At the time, it was meant to be read as a great compliment: Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez create comic books for people who don’t read comic books! A publisher or pitchman couldn’t have come up with a more glorious phrase, one magical sentence that would reel in the literate and…
The War on Drugs has become this generation’s Vietnam, the unwinnable conflict that will, in the end, destroy the innocent and reward the guilty. That, in a coke vial, is the premise of Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic, a film that gives flesh and face to bloodless government statistics and statements seldom…
Pete sells out, and then some: Since opening his own Internet kiosk (www.eelpie.com), the Who’s songwriter-guitarist has opened the vaults and introduced American shoppers to the value of buying music by the pound (conversion rates being what they are). Earlier in the year, he finally unloaded the Lifehouse baggage he’s…
“You’re right! I quit!”Until this moment — this shrill outburst that comes out of nowhere and startles both interviewer and subject — Marisa Tomei had been speaking in hushed tones, like someone making funeral arrangements. Every so often, she would punctuate her sentences with giggles — some nervous, some delirious…
Thank God for old Jews with shaky hands and the inability to tell this word (G-O-R-E) from this one (B-U-C-H-A-N-A-N). Without them — and Survivor Richard Hatch, that self-proclaimed “fat naked fag” who, as it turns out, is just a really concerned parent and not at all, uh, abusive –…
The Family Man offers but a slight variation on the threadbare holiday theme of what life might have been like had Our Hero followed a different path — or never been born. Not only is it a redo of It’s a Wonderful Life — complete with an angel (played by…
Contained within a care package sent by C.D. Payne is a self-penned press release introducing the author as “the Rodney Dangerfield of comic novelists,” complete with a picture of the bug-eyed comedian and his shopworn catch phrase “I can’t get no respect.” As it turns out, this is the letter…
What Women Want could be the first movie to win a Clio Award for Advertisement of the Year. No fewer than two dozen products receive prominent placement in the film, from Federal Express to Foster’s Lager to Cutty Sark to L’eggs pantyhose to US Airways. After a while, you begin…
Fair warning: Enough time has passed that it’s okay to discuss the ending of writer-director M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable. Those who’ve not yet seen the film and intend to might want to keep on moving. Or perhaps not: To reveal the ending, all 180 or so seconds of it, is…
Christmastime is here, but for the first time, Charlie Brown’s father will not be around to watch his depressed, round-headed child celebrate the holiday. He will not be in front of the television next week to watch his little boy seek psychiatric help from a nickel-grubbing girl who diagnoses her…
Day One: It was just part of the job, just another movie on another afternoon. This one promised to be no more special than any other, save for the casting of Meg Ryan and Russell Crowe. Proof of Life was the movie during which they fell in love, or whatever…
When Sub Pop Records announced earlier this year it was releasing a tribute to Bruce Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska — the one he recorded in his bedroom, the one on which he sounded like Bruce Springsteen doing Bob Dylan doing Woody Guthrie doing Bruce Springsteen — it sounded like a…
Ken Burns apologizes for his “filibustering,” but it doesn’t stop him from talking and talking until the original question becomes a faint memory in the wake of an answer that goes on and on. But perhaps as much is to be expected from Burns, the documentarian whose films begin as…
Unbreakable is such a quiet film that whenever a character speaks above a whisper, it sounds like the shattering of glass in a monastery. It’s also a terribly sad movie; almost no one cracks a smile or a joke, and everyone wears the look of someone who’s just spent the…
Both of these acts belong in a rock ‘n’ roll museum — Bono’s fly specs and Liam Gallagher’s eyebrow, preserved in amber behind Plexiglas (most of Oasis’ riffs are already sealed and on display, under the Beatles exhibit). They belong to another era, a time when it was possible to…
No one likes to be seen as the roadblock to a revolution. The unfortunate soul — or the dumb bastard — who chooses to impede progress is likely to be mowed down by those charging toward tomorrow. He will become a thing to be wiped off the shoes of those…
Little Nicky will redefine the phrase “worst movie ever,” because it might actually be the worst movie ever. Never again will one be able to so casually sling around that phrase about, say, anything produced by Jerry Bruckheimer or anything starring Richard Grieco or Robert Davi or Rodney Dangerfield (who,…
Now that Radiohead’s Kid A has topped the pops, it’s tempting to proclaim the long musical drought at an end; for one moment, at least, art rock has mounted the charge and proudly planted its flag, right into (Milli Va)Nelly’s ski vest. Never mind that Kid A is only half…
No one likes to be seen as the roadblock to a revolution. The unfortunate soul–or the dumb bastard–who chooses to impede progress is likely to be mowed down by those charging toward tomorrow. He will become a thing to be wiped off the shoes of those who march, march, march…
Charlie’s Angels
John Wesley Hall believes justice is a myth taught in classrooms, a fable found in law books, as imaginary as the unicorn and the mermaid. The Arkansas attorney mentions case after case in which he represented an innocent who wound up imprisoned or, worse, executed; in the course of a…
Let’s get this out of the way right now, because so many of you will find this hard to believe: Yes, Mad magazine still exists. It is still being published 48 years after it was created by Harvey Kurtzman and William Gaines, neither of whom lived long enough to see…
