Many bloggers and readers have gotten into a debate on whether or not the violence in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds is morally responsible and whether or not Tarantino's film (and entire body of work) has anything to say about violence, atrocity, or anything at all, for that matter. There have...

If you had told me one year ago that the most delightful beach read of 2009 would be written by Thomas Pynchon, I'd have stared back at you in disbelief, raised eyebrows in tow.

Don't get me wrong, Pynchon is one of my favorite writers of all-time, but when...

Break out your shoe polish and dishrags, for today, Tuesday, August 25, 2009, one of the greatest films of all time is finally getting its video debut in the United States. The Criterion Collection is releasing Chantal Akerman's epic Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxhelles in a...

The Los Angeles film community has been in a major tizzy since July 28, when the Los Angeles County Museum of Art announced it was (for all intents and purposes) tossing its film program on the cutting room floor. The museum claims that the program was losing millions (over...

If you have fond memories of doing summer reading for school, then you're a prime candidate for the ultimate summer read, the Infinite Summer Read: David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest.

Just hitting the halfway mark in the novel this week, Infinite Summer is an online reading group devoted to...

Sacha Baron Cohen is at his best when he's at his most political. Taken together, his three characters from Da Ali G Show constitute a body of work more like the work of a muckraking journalist than that of a comedian, work that reminds audiences of the vital place of...

Regardless of who wins Tuesday, Hollywood is in deep trouble. I don't mean that they'll be threatened with censorship of sex and violence from Congress. What I mean is that this election will quite possibly kill the political film as we know it.

There is no way that Hollywood...

Something's happened to the Coen Brothers. Maybe it's success going to their heads (they've got my vote for Smuggest Oscar Acceptance Speech), maybe they're losing their touch, or maybe they're just plain cruel. This decade has been mostly uneven for them. There's O Brother Where Art Thou? (fun but lightweight),...

Music awards at the Oscars have always been a bit dicey, but the past few years have been flat-out confusing. The Best Original Song category has gotten ludicrous, with 3 out of the 5 nominees coming from the same film -- and then all 3 nominees lose, most likely because...

Three hours before kickoff may be a little soon to write a Super Bowl wrap-up, but I'm making a preemptive strike. I'm going in with what I know at the time, which I think is enough. I believe I will be greeted as a liberator. By whom, I haven't quite...

I have to preface my year-end list with this: it was perhaps the hardest top 10 list to make this entire decade, with last year being a distant second place. In the interest of honoring the quality of the year, I've decided to create 10 slots with similar films grouped...

1.
... say for sure. I'm Not There might be Todd Haynes' best film. It's the film Velvet Goldmine had the potential to be and the film Across the Universe thinks it is. It's a rock film that manages to make clichés (the troubled pop star, the drug-addled tour,...

Most Hollywood novels are written by "legitimate" writers whose experience Out West has driven them to hate the movies. The novels read like the whiny, embittered diatribes that they are, craftless rants that seethe with resentment and make claims to providing the anti-myth to Hollywood's myth; however, they really only...

I've gone into every Sean Penn film the same way: I want to love it. I leave every Sean Penn film the same way: I love it. What happens in between is much different and much more interesting, and it is what makes Sean Penn one of the most underrated...

The question on the lips of every NFL analyst over the past three weeks is "What has happened to the New Orleans Saints?"

After a miraculous trip to the NFC Championship, the Saints have lost three straight. This "surprising" change has taken all the hot air out of the...

Britney Spears may not have become more famous in the past few months, but it certainly seems that way. Press coverage of her every wobbly move seems more pervasive than ever. Once again, Britney Spears is major business. This time, however, her music is not the commodity being exchanged in...

This past Labor Day weekend, L.A. radio station KROQ aired their Top 500 Songs of the 90s (twice), which meant that they played essentially 85% of their normal playlist. For a child who came of age in the 90s, however, this countdown was no ordinary countdown; this was...

It's 1985, and after five years of doing everything I wanted, my parents decide it's their turn to go to a movie they want to see, and they want to see Rocky IV. And I have to go with them. I am five years old, which means that Rocky IV...

You don't know if there is much on this earth that is better than a used book store. You know they're not just crammed with trashy romance and mindless mystery novels. You know there's always good literature hiding there, as if it's waiting just for you. You walk into these...

Last night, hundreds of people piled into the Writer's Guild Theater in Beverly Hills for a serious discussion of a fundamental question: "What is narrative television's role in public policy?" Such a question, one surely asked every day in Hollywood, can only be answered by one man: William Shatner.