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!

The Ring
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

The movie doesn’t make any kind of sense, and yet I spent the next 24 hours creeped out beyond belief. The “killer video” itself is so incredibly unsettling, and the tinny music on it…[shudder]. I …

Return of the Dragon
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

Slower than I’d like — it’s nearly half an hour before there’s fight contact of any kind — and horribly stagy, but still worth watching, for three reasons: 1) the wardrobe, which is ’73 to …

The Ref
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

It took a little while to get going, and certain payoffs weren’t quite earned, but I really liked the kid and I really liked Judy Davis; I don’t think her character was written with as …

Re-Animator
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

It’s probably really wrong that 1) Jeffrey Combs reminds me of Stephen Colbert and 2) that’s part of why I loved the movie, but hey, I gotta be me. Plus the pervy zombie head is …

Ray
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

I like Jamie Foxx a lot, and this is impressive work, especially the singing; he’s getting the Oscar for sure. But the movie pointed up the problem with all bio-pics, which is that the movie …

Queens Logic
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

No movie with a scene in which John Malkovich 1) gets pelted with fish, then 2) disses Terry Kinney can be all bad, but this one is pretty damn bad. It’s derivative, it tries too …

Quarterback Princess
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

Words cannot describe how much I loved this movie as a kid; I probably watched it twenty times, and it always gave me that “FUCK yeah!” feeling in my stomach. Well, I watched it again, …

Punchline
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

Yeah, I know. It’s a fucking awful movie, but I remembered it for some reason as being not only 1) fairly funny in spots but 2) a lot better than people gave it credit for. …

The Poseidon Adventure
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

The grandpappy of disaster movies, and I have to say, we’ve seen all these tropes before, but 1) it’s because this movie gave birth to many of them, 2) it still works, and 3) what …

Poltergeist
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

Not as scary as I remembered, although it’s got its share of jump scenes — and more likeable, actually. There’s always a decision made, from a writing standpoint, on how much time to spend on …