My kid’s favorite superhero is the Black Panther. Not Spider-Man. Not Captain America. Not Batman. Not even Blue Beetle. He’s a gigantic fan of Marvel’s T’Challa, the ruler of the fictional African nation of Wakanda. But why is he a fan of that guy? Well, let’s hear it from the horse’s….ah….10-year-old’s mouth. “He’s smarter than […]

There’s a place for kink in the world, though you might not know that if you’re an American. Our great nation pays some pretty profound lip service to tolerance. John F. Kennedy was quoted as saying, “Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one’s own beliefs. Rather, it condemns the oppression or persecution of others.” […]

Some buildings feel wrong. You set foot inside them and you feel uneasy, the hairs on your arms stand up, every instinct tells you to get the hell out of there with a quickness. Why does that happen, though? Is it an evolutionary throwback to when we mammals were tiny, bite-sized rodents? Is it because […]

There’s a very real conundrum at the heart of film criticism. On the one hand, most people don’t really understand exactly how hard it is to make a movie. First, you need a script that’s either a) good, b) marketable, or c) both. Then you need to figure out how much it’s all going to […]

Everything ends. Sometimes it’s unplanned. Look at Terry Pratchett, the prolific English author. He wrote dozens of novels and gained a worldwide following due to his piercing intellect and cutting wit. He should have lived longer, written more, but on March 12, 2015, Alzheimer’s disease snuffed out his mighty brain at age 66.* Other times endings […]

More than most countries, America runs on narrative. We call ourselves a shining city on a hill, lay claim to exceptionalism.* We brand ourselves as a nation of self-starters, rugged individualists, a place where a person from humble beginnings can rise all the way to the top through nothing more than determination and grit. Is […]

Very recently, I learned two interesting facts. First, if you’re a figure skater, the triple axel is a fiendishly difficult jump to perform. If you’re profoundly ignorant about skating like me, you might not understand why it’s so damned hard. Let’s break it down for a moment and go over exactly how it’s done: First, […]

If you’re a screenwriter in Hollywood, a successful one, after a while you start to get the itch to direct your own stuff. Sometimes it works out. Look at Christopher McQuarrie. Other times it doesn’t. Look at Dan Aykroyd. Aaron Sorkin has likely felt the same way, and he’s seized his opportunity with his latest […]

Like all great romances, it began with a connection. He was raised in Guadalajara, Mexico, in an enthusiastically Catholic household. Was it the fixation on blood, death, and rebirth that steered his imagination in a certain direction? Perhaps, but who can say for sure? The only thing we do know is, starting from a very […]

I’m told that Star Wars  was the first movie I ever saw. My parents made the fairly questionable decision to take two-year-old me to a crowded theater, and my gut tells me it was probably my mother’s idea. At some point, Dad probably said, “It’s not like he’ll remember it.* What’s the point?” Mom probably […]