1. Movie Review: The Expendables
(Article Categories/Pop Culture)

The Expendables is a good example of the type of lazy, bait and switch movie making that seems to be getting more and more common. They went through the trouble of signing a huge cast of action greats, ...

2. Book Review: The Wrecking Crew
(Article Categories/Politics and Current Events)

In What's The Matter With Kansas? Thomas Frank explained how conservatives hoodwink (mostly poor) Americans into voting against their own financial self-interest. In The Wrecking Crew, he goes into ...

3. Movie Review: Hot Tub Time Machine
(Article Categories/Pop Culture)

Hot Tub Time Machine follows the Snakes on a Plane tradition of telling you right in the title whether or not you're going to enjoy the movie. If you think the title is dumb, you probably won't care ...

4. Web Series Review: Broken Toy
(Article Categories/Geek Culture)

This review originally appeared in the February 2010 issue of Bazooka Magazine. You can read my interview with series director Letia Clouston at The Death Cookie. When Bella asked me to watch ...

5. Movie Review: The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus
(Article Categories/Pop Culture)

The first thing I thought upon hearing about Heath Ledger's death was "Oh crap. Not again." Being a Terry Gilliam fan, I had already heard about Ledger (and more importantly, Tom Waits) being cast in ...

6. 2009 Book List
(Article Categories/Other Stuff)

You're probalby wondering where you can find a complete list of books I read in 2009, along with short reviews or links to longer reviews. If so, you can find just such a list at Goat Head Gumbo.  ...

7. Movie Review: Avatar
(Article Categories/Pop Culture)

Pandora is a distant planet rich in a valuable mineral amusingly named "unobtainium." The only problem is that the richest deposit lies directly beneath the village of a group of natives known as the Navi--ten-foot ...

8. Movie Review: The Box
(Article Categories/Pop Culture)

Remember how, in Cool Hand Luke, any man who did anything wrong, from failing to return his bottle to playing grabass, had to spend a night in the box? Well, I'm pretty sure that spending a night in ...

9. Movie Review: The Men Who Stare at Goats
(Article Categories/Forteana and Fringe Culture)

The usual way to adapt a movie based on a piece of reporting is to tell the story being reported on, leaving out the reporter entirely. With a Jon Ronson book, however, that sort of adaptation doesn’t ...

10. Book Review: The Men Who Stare At Goats
(Article Categories/Forteana and Fringe Culture)

I read Jon Ronson's Them: Adventures with Extremists several years ago and enjoyed it quite a bit. (You can read my review here). While I meant to keep up with Ronson's work, he somehow got lost in the ...

11. Movie Review: Surrogates
(Article Categories/Pop Culture)

It’s hard to know what to expect when Bruce Willis does sci-fi. On the one hand there’s the awesome 12 Monkeys. On the other hand there’s The Fifth Element, a very pretty but incredible derivative ...

12. Movie Review: Jennifer's Body
(Article Categories/Pop Culture)

Jennifer’s Body is the story of two high school friends, the popular, pretty bad girl Jennifer (Megan Fox) and her geeky (which of course in movie land means “also incredibly hot, but wears glasses) ...

13. Book Review: Death's Daughter by Amber Benson
(Article Categories/Geek Culture)

Death’s Daughter tells the story of Calliope Reaper-Jones, a young woman trying to make her way up in (or, more precisely, up to) the fashion industry in New York. Or at least that’s who she thinks ...

14. Movie Review: The Final Destination (3-D)
(Article Categories/Pop Culture)

Movie Final Destination movies follow a pretty simple formula: a bunch of people narrowly escape a major accident after one of the characters experiences a premonition about the disaster. Shortly thereafter, ...

15. Movie Review: Inglourious Basterds
(Article Categories/Pop Culture)

Based on the trailers of Inglourious Basterds, I was expecting the movie to be a big-screen version of a Garth Ennis war comic, full of action, gore, and general bad-assery. When a friend told me that ...

16. Movie Review: The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard
(Article Categories/Pop Culture)

An important element of marketing is knowing your audience, and Jermy Piven (One Crazy Summer, "Ellen") knows that his audience loves to see him in the role of a smooth-talking scumbag. Don Ready, a "mercenary" ...

17. Movie Review: G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
(Article Categories/Pop Culture)

When I saw the first trailers, I planned to skip the G.I. Joe movie. I never watched the cartoon or owned the toys as a kid, so I had no emotional connection to the franchise. More importantly, the ...

18. Movie Review: Funny People
(Article Categories/Pop Culture)

Funny People, as you know from the trailers, is about a comedian and actor named George Simmons (Adam Sandler) who finds out he’s dying and befriends a young comedian named Ira Wright (Seth Rogan). When ...

19. Movie Review: Moon
(Article Categories/Pop Culture)

Moon is the story of Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell), who’s nearing the end of is three-year contract with Lunar Industries as a Hydrogen-3 miner. The job requires him to live alone on a moon base for the ...

20. Book Review: Make Love The Bruce Campbell Way
(Article Categories/Pop Culture)

Make Love! The Bruce Campbell Way tells the story of Bruce Campbell, a B-Movie actor known for his major roles in countless low-budget movies and failed television serious and his bit parts in every ...