If you are a regular reader of this blog, you probably don’t need to be convinced that the movies are important. That’s the idea underlying all of our discussions here: that films and other forms of pop culture play a vital role in our society by both reflecting and affecting political, cultural, and social change.…
Some news from The Hill yeseterday on the popularity of House of Cards among a certain demographic: “The popular Netflix series about a villainous congressman-turned-vice president shows a decidedly dark side to Washington, but that hasn’t kept political figure from watching it, or from using it to promote themselves. Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) on Wednesday…
To explain how on earth I am giving a positive review to 3 Days to Kill, I must cite the late, great Roger Ebert. He referred to his reviewing style as “relative, not absolute,” meaning that he compared a film to others in its genre and judged it against what it was aiming for –…
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…
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