“Girls be making HBO shows, am I right?”
This gives a brief (if overly patronizing and insensitive) summary of what bothered me about HBO’s new show: Girls. I didn’t know much about it going in, other than I was pretty excited. Anyone...
Category: TV and Movies
Classic TV is Bad TV
TV isn’t better, just different. And someone in the future less swayed by the fads of today will see today’s TV as just different, but not better.
Walking Dead Season Finale: Open Thread (Spoiler Alert)
What an episode! All those that have been complaining about a lack of walkers or action this season should be happy after last night. I thought the finale was handled beautifully and they did...
“What’chu talking ’bout, Willis?”
When I was growing up there was a period when the above phrase was uttered by everyone, all the time. I’ve seen similar things happen to, among others, “Show me the money!,” “Time to...
The People Problem
I am about 8 years old. My parents are out for the evening, and I am home with my younger sister, and Beverly, a baby-sitter we both like. Beverly introduced my sister and me...
The Politics of ‘Homeland’ are Incredibly Squicky
(Spoilers for the first three episodes of ‘Homeland’ follow. Be warned.) I’ve been working on catching up with the Showtime series “Homeland” for the last couple days on the recommendation of basically everyone on...
2012 Oscar Nominations Have Been Announced
I’m sad to say that I haven’t had a chance to see a majority of the films listed here. Especially over this past year, I’ve taken to spending my money on seeing movies that are...
“An Incompatible Combination”
I’ve watched every presidential debate thus far in the Republican primary. And I’ve done more than my fair share of laughing, weeping, and sometimes just staring blankly at the television screen. In a way,...
The Culture is Fine, Thanks
Forgive me for a little anti-curmudgeon curmudgeoning, but the numbers cited in this Mary Sue post by Jamie Frevele (and the post itself, to some extent) set off all my neurons. We see these dire...
Nostalgia and film
As a brief follow up to my post on upper-middle-class families in modern television and film, I’d like to respond to this comment by Sam MacDonald: Yes. If we could only go back to...
Normalizing the Upper-Middle-Class in Movies and Television
Alyssa Rosenberg worries that the introduction of characters like Ashton Kutcher’s Walden Schmidt – the replacement for Charlie Sheen’s character on Two and a Half Men – could ‘normalize’ the very wealthy: The thing...
Tits! Swords! Edginess!
(Editor’s note: Erik’s praise for “Game of Thrones” drew me out of semi-retirement. Bear with me) One of the problems with easing constraints on a creative medium is that creators are inevitably tempted to...
TV Review: A Game of Thrones (HBO)
I have television in my house once again – for a little while. This is because it was cheaper to hook up television service when we were hooking up cable internet than to pay...
The Hunger Games (and other books and such)
I just finished the second book of Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games trilogy – Catching Fire. Both books have been really great reads – fast paced, suspenseful, extremely and surprisingly violent given their intended audience....
“Nuclear chivalry.”
As many have said before, it’s no coincidence that in the world of Hollywood blockbusters the last decade has been the decade of the superhero film. In the nineties our blockbusters brought us fantasy...
Capra-corn and the life of our time
There’s a quote about Carl Jung that I’ve come across a couple of times and shamelessly stolen every chance I’ve had: “We live a double life whether we know it or not. We live...
Toy Story
Why did Star Wars go off the rails? The Los Angeles Times takes a look at the producers’ internecine squabbles — and how the toy industry shaped the movies’ trajectory:
Community, technology, & work
I think this Amanda Marcotte piece is pretty interesting. She touches on the idea of work and community and how the modern workplace has, until very recently, served to cut us off entirely from...
