by Daniel Erenberg

I’ve been watching the Red Carpet show on E! for an hour and I’m already pissed.

I should probably give you guys a disclaimer. I thought Slumdog Millionaire was a totally lame movie, and I don’t care what anyone says. And don’t try to explain the film to me. I don’t care that it’s a fairy tale. I don’t care that it’s being honest about real life events that have occurred in Mumbai. I don’t care that it’s an underdog masterpiece with many wonderful amateur actors. I don’t give a shit. I hated the “message,” I didn’t buy the plot contrivances and I thought the characters were motivated by completely false impulses, and it’s not “feel-good” if it just makes me feel disdain. Also, worst ending ever. And I’m referring to the phone call, the race across the train tracks, the “Destiny” choice and the Bollywood number. It was all awful. But it’s going to win Best Picture tonight. And it may be the worst Best Picture winner of all time. That’s right. Crash was better. So was Million Dollar Baby.  So was Shakespeare in Love. If Slumdog wins tonight, it would be worse than if Little Miss Sunshine had beat The Departed three years ago or if Michael Clayton had taken down both No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood last year. The Academy is gonna be really embarrassed about this in a few years. Also, I’m sick of Danny Boyle’s smug face. So let’s get going. Time for the Oscars!

FULL OSCAR DIARY

Tags: oscars diary slumdog
February 22, 2009 at 11:59pm

by Daniel Erenberg

“Not Fair,” the third track on Lily Allen’s new album, represents everything that is great about her as an artist. It’s a break-up song about a guy who is perfect in every way, with the apparently massive exception that he’s terrible in bed. The lyrics are cutting and laugh-out-loud funny, calling attention to those aspects of relationships that no one really talks about aloud. And, importantly, Allen never comes across mean or unreasonable. She’s just unsatisfied and just about ready to call it quits. Meanwhile, the music, co-composed by Greg Kurstin, half of the pop duo The Bird & the Bee, is an exhilarating cut-time jig, punctuated by spaghetti-western guitar bends and mechanical drumming. The best verse I’ve heard this year so far must be: “Oh I lie here in the wet patch/ In the middle of the bed/ I’m feeling pretty damn hard done by/ I spent ages giving head/ Then I remember all the nice things that you ever said to me/ Maybe I’m just overreacting, maybe you’re the one for me.”

FULL REVIEW 

Tags: lily allen pop music greg kurstin
February 17, 2009 at 6:31pm

by Daniel Erenberg

I’ve been very reluctant to review the Dollhouse pilot since it aired on Friday. Since the launch of Slow Century Magazine, it’s the only thing that people have actually requested I write about. In fact, friends of mine have asked me to review each episode individually, which is something I haven’t done with anything yet. You have to understand. As I’ve stated elsewhere on the site, part of my background comes in Joss Whedon studies. I wrote my undergraduate thesis about the use of foreshadowing in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Indeed, I wrote a weekly column for three years over at Slayage.com, which has been cited in multiple published books about Buffy and Angel. So now here is Dollhouse, the first new Whedon show since Firefly got cancelled back in December of ’03. I have high hopes for it, and I still do after watching the pilot. But Joss Whedon shows are always slow starters, stumbling out of the gate before becoming the masterpieces you can see at their cores.

FULL REVIEW 

Tags: joss whedon dollhouse eliza dushku
February 17, 2009 at 5:42pm

by Danielle Berg

MTV’s The City is the television show you don’t admit you watch, unless you’re watching to be ironic, or to stay updated on The Cut’s hilarious recaps. I watch it. But I’m not doing it (primarily) for the reasons above. I’m watching it for the same reasons we fall in love with slightly less attractive, less intelligent versions of our greatest loves; why we order the same dish at a restaurant even though it’s changed owners and our Curry Supreme will never be as good. I’m watching it to bring back My So-Called Life.

FULL ARTICLE

Tags: mtv the city my so-called life
February 16, 2009 at 1:14pm

by Daniel Erenberg

With Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse set to premiere this Friday night, it must finally be said and agreed upon that Friday is currently the best night of the week for TV. After all, NBC and Sci-Fi are airing near-perfect seasons of Friday Night Lights and Battlestar Galactica, respectfully, and FOX is working hard to create a Geek brand on Friday nights by pairing Dollhouse with Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Of course, how long are these shows for the world? Friday night has now been a historically great night for quality TV, but most of the shows I’m thinking of are long-cancelled and forgotten by everyone who doesn’t own one of those depressing “Complete Series” DVD sets that never have endings.

FULL ARTICLE PLUS “IN MEMORIAM” SECTION

Tags: brilliant but cancelled dollhouse bruce campbell friday night
February 12, 2009 at 2:46pm

by Matt Hevia

The don of douchebaggery, the Mickey Mantle of morons, the sultan of steroids, ladies and gentlemen:  A-Rod. The man many have deemed baseball’s best player has admitted to doing steroids in an interview with ESPN’s Peter Gammons and, strangely, I couldn’t care less. I was more concerned with the fact that I’ve never seen someone look so orange on television, and I live on the south shore of Long Island, the home of fake tanning and fist pumping. Alex Rodriguez is the man that decided to smack the ball out of Bronson Arroyo’s hand in the 2004 ALCS, as the Yankees’ season was crumbling. He is the man that screamed while rounding third in an attempt to underhandedly force his opponent to commit an error. And, pardon me for sounding shallow, but this is also the man that is a fucking top-of-the-line third basemen, he could have any girl on the planet, and married a woman that looked like a coked-up back-up dancer for J. Lo. Then, on the rebound, he bagged Madonna about twenty years too late. His choice of women resembles his play in the post-season: shitty.  If you are going to be a complete dickhead, do it 100%, go all the way, and date Paris Hilton.  After re-hashing Mr. Rod’s history of poor and tasteless decisions, I ask, should it surprise a single person that this guy was capable of taking steroids?

FULL RANT

Tags: orange guys madonna is old penis-shrinking drugs
February 12, 2009 at 2:26pm

by Janna Washington

I love a good piece of design almost as much as I love a good movie. It only makes sense, then, that a brilliantly designed movie poster is to me a work of art on par with anything I’ve seen in a museum.

The people at the Criterion Collection understand the value of both good films and good design. In designing boxes for their DVD releases of films they have deemed “important,” they strive to create packaging worthy of the content inside. Inspired by a post by Well Medicated’s Andrew Lindstrom, here are 50 of my favorite Criterion boxes.

FULL LIST

Tags: film posters design
February 11, 2009 at 12:14pm

by Daniel Erenberg

Comic books will never be understood by mainstream audiences, and it’s all the fault of the comic book companies. Here, Marvel have a wonderful new book, written by the interesting indie creator Jonathan Hickman, doing his first mainstream comic book work, co-plotted by superstar writer Brian Michael Bendis and penciled beautifully by rising star Stefano Caselli. But, if a single non-obsessive, ordinary human being were to pick up this book, they’d be completely lost. I can barely explain the origin of this comic without getting dead-eyed stares from laymen.

FULL REVIEW

Tags: marvel comic book review nick fury secret warriors
February 11, 2009 at 12:26am

by Daniel Erenberg

It was impossible for me to be too depressed today, because I was about to see two of my three modern TV idols in person. I feel as though Joss Whedon, Josh Schwartz and J.J. Abrams are at the top of the heap in terms of TV writing these days (I’m gonna go ahead and wait until Matthew Weiner’s follow-up to Mad Men to add him to this list). Abrams wasn’t going to be attending the con this year—though I was psyched for the panel for his new show, Fringe—but Whedon was there to promote his new one, Dollhouse, and Schwartz was in attendance to talk about his sophomore season slump-defying Chuck.

FULL ARTICLE

Tags: dollhouse geeks new york comic con chuck fringe
February 8, 2009 at 11:39pm

by Daniel Erenberg

Like the middle chapter of most trilogies, the second day of Comic Con felt a bit like filler, killing time until the grand conclusion. I woke up in better spirits this morning (though still not great) and walked over to the Javits Center with my head held medium-high. There were only two Saturday panels that I really gave a shit about and those were Cup O’ Joe, a regular Comic Con affair, which is, basically, just a chance to listen to Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada answer fan questions, and a spotlight panel about J. Michael Straczynski, the creator of Babylon 5 and a guy whose comic career has included excellent runs on Thor and The Amazing Spider-Man.

FULL ARTICLE

Tags: comic con new york comic con
February 8, 2009 at 12:49am