January 18, 2016
Happy New Year! Or, given the slight delay in posting this year's edition, Happy MLK Day!
Any day is a good day to share the annual list of enjoyable cultural artifacts encountered last year. In no particular order, as always. Let me know what I should seek in the future!
Aaron Caplan
Two different angles on what happens when people are so terribly certain that other people are evil. Sicario is a superior thriller about the war on drugs and picking your workmates wisely. Making A Murderer is a multi-part true crime documentary that shows how some people don't want the facts to get in the way of a good story. Too bad for you if one of them is your public defender! (Episodes 1-4 are the most important.)
Two different approaches to being a girl in San Francisco. Only the Pixar one is safe for work. (I'd sell the film rights to "Diary of a Teenage Boy" set in a pinball arcade in Iowa City, but it's not very cinematic.)
Marx said history plays first as tragedy and then as farce. Since The Big Short plays the 2008 financial crisis as comedy, what will the next bursting bubble look like: tragic farce? or farcical tragedy?
Bickering vampire roommates realize that getting dressed for a night on the town is harder than you think when you can't use a mirror.
Adrenaline with a splash of mother's milk.
Aged Sherlock regrets being such a know-it-all, while being terrified of not knowing it all any more.
I raved a few years ago about Black Mirror, the British import where people interact with their personal technology in unsettling ways. I was able to see the Christmas episode only recently, which may be the best of the bunch--questioning our obligations to each other and to our artificially intelligent servants.
Superpowers can drive you to drink.
Ant-Man (2015) The Baader Meinhof Complex (2009) Ex Machina (2015) Keep The River On Your Right (2001) Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015) Nightcrawler (2014) Spotlight (2015) Stories We Tell (2013) Under The Skin (2014) Wild (2014) The Wrecking Crew (2015), paired with Love & Mercy (2014)
So insightful! So accessible! So pretty! Such a wonderful companion web site! Such good value for money!
It's about time those "Philadelphia Freedom" strings got revived for a new century!
The fabulous Leah Lee, of course!