This morning, President Obama revealed his policy proposals on gun violence. The White House fact sheet pointed to 10 major policy proposals that the president will take to Congress, along with 23 executive orders that he will enact in the near future. As predicted, strengthening of gun control laws and ensuring access to mental health…
For the last two weeks, Vice-President Joe Biden has been working with Attorney General Eric Holder, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and others to formulate policy recommendations on curbing gun violence in America. Biden will deliver those recommendations to President Obama today, and while no one knows precisely what they will be,…
The late Gene Siskel once described the job of being a film critic as “covering the national dream beat.” What he meant is that the movies document our collective unconscious. We may go to the movies to escape, but because the movies trade on our fantasies and not our conscious fears and desires, they often…
I am still trying to wrap my mind around this interview of Zero Dark Thirty director Kathryn Bigelow by The New Yorker’s Dexter Filkins. Here is an excerpt: The film includes wrenching scenes of a terrorist suspect being waterboarded and subjected to other forms of torture by C.I.A. operatives; the suspect eventually surrenders information that…
Watching Killing Them Softly, one can almost picture the “a-ha” moment when writer/director Andrew Dominik was reading “Cogan’s Trade,” the book on which it is based, and came up with the idea of setting this story during the early days of the 2008 financial collapse. Images and sound bites of George W. Bush and Barack…
In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, 2012 may be remembered as the year that we decided to take environmental concerns more seriously. If that is the case, the movies of this year have reflected this change in consciousness. Films as diverse as The Lorax, Beasts of the Southern Wild, and the upcoming Matt Damon vehicle Promised…
The president has just been re-elected to a second term, and he intends to use his political capital to pass a bill addressing the most important issue of the day. The bill has already passed the Senate but is opposed by a majority in the House. This former lawyer from Illinois turned beloved president is…
From Obama: 2016 to Argo, the movies of 2012 have been particularly heavy on political content, and naturally some pundits have wondered if a film can influence an election. It seems clear that many in Hollywood think it could – and they want nothing to do with it. Three political films originally scheduled to hit…
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