Too long; do not read.
Fascism, for reasons that should not be difficult to divine, has been very much on my mind of late. My bedside table has borne a stack of books about the growth, nature, and origins of fascism, mixed in with the novels, for the last six months or so, and understanding …
It is a false dichotomy to say that in this world there are cat people and there are dog people, and never the twain shall meet. There are many — myself included — who love the company of both animals, and have been lucky enough to have both dog and …
It is a canard often, and falsely, leveled at Hollywood that it has no new ideas. In fact, Hollywood has innumerable new ideas; they’re just all bad. If you’re in the television or film business and have a really shitty idea that nobody asked for or could possibly want, you …
Today, Wednesday, March 8th, 2017, is International Women’s Day. It will be marked by protests, marches, rallies, and a proposed general strike by women — the ‘Day Without A Woman’ — in reaction to the election of Donald Trump as president and the legislation, remarkably hostile to women, that he …
A new wave of Russophobia is sweeping the nation, surely the high-water point for such shenanigans since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. It’s familiar; much of it echoes the anti-communist rhetoric of Ronald Reagan, the closest analogue in presidential history to Donald Trump, only this time our …
When the announcement was made a few months ago that Netflix would be shepherding a new series entitled The Santa Clarita Diet, I didn’t exactly mark my calendar, because that name is terrible. I was even less inspired when it was announce that the show would be a zombie comedy, a …
It can be extraordinarily difficult to write about mental illness, in fiction and in reality. Even now, as I write this, I select my words with care when I say that the current trend in television to try and make entertainment out of mental illness — intelligent and empathetic entertainment, …
Who among us does not practically break a leg running to the box office when we hear those magical words “three-hour bittersweet German art dramedy”? The third film by the director Maren Ade, whose work I have never seen but which has been highly praised by those who have, seems like …
There is a moment, late in I am Not Your Negro, where the great writer and thinker James Baldwin is appearing on Dick Cavett’s talk show to discuss the one subject that consumed him like no other during his life: America’s compulsive reluctance to address the reality of its treatment of …
La La Land has, as I write this, been nominated for an astounding 14 Academy Awards, and it is very likely going to win most, or even all, of them. It has a chance of becoming the most decorated film in motion picture history, and if you follow the absurd …
Ever since the early days of film and television, the question has been asked: how much fidelity does an adaptation owe to its source material? I don’t think there’s any one useful answer to this question. there have been exceedingly faithful adaptations that have been wonderful (John Huston’s version of The …
The question so memorably posed by Jack Nicholson’s Joker in Tim Burton’s Batman — “Hubba hubba hubba, who do you trust?” — has become of rather grave importance in recent years. With Donald Trump in the White House, the Republican war antagonism to the press, at a low boil at the best of …
When you get right down to it, for capitalists, slavery was a hell of a good deal. It opened up new markets, it was a self-reproducing form of labor, and best of all, it provided a very inexpensive and largely docile workforce. Its failure, if you remove morality from the …
Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight — his second feature film and a quantum leap from his first, the fascinating but slight Medicine for Melancholy — is a film that builds itself up by little moments. Very little happens in the movie itself; it is slow and deliberate, with many of its major events implied …
My origin story with hip-hop still burns in my brain like it happened yesterday. Run-D.M.C.’s Raising Hell had just been released, and for me — a white suburban kid who’d been raised an only child in a house full of outlaw country and ‘beautiful music’ — it seemed like something being …
