
Alternative monitoring of popular culture ~ broadly defined ~ in the pursuit of deeper understanding.
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol

Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Young Adult

Thursday, December 15, 2011
The Nutcracker

Tuesday, December 13, 2011
The Wire Season 2 Episode 2: Collateral Damage

Sunday, December 11, 2011
The Big Bang Theory

Friday, December 9, 2011
Melancholia

Monday, December 5, 2011
Arthur Christmas

I haven't been able to figure out what movie-makers are doing with children's films. These movies are spectacular to watch (even in 2D) but they have too many moving parts, the characters speak too rapidly and the jokes and sight gags are loaded with cultural references from the Mad magazine school of humor that don't make the kiddies laugh. The screenings of Arthur Christmas, Hugo and The Muppets I went to were all attended by moppets 10 and under and I heard not a peep from any of them. I don't know if kids have changed but the pictures certainly have.
Gaslight

George Cukor's 1944 film Gaslight (Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman) is the only film I'm aware of that coined a psychological term. Sometimes I feel "gaslighting" is another name for American politics. Consider this definition from Urban Dictionary:
"A form of intimidation or psychological abuse, sometimes called Ambient Abuse, where false information is presented to the victim, making them doubt their own memory, perception and quite often, their sanity. The classic example of gaslighting is to switch something around on someone that you know they're sure to notice, but then deny knowing anything about it, and to explain that they 'must be imagining things' when they challenge these changes.
"A more psychological definition of gaslighting is 'an increasing frequency of systematically withholding factual information from, and/or providing false information to, the victim -- having the gradual effect of making them anxious, confused, and less able to trust their own memory and perception."'
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Queen & Slim
In the soon to be iconic photograph from Melina Matsoukas's distressing Queen & Slim, stars Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith...


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A-list movie and Broadway composers Pasek and Paul's score for The Greatest Showman, much like last year's celebrated La La Land,...
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Interestingly, even though Chad Stahelski's John Wick: Chapter 3 —Parabellum delivers deliciously brutal set pieces where our hero (K...
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Thoughts about some Oscar noms: BEST PICTURE "Black Panther" -- Big personal and professional accomplishment for the direc...
