On the Ethics of TV Spoilers
AMC committed a cardinal sin this week — the network spoiled its own show. In a television environment where delayed viewing, time differences, and pirating mean that people watch television at...
Category: Arts & Literature
TV’s Sweeps Week: Four Weeks of Torment
Sweeps Week is here, as in what one would think should be one week of programming designed to lure in advertisers by pumping up ratings with thrilling episodes of television, but what’s actually...
Review: Breaking the Waves
When you gaze at all the wonders that “Breaking the Waves” possesses you have to submit to Emily Watson’s eyes. Are they the most exhilarating orbs owned by a British actor since Michael...
Rewatching Twin Peaks: Does It Hold Up?
The minute the familiar opening montage of Twin Peaks flashes across the screen as I settle back to watch the pilot, I can feel my eyes tingling with nostalgia. The music swells, and we’re swept...
“Homme Less” in DOC NYC: An Interview with Director Thomas Wirthensohn and Subject Mark Reay
Making its North American debut in the Metropolis section at DOC NYC, Thomas Wirthensohn’s beautifully crafted “Homme Less” follows the quintessentially eccentric New Yorker Mark Reay. At 52,...
Review: Gomorrah The Series
After reading this review and when you sit back to watch the box set of “Gomorrah The Series,” take some time out to remember just how much some writers have to suffer for their art. Back in 2006...
The New Wave of Comic Book TV Shows
In the next six years, we are facing down nearly 40 superhero films, according to announcements from the major studios. That is, to put it mildly, a lot of superhero movies. But the superhero...
The Niqab of the Paris Opera: A Tale of Censorship
Despite divergences of opinion amongst Muslim religious scholars as to whether covering the face of a woman in Islam is compulsory or not, practice testifies that many Muslim women customarily do....
Review: Gracepoint
The show opens with a vista that’s achingly familiar for me — though I know it’s shot in British Columbia, that great stock replacement for the Pacific Northwest, it feels like home. The...
LFF Dispatch 4: Brad Pitt’s “Fury”
Irony rides a pale horse. Where have all the Panzers gone? The architects of blitzkrieg have been reduced to legs and tails and hooves as Patton and Zhukov strangle the Thousand Year Reich. Oblivious...