Culture Warrior: ‘Sex’ and the Romantic Comedy
The Crisis of the Romantic ComedyThe romantic comedy, like the western, has a unique, Hollywood-specific tradition as a genre. Romantic comedies… Read More
June 1, 2010
Culture Warrior
Culture Warrior: The Legacy of ‘Lost’
Like all of you, I have my own emotional and intellectual response to the Lost finale: its meaning, its significance,… Read More
May 25, 2010
Culture Warrior: This is Not a Banksy
Belgian artist Rene Magritte’s painting, The Treachery of Images (1928), famously features a painting of a pipe with the words… Read More
May 18, 2010
Culture Warrior: A Marxist Reading of ‘Iron Man 2’
Is Iron Man 2 an escapist, crowd-pleasing piece of big-budget popcorn entertainment, or a two-hour ad for neo-capitalism? Can it… Read More
May 11, 2010
Culture Warrior: Playing it Straight
Then - Rock HudsonThere’s a scene (video below) midway through the Doris Day-Rock Hudson romantic comedy Pillow Talk (1959) that has… Read More
May 4, 2010
Culture Warrior: The Grown-Up Children of Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach
My favorite college screenwriting professor once explained to me the difference between an audience’s sympathy and empathy for a film’s… Read More
April 27, 2010
Culture Warrior: Deconstruction and Difference in ‘Kick-Ass’
As Cole Abaius pointed out late last week, a hyperbolic debate has occurred regarding the alleged potential of Matthew Vaughn’s… Read More
April 20, 2010
Culture Warrior: The Great ‘Kane’ Debate
“But I didn’t go to jail…I went to Hollywood.”The above line comes from Orson Welles’s last completed film, the pseudo-documentary… Read More
April 14, 2010
Culture Warrior: The Postmodern Dialectics of ‘Hot Tub Time Machine’
You might think Steve Pink’s Hot Tub Time Machine is just another silly, raunchy studio comedy, and you’re probably right,… Read More
April 6, 2010