful to announce to the heavens that The Love Guru… Read More Roger Ebert’s Hilariously Vicious Bad Reviews, and How to Survive Them
Content Blues 