“All this love ever really was – was sex, deceit, manipulation.” That’s what a young man angrily told a judge Feb. 24 that his band teacher at Bonita Vista High School had seduced him at age 16, which “has forever changed my life.” The victim, now around 23 years old, did not report the 2010-11…
A few times in these pages I’ve criticized the marketing departments of film studios for advertising films as the opposite of what they really are. There was 50/50, a movie about cancer that was sold as a comedy because Seth Rogan is in it and says a few funny things. August: Osage County was marketed…
LONDON — In case that is sending shockwaves through the British legal system, a Jamaican national known only as ‘JR’ was spared deportation from England after a London Court of Appeals ruled that he was at risk of having his human rights abrogated should he be sent back to his home country, reports U.K.’s Daily…
dvd of the week Despite writer-director Derek Cianfrance’s Herculean efforts at creating country noir and Ryan Gosling’s smolder, the film doesn’t quite work. The main reason is the film’s conceit, that the plot, focusing on three men in upstate New York over a generation, would be completely linear. In the first act, a daredevil motorcyclist…
http://youtu.be/3ROXTFfkcfo A short film from 2012 that illustrates what it would be like if homosexuality was the “norm” making heterosexuals outcasts. “Teen bulling and teen suicide based on someone’s sexual preference is ridiculous – and this film turns the tables on modern society. What IF the shoe was on the other foot?. ” –K.Rocco Shields…
Beautiful Creatures One of the most repeated complaints about Hollywood is its lack of originality. (Others include: It’s too liberal, it’s too conservative, it’s homophobic, it’s pro-gay, it’s too populist, it’s elitist, and so on.) Considering the number of remakes, reboots and rip-offs of great or popular movies we’ve been offered in recent years –…
(CNN) — Masonia Traylor doesn’t look sick. The 25-year-old mother of two is poised. Sitting in a boardroom at AID Atlanta, an HIV outreach facility in Atlanta where she volunteers, she exudes confidence. But Traylor is HIV positive. According to the CDC, 50,000 Americans are infected with HIV each year, and 25% of those are…
(CNN) — Footage of the beating of a New Jersey teen, who was apparently forced to strip naked before a belt-whipping over a $20 debt, has since garnered the attention of Newark city officials after the online video went viral. “Take everything off right now. You’re moving too slow,” a person yelled during shaky cell…
MOVIE REVIEW Warm Bodies Written and Directed by Jonathan Levine Starring Nicholas Hoult, Teresa Palmer and John Malkovich Rated PG-13 At your local multiplex This winter, two of my students are writing research papers on why zombies are such a popular topic in media culture. And what they’ve taught me is that, while horror trends…
COMO, Mississippi (CNN) — It was a hot Sunday morning last July when, right on schedule at 6:30 a.m., 61-year-old Johnny Lee Butts left his rural Mississippi home on his morning ritual, a 4-mile walk. His neighbor, Otis Brooks, says Butts, a Sunday school teacher, waved as he passed his front door wearing a blue…
