May 26, 2016 | Arts and Entertainment, Elections, Elections - Presidential (2016), History, Race and Racism
Published: Salon (May 23, 2016) When HBO announced in 2014 that it was going to release a cinematic adaptation of “All the Way,” Robert Schenkkan’s Tony Award-winning play about President Lyndon Johnson’s successful mission to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it’s...
May 16, 2016 | Arts and Entertainment, Elections, Elections - Presidential (2016), Foreign Policy
Published: The Huffington Post (May 16, 2016), Salon (May 15, 2016), The Good Men Project (May 12, 2016) If you're a fan of movies and haven't visited Red Letter Media's website, you should. The critics there are among the funniest and smartest on the Internet, as...
May 6, 2016 | Arts and Entertainment, Civil Liberties
Published: Salon (May 6, 2016) “If we can’t accept limitations, we’re boundaryless, we’re no better than the bad guys.” So says Iron Man (aka Tony Stark) in “Captain America: Civil War,” perhaps one of the most politically nuanced films ever released as a tentpole in...
Apr 11, 2016 | Arts and Entertainment, Mental Illness, Scandals
Published: Salon (April 11, 2016) Life wasn’t easy for Jake Lloyd after his starring role in “Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace.” As anyone who went to the movies in 1999 will recall, his subpar performance was frequently singled out as a major weakness in a...
Mar 29, 2016 | Arts and Entertainment
Published: Salon (March 29, 2016) The reviews are in for “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice”… and they aren’t good. It currently scores a 29 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and a 44 on Metacritic, with the general consensus being that it has a muddled and confusing plot,...
Mar 16, 2016 | Arts and Entertainment, Gender and Sexism, Race and Racism
Published: Salon (March 16, 2016) Like most millennials, I’m absolutely psyched that Steven Spielberg is making a fifth “Indiana Jones” movie. The 1980s trilogy was a staple of my childhood, and after the disappointment of 2008’s “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the...
Mar 8, 2016 | Arts and Entertainment, Gay Rights and Other LGBTQIA Issues, Gender and Sexism, Religion and Religious Issues
Published: Salon (March 8, 2016) If we live in the golden age of television, the FXX comedy “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” is one of the underappreciated gems. Often billed as “Seinfeld on crack,” the show has a distinct comic sensibility of its own, cynically...
Mar 8, 2016 | Arts and Entertainment, Gender and Sexism
Published: The Good Men Project (March 8, 2016) When it was first announced that Sony was making an all-female Ghostbusters, I couldn't have been more excited. In my article for The Good Men Project on the upcoming film, I wrote that "it would be a disaster if the...
Feb 3, 2016 | Arts and Entertainment, Gender and Sexism, Race and Racism, Scandals
Published: Salon (February 3, 2016) When Shia LaBeouf was caught plagiarizing another artist, he launched a performance art piece called #IAmSorry as a statement on the ritual of celebrity apologies. Although his particular offense had nothing to do with bigotry, he...
Jan 29, 2016 | Arts and Entertainment, Gender and Sexism, Race and Racism
Published: Salon (January 29, 2016) How should progressives respond to the recent news that Marvel Comics CEO Ike Perlmutter donated over $1 million to a Donald Trump event intended to draw viewers away from the Republican presidential debate? As a start, they should...