The campaign documentary is an inherently flattering genre. If a political candidate decides to allow his or her private moments to be filmed, they have to be pretty confident that they will be portrayed in positively. Maybe they trust that the documentarians are not interested in causing them trouble, or perhaps they just think having…
House Democrats are exiting stage left. Yes, Beltway pundits have noticed that an inordinately high number of veteran House Democrats have opted to retire this year instead of face another Congress under Republican control. The latest – and perhaps the most telling – is Rep. Henry Waxman, a 40-year veteran of the U.S. House of…
First of all, I’m very grateful to the hundreds of you who read and shared my piece about Philip Seymour Hoffman. Like many other fans, I am revisiting his work these past few days and find myself laughing, smiling, and crying all over again. It is a great loss, but I’m so moved by our…
When I was a teenager, my uncle told me that the person whose death affected him the most in his life was John Lennon. Not his father or his mother, nor a childhood friend. Instead, he mourned for a person he never knew and had little chance of ever having a personal relationship with. When…
There is probably an incisive political documentary that could have been made from the footage that was shot for Mitt, but it’s certainly not this one. The behind-the-scenes doc about Mitt Romney’s two presidential campaigns eschews politics and policy almost completely, instead focusing its narrow gaze on Romney the loving husband, father of five, and…
The dysfunctional family drama is practically a genre unto itself (I’m sure Netflix has a micro-genre for it), and August: Osage County sticks to its tropes. In fact, when you hear the plot, you’ll feel like you’ve already seen it: A dysfunctional family comes together in the home of its matriarch for a weekend of simmering…
A quick one this morning. With Oscar season nearly upon us (the nominations will be announced on Wednesday), it seems like a good time to remind ourselves of the true nature of the Academy and its illustrious awards. The Oscars are an elitist institution, and not just in the obvious ways. Everyone knows the perils…
There’s something about the discussion surrounding Wolf of Wall Street that feels awfully familiar. Wasn’t it around this time last year that we were all fiercely debating the morality of another Oscar hopeful? At that time, it was Zero Dark Thirty’s depiction of torture in the War on Terror that made us choose sides. This…
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