Breaker Morant: Incivility in an uncivilized environment

Ask anybody who has seen combat and they’ll tell you all the poems are true. War really and truly is hell. In 5,000 years of recorded history that is one fact that has remained a constant. We try to keep the brutality civilized with rules of engagement and gentleman’s agreements like the Geneva Convention. The [...]

Atlas Shrugged: and so did I

This year marks the fifty-fifth anniversary of the publishing of Atlas Shrugged, the foundation of libertarian philosopher Ayn Rand‘s Objectivism ideals. In the years since her passing she has largely slipped from the public conscience and with the fall of communism her ideals have largely been taken for granted or simply left to decay like [...]

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil: This isn’t your dad’s Chainsaw Massacre

What do you get when you mix the Bad Seed and Texas Chainsaw Massacre then film them from the wrong perspective? An hour and a half of pure, unadulterated movie bliss. I was mildly concerned that I had waited too long to see Tucker and Dale vs. Evil and the  anticipation would kill all hopes [...]

Wild Target: Bill Nighy the non-science ghuy

I have somehow managed to once again put off watching Tucker and Dale vs. Evil another week. I’m not sure how I keep doing, but it’s troubling. I really want to see that movie. At any rate, I was having trouble sleeping the other night and decided to watch “just one more movie” to fall [...]

Visioneers: In a forgotten corner of Martha’s Vineyard George’s bones are rattling

Every once in a while I go through periods in which really depressing things make me happy. I suppose it’s cathartic but I always assumed catharsis had to end in crying or blood. Lots of blood. Pooling in those strange dips in the carpet you’re pretty sure are left over from something dirty the previous [...]

The day the internet died: and something about House of Pain

I come to you from behind a thinly veiled wall of protestory and shenanigans. For the nerdiest of our nerdy readers, you may have noticed some of your favorite websites have gone dark for the day. These websites range from blog hosts such as our own gracious hosts wordpress.com to social sharing sites such as [...]

Four Rooms: A New Year’s Eve for the Books

Traditionally New Year’s Eve has been a bit of a disappointment for me. I always had these delusions of some grandiose party that would be the . In the end I usually found myself playing board games, or maybe pool, and watching a movie with some friends. Which was fun in its own right. But [...]

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: Hollywood hasn’t cornered the market on lame

After Elrood picked up the book The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo I decided to give it a go myself. Despite some very disturbing scenes I found the book entertaining on a level not reached by any other novel whose pages I’ve thumbed this year. So when I saw the book’s native sons had created [...]

The Final Countdown: Danah DAH dun…Dana dat dun da

What if Martin Sheen, Kirk Douglas, that girl from The Graduate and Doc Hopper from the original Muppet Movie all got together to make a film about the Navy inadvertently traveling in time? Specifically a Nimitz class, and indeed the U.S.S. Nimitz herself, aircraft carrier traveling back to Hawaii on December 6, 1941? You get [...]

Hitman: Let’s make an action movie about a stealthy assassin

We all know that video games don’t translate to movies as well as comic books and other story forms. If you’ve had the misfortune of seeing a Mortal Kombat or Resident Evil movie you are painfully aware. Still, I’m a glutton for punishment so here we go. Hitman was a beautiful game my roommate got [...]