The Oscar nominations were finally announced this morning, and, as soon as Forest Whitaker said Frost/Nixon, alphabetically passing up The Dark Knight, I knew that, unless the Academy subscribed to Comcast's idiotic system of alphabeticization, they had turned their backs on the Batman. Bummer. I was beginning to...

When Crash won the Oscar for best picture, I was half-drunk at a party in Seattle but sobered up quickly. I had to. I'd promised my editor at MSNBC that if the unthinkable did happen, if Crash won best picture that night over Brokeback Mountain, I'd write a piece...

There's a good early scene in Dreams from my Father, the memoir Barack Obama wrote before he ever held public office, that reflects on the man, and the politician, he'll become.

It's the late 1970s and he's attending Occidental College in southern California and still trying to figure out...

On Meeting Stan Lee in 1975

A belated shout-out to Stan Lee, the creator, or co-creator, of Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, X-Men, etc., who was awarded the National Medal of Arts at a White House ceremony last week.

I met the man once, in 1975, when...

Dear Bud:

My friend Jim came over to watch Game 5 of the World Series last night. We were both hoping for a Rays' win. We were both hoping for at least six games. We haven't seen that in a while.

The game started at 5:30 p.m. for us,...

My friend Andy Engelson, a father of two, an editor in Seattle, and one of the nicest people I know, spent the first weekend in October canvassing for Obama in Ohio. Here's what he found...

After flying into Columbus and driving three hours east, I arrived...

The letters of Norman Mailer, excerpted in the Oct. 6 New Yorker, reminded me all over again why I loved that left-conservative bastard. He's grandiose but self-effacing. He's far-sighted and non-doctrinaire. He admired both Fidel Castro and William F. Buckley, and even contributed money to The National Review,...

Remember that classic SNL skit from 1986 with Phil Hartman playing President Reagan? Various visitors come into the Oval Office and Reagan bobs his head and offers jellybeans and homey anecdotes, but when they leave he snaps fingers and barks orders at subordinates who just can't keep up with his...

For most of the year, Republicans have tried to negatively define Barack Obama. They compare him to the most empty aspects of our own society and the most violent aspects of global society. They twist everything, and lie about anything, and in doing so reveal exactly who and how...

Check out this in-depth article by Ken Armstrong and Hal Bernton in The Seattle Times on then-Mayor Palin's record in her first year in office in Wasilla in the mid-1990s. It's pretty scary. She's intolerant, yes. She gets involved in things she shouldn't get involved in -- such as...

Apparently John McCain doesn't take this presidency business seriously. First he injected Paris Hilton and Britney Spears into the race, now's he's injected Sarah Palin. Gail Collins has a good piece on his decision and her qualifications, but a friend of mine had the better line: "It shows his...

The Republican National Committee sent me a census the other day addressed to a "fellow Republican."

I know. I assume they sent it to as many people as possible. Maybe they even want people to fulminate against the enclosed "Republican Party Census Document" and its leading questions. It's...

One thing you can say about Jan Hoffman's nearly 2000-word piece in the Sunday New York Times on the growing battle between motorists and cyclists: It probably won't lessen any tensions.

I've been biking to work for 15 years now and couldn't find myself in it at all....

It's 1978 and I'm flipping between the five channels our TV offers -- and doing it the old-fashioned way, without a remote -- when I come across a scene from Magic, starring Anthony Hopkins and Ann-Margret, a movie that has just been released in theaters. I can't believe my luck....

This batch [of summer movies] is light on sequels, gloomy in spots (as with "The Dark Knight") and heavy on comedies...The mix may not perfectly match the mood of an audience looking for refuge from election campaigns and high-priced gas, said Peter Sealey, a former Columbia Pictures marketing executive...
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Note: This is the final review of the seven Batman serials and movies that prefigure the current Christopher Nolan/Christian Bale cycle. For many, it'll be too much information. For others, it won't be enough. Apologies all around.

All Batman series tend to descend into camp. Batman starts out...

Note: This is the sixth review of the seven Batman serials and movies that prefigure the current Christopher Nolan/Christian Bale cycle. (I skipped Batman Returns, but if you really need it, it's here.) For many, it'll be too much information. For others, it won't be enough. Apologies all around.

Note: This is the fourth review of the Batman serials and movies that prefigure the current Christopher Nolan/Christian Bale cycle. For many, it'll be too much information. For others, it won't be enough. Apologies all around.

Although vaguely aware that a new Batman movie was being made in the late...

Note: This is the third review of the Batman serials and movies that prefigure the current Christopher Nolan/Christian Bale cycle. For many, it'll be too much information. For others, it won't be enough. Apologies all around.

Batman, the TV series, debuted in January 1966, when I was 3, and Batman:...

Note: This is the second of seven reviews of the Batman serials and movies that prefigure the current Christopher Nolan/Christian Bale cycle. (The first can be read here.) For many, it'll be too much information. For others, it won't be enough. Apologies all around.

It's six years after