Articles in Culture and Criticism

Sars: Michello!
Miss Alli: Oh my GOD, seriously. SHE IS INSANE.
Sars: I had a few moments last night where I thought, fleetingly, that her whole shtick is a giant put-on. Because who can actually act like …

Welcome to The Tomato Nation Oscars 2011 Death Race! In case you missed last year’s iteration, the ODR is exactly what it sounds like: I try to watch every single Oscar nominee before the ceremonies …

It’s tempting to blow Shutter Island off with a “there’s no there there,” but there’s a there. It takes the script about an hour too long to arrive at, is the issue, and the story …

Sars: Bachello again.
Miss Alli: Bachello!
Sars: I’d just like to say right up front here that I kind of got a little for-real crush on Brad when he called that marshmallow “little buddy.”
Alli: I was watching …

William James, the Harvard philosopher, wrote a letter to the Boston Transcript about “the cold pot of grease of McKinley’s cant at the recent Boston banquet” and said the Philippine operation “reeked of the infernal …

The entire purpose of your flimsy-looking contraption is to strengthen the abdominals. AbdomiNals. Not one of the artistes responsible for either the ’80s-vintage illustrative graphics or the pornishly loving footage of the positively ropey-looking “after” …

You’re not an asshole, Mark. You’re just trying so HARD to be.
That presumed attempt to make Mark Zuckerberg marginally more likable to the audience is one of the few feet Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Network …

In this week’s episode of Bradelor! DUN!, Miss Alli and I almost accidentally co-watched the second hour on a weird intra-IM time delay, and Alli impressively kept secret from me a final rose ceremony that, …

Howard Zinn edges Shannen Doherty at the last moment — how many times to do you get to write that sentence — to make A People’s History of the United States our 7th read-along book. …

Discovered after the war, the unfinished work, with no soundtrack, quickly became a resource for historians seeking an authentic record, despite its elaborate propagandistic construction. The later discovery of a long-missing reel complicated earlier readings, …