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Articles in Culture and Criticism

Around the Tomatoverse: Rocha, Rayna, Ari Gold, and dancing nuts
February 12, 2013 – 4:49 PM | 3 Comments
Around the Tomatoverse: Rocha, Rayna, Ari Gold, and dancing nuts

Above, Coco Rocha schools Buzzfeed on the perfect photobomb. Hee.
On The Blotter, The Amazing Soriano solved the category-spacing ish. Thanks, friend.
On Yahoo!, I recapped The Carrie Diaries, Girls (ugh), and love in an elevator on Nashville; interviewed Coco Rocha about …

Les Miserables: Uch, haine
February 7, 2013 – 7:17 PM | 30 Comments
<I>Les Miserables</I>: Uch, <I>haine</I>

Never have I been so delighted to break a review screener in half as instructed. Les Miserables is everything I mean when I say I hate musicals: loud, obvious, sincere, leaden, fucking goddamn endless. Every …

Film Fiber: Frenzy brings it all back home (and shouldn’t)
February 2, 2013 – 12:02 PM | 16 Comments
Film Fiber: <I>Frenzy</I> brings it all back home (and shouldn’t)

(or, “Hitchcock Completism Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up To Be”)
Frenzy is adequate. It’s not great; it’s not quite good, even. Alfred Hitchcock’s penultimate film is miles better than the stillbirth that preceded it in his …

Tomato Nation Read-Along #17: Poll
January 31, 2013 – 5:19 PM | 3 Comments
Tomato Nation Read-Along #17: Poll

Or, “Time to hack this pile of Christmas books down to a manageable size.” It’s a fiction/true crime/pop culture fest…with some overlaps there (Bourdain is the first and last things; Spungen is the last two …

Elsewhere in the Tomatoverse: Carrie, commercials, Kingles
January 31, 2013 – 10:49 AM | 8 Comments
Elsewhere in the Tomatoverse: Carrie, commercials, Kingles

On The Blotter, I talked about the ambiguity of Zodiac‘s ending with Matt Zoller Seitz and Mike D’Angelo, and reviewed an excellent Jack the Ripper book. (Coming soon: a “compleat Betty Broderick” line-up from me and …

Zero Dark Thirty: Fatigue(d)
January 28, 2013 – 3:47 PM | 16 Comments
<I>Zero Dark Thirty</I>: Fatigue(d)

I wonder what I missed; I didn’t have a strong reaction to Zero Dark Thirty either way. I didn’t think the depiction of torture was fetishistic, or cynical, or too much or too little (I …

Elsewhere in the Tomatoverse: Oprah, Rayna, and Ralph
January 18, 2013 – 6:33 PM | 3 Comments
Elsewhere in the Tomatoverse: Oprah, Rayna, and Ralph

On Yahoo!, I broke down Night One of the Lance/Oprah interview (twice); recapped Nashville, The Carrie Diaries, Revenge, and Girls; and talked about Oprah some more.
On Revolting Snacks, Dr. Glark filed a report from L.A. on some …

Life of Pi: Let’s hope this kitchen sink floats
January 17, 2013 – 10:43 AM | 25 Comments
<I>Life of Pi</I>: Let’s hope this kitchen sink floats

A teenage boy named Pi, shipwrecked on his way from India to Quebec with his family and their zoo animals, spends more than half a year at sea, “sharing” a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger …

The Uninvited: Blood, no guts
January 7, 2013 – 12:22 PM | 2 Comments
<I>The Uninvited</I>: Blood, no guts

Despite the too-broad title — Bloody Things or …Eek! would have worked just as well — The Uninvited has a ton of potential. Jan (Marguerite Moreau of Wet Hot American Summer) suffered most of her …

The Impossible and the white light
January 2, 2013 – 3:12 PM | 8 Comments
<I>The Impossible</I> and the white light

Treed by the Boxing Day tsunami, seriously injured vacationer Maria (Naomi Watts), her tween son Lucas (Tom Holland), and an equanimous mystery toddler named Daniel (Johan Sundberg) divide a can of Coke. The rest of …