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Thinking pop culture

Displaying 71 - 80 of 184 articles

The best of films, the worst of films: 2014

So it’s that time of year when everything gets boiled down to arbitrary lists of ten. The top ten uses for milk crates in cafés. The ten most mawkishly reported news stories. The ten most offensive things…

The House of Yes and the No of Closure

If John Waters - think Pink Flamingos rather than Offspring - were writing plays, he’d be penning things like the House of Yes. Made into a film in 1997 - Parker Posey in the lead - the story began life…

Being Plain. Hollywood-style.

Tommy Lee Jones may not have done the catering or cleaned-out the Porta-Loos, but he pretty much did everything else for The Homesman, having written, directed, produced and starred in this dreary tale…

Interacting with Interstellar?

A friend had made a self-deprecating comment about not being “cut”. “What?” I said, incredulously. “You are cut.” “You think I’m cut?” he said, grinning far too widely. “I know you’re bloody cut.” A bizarre…

Hector and the Search for Colour

A six dollar ticket and 114 minutes of my time felt like a fair exchange. Sure, seeing Rosamund Pike in a Best Supporting Girlfriend role after all her scene-stealing craziness in Gone Girl was a tad sad…

The Judge, The Old Lady and the Incest Spectre

A confronting minute or two with Hank (Robert Downey Jr) and his title character father (Robert Duvall) in a bathroom together encapsulates the strength of The Judge; their rough rapport is executed with…

Tammy and Resizing Hollywood

Shortly after I saw - and then wrote about - the racist romp No Good Deed, coincidentally a controversial article about Shonda Rhimes appeared in the New York Times. Rhimes - if the name is unfamiliar…

Boyhood, Fatherhood and the Conduits of Culture

For the first couple of hours I was preoccupied by how long I’d been seated, that I really shouldn’t have drunk that whole bottle of water and that 165 minutes is at least 45 minutes too long for a plotless…

This Is Where I’m Curious

In late April my grandma died. In early May a solicitor told my parents that such deaths either make or break families. In our case the solicitor was correct - a story for another time - but realistically…