Roll call: Rich Bunnell, Josh Leichtung, Garrett McLean, Jake Mix, Alex Storer.
47 Words champions the female monarchs who have impressively held their ground amid history’s grand, male-oriented sweep.
Six capsule reviews - 47 words in length. No more, no less.
The Long Haul
Doug - The Things a Guy Has to Go Through to Keep From Being a Loser
by James Boo · September 10th, 2008
Media travelogues, reporting in every two weeks.
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This week: Exploring Doug’s wild imaginings through season one.
When placed before the mirror of ’90s pop culture, Doug is a hard program to place. Is this because Jim Jinkins created a unique rendition of pre-teen life that brought to the screen a distinct set of stories and quirks, or is it because his series turned out to be more formulaic than its fans would care to admit?
Content to let this question to loom over the Funnie household for the time being, the first season of Doug’s daily grind goes to great lengths to deliver one consistent message: The sixth grade is Hell.
Movies we haven't seen • Books we haven't read • Music we haven't heard
Less than a year after the release of No Country For Old Men, perhaps the best movie of 2007, the Coen brothers are back with Burn After Reading. The last time there was such a short lapse between films, Los Bros Coen gave us their worst film,The Ladykillers, so there is reason to be concerned that their latest endeavor might leave something to be desired.
Movies we haven't seen • Books we haven't read • Music we haven't heard
Robert De Niro and Al Pacino seem, in many ways, to be interchangeable, peddlars of the same unique brand of high-art ultraviolent cinema and Academy Award-winning gravitas. Through them, we have been able to vicariously live all of our sickest immoral power fantasies. It would seem obvious then, to have long ago put them in a movie together. After all, wouldn’t the power fantasy then be twice as good?
On the contrary, it seems as though their mutual kinetic energy, like some kind of opposing magnetic force, continually pushes them apart — perhaps, a la Time Cop, if their flesh were to touch they would spontaneously cease to exist. Yet at the same time, another force, albeit a much weaker one, seems to be pulling them ever closer together, one small step at a time.
Six capsule reviews - 47 words in length. No more, no less.
Roll call: Aaron Azlant, Jennifer Carman, Josh Leichtung, Garrett McLean, Jake Mix.
47 Words offers a history lesson on male monarchs, past and present, animate and inanimate. Coming later this week: queens.
Six capsule reviews - 47 words in length. No more, no less.
Roll call: James Boo, Rich Bunnell, Josh Leichtung, Garrett McLean, Jake Mix.
47 Words celebrates the dinosaurs that continue to define the world we live in.
Media travelogues, reporting in every two weeks.
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Mea Patafria is the author of the movie criticism blog Cinemango. You can find her reactions to the oeuvre of John Waters, as well as impressions of other films, there as well as on Indefinite Articles.
In 1964, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart officially stated that obscenity is impossible to define, but added, “I know it when I see it.” He was referring to what is protected under the First Amendment, and his statement officiously took the power out of the hands of moviemakers and artists; judgment of their art would be at the discretion of the authorities. The very same year, Susan Sontag wrote “Notes on Camp,” wherein she defines camp through a list of examples, exceptions and anecdotes. Camp, like obscenity, belongs to the realm of the intangible and unspecific.
Along comes the 1970’s, and with it came a new face in cinema. If there was ever a person who wanted to put a fine point on both camp and obscenity, it is John Waters. With his films that seem to portray the absolute worst of society, he lays the foundation for the Church of Camp, and the Camp Bible is none other than Pink Flamingos. In this film, he pushes the boundaries of what is acceptable, what is tolerable, and what you can portray in film. Pink Flamingos is not his first film, but it is the first that is readily available via Netflix. It is also arguably his most well-known and notorious film, which people discuss in shocked whispers. “This is the one where Divine eats shit!” “This is the one where she puts a steak under her skirt!” “This is the one with the Egg Man!”
Six capsule reviews - 47 words in length. No more, no less.
Roll call: Rich Bunnell, Jennifer Carman, Josh Leichtung, Garrett McLean, Jake Mix.
47 Words peers into our planet’s past and excavates several undersung examples of the dinosaur kingdom’s greatness, forever lost.
Media travelogues, reporting in every two weeks.
As someone who’s been alive since 1939, I’m very familiar with the movie The Wizard of Oz. I don’t actually remember seeing it for the first time — it’s one of those things that seems to have always been in my memory. The Oz story is still incredibly popular and influential, with two major reinterpretations coming out in the last five years. So I thought I’d go back to beginning, to a time before the songs, the Technicolor, the Pink Floyd, to explore where it all started: with L. Frank Baum’s original book series.
Letters - making the world a better place.
George,
I don’t fancy myself a fantasy nut, but my fancy has been struck, and your A Song of Ice and Fire novels are the ones doing the striking. You’ve made peace with the obligatory Lord of the Rings influence that plagues your peers, but you’re smarter than those chumps. Instead of brainlessly letting magic act as prime mover, you use it to set the scenery as the actions and words of your characters play out like great works of history.
You’re also about to turn 60, and you’ve got three more of these bricks to churn out. I’m not some fanboy ordering you to hustle — for the love of God, exactly the opposite. Keep yourself relaxed, or you are going to die.