Too long; do not read.
When you ask people what they think was the greatest baseball movie ever made, you usually get one of three answers: the charming, effusive Kevin Costner vehicle Bull Durham; the treacly, sentimental Kevin Costner vehicle Field of Dreams; or the moronic but enjoyable Major League, which at least has the advantage of not …
Every week brings a new division. As I write my annual May Day sermon, division is everywhere I look. Following the death of another black man at the hands of the police, a number of Baltimore police officers have been indicted for his murder, causing division between those who think …
It seems like forever since I’ve done Four Colors to Infinity, the inexplicable semi-weekly feature where I spend a bunch of money on randomly selected comic books and read them even though I hate them. Maybe this is because I’ve been busy hanging out with actual people in the real …
As I write this, I am sitting in an apartment in the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. Six months ago, I was writing from an apartment in the University District of Seattle, Washington. There are many things that make the two places distinct, but today I am thinking about …
Netflix’s newest original series, Daredevil, is also the latest attempt by Marvel Comics’ multimedia engine to dominate the world of serialized television the way it has dominated the world of blockbuster movies. It is also the most recent attempt to bring the story of Matt Murdock, the blind attorney who defends …
Perhaps it is best, given his reputation as a rather difficult person to work with, that Dan Harmon confine himself to a medium in which the cast need not be in his presence, and the majority of the crew be separated from him by an entire ocean. With the debut …
A problem I’ve always had with Iranian cinema, from Abbas Kiarostami to Asghar Farhadi, is that its films tend to be…how can I put this? They’re a bit deliberate. A bit studied. A bit slowly paced. A bit…boring. This may seem like blasphemy, especially coming from someone who values …
In terms of my own cinematic preferences (which, after all, are the only ones that really matter, right?), no genres, styles, or movements have made more of an impact on me than American film noir and Italian neo-realism. I am hardly unique in this regard. These two particular filmic interpretations …
Kicking the poor in the teeth never goes out of style, particularly when questions about the nation’s economic future are troubling the minds of many. Ever since food stamps were introduced in 1939, one of FDR’s many radical ideas about how you shouldn’t have to suffer and die just because …
I’ve been to a lot of major league ballparks in my day. I’ve seen games at fully half of the existing 30 MLB stadiums, and if you count ballyards that are now defunct or no longer used for baseball, that adds four more. While I haven’t had the chance to …
About a month ago, IFC — not exactly a broadcast powerhouse, but the home of some appealingly quirky programming including David Cross’ sporadically brilliant The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret — announced that it would not be renewing Garfunkel and Oates for a second season. This came as a shock to …
With the birth of direct streaming and binge-watching, the average cable provider (if a handful of multi-billion-dollar conglomerates can be said to have an average representative) has to fight even harder for our entertainment buckaroo. Once the undisputed masters of their realm, they now throw anything that sticks at the …
Today is the 144th anniversary of the founding of the Paris Commune. One of the most astonishing, inspiring, bitter, tragic, extraordinary, and powerful events in human history, the very nature of the Commune is the subject of intense and violent debate, and has been since its first barricade went up. Conservatives, …
Anthology shows are all the rage these days because if the show is a hit, you can avoid the actors asking for too much money to do the second season by just firing everybody and bringing in a bunch of scrubs. Thanks, True Detective! The latest offering in this vein from …
It’s been a good 40 years since hip-hop was birthed booming onto the streets of New York, and having sped past various barriers to respectability and minted at least one billionaire, it would seem that there could no longer be any question about its legitimacy as a genuine modern music …
