Review: Syfy’s Helix
Before I delve into SyFy’s new original show Helix, I must first express my deep and abiding look for epidemiology. While I love all the sciences, and I’m fascinated by medicine, epidemiology is...
Category: North America
Review: 12 Years a Slave
Just look at Edwin Epps’ eyes. Shimmering blue hatred ringed with red and sunk into black pits dug out of his cheekbones. The sweat of corruption clings to his sickly yellow skin, he is odious and...
Review: American Hustle
“Anyone can be confident with a full head of hair. But a confident bald man - there's your diamond in the rough.” Larry David should know, that glint in his eye, a fortune in the bank, that...
The Republican Attack on Unemployment Benefits
It is time for the United States to admit that it is no longer facing a battle over public services, or beginning to see the signs of an anti-welfare culture, but that it is in fact actively...
Strong Female Characters? Why Buffy Still Rules
I was a little young to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer when it first hit our television screens back in 1997, although it finished up in 2003, when I was heading headlong into adolescence and...
Review – The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Towards the end of their arduous journey to the Lonely Mountain, Bilbo and the Dwarves happen across the burnt out husk of Dale a prosperous town once inhabited by men. Smaug the Magnificent, the...
The Two Worst Shows of 2013
As 2013 draws to a close and the media are filled with retrospectives on the best of, the worst of, and those between, I find myself reflecting on the television I gave up on in 2013 due to complete...
Not So Liberal? Violence Against Transgender Women in the Bay Area
California’s Bay Area enjoys a reputation as one of the most liberal regions in the country, a locale infamous for ‘San Francisco values,’ the alleged libertine attitudes of the Castro, the...
Hard Science Fiction Makes a Comeback in Fox’s Almost Human
Irritatingly, I find myself deeply enjoying yet another police drama. This whole thing is starting to make me highly suspicious about my supposedly anti-establishment leanings—perhaps pop culture...
Gravity and the 21st Century Hollywood Universe
The planets have realigned and America is no longer at the center of the Hollywood universe. Imaginative outsiders are heading west to mine California gold, and in true Invasion of the Body Snatchers...