For a good number of people, I could convince them to see a movie with a review one sentence long: “Tilda Swinton plays a vampire.” Though she’s been starring in films for nearly three decades – her first role was in Derek Jarman’s queer masterpiece Caravaggio in 1986 – it has only been since she…
Sometimes, you wish you had a better memory. You would never, for instance, forget appointments. You could tell better jokes, win more arguments, save more money. You’d remember faces of the people you met and events that happened when you were too small for it to matter. Then again, as you’ll see in the new…
Two recently published trials, which have been sensationalized by the news media, suggest that testosterone replacement therapy may increase the risk of heart disease and/or stroke. These were poorly designed studies which conflict with numerous previous medical trials which showed the beneficial effects of testosterone on the heart and that a low testosterone level in…
I am a member of the strong minority that believes that Captain America: The First Avenger is the best of the recent crop of Marvel movies. Joss Whedon’s The Avengers is great fun, but the Captain America story is much more emotionally rich. During World War II, an incredibly scrawny, sickly Steve Rogers tries over…
The room was crowded, filled with only two people. At least that’s what it seemed as the groom looked at his beloved: there was no one else in the room but them. You could see it on their faces, the way their eyes danced together, alone in a sea of well-wishers, seeing only one another….
I struggled to start writing this review because I wanted to communicate as powerfully and as effectively as possible how much I loved Wes Anderson’s eighth feature film The Grand Budapest Hotel. Luckily, I don’t have the same degree of difficulty when I write a review as Wes Anderson has when he makes a movie….
You really didn’t want to talk about it. Sometimes, you thought it might even be just a rite of passage: everybody endures name-calling at one time or another, right? Everybody’s bullied at some time. You didn’t want to talk about it, but you always wondered if you should’ve. When faced with bullies, is keeping quiet…
In January, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in a pharmaceutical contract dispute, Abbott Laboratories v. SmithKline Beecham, that it violates the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection to exclude someone from jury service because of his or her sexual orientation. In doing so, the court also concluded that discrimination based on…
I first discovered Elaine Stritch on the original Broadway soundtrack to Company, the classic 1970 Stephen Sondheim musical about then-modern love in New York. The plot revolves around perennially single Bobby and his married friends; Stritch played Joanne, the oldest of the group. At the end of the second act she sings “The Ladies Who…
Tonight, you’re bringing home the bacon. You got it at the grocery store on the way home from work: neat little strips adhered to a rectangle of cardboard, wrapped in plastic. Some bread, a hothouse tomato, a head of lettuce and you’re set. So where does your food come from? Go ahead. Point to the…
