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 […]

read more from this topic.....

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 […]

read more from this topic.....

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 […]

read more from this topic.....

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 […]

read more from this topic.....

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 […]

read more from this topic.....

I was startled to find this important editorial in the NYTimes:

A Final Verdict on the Presidential Salute

After a couple of paragraphs explaining the writer’s expertise in saluting, and another couple of paragraphs on the history of presidential salutes, we come to the conclusion:
(President Obama’s) salute, it struck me, was impeccable in every way.
Huh?
It’s true that […]

read more from this topic.....

After striking a well-appreciated chord with audiences everywhere in the highly praised Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, the voice of Neil Patrick Harris is in almost as high demand as the actor himself. And last week in a special episode of the animated series Batman: The Brave & The Bold Harris’s voice made an impressive appearance […]

read more from this topic.....

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 […]

read more from this topic.....

Ah, a British paper just pooh poohed the British victory at the Battle of Agincourt, saying that Prince Hal was not outnumbered 4 to 1, merely outnumbered 2 to 1.
Actually, the author misses the point, which is that the elite knights of France got slowed down by the mud and were massacred by ordinary British […]

read more from this topic.....

After the success of both Alan Weisman’s 2007 novel The World Without Us - an investigative and imaginative exploration of what would happen if humans suddenly disappeared from the face of the Earth - and the subsequent 2008 feature-length History Channel documentary Life After People, it’s no surprise that the History Channel spun the underlying […]

read more from this topic.....

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 […]

read more from this topic.....

In an incredibly chilling move, the White House tried to freeze out Fox News from interviewing Obama’s Pay Czar, while granting interviews to all the other major news organizations.  As the video notes, often the White House makes a particular official available to all the groups, one after the other, but today’s event broke with […]

read more from this topic.....

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, […]

read more from this topic.....

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 […]

read more from this topic.....

This past Friday, an episode of Degrassi The next Generation aired an episode entitled “Shoot to Thrill”. This episode involved a girl named Ali and her boyfriend Johnny. Ali took some pictures of Johnny and a stuffed animal promising never to share them with anyone. As the episode went on, we saw how poorly Johnny […]

read more from this topic.....

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 […]

read more from this topic.....

President Obama was brought up in Asia, yet he seems clueless about Afghanistan, and of the geopolitical problems in this area.
The press is even worse, preferring the simplistic out of date explanations of the “Afghanistan is Viet Nam” meme, or the “Stop the war” meme, or stressing civilian casualties “reported” by Taliban linked sources without […]

read more from this topic.....

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 […]

read more from this topic.....

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 […]

read more from this topic.....

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 […]

read more from this topic.....

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 […]

read more from this topic.....

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 […]

read more from this topic.....

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 […]

read more from this topic.....

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 […]

read more from this topic.....

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 […]

read more from this topic.....

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 […]

read more from this topic.....

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 […]

read more from this topic.....

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 […]

read more from this topic.....

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 […]

read more from this topic.....

I was delighted to hear that Mother Angelica and Deacon Bill Steltemeier have been awarded a medal by the Vatican. She deserves it. Mother Angelica is the founder of EWTN, a Catholic network that is found on many cable systems all over the world.
On the surface it sounds like a proper award.

But her story […]

read more from this topic.....