dvd of the week Alan Turing was the gay British man who broke the Nazi codes during World War II and more or less invented the computer. Despite his key role in winning the war, Turing was arrested for his homosexuality and forced to undergo chemical castration to avoid prison; he killed himself after a…
Many years ago, the Imperial Court de San Diego established the Ben F. Dillingham Fund for special emergency needs. Among those it has helped is an 89-year-old-man whose apartment was totally burnt down (no insurance) and a lesbian mom who had one of her legs cut off. But more than half of the Dillingham Fund…
Let’s get this out of the way: Despite what you may have heard, read on Twitter, or seen ranted about on Facebook, The Imitation Game is a not a homophobic whitewash of Alan Turing, the gay British man who broke the Nazi codes during World War II and more or less invented the computer. Despite…
dvd of the week The Broadway production of the Pulitzer Prize winning play August: Osage County is considered one of the great theater events of the last decade. An extended family, full of secrets and problems verging on mental illness, come together for a funeral. All hell breaks loose. It’s funny, moving and upsetting. Somehow,…
As cross-cultural pollinization accelerates, its various permutations can seem both jarring and perfectly normal. Take, for example, the wholly natural assimilation of the story of Sherlock Holmes and his unwavering sidekick Dr. Watson in Chinese culture. Since 2011, when millions of television viewers first laid eyes on Benedict Cumberbatch as the iconic sleuth and Martin…
dvd of the week The second in JJ Abram’s reboot of the Star Trek franchise starts out a few years after the last film. A rogue Star Fleet officer (Benedict Cumberbatch) bombs a top secret weapons lab, and, then when they are assembled to discuss it, he kills half of Star Fleet’s leadership. Seeking vengeance,…
The first question I was asked after I walked out of Star Trek Into Darkness was not, “Was it good?” but rather, “How good was it?” After the 2009 glorious reboot of the iconic sci-fi series Star Trek, with J.J. Abrams directing Chris Pine as Captain Kirk and Zachary Quinto as Mr. Spock, the expectations…
