For me, Giants versus Eagles is a good enough reason to watch Monday Night Football (even though the game is turning out to be one of the sloppier in recent memory). For others the draw is the halftime release of this third trailer (first full) for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. As you already know…
Still no giveaway as to the plot of it, but this second trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens still manages to build upon the first. For one, if my ears hear correctly, Luke’s narration makes it sound as if he may have a child with a powerful connection to the Force and that his…
Science fiction has long explored the question of what it is to be human. This philosophical topic has involved different non-human figures, such as extra-terrestrials in “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and “Avatar,” clones in “Never Let Me Go” and “The Island” and perhaps most frequently, artificial intelligence. Films such as “Metropolis,” “2001: A Space…
J. C. Chandor’s New York drama, A Most Violent Year, is a misleadingly titled film, as its timeframe only covers a month and there is very little physical violence. While the title references the exceptionally high crime rate of New York in 1981, the film itself is an intriguing study of different types of violence,…
The Empire isn’t quite dead, although it’s taken thirty years for them to regroup to make a new power play against the Republic. In the hotly anticipated trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens those moves are, sadly, not spoiled. It’s more an amalgamation of what to expect — a new Sith Lord, stormtroopers geared…
Mind games are afoot in Alex Garland’s upcoming sci-fi thriller Ex Machina. And Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) finds himself in the middle of them as he gets much more than he bargained for when he is selected to evaluate how well a newly developed artificial intelligence represents human intellect and behavior. In the form of a…
Folk music has been around ever since there have been folks, but the folk revival of the 1960s was due in large part to the increased topicality of the songs and their relevance to the changing times. Though singers such as Joan Baez and Ian & Sylvia among others continued to sing traditional ballads, singer/songwriters…
