question of the weekend: Is a new intellectual culture taking shape in America?
If so, can it happen fast enough to save us?
questions
question of the day: Will we ever see an avowed atheist as a cinematic hero?
Few characters of any kind on film (or TV) express any kind of religious belief, but it’s still far more common to see explicitly religious characters than it is to see explicitly areligious characters…
question of the day: Do comic-book movies make you want to read comic books more than you already do?
If it’s summer, it must be time for the comic-book movies. But is there something else at work besides getting butts into seats with familiar characters with built-in appeal? Could it all be a nefarious plan to turn non-comic readers into comic buyers?
question of the day: Johnny Depp and Rachel Weisz in Rob Marshall’s ‘The Thin Man’: good idea or the death of film?
I love Depp and Weisz, and I bet they’d be fantastic together. But is there any reason to remake a classic? Is there any hope in hell it could possibly be better than the original? Why bother to make such a movie at all… except that Hollywood is unashamed of its creative bankruptcy?
question of the day: What film (or TV show) have you had the biggest change of heart about?
I get asked the question about changing my mind so often that I figure this must be a more regular thing for other movie lovers. So now it’s your turn…
question of the day: What are some of your most powerful cinematic experiences?
I made the mistake the other night of getting distracted by my iTunes library, and ended up wasting hours jumping around listening to music when I should have been working. One of the pieces I stumbled across was “Circle of Life” from The Lion King, and I got caught up in remembering the first time I heard that…
question of the weekend: Is it okay to celebrate the death of an enemy?
In a way, I’m glad I wasn’t in New York for the news of the death of Osama bin Laden last weekend. The chanting and the flag waving and the celebrating was so distasteful just watching it on TV from across th Atlantic…
question of the day: What’s your favorite non-English-language film?
Do you have different criteria for judging foreign-language films than you do for English-language films?
question of the day: What films have you lied about seeing?
As with many other lies of all kinds, it’s often easy to get caught in a lie… but is it easier to pretend you’ve seen a movie you haven’t seen when the content of such a movie has been discussed so frequently that it’s easy to fake it?
question of the day: Have you ever lied about liking a movie, and if so, why?
I do think that any film critic who lies about his or her reaction to a movie needs to find different work. But there would seem to be no reason why a member of the moviegoing public wouldn’t lie about liking a film…
