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"The Franchise" Has A Generous Kind of Mirth

The corporation is enraged that the raw materials it is their charter to exploit have found voice and "answered back." The audience, to them, is composd of ignorant natives, who must be transformed, segment by segment, into docile proprietary consumers...not only proprietary but addicted. The Britsih opium

"Say Nothing" Says Much About Tribal Warfare

On June 7th of this year, the masterful  New Yorker staff writer and  author Patrick Redden Keefe appeared on Dua Lipa’s “Section 95” podcast that features her monthly choice of a topical read. It may or may not come as a surprise that the same Albanian-English pop star we

"Gladiator II": Bloodlines and Bloodshed in A Corrupt Empire

Anyone who’s seen Ridley Scott at work quickly realizes just how he’s churned out 17 films between 2000’s “Gladiator” and this weekend’s release of “Gladiator II”.   His work ethic is storied. One wintry day in the late winter of 2005, I hustled out of a rain

You Bet Jack Lowden Has A Favorite "Slow Horses" Scene...and A Close Second

When the producers of the much-loved “Slow Horses” series first recruited a cast for the often-comedic spy drama, they well realized they had a prime asset in generational talent Gary Oldman. They also had a near-legendary array of supporting cast, with Jonathan Pryce, Kristin Scott Thomas, and  Saskia Reeves, but

"The Ice Cream Man" and the Holocaust Memories That Art Must Ponder

Well, it’s been one Hell of a week.  As the prelude to the coming `fight’ many are foreseeing, we may first have to find our own individual strengths in confronting the ascendancy of Trump.  Personally, I found inspiration this week in the person of journeyman filmmaker Robert Moniot (pronouncd

Springsteen and "Nebraska": There's Been A Healing

Rochester, New York December 2, 1980, deep into The River Tour. It’s just minutes after The Boss has come offstage of the War Memorial Hall after a  typically lengthy and committed show. He stands amidst his E Street bandmates just outside the stage door. The sidewalk is peopled with

Dodger Hero Freddie Freeman Is in It for the Love of the Game. And More.

Let’s start with the fundamentals.  Tonight on Fox at 5 p.m. Pacific time brings Game 3 of the Dodger-Yankees World Series, with the Dodgers holding a surprising (to most) 2-0 lead. Even more than typical in this grand a setting, the game offers multiple converging narratives, some bearing

Sean Baker's "Anora": You Can't Touch Her But She May Touch You

Well, actually, you can under certain conditions touch Amora, the central figure in almost every scene of the 139-minute Baker film that brings joyous farce laced with societal critique. Just don’t lay hands on her in the dimly-lit confines of the Brighton Beach bar where she’s the belle

Cameron Crowe Talks Petty and "Heartbreakers Beach Party"

I don't believe the good times are over/I don't believe the thrill is all gone/Real love is a man's salvation/The weak ones fall/The strong carry on... (from "Straight Into Darkness,' as heard– and seen--in the film)  This post

"Saturday Night": SNL Had Mad Sack in Belushi's Day

I was just stuffing my knapsack under a linen-draped table of hors-d'oeuvres when John Belushi thumped me on the spine, not all that gently. It was a warm May evening in 1979, following the finale of the show's fourth season, and there was an open-air party

"Joker: Folie`a Deux...That's Entertainment?

Okay, we all know this is where the slagging is meant to come in. Where the writer cites the grand success of the first "Joker" movie and proceeds to indict director Todd Phillips for catastrophically and self-indulgently, in league with his cast, screwing up the sequel.   So is

Saoirse Ronan, in "The Outrun", "Rides It Like A Soldier"

Who here can stomach a medium-grade blast of positivity? I ask because the current entertainment climate, as depicted by blogger Ted Gioia in a post this week, is trending away from hopefulness and joy. “The pop culture audience today,” he notes, “craves darkness and dysfunction.” The mission of today’s

The “Cultural Tragedy” of the Suppressed Prince Doc

The words in quotes in the above headline for this post come from New York Times Magazine culture editor Sasha Weiss, as spoken in a podcast cited below. And she’s right, of course—she steadily proves that throughout her exemplary, 9,000+-words article on the topic (“The Prince

Who is Nastier--The Killer Elite  of “Gangs of London” or the Mafiosi of “The Sopranos”?

Ultimately, it may come down to the role of the common meat cleaver in crime dramas. (Well, perhaps they’re not so common. My domicile lacks one.) Whether in a kitchen or in a plastic-lined car trunk, the gleaming instruments are used, as one corporal in “The Sopranos” notes, for