Baseball

“I wrote 63 songs this year. They’re all about Jeter.” Just kidding. The game we love, the players we hate, and more.

Culture and Criticism

From Norman Mailer to Wendy Pepper — everything on film, TV, books, music, and snacks (shut up, raisins), plus the Girls’ Bike Club.

Donors Choose and Contests

Helping public schools, winning prizes, sending a crazy lady in a tomato costume out in public.

Stories, True and Otherwise

Monologues, travelogues, fiction, and fart humor. And hens. Don’t forget the hens.

The Vine

The Tomato Nation advice column addresses your questions on etiquette, grammar, romance, and pet misbehavior. Ask The Readers about books or fashion today!

Fantastic Mr. Fox
February 27, 2010 · 11 Comments

It’s about what you’d expect from a Wes Anderson movie, in animated form: if you find his work twee, you’ll hate it, and if you like its offbeat charm, you’ll enjoy it.
It tries a little …

The Vine: February 26, 2010
February 26, 2010 · 39 Comments

Dear Sars,
I would be ever so appreciative if you/the readers could possibly help me identify a book/story I have stuck in my head — it’s driving me insane.
This all came about because I was washing …

Serpico
February 25, 2010 · 36 Comments
<I>Serpico</I>

It seems like more than a few seventies movies have lines of dialogue in which girls swoon over Al Pacino. A quick search only revealed the one, the girl in Saturday Night Fever who sighs …

Crazy Heart
February 25, 2010 · 22 Comments
<I>Crazy Heart</I>

The acting is good across the board, in spite of writing that lurches between motivations and tempos like a car dropping out of gear. By that measure, it’s not Jeff Bridges, the presumptive Best Actor …

The Vine: February 24, 2010
February 24, 2010 · 93 Comments

Hi Sars,
My husband and I have a close-knit group of friends, all couples, mostly, and they all are starting to have kids.It is not an exaggeration when I say all of them: it is quite …

The Animated Shorts Program: Sharp as a Brick
February 23, 2010 · 7 Comments
The Animated Shorts Program: Sharp as a Brick

A more entertaining slate overall than the live-action shorts, by far.
Again, I’ll cover them in the order screened, along with the “highly commended” shorts that showed.
French Roast. A single joke, not terribly funny to begin …

Faubourg 36
February 23, 2010 · One Comment

It’s…fine. It has a few charming bits; the return of Jojo is predictable, but done well, and a funeral at the end has a sweet callback to a running sight gag. But the coda is …

The Princess and the Frog
February 22, 2010 · 14 Comments

It’s nice to see a heroine of color in a Disney movie, but I don’t know if Tiana spending the bulk of the story as a frog necessarily strikes a great blow for multiculturalism, not …

The Messenger
February 22, 2010 · 4 Comments

The Messenger is nominated for Best Original Screenplay; if it wins, Oren Moverman and Alessandro Camon should waste no time chopping the statue in half and handing it to Ben Foster and Woody Harrelson. The …

The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus
February 22, 2010 · 11 Comments
<I>The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus</I>

Roger Ebert, though he feels more generously towards it than I, sums up my reaction to the movie in his January 6 review:
My problem with Gilliam’s films is that they lack a discernible storyline. I …