The Politics of the Oscars
Holly Flynn explains the highly politicized nature of the Oscars.
On the Newsstand:Movies
When will white people stop writing articles like this?
If you’ve seen Avatar and haven’t yet read Annalee Newitz’s article “When will white people stop making movies like this?” then you’re missing out. Avatar — putatively anti-racist, seemingly simple and beautiful and extraordinarily entertaining — is in fact, she argues, mired with subtle racial biases and white ethnocentrism. She writes: These are movies about white guilt. Our main white ... Read More
Vampires v. Zombies, 2009
Twilight is big. Yes, I realize that that was not exactly an original observation nor a particularly timely one. However, I just wanted to posit that quite aside from the merits of Twilight as such (have neither read nor seen it), the cultural prominence of Twilight/vampires in general really does speak to the conservative trope that America is a “center-right ... Read More
E Pluribus Pluribus
Public discourse in the age of the Internet Republic.com 2.0 by Cass Sunstein Princeton University Press, September 2009, $24.95, 272 pp. Create Your Own Economy by Tyler Cowen Dutton Adult, July 2009, $25.95, 272 pp. Cass Sunstein begins Republic.com 2.0 by asking his readers to imagine a world where their control over the media they consume is total.”It is some ... Read More
Strategy and Lord of the Rings
It’s a rainy afternoon, and so I’m watching The Two Towers, the second film in the Lord of the Rings series (Ed: I hated the books and didn’t even finish, but those movies are great). Tolkien’s politics are not my own, not so much because of their noxiousness as simply their anachronism. Regardless, the novels are rich in pretty interesting ... Read More
Digital Leapfrog
The Australian government announced last week a massive 8-year, $31 billion investment in broadband that would leave the land down under with the most impressive internet infrastructure in the world. Not only does the plan promise tenfold faster download speeds (imagine streaming multiple HD movies at once), but promises to bring that speed to over 90% of Australian households. The ... Read More
The “Reel” Richard Nixon
A novel and compelling treatment of the 37th president The legendary filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock once remarked, “The more successful the villain, the more successful the picture.” Given this formula, it is hardly surprising that Richard Milhous Nixon, quite possibly the most despised and maligned political figure of the past half-century, would naturally lend his story to cinematic success. With his ... Read More
The Supreme Court as Movie Reviewer?
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the interesting, vexing, and somewhat hilarious case of Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission. The question before the Court is whether the low-budget hit-piece “Hillary: The Movie” is subject to the financing restrictions of McCain-Feingold, which regulates so-called “electioneering communications.” In other words, is a 90-minute movie slamming a presidential candidate ... Read More
