Pop Culture Archives — Page 5 of 56

Kris Allen is the next American Idol

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:May 18, 2009
Post category:Media Pop Culture
Post comments:3 Comments

Kris Allen and Adam Lambert, American Idol

In a just world, at the end of a season that featured the most raw talent they’ve ever assembled, Kris Allen would be this season’s American Idol in a landslide and authenticity would be hailed as the new black.

Period. And shut up. (Especially you, Kara DioGuardi!)

Of course, we don’t live in a just world — if we did, it would be Kris vs. Allison Iraheta — and Adam Lambert is supposedly the prohibitive favorite going into the finale.

Here’s three reasons I think Kris will pull off the “upset” that really should be a no-brainer:

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Christopher Nolan’s Joker Problem

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:February 1, 2009
Post category:Pop Culture
Post comments:1 Comment

ledger-joker — Heath Ledger as the Joker

No matter who wins the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor three weeks from now, Christopher Nolan has a serious dilemma in front of him as he decides where to go with his inevitable third installment in the juggernaut Batman franchise.

To Joker, or Not To Joker?

Even if he hadn’t received a single award nomination for his performance, Heath Ledger left behind some huge shoes to fill with his breathtaking spin on Batman’s best-known and, arguably, best-loved villain. It’s pretty clear that Nolan intended to bring him back for the next movie, and not just for a brief Scarecrow-like cameo Cillian Murphy made in Dark Knight.

So now, he has an unenviable decision in front of him, whether to leave the Joker out of the next movie completely and focus on other villains, or take a risk recasting him and get a similarly astonishing performance out of someone who can expect to have every syllable and tic scrutinized by critics and fanboys alike.

My first instinct was that he should move on, offering a quick explanation that the Joker is locked away in Arkham Asylum, maybe edit in 15 seconds from Dark Knight to honor Ledger, and focus on a new arch-villain like…

Well, there’s the problem.

Catwoman?

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Random Reviews: Inkheart, Wanted, Chalk

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:January 24, 2009
Post category:Personal Pop Culture Reviews
Post comments:0 Comments

We’ve been having a lot of Blockbuster nights since we bought the house last summer, while managing to catch whatever kid-friendly movies worth seeing in theaters whenever possible, and I’ve been reviewing a lot of them on Flixster but wanted to round up the most recent batch and post them here, including expanded commentary on a few.

Inkheart: Saw it tonight and loved it! A great cast highlighted by Paul Bettany and Helen Mirren, who lift Brendan Fraser beyond his typically solid leading-man performance, and Andy Serkis as a great villain; plus, an intriguing story combine for what is effectively an entertaining love letter to the power of the written word, writers, and imagination itself. It’s a little dark for some kiddies — India said afterwards that she thought it was rated R! — but I enjoyed it so much that I went and bought the book right afterwards and started reading it in the store.

Side note: This was the first movie I’ve seen Mirren in since those pictures last summer of her in a bikini and it was a little distracting for the first couple of minutes. Zoinks!

Black Snake Moan: Surprisingly poignant and touching; great performances from Samuel L. Jackson and Christina Ricci enable Craig Brewer to fulfill the potential of his risky idea — the DVD extras are must-see — and Justin Timberlake does a solid job of not embarassing himself. The music, too, is amazing and I want the soundtrack which includes Jackson doing “Stack-o-lee”, one of the many songs that inspired the best graphic novel of 2006, Stagger Lee.

Wanted: Imagine, if you can, a mash-up of The Matrix and Fight Club, written by a roomful of monkeys with iPods and directed by the least talented monkey in the room, and you’ll get close to the total wackness that is Wanted. James McAvoy’s character and acting were lame imitations of Ed Norton in Fight Club, and the handful of kewl action moments were overshadowed by the sheer lameness of the script and, pardon the pun, threadbare plot. The comic book it was based on was similarly hacktastic, so it’s no surprise, but I expected a little better from Easy Reader. Morgan Freeman: You’re on notice!

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Outrage, Humor, Context

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:December 10, 2008
Post category:Personal Pop Culture
Post comments:1 Comment

David Brothers was one of the smartest comics bloggers on the scene a few years back when I was at my peak of following the industry, and he’s remained one of the few whom I still follow despite my current pull list being a shadow of its former self.

[Side note: Have to get to Midtown soon before they cancel my bare-minimum pull list again. Particularly looking forward to Joshua Dysart’s Unknown Soldier.]

He has a great post up at his site, 4thLetter, called SuperHHero KKKomics 200Hate: A Year In Review, an exponentially more substantiative response to the knee-jerk (but cleverly illustrated) 2008: The Year of Misogyny, that starts as a typical rant about the poor treatment of blacks in comics, but quickly becomes something much, much better.

Some of my favorite highlights of 200Hate include:

Barack Obama– leader of Dark Reign, gullible enough to trust Norman Osborn
Crispus Allen– killed his own son, has to have some old white lady re-ignite his faith in God after he tries to kill his best friend for being a lesbian, probably Pro Prop 8, forced to wear goatee as racial identifier, likely never-nude
Falcon– lost his best friend, hasn’t appeared in Captain America lately, was set on fire once
Manhattan Guardian– tossed aside the second a WHITE Guardian shows up
Martian Manhunter– murdered with a spear (martians count as black, see also Lil Wayne “We are not the same, I am a martian”)
Spawn– blows own head off in own comic, promoting the suicide of strong and proud black men
Spawn (Michael Jai White)– Killed by the Joker in The Dark Knight, movie goes on to make a billion dollars
Storm– taken from high profile X-Men appearances to be a supporting character in some lower-selling book, forced into arranged marriage, needs Emma Frost (who once enslaved her) to call her names just so she can feel like she belongs somewhere
Tyler Perry– still not invited to write a Black Panther story where T’Challa remembers how his big grandma was the one that scared him into following the path of the warrior, leaving untold the story of Bg’mama, the true power of wakanda

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How Wonderful Is It?

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:December 9, 2008
Post category:Personal Pop Culture Reviews
Post comments:0 Comments

Back in 1996, when I was publishing my short-lived zine, zuzu's petals — which, in a wonderful bit of circularity, played a significant role in my getting married! — I wrote a pretty cynical essay about why I loved It's A Wonderful Life, not so much for its purportedly uplifting message, but rather for its "unintentionally subversive message".

Review: The Incredible Hulk

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:November 1, 2008
Post category:Pop Culture Reviews
Post comments:0 Comments

I skipped The Incredible Hulk in theaters because I was fully expecting to be disappointed, but my son really wanted to see it and Iron Man was unexpectedly good, so we picked up the DVD and I was pleasantly surprised.

Ed Norton isn’t as dynamic an actor as Robert Downey, Jr., unlikely to carry a blockbuster superhero movie on his own shoulders, but he brings the right level of intensity to the Hulk’s conflicted alter ego, Bruce Banner, that combined with some precision casting — and, according to several rumors seemingly backed up by many of the DVD’s bonus features*, exerting influence far beyond his own character — makes for a movie that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Tim Roth and William Hurt shine in their roles, and Liv Tyler manages to escape the confines of the cliché “female interest” as she and writer Zak Penn (who takes an impressive step forward from Fantastic Four and X-Men: The Last Stand) make her character work as the emotional centerpiece of the story.

It’s a well-paced action movie with just the right dash of drama — many of the deleted scenes featuring psychiatrist Dr. Samson are deservedly so — and the CGI Hulk and Abomination are even more impressive than last year’s Transformers triumph, especially their final battle which is arguably the best balls-to-the-wall fight scene put to film in recent years.

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Apology Unnecessary

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:October 29, 2008
Post category:Media Pop Culture
Post comments:0 Comments

The K Chronicles: Tales From the Campaign Trail — The K Chronicles: Stories From the Campaign Trail

There’s a bit of a tempest in a teapot happening over at Montclair State University thanks to a “controversial” episode of the Keith Knight comic strip, The K Chronicles, that was published last week in the student newspaper, the Montclarion, and included the word “nigger”.

Twice!

Well, kind of…

Seemingly lost on most of those in a tizzy over the strip (reading some of the comments is just one more reason to not take anything for granted before the election results are in and officially certified) is the fact that Knight was simply repeating a story told by a canvasser in Western Pennsylvania, where conventional wisdom has it that people are simply too racist to support Obama, as evidenced partly by Hillary Clinton’s thumping him out there during the primary.

It’s a story that’s been referenced in several places over the past week or so, and Knight’s take on it was simply addressing what has become one of the more fascinating sub-plots of this election as the economy has taken center stage and helped turn John McCain’s ill-conceived selling of his soul campaign into a sputtering hot mess: Racists for Obama.

“I wouldn’t want a mixed marriage for my daughter, but I’m voting for Obama,” the wife of a retired Virginia coal miner, Sharon Fleming, told the Los Angeles Times recently.

One Obama volunteer told Politico after canvassing the working-class white Philadelphia neighborhood of Fishtown recently, “I was blown away by the outright racism, but these folks are … undecided. They would call him a [racial epithet] and mention how they don’t know what to do because of the economy.”

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