It is President Obama’s favorite television show. It has accumulated dozens of awards in just its first two seasons, including Golden Globes for best male and female lead and best drama. Despite all this praise and endorsement, a sobering fact remains. Homeland’s bad guys, the terrorists threatening the United States, are all Muslims. Homeland is addicting. I subscribed … Read more
On September 20th, 2012, Aleph Jiménez Rodríguez went missing. He was the spokesperson for the Ensenada, Baja California division of the Mexican student movement #YoSoy132. He had been one of 20 students arrested a few days earlier for protesting alleged electoral fraud in the July presidential elections. The rumor of Jiménez’s disappearance spread quickly on … Read more
For as long as art and literature have existed, artists and writers have struggled with the task of depicting reality in a limited medium: from the impressionists who tried to paint how rather than what the eye sees, to stream-of-consciousness writers who attempted writing how the mind thinks. Ultimately, though, neither effort was really met … 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
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
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
The Casual Vacancy, J.K. Rowling’s debut adult novel, should not be taken lightly. This 500-page book is a first-hand look at various manifestations of disappoints and failings of human nature, yet it also demonstrates the complexity behind personal actions. In the small, picturesque, and fictional British town of Pagford, filled with mostly petty people, Rowling … Read more
No Easy Day: the Autobiography of a Navy SEAL has been one of the most controversial and talked about books published this year because it is the first account of the mission that killed Osama bin Laden to have been written by one of the SEALs who took part in the raid. The book was … Read more
If you have ever wondered what a feminist is, Caitlin Moran has an answer for you. In her best-selling How to Be a Woman, which Slate called her “memoir-slash-manifesto,” Moran argues that feminism is practical, universal, and crucial for 21st century women. With stories from her own life, she presents a humorous and in-your-face diatribe … Read more