Chris Rock’s Top Five isn’t one of the best movies of the year, but it’s undoubtedly the coolest. It’s the movie I’d most want to hang out with, as a fly on the wall of its hyper-realistically detailed locations: under the unforgiving lights of a comedy club, in the nihilistic privacy of a luxury hotel, in the Cristal-popping velvet booths of a strip club — even in a jail … [Read more...]
Sundays: The end of advertising
By Myles Ludwig I like to stay just ahead of the knuckleball. So before the minions of Hypostan begin their campaign to whisk up a kind of consumerist Cool Whippy enthusiasm for the TV commercials interrupting the Super Bowl game — and overshadowing the game itself — I’d like to throw a pitch against American advertising in general, and broadcasting ads in particular. … [Read more...]
Evenhanded ‘J. Edgar’ mostly shies away from sex life
When I was a kid, before I knew who J. Edgar Hoover was, I associated him with cross-dressing. I’m not alone. “Cross-dressing” is the seventh-most-popular Google search accompanied with the phrase “J. Edgar Hoover,” behind “movie,” “biography,” “trailer,” “building,” “president” and “black” (something about Hoover’s rumored African-American ancestry). It tops even “FBI” in … [Read more...]