Sony’s decision not to release The Interview on Christmas Day due to hackers threatening violence seemed inevitable. But the shock still hasn’t worn off. That some group of idiots could intimidate and bully a major motion picture studio into shelving a multimillion dollar motion picture seems unbelievable. It’s even more…
The biggest laugh I heard from the audience at my screening of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies came after seven words in the end credits: “Based on the novel by J.R.R. Tolkien.” Just picture that tweedy Oxford philologist nodding in approval at this adaptation of his lark…
The original Broadway production of Annie was a kiddie musical that wasn’t for kids. It was a period piece about the Great Depression — both a celebration of Warbucksian success and an elbow-jab to stingy rich folk — with a detour into a Hooverville and a key cameo from Franklin…
Editor’s Note: Sony has officially canceled the theatrical release of The Interview following terrorist threats against theaters, and the announcement that several major theater chains had opted not to exhibit the film. The following review was written before Sony pulled The Interview – and stands as a reminder that world-shaking…
Sony assumed North Korea would hate the movie. The question was: What would it do? Pyongyang had just tested its atom bomb and threatened “preemptive nuclear attack.” And the Supreme Leader with his finger on the trigger was barely over 30, with less than two years of experience. But Kim…
By Inkoo Kang TV continued to unmoor from its origins and transform into something else this year. No longer tethered to a specific appliance, a particular kind of storytelling, or even commercial concerns, “television” now feels like an increasingly obsolete word. But that’s a discussion for another time, for we’ve…
What kind of circle is time again? A year after blowing the doors off our annual critics’ poll, golden boy Matthew McConaughey won just a single vote for his turn in the loudest movie of the year, Christopher Nolan’s tears-in-space effort Interstellar, which has tied with the unprescient Transcendence as…
By Amy McCarthy & Jaime Paul Falcon You poor people, you’re on your way home for the holidays, and the reality that you can’t steal away to the bar every night sinks in right around the time your mother insists that you actually talk to your grandparents instead of just…
Whatever it is Americans want out of life — it’s something we struggle to precisely define ourselves — it was nowhere in evidence on December 3, when a New York grand jury failed to indict the police officer whose chokehold killed Eric Garner in July. We all know we live…
Flip open your Bibles to Numbers 12:3 to find the first inaccuracy in Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings. “Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth,” sayeth the Good Book of our hero, played by Christian Bale, an…
For reasons that are perhaps understandable, stories about women finding themselves — or their voices, or their inner courage, or any number of things that are apparently very easy to mislay — are big business. But even if Cheryl Strayed’s hugely successful 2012 memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on…
What kind of circle is time again? A year after blowing the doors off our annual critics’ poll, golden boy Matthew McConaughey won just a single vote for his turn in the loudest movie of the year, Christopher Nolan’s tears-in-space effort Interstellar, which has tied with the unprescient Transcendence as…
BY INKOO KANG Despite its sumptuous displays of feudal opulence — cavalries, silk gowns, all the naked female extras money can buy — Netflix’s Marco Polo feels distinctly like scraps. Turgid, fatuous and humorless, the streaming site’s newest series is a grave miscalculation of what has made Game of Thrones,…
We begin this week’s Voice Film Club podcast with a Thomas Pynchon story, before hosts Alan Scherstuhl and Stephanie Zacharek of the Village Voice, and Amy Nicholson of LA Weekly, move onto Paul Thomas Anderson’s movie adaption of his novel, Inherent Vice. It’s “in some ways a godawful mess, indulgent…
It wasn’t that long ago that the world’s focus was on our little corner of the globe thanks to a retail cutie named “Alex From Target.” Don’t know who that is? Good for you. The important thing is this: He’s from Frisco and became inexplicably famous enough to appear on…
BY INKOO KANGHospitals are depressing. Until recently, medical shows glossed over this basic fact of life by focusing on the most glamorous clique within them: doctors. For the past two decades, the upwardly mobile audience identification integral to most TV shows taught us to look away from the bedpans and…
The biggest laugh I heard from the audience at my screening of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies came from seven words in the end credits: “Based on the novel by J.R.R. Tolkien.” Just picture that tweedy Oxford philologist nodding in pleased approval at this adaptation of his…
There is a difference between being a redneck and being white trash. So when CMT’s fourth season of Redneck Island airs Thursday, make sure you’re fully aware of the difference. After filling out an application she found on her Facebook newsfeed, Royse City native and former Hooters bartender Nicole Bass…
If we’re honest with ourselves, the teaser trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens looks better than the original Star Wars movies. That’s how this week’s Voice Film Club podcast opens, with your hosts Alan Scherstuhl and Stephanie Zacharek of the Village Voice and Amy Nicholson of LA Weekly. Talk…
The du Pont family made its fortune selling gunpowder during the War of 1812, and soldiered on to invent everything ever worn by a cop: Kevlar, nylon, polyester, synthetic rubber. If you’ve cooked on Teflon pans, that money’s theirs, too. That means you’ve supported American patriotism, or at least heir…
Tales of the Old West continue to make up a significant portion of our cultural narrative, mostly because we still like to comfort ourselves with stories showing that ours is a land of opportunity. Making the trek to the American frontier promised a new life, or at the very least…
The third-greatest scourge of the earth, right after online comments sections and bedbugs, is the unfunny comedy sequel, which may be why you think you should skip Horrible Bosses 2. The miraculous surprise is that Horrible Bosses 2 isn’t terrible at all. It’s looser, breezier, more confident than its 2011…
