“What Do We Call It?” “I Don’t Know, Just Add a T to Las and Let’s Go to Lunch”
Dec05

“What Do We Call It?” “I Don’t Know, Just Add a T to Las and Let’s Go to Lunch”

It doesn’t fare well for a film when the two-minute pre-credits sequence clues you in to every single thing that’s going to happen in the next hour and thirty-eight minutes. Last Vegas opens with four friends at age ten, living in Flatbush, NY, hanging out at a soda shop with a girl their age. There’s the token black friend and the stock Jewish friend, who in this kind of film are obviously not going to be contenders for the girl’s...

Read More
Deliver Us from This Movie
Dec05

Deliver Us from This Movie

As a compulsive Oscar statistician, a (sometimes) film critic for this website, and a film-lover if not quite a cinephile, I’m aware that the films I see are sometimes limited in scope. That is to say, I see the kind of films that someone like me is apt to want to see. I don’t get to venture out of my tunnel vision very often (what am I saying? I get to do it all the time, I just choose not to). That’s why I like when my dad comes to...

Read More
Kill the Messenger
Dec04

Kill the Messenger

Last year’s Hollywood Oscar contenders were marred by a spate of controversy. It seemed like every single high-profile film was taken to task for some politically incorrect issue or another. Lincoln got heat for its historical inaccuracies; Zero Dark Thirty allegedly condoned the use of torture; Argo jingoistically re-wrote the Iranian revolution; Silver Linings Playbook soft-pedaled the issue of mental illness; Django Unchained and...

Read More
Oh, Russel
Nov19

Oh, Russel

A retrospective look at ‘Silver Linings Playbook’: In an online writers’ discussion group, a poet (of course) friend of mine stated her rule of thumb for creating a piece: “I give it to my friend to read, and if she tells me she likes it because she ‘gets it’, I throw it out. ‘Getting it’ shouldn’t be the goal of writing—if you want something accessible, go read a dishwasher manual.” This is a surprisingly ubiquitous...

Read More
On Logic and Libertarianism
Nov05

On Logic and Libertarianism

Okay, so let’s look at it like this, then. There are three siblings: Jack, Bobby, and Suzie. Their mom tells them that they can’t go outside to play until all three of their rooms are clean. She wants to reward the individual as well as the group, however, so if, say, Jack is done but Bobby and Suzie haven’t finished, Jack can watch TV. But Bobby’s room is bigger than his brother’s and sister’s, so it will take him longer. What is the...

Read More