Screening Room
January 20, 2012
The Literary Pedigree of Downton Abbey 9
by Garth Risk Hallberg
The current PBS Masterpiece series mashes the “class” buttons hard, in both the literary and the economic senses. But its relationship with the English novel is more complicated than it might appear.
November 16, 2011
Monster Mashups: The Recurring Horror of Mary Poppins 3
by Steve Himmer
The monsters are always among us, because no matter how tightly we shore up the windows and nail shut the doors, we always create some new cracks through which they can come.
September 30, 2011
The Joys and Compromises of Bennett Miller’s Moneyball 2
by Patrick Brown
Take whatever it is that’s important to you – knitting, perhaps, or mountain biking – and then imagine waiting for a feature film about it. Would you be excited or nervous? Or would you simply be dreading how Hollywood would manage to fuck up your passion?
September 21, 2011
A Documentary for Our Times: The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 8
by Bill Morris
As the divisions of class and race continue to harden and widen in this country, I say we could use more leaders like Stokely Carmichael and Angela Davis, with their beautiful, hard-earned fury.
September 8, 2011
Star Wars, Apatow, and the Death of Classic Comedy 2
by Jacob Lambert
Judd Apatow and friends, with their hyper-familiar brand of hairy-assed humor, have issued a crushing blow to the suspension of disbelief — and made the gap between old comedy and new unbridgeable.
August 16, 2011
Films You Haven’t Seen Yet…The Sequel! 7
by Joe Griffin
You might think that Real Steel 2 is an exception. You might think that, even by the standards of Hollywood conservatism gone mad, work on Real Steel 2 is a damning, individual act of hubris. But it’s far from the only example.