Silver Linings Playbook won’t win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Maybe the award goes to Lincoln—the iconic cinematic masterpiece of noted method-acting savant Daniel-Day Lewis and brilliant director Steven Spielberg. Maybe it goes to Django Unchained, the latest in Quentin Tarantino’s perverse attempts to rewrite history and empower historical minorities in vigilante crusades against … Read more
Not many films in our time have produced the outraged frenzy of political activists and elected officials alike quite like Kathryn Bigelow’s latest film, “Zero Dark Thirty.” The movie depicts the CIA’s decade-long search for Osama bin Laden and, through the eyes of one CIA officer, shows the various intelligence-gathering techniques used to locate the … Read more
Silver Linings Playbook won’t win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Maybe the award goes to Lincoln—the iconic cinematic masterpiece of noted method-acting savant Daniel-Day Lewis and brilliant director Steven Spielberg. Maybe it goes to Django Unchained, the latest in Quentin Tarantino’s perverse attempts to rewrite history and empower historical minorities in vigilante crusades against … Read more
Though ten films may be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, there are only nine nominees this year: Amour, Argo, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Django Unchained, Les Misérables, Life of Pi, Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook, and Zero Dark Thirty. These films are all excellent (I’m especially partial to Lincoln, Django, and Zero Dark Thirty), but the final … Read more
Not many films in our time have produced the outraged frenzy of political activists and elected officials alike quite like Kathryn Bigelow’s latest film, “Zero Dark Thirty.” The movie depicts the CIA’s decade-long search for Osama bin Laden and, through the eyes of one CIA officer, shows the various intelligence-gathering techniques used to locate the … Read more
Quentin Tarantino has always been known as the premiere “shock jock” of cinema, and that reputation does not falter in Django Unchained. The slave-era journey of a freeman-turned-hitman (Jamie Foxx as Django) and his white owner/partner (Christoph Waltz) on a mission to save Django’s enslaved wife (Kerri Washington) had about as much blood as it … Read more
Argo is a movie about three things. Argo is a movie about why we love movies. Argo is a movie about what movies are supposed to be. Argo is, lastly, a movie about the redemption of Ben Affleck. Argo tells the story of a CIA rescue operation carried out during the Iran hostage crisis in … Read more
Slow, historical European films seem to have been doing well in the United States lately, and especially in the Oscars. With The Artist last year winning the big award, it seems no surprise that A Royal Affair, the Danish submission to the Oscars for 2013, has been nominated for Best Foreign Picture. It has, almost … Read more
When grotesque, anti-Semitic remarks made by President Mohamed Morsi in September of 2010 were widely published earlier this week, they were met with appropriate outrage by the Western world. Calling Zionists the “descendants of apes and pigs” is completely unacceptable coming from anyone, let alone the president of a country, despite Morsi’s attempts to explain that his remarks were … Read more
Upon first glance, Ted Cruz doesn’t fit the characteristic Republican stereotypes. The black-haired son of Cuban-American immigrants, Cruz diverges sharply from the media image of the Grand Old Party. With overwhelming electoral losses in the election among Hispanics, women, and African-Americans, the Republican Party is seen as a predominantly white, male, Protestant organization hailing back … Read more