Alternative monitoring of popular culture ~ broadly defined ~ in the pursuit of deeper understanding
Monday, June 14, 2021
In the Heights
Thursday, June 10, 2021
Cruella
Sunday, June 6, 2021
Spiral
The Saw franchise of eight (or nine) splatter films (depending on if you count Chris Rock's latest movie, Spiral) were successful because they walked the line between the plausible and implausible in the games of deadly entrapment the homicidal maniac Jigsaw devised to test or punish his victims (again, depending on your POV). Darren Lynn Bousman directed three pictures in the original series and has returned to tweak that winning formula while keeping the ironic sadism front and center. The results are mixed and if the ending is to be believed, this might be the start of another bloody series.
Trap
M. Night Shyamalan's latest thriller, Trap, is mind-bending poser like his previous pictures but not in the same way. The biggest ques...

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As you closely read the two photographs above -- Sally Mann's "Candy Cigarette"(top) and Diane Arbus's ...
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The rootlessness that comes from pride and calamity threading through Bob Dylan's 1965 hit single "Like a Rolling Stone" als...
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Dame Maggie Smith's only leading role Oscar was for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), in which she played the title character, a t...