Shot and produced by photographer Tim Hetherington and journalist Sebastian Junger, Restrepo is one of the most powerful filmic examinations of modern warfare. While embedded in Afghanistan for 15 months throughout 2007 and 2008 (on and off) for a Vanity Fair assignment, Hetherington and Junger shot approximately 150 hours of video footage which was ultimately…
This is my first review of a film that I first saw on Netflix, rather than in a theater or on a DVD, and I have to say the service is something of a revolution in how one watches film; or, to be more accurate, in WHAT one watches, for had it not been for…
Ten years ago a group of skateboarders, bmxers and stoners, already getting paid for doing crazy stunts on the circuit (and in their backyards), armed themselves with a video camera and captured themselves doing painfully insane pranks and tricks on one another. It was a MTV hit and it was good. Capitalizing on the success…
There is a tactic that shock jocks, the writers of publications like the Enquirer and others in the media use to generate a buzz. They will say something outrageous, “Did you know that the left kidney of dolphins, when mixed with elephant tusk powder, will reverse the aging process? In fact that’s what Avon uses…
Religion and disease — two of the most destructive aspects of modern society. Both have the tendency to spread like wildfire and both can alter a person’s physical and mental well-being. However, disease can be cured or prevented — religion cannot; because before human beings learned how to think both rationally and peacefully, we learned…
I don’t cry at movies. I mean, I’m not some unemotional or unattached person — many movies have touched me profoundly. But I have trained myself not to cry at movies. Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father made it real tough. For anyone who has read or heard anything about this…
It was never really that cool to like Rush. I heard them first when my older brother, whose musical tastes had only previously included Yes, Medicine Head and Genesis (the Peter Gabriel, flower-head version), brought home a copy of 2112 back in 1978 or so, a couple of years after its release. I saw the…
