Happy New Year, and I'd like to say how grateful I am that I have helped people find information on nude Arabian womens, a nude John Cleese, and a full frontal Tony Curtis.
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Happy New Year!
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Thursday, December 22, 2011
The Year Without a Santa Claus
"The Year Without a Santa Claus" is predictably about a hypothetical curious, furious, fidgety, terrible year where Santa decided to be like everyone else and take a vacation. If the setup is predictable, then so is most of what follows. From the beginning, the narration of Mrs. Claus (voiced by Shirley...
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Bottoms
Every once and a while there comes along a film that totally makes you speechless. And if it's about walking buttocks, than perhaps this is one of them.
In 1966, Yoko Ono released a five-and-a-half minute video consisting exclusively of nude bottoms; according to IMDb, she meant this to be a dialogue...
Thursday, December 8, 2011
The Ides of March
"The Ides of March have come."
"Ay, Caesar; but not gone."
This is a most unique political tale. Every once and a while, there's a candidate to restore law and order, to never lie to us, to be the man from Hope, to be a uniter and not a divider, and to be the change we have been waiting for. While there is one side that generally sides with loyalty and discipline, another is disorganized, panicky...
Monday, October 31, 2011
Some Notable Things About "King's Row"
"King's Row" is a popular 1942 film from Warner Bros. directed by Sam Wood, starring Ann Sheridan, Robert Cummings, and Ronald Reagan. It is noted for its juxtaposition of small-town American simplicity and dark, hypocritical undertones. Among other notable factors are its famous score, the conflicts...
Thursday, October 13, 2011
What Kind of Teachers Are at Hogwarts?
I solemnly sweat that this is my last article about the "Harry Potter" films...
An essential book for instructors of any kind is "Setting Limits in the Classroom," a classroom management book by Robert MacKenzie. Unfortunately, classroom management is hardly, if ever, taught in university programs...
Monday, August 29, 2011
Our Idiot Brother
A stoner, or in academia, a habitual user of cannabis, can be funny. Dumb people can be funny. Dysfunctional families can be funny. People being hurt, or naked, or both, can be funny. "Our Idiot Brother" has all of these situations, but "Our Idiot Brother" is not funny. It has its moments, and certain characters work better than others, but ultimately, it's a big disappointment.
Paul Rudd...
Power Trip
Electricity is connected to hope. No electricity leads to insecurity, humiliation and vulnerability. These are some of the main sentiments in Paul Devlin's documentary "Power Trip," detailing the struggles of the company AES providing electricity to the Republic of Georgia in the post-Soviet Union era.
But for many Americans, perhaps this is a bit difficult to understand. Historian Robert...
Saturday, August 27, 2011
A Summer of Movies
After being on a schedule of more or less a movie a day, I was, due primarily to the painfully slow internet speed of the Republic of Georgia, only able to watch three movies ("Ajosshi/The Man From Nowhere," "Waltz with Bashir," and "Amadeus") in the months of March through mid June. I was volunteering in a program similar to the Peace Corps, living with a wonderful family and teaching English to...
Monday, August 22, 2011
No, Harry Truman Would Not Be a Republican
I am only 24 years old, but I have heard a lot of stupid things in my lifetime. Perhaps none of them is as stupid as when I was told that "Harry Truman would be a Republican if he were alive today."
Most Americans would recognize Truman to be the president who succeeded his predecessor Franklin...
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Charles Darwin told us that life is a "descent with modification." Bernard Haubold of the Max Planck Institute of Chemical Ecology simplified the expression by comparing biological evolution to a family tree. Even though humans and chimpanzees share about ninety percent of the same genes, the last common ancestor between the two lived five million years ago. Since then, it can be argued that...
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Ranking the Harry Potter Films
As just about everyone is aware, the Harry Potter franchise, one of the most successful and entertaining in cinematic history, came to an end last week. In my review of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2," I mentioned the nostalgic and sentimental reactions most audience members have had recently, so I won't do that again. Instead, I would like to provide a simple list and explanation...
Monday, July 18, 2011
Horrible Bosses
I feel very fortunate that I have never had a horrible boss. I have worked at a fast food restaurant, as an umpire (dealing with horribly stupid people all of sorts, but alas, no bosses), an RA, a waiter, at a newspaper, as a summer camp counselor, a teacher, and a telemarketer (talking to horrible people but not being bossed by them). I have not been manhandled, verbally ripped to shreds, or been...
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
Something wicked this way has finally ended. After a period of ten years and $6.3 billion dollars, one of the world's most successful and well-made franchises has come to a conclusion. Happy I am that despite the trajectory of the recent Harry Potter films becoming less and less interesting with each movie, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2" is truly exceptional, the most exciting since...
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Nixon
Unlike "JFK," in which director Oliver Stone was climbing uphill to convince a public that he was presenting the truth, "Nixon" opens with a disclaimer that this is a historical interpretation. This film admits it's not completely accurate, and it is ironic that the opening footage of a self-help video concludes by telling us that "nothing sells like sincerity," for it seems that that was a trait...
Saturday, May 14, 2011
The Curious Case of Batman Returns
I always believed that “Beetlejuice,” with its quirky combination of horror and comedy, its silly visual effects paying tribute the films of Harryhausen, and its wonderful set design by Bo Welch, was the essential Tim Burton movie. But perhaps I’m wrong. Maybe it’s “Edward Scissorhands,” with its pessimistic view of normality, or “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and its juxtaposition of Halloween...
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Waltz with Bashir
That "Sin City" sense of melancholy and art--art that takes pride in itself but doesn't obnoxiously shout to be looked at--opens Ari Folman's "Waltz with Bashir," a 2008 Israeli animated film. The film's main character, voiced by Folman, is chased by 26 dogs, haunting him in his nightmares. He must find out what is provoking these nightmares, and he learns eventually that his memory is filling in...
Monday, April 18, 2011
Obama and 2012
The election season has begun, and the president--that socialist, Muslim, Black Liberationist, terrorist, Kenyan--is in a good position. Here's why:
1. There's a weak Republican field.
Last time around, the Republicans put forward a dinosaur, a flip-flopping elitist, some creationists, James Polk, an uber-libertarian, and Rudy Giuliani. This time, the flip-flopper is back, but now he’s (believe...
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