In the spring of 2022, Ibram X. Kendi was recognized as one of the most banned authors in America. The National Book Award winner’s passionate reporting on the permeation of racist ideas throughout American history riled up conservative proponents, leading to three of Kendi’s tomes being banned in six school …
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When the Elton John biopic Rocketman opened at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2019, expectations were sky-high. Just months earlier, Bohemian Rhapsody, another rock-music biopic, this one centered on Queen’s Freddie Mercury, had pulled off a surprise box-office coup, raking in $911 million worldwide. Paramount Pictures had taken a …
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The prisoner is strapped down to a table in the villain’s lair, as his megalomaniacal host watches a laser slowly burn its way up towards this captive’s crown jewels. “You expect me to talk?” asks James Bond, staring down a crotch-zapping death ray. “No, Mr. Bond,” the title character of …
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Last year’s Emmy haul for Schitt’s Creek was a historic one, as the Pop TV comedy became the first ongoing series to ever sweep all seven of the awards — the four acting categories, plus writing, directing, and Outstanding Comedy Series — presented in the primetime telecast. Because that night’s …
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“It’s strange, but some movies present themselves almost entirely in your head.”—Joel Coen “I’ll show you a life of the mind!”—Charlie Meadows, a.k.a. Karl Mundt, a.k.a. “Madman” Mundt Everyone knows about the telegram. It’s an apocryphal Hollywood story, with the actual letter lost to time. But its recipient Ben Hecht …
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Jessica Walter worked. She worked in the literal sense, in that she was rarely without an acting job from the time her career began in the early Sixties, with a role as Julie Murano on the CBS daytime soap Love of Life, all the way through this past February, when …
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The possessive in the title of Zack Snyder’s Justice League says it all. This rerelease of 2017’s disappointing Justice League is not merely a “Snyder cut,” as it’s been called by rabid fans and suspicious nonbelievers, who doubted we’d ever see such a thing. The difference between the nearly four-hour …
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In the late 1980s, screenwriter Barry Blaustein was at a Los Angeles Clippers game watching Michael Cage – a six foot nine rebounding machine known almost as much for his vibrant Jheri curl as his domineering talent – when an idea hit him. He and his writing partner, David Sheffield, …
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Within the last three weeks, TV’s documentary explosion has given us two damning close-ups on decades-old celebrity scandals. In one, an insatiable media-industrial complex takes a vulnerable young woman into its maw, judging her sexuality and questioning, then actively undermining, her sanity. In the other, it happens again. The main …
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Before we begin this exercise in nostalgia gone awry, two things of note. I only watched The Star Wars Holiday Special for the first time, and am writing this review, as a stretch goal for The George Lucas Talk Show‘s fundraiser for Feeding America. And this review will contain spoilers …
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