Email Author Alan Scherstuhl

Awards

• 2009 - Kansas City Press Club Heart of America Awards, published April 3, 2008

  "The Best Story of the Year"

• 2009 - Kansas City Press Club Heart of America Awards, published April 24, 2008

  "Desert Storm"

• 2009 - Kansas City Press Club Heart of America Awards, published September 11, 2008

  "Water Logged"

• 2009 - Kansas City Press Club Heart of America Awards, published November 13, 2008

  "What's At Stake"

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2013 Stories by Alan Scherstuhl

• Want a Vague Idea of Midnight's Children? See the Movie!

  published May 9, 2013

  One of the most beguiling of the many stories all knotted up in Salman Rushdie's brilliant, baggy, exhausting 1981 novel Midnight's... More >>

• Matthew McConaughey Is Great, Again, in Mud

  published May 9, 2013

  Has anyone ever been so perfectly cast as Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused? Sculpted entirely of charisma and cheekbones yet... More >>

• Tom Cruise's Oblivion Is Grand Until It's Not

  published April 18, 2013

  The good news: Here's a lavish, serious science-fiction picture, one that on occasion transcends big-budget hit-making convention to glance... More >>

• It's a Disaster Contradicts Its Title in Every Way

  published April 18, 2013

  Perhaps the first great indie apocalypse potluck comedy, Todd Berger's It's a Disaster aces many of the fundamentals bobbled by too many... More >>

• Django Unchained: The Most Moving Scene Quentin Tarantino Has Yet Filmed

  published April 18, 2013

  Half a year later, now on Blu-ray and DVD, Django Unchained is still kicking up shit, this time via cross-media trickle-down. TV's LL... More >>

• 42: Jackie Robinson Biopic Nearly Brings Its Hero to Life

  published April 11, 2013

  A likable hagiography as nuanced as a plaque at the Cooperstown Hall of Fame, Brian Helgeland's Jackie Robinson bio 42 finds a politic... More >>

• Jurassic Park 3D: How Does a Classic Play When You Can't Fast-Forward?

  published April 4, 2013

  "They do move in herds," Sam Neill marvels, purportedly gazing at his director's miracle dinosaurs but in reality directing his... More >>

• The Delicious Absurdity of Wrong

  published March 28, 2013

  If real life were like Wrong, Quentin Dupieux's sweetly unnerving experiment in ambient fucked-uppedness, your phone would ring before... More >>

• A Real American Miracle: Could a G.I. Joe Movie Actually Almost Be Good?

  published March 28, 2013

  What must Bruce Willis have felt when he discovered that his seven or so minutes of G.I. Joe: Retaliation screen time offer much more... More >>

• f You Must See The Host, Please Bring a Young Man with You

  published March 28, 2013

  Across America this weekend, wives and girlfriends will accompany their fellas to G.I. Joe: Retaliation, as boys-shooting-boys movies... More >>

• Philip Roth Unmasked Reveals Our Most Wicked Writer as a Charmer

  published March 21, 2013

  Here's a tale that explains everything: A young Philip Roth, trying to shove his teen brain through Ulysses, is struck by a passage... More >>

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  Here are Five Awesome/Crazy Theories About The Shining from Room 237

  published March 21, 2013

  Like the blood that gushes forth from the elevators of the Overlook Hotel, brilliant/ridiculous theories of what Stanley Kubrick's The... More >>

• Burt Wonderstone Vanishes What Steve Carell's Best At

  published March 14, 2013

  Steve Carell's gift is for men who might drown in their own obliviousness. Like his Daily Show reporter or The Office's Michael... More >>

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  In Top of the Lake, Peggy Olson Goes to Hell

  published March 14, 2013

  Elisabeth Moss’s face is far from the only reason to savor Top of the Lake, Jane Campion’s smart, bracing, hugely... More >>

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  Other Ozzes, Great and Terrible (But Mostly Terrible)

  published March 7, 2013

  Twenty minutes into the first full-length movie based on L. Frank Baum's most beloved novel, a duck pukes into the face of Larry Semon, the... More >>

• Werner Herzog Helps Out With the Excellent Happy People

  published February 28, 2013

  Calling Happy People: A Year in the Taiga a Werner Herzog film is something like calling the dozen books released in 2012 with James... More >>

• Beautiful Creatures Is a Ravishing Chastity Fantasy

  published February 14, 2013

  Here's a question you can spit back next time someone complains that our popular culture is depraved: "Then why are our high school witches,... More >>

• Die Hard's Latest Breaks New Ground in Incoherence and Stupidity

  published February 14, 2013

  Before anything else, here's how dumb things get in A Good Day for Die Hard, which is being sold as a bang-bang movie sequel so that nobody... More >>

• Identity Thief's Creators Fear What Audiences Love About Melissa McCarthy

  published February 7, 2013

  Just a week or so after the Pentagon reversed its ban on allowing female soldiers into combat, here's another breakthrough, of a sort: The... More >>

• Director Dave Grohl, Rockers Toast L.A.'s Sound City

  published January 31, 2013

  Here's something you don't get to say too often: It's a shame when Paul McCartney turns up. Before McCartney arrives, rasping, puppy-eyed, and... More >>

• Stand Up Guys Is a Blow to Al Pacino's Legacy

  published January 31, 2013

  Please, for his own good, somebody clap Dustin Hoffman into a chastity belt. Based on what Al Pacino suffers in Stand Up Guys, and the... More >>

• West of Memphis Achieves the Impossible

  published January 24, 2013

  The murder of the children should be the most disturbing thing. But for many viewers, that isn't the case in the four films chronicling the... More >>