I greatly enjoy stand-up comedy.  I usually go see a live comedy show from a nationally known comic artist every couple of months or so.  I don’t go to many open mikes, although some of my friends have been pressuring me to start performing at them.  Suffice it to say that comedy is a pretty […]

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“This film is a trip”
There came a time in my life when I was ok with simply admitting when I don’t “get” something. I stopped pretending to understand certain music, writers or artists simply to seem cool and hip. Therefore I can easily say that although I liked THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS, I […]

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“A Christmas Carol beats the dickens out of other 3-D films.”
The Halloween pumpkins are still warm from their candles and our thoughts have yet to turn to turkey and stuffing yet A Christmas Carol is already the talk of this weekends movie releases. I would have a big issue with that if not for the […]

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Period dramas are the types of movie that you do if you are Keira Knightly or if you want to be taken seriously as a candidate for a movie award.  Some of them are genuinely good, but the vast majority of them are just an excuse for people to dress up in poncey outfits and […]

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I’m not much into magic or magical anything.  That eliminates most fantasy writing, a lot of video games and a host of other things.  The one exception I do make is the novels and novellas of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the father of Magical Realism.  Also, I like the Force and the mystical power that guides […]

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I was not surprised when Fox first said that they would be making several sequels to the original movie in this series.  It was a truly delightful movie and they have done a great job of keeping each new movie exciting.  They do this through making each individual story compelling and by introducing new characters […]

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If a scary movie is all about making you jump, that’s just stupid.  Anything can make you jump, so that doesn’t take intelligence or anything else other than an understanding of timing.  I went to a haunted house last week for Halloween, a huge one that took up an entire warehouse building along with numerous […]

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Ah, Halloween is here, and the TV channels are full of stories of witches and ghosts and goblins of all sorts.
Most of it is harmless fun: art and literature helps mankind be able to confront the evils around them in a way that strengthens their ability to hope that confronting the more real evils around […]

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You may or may not know that the largest film industry in the world is not Hollywood, but Bollywood: the film industry of India. But do you know which country has the second largest film industry in the world?
Nollywood.
The Nigerian film industry.
According to Wikipedia the industry is a $250 million dollar industry which produces […]

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“The greatest concert that never was”
It is hard to watch and talk about the new documentary, THIS IS IT, which chronicles the last few months of Michael Jacksons life without feeling some tinge of sadness and a little bit of media sensationalism. Granted the film was created with the full support of Jackson’s estate but […]

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Ah, how quickly the grandchildren grow up. The grandsons have changed from computer game freaks to college geeks, and the granddaughters are now budding teenagers, on the threshold of being a woman.
In the past, the “Themes” for birthday parties were various Disney princesses; now little girls are starting to grow up, so the Theme of […]

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I have loved the work of Ryan Reynolds ever since I first saw him on screen.  He’s hilarious, he’s one of the best looking guys out there and he is married to Scarlett Johansson.  What could possibly get better than that?  He has monumental talent when it comes to being a comic actor, but it […]

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A few months ago, I was spending some time with my sister, just sitting around and watching classic television on WGN America.  In my opinion, that is the best channel out there for viewing those sometimes regrettable television shows that were a huge part of our collective past.  So, in the course of watching television, […]

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The Jonas brothers are pretty much omnipresent these days.  The three of them are all over the place and it looks as though their cultural influence is only growing.  First there was the CD and then the appearances on different television shows and then the tour and the movie about the tour show.  I thought […]

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I always like it when characters from one television show make an appearance on another television show.  It’s a great kind of nod to another show and it really brings in a whole lot of different facts than can be played off of.  The first instance of this I can remember is when the Bionic […]

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I am really not a fan of scary movies at all.  I can watch exploitation movies until the cows come home, but when it’s straight up scary, I can’t deal with that.  The movies of Eli Roth and Rob Zombie have never been a big deal for me, because they’re fun and evil and just […]

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Here is the number one clue that this DVD is going to be incredible – major funding for it was provided by none other than the National Science Foundation.  This project is also connected to the American Museum of Natural History.  Both of those groups are very great and have managed to be attached to […]

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The six television shows that are included in this DVD are some of the best out there when it comes to children’s television.  My personal favorite is none other than Thomas and all of his tank engine friends.  With winter fast approaching (at least where I live), your children are going to be indoors a […]

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Prior to seeing the commercials for this new diamond edition of this movie, I did not know that this was in fact the first full-length animated movie that was made by Walt Disney.  I hadn’t seen this movie in years, prior to just rewatching it a couple of days ago.  However, if I had seen […]

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French cinema seems to be highly associated with independent cinema and foreign films, at least in the minds of most American citizens.  Some of it certainly comes from a place of Francophobia, but much of it is because a lot of French filmmakers have been before their time and they tell stories of such light […]

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Sometimes it’s hard to tell if a movie is being bad ironically or is just plain bad.  More often than not, that is a really bad sign for the movie.  But with all the meta-references that go on in independent cinema and the overwhelming amounts of irony out there in the ether, sometimes you just […]

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I’ve said it before and I will say it again – I adore Wallace and Gromit without hesitation in the least.  They first came out when I was five years old and they were the funniest things I have ever seen at that point in my life.  Even now, they are way up there and […]

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I did not know who Mitch Fatel was before I got this DVD.  Once I started watching it, I realized that I did recognize him from some other things I had seen before, but I did not remember him based on his name.  That’s the problem with stand-up comedians – there are just way too […]

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I know next to nothing about Miley Cyrus.  I don’t know how much you know about her, but if you want to find out more, now your chance is ready for you to bring home on DVD today!
Starting this September 29th, now available on DVD from Infinity Entertainment Group comes the unauthorized look into the […]

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I would do next to anything to have Tina Fey be a part of my life.  She’s hilarious, she’s nice, and she’s beautiful.  She makes jokes about the same sort of deep cultural pieces that I do as well.  But as much as I like Tina Fey, I just might be in love with Liz […]

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This DVD is the kind of stuff I grew up on.  I have a younger sister, so we were never able to watch overly violent or even interesting television shows.  Due to that fact, things like Winnie the Pooh were commonplace to us.  I don’t think I ever watched this particular movie prior to getting […]

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Dickens’ tale of Christmas and wealth and poverty in Victorian England is one of the most popular holiday myths outside of those found in religious books.  References to it abound in popular culture, even this many years after the fact.  I don’t even think I can count all of the different remakes and adaptations of […]

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“Unplug and run… from the theater”
In the new film I, Robot… wait that isn’t right. In the new film The Stepford Wives… oops still not correct. The new movie Short Circuit… darn wrong again! In the new film Surrogates, there we go, we find little originality and even less of a plot line or attempt […]

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“This Informant gives too much information”
When a filmmaker puts the entire weight of a project on the shoulders of one character the actor playing that role had better be able to bring the goods. Also the writing has to be such that your actor has the confidence to dive in and go for it. In […]

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“Whip It…good”
Drew Barrymore releases her directorial debut this week taking a quirky look inside the world of roller derby and coming of age with a fun little film called, Whip It. We all know that the big screen has loved Drew since she first chased that little extra terrestrial around and we have seen the […]

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