I saw (for the second time) Terence Malick’s The New World Friday night. It’s a strange and engrossing movie, what one critic calls a “tone poem” about the founding of the Jamestown settlement. Part history, part psychological analysis, part dream, it enraptures, engrosses, and enrages alternately. Partly through pacing (one of, I think, its best qualities – The New World doesn’t seek […]
Tag Archives: film
Samuel L. Jackson as Minty Fresh in A Dirty Job? Make this movie happen NOW
I’m currently reading Christopher Moore’s 2006 novel, A Dirty Job, and am nearing what I expect to be a slam-bang, fun-filled, rollicking climax. I picked it up because I thought Lamb, the story of Jesus Christ’s life as told by his best friend Levi, who is called Biff, was one of the funniest things I’d ever read. […]
A star is born
Our real photographer, the estimable Lisa Wright, is on vacation, so I ventured out last night, new camera in hand, to see if I could capture something vaguely interesting for our readers. As luck would have it, they were showing A Star is Born, the 1937 classic starring Janet Gaynor, on the lawn in front […]
S&R 701 Final Exam, Spring Semester 2012
Watch the two TED talks below. The question, which represents 100% of your final grade, follows. First, Nick Hanauer in 2012.
Kara is self-aware: technology is climbing out of the uncanny valley, but toward what?
The uncanny valley is a hypothesis in the field of robotic and 3D computer animation, which holds that when human replicas look and act almost, but not perfectly, like actual human beings, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers. The “valley” in question is a dip in a proposed graph of the positivity […]
Heads up, Denver: Hot Coffee director in town for Wednesday night screening
American propagandists and PR hacks have developed remarkably innovative ways of making words lie. Back in the ’80s we had “freedom fighters,” which was the way we described death squads who were friendly to America. “Pro-life” can be used to describe those who bomb clinics and murder physicians. “Enhanced interrogation,” of course, means “torture.” And […]
Frost/Nixon: The rehabilitation of Tricky Dick and what it says about the soul of modern America
My colleague Michael Sheehan recent offered a tip of the cap to a local staging of Frost/Nixon, which starred our old friend Stuart O’Steen. If anything, Mike was understated in his praise of the show and O’Steen’s performance. Anytime the big-city Denver Post says nice things about a community theater production up in the hinterlands of […]
Warning: spoilers ahead
by Lindsay Hayes A recent study conducted at University of California, San Diego revealed that people enjoyed short stories more when they had been given a spoiler about the ending. That’s nice, but as far as I’m concerned spoilers are still the revelation of the damned. While some have taken this study to mean spoilers […]
Holocaust for soccer moms: Review – Sarah’s Key (Elle s’appelait Sarah)
by Samantha Berkhead Sarah’s Key (Elle s’appelait Sarah) US release: 2011 Director: Gilles Paquet-Brenner In the earliest moments of Sarah’s Key, lead actress Kristin Scott Thomas declares that “when a story is told, it is not forgotten.” This statement rings as a challenge both to the film’s viewers and the film itself, but it’s a […]
A valiant and fearless truth-teller: Tim Hetherington
by Richard Allen Smith Within two months of arriving in Afghanistan in 2007, I was sitting in the back of one of the few Humvees on Kandahar Air Field that wasn’t up-armored. Seven of my comrades and I, all paratroopers from Task Force One Fury, had rehearsed this mission over and over. This was one […]
Out of this world
The good folks over at the British Library, bless their hearts, are having a substantial exhibit that starts today on science fiction—Out of this World: Science Fiction but not as you know it. This looks great, and it has barely opened. As part of the show, there will be, as is usually the case with […]
Sax and violins: 30-Day Song Challenge, the Sequel, day 16 – your favorite song from a TV or movie soundtrack
Every movie has a soundtrack. And let’s be honest – most of them are as unmemorable as … well, as the movies themselves. At its best, though, the music captures the spiritual essence of the auteur‘s vision, interacting with the film in ways that are simply transcendent. One plus one equals infinity, and it’s impossible […]
S&R Honors
Click here to learn more about past honorees...- IRS/Tea Party controversy: progressive groups “targeted,” too, and corporate media once again refuses to tell Americans the whole truth
- “Useful Enemies”: U.S. admitted not just Nazis after WWII, but their sadistic collaborators
- The time a source has to respond to request for comment? Virtually none.
- Profiling the Tea Party: In defense of the IRS. Sorta. Or not.
- Saturday Video Roundup: “Imagine the Band,” by John Lennon and Wings
- Mystery Unraveled: How a white, moderate, married, churchgoing, middle-class, middle-aged woman could vote for Obama
- An open letter to Burt Rutan, regarding his WSJ commentary on human-caused climate disruption
- Meet the men of Match.com: Really, guys, are you serious?
- Climate scientists still besieged
- Pelosi on Bush: “He’s not worth impeaching”
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Otherwise: interesting and yet another example of faux news m…
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Autumn: You said several organizations have purposed alter…
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Samuel Smith: It's not JUST three groups. These are the three th…
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Bret Higgins: Slightly confused - You say one third of the 471 g…
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SeattleAuthor: Actually, I had heard that reported on about Day T…
