Culture

There is a phrase called ‘Jumping the shark’. It comes from the classic sitcom Happy Days. It was years into their run and they were losing their audience share so they thought if they did something spectacular they would get more attention. They decided to do a stunt, Fonzie literally jumped over a shark on…

I have an overinflated sense of right, maybe it is a correct amount of righteousness, however, it does get me in trouble. When I was 9, I got in trouble because I wouldn’t back down when the teacher was treating the girls differently than she was treating the boys. To this day, she was wrong,…

A little while ago I had drinks with a buddy who was back over from Spain. He needs to sort out a visa issue and covid has meant that he is here for longer than he thought. At his drinks, there were many people that I didn’t know.  One of them was a lovely young…

As Bob Dylan said, the times they are a changing. When I was growing up, my big sister Kate, was a star athlete. Whenever I would go to any gym or sporting event, I would just be known as Kate’s little brother. Fast forward a few years, a touch of puberty, and nearly a foot…

It pays to be the boss. Chris Rock is the executive producer and it’s why the lead character Detective Zeke Banks, who he plays, spends a lot of time walking around, looking cool, acting tough, and doing what appears to be semi stand-up routine. It’s why because I am writing this review I can mention…

I remember vividly the first time I saw Mortal Kombat at the arcade. We had been used to bloodless cartoon violence and then this tidal wave of brutality hit our little eyes and we wanted more. It was a wild reinvention of the genre visually, but the gameplay was much the same.  Mortal Kombat (dir.…

The challenge with historical biopics, especially ones that deal with how terrible the hegemony was in relation to race, is that they are all very important stories to be shared, but sometimes, they are not very good movies.  The United States vs. Billie Holiday (dir Lee Daniels) falls into this category. The film is based…

As with all of Einstein’s quotes, you have to take them with a grain of salt. Lots of them are real, some of them fanciful. One quote attributed to him is: “Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it; he who doesn’t, pays it.” It highlights the powerful…