That title sure is a mouthful, isn’t it? As we slam the door on 2021 and peer ahead to the New Year, we thought we’d do something a little different on this fine Friday. As regular readers of this website have likely noticed, we often drop a couple of our YouTube videos into the mix,…
Author: Jeff Kelly
As a general rule, movie adaptations of books are at worst horrible, and at best somewhere hovering above mediocre. It’s difficult to shoehorn a book’s numerous plot points, and beloved characters, into 90-120 minutes of running time. Heck, just look at the complaints about the inconsequential details left out of the various Harry Potter books.…
“To sleep — perchance to dream.” It’s one of the most famous lines in literary history, written (probably?) by the man himself, Big Billy Shakespeare. The line, contemplating death and whatever lay beyond, springs to mind easily when thinking about actual sleep. But as we’ll discover today, while it’s a haunting line about mortality and the unknown,…
It’s the holiday season, and if you’re anything like us you’re struggling to come up with that perfect gift for a certain someone in your life. Maybe it’s your wife, who refuses to give you any hints and is still mad about the vacuum cleaner from last year. Maybe it’s your best friend, who’s vastly…
If you’ve ever seen the HBO series Deadwood, your first thoughts are probably about Ian McShane’s character, Al Swearengen, or perhaps the overabundance of extremely salty language… delivered in the midst of flowery prose, of course. Seriously, though – we looked for clips from the show to use, and not a bit of it was safe…
Everyone dreams of living in the coolest, biggest, most amazing house imaginable. And everyone has thought about the wild amenities they’d go for if they could afford them. Heck, at this point we’re pretty sure that’s the entire driving force behind HGTV’s full schedule of shows. Big or small, there are some features that most of…
We all do it. When a mystery movie comes on, we sit enraptured, looking for clues, trying our damnedest to become the finest real-life Sherlock Holmes whose butt our couch has ever had the honor of hosting. “Oh, I think it’s the boyfriend,” we might say, or “Well of course the killer is really the plate of…
Celtic history is steeped in mystery. You’ve no doubt heard of the Celts, but because they left behind no written records, what we know about them can often be chalked up to myth and legend. Contemporaries and frequent enemies of the Roman Empire, these warriors were quick to fight, and vicious in attack. But like…
Contrary to what a lot of people might tell you, it’s okay to shed a tear or two over TV and movie characters. No, you’re not watching real people struggle through life and death. But that doesn’t change the fact that fiction can pack one heck of an emotional wallop. And nothing hits you harder…
There’s a famous saying about sports, that it’s the perfect platform to illustrate the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. That’s a very true statement, and sometimes we forget just how fine a line there really is between those two things. The thrill for one side equals agony for the other, and anyone…
Casting for a television series or movie is an inexact science. A casting director can only hope she gets it right and locks in both the director’s first choice, and the best actor for the job. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. But once in awhile, an even trickier task comes up: trying to…
A few months ago, we took a pretty controversial stance and claimed that Disney may very well have surpassed Pixar in terms of churning out quality animated films. Well, there are two sides to everything – Dungeons & Dragons dice notwithstanding – and today we figured we would turn things around and look at what…
Today is Veterans Day in America. This federal holiday commemorates the service of United States armed forces veterans, and was originally celebrated as Armistice Day. The fact it’s celebrated on November 11 is no accident, of course. Armistice for the First World War was reached at the 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th…
It’s not exactly a secret that Hollywood has some pretty unfair standards when it comes to beauty. Look at the fact that Amy Schumer is considered “big” by conventional celebrity standards. Women don’t get a lot of great roles in the movies and on television unless they’re a size two and traditionally beautiful, unless they’re…
Let’s be honest, you clicked on this article in a fit of rage, right? How could anyone suggest that Pixar is not the top dog when it comes to animation in Hollywood? Well, don’t get us wrong, we’re big fans of Pixar. They’ve produced some of the finest animated films in history. But right now, Disney has…
When you hit on a pop culture phenomenon, it’s not surprising that you may want to capitalize on it however you can. Just look at the toys, video games, and even a forthcoming spinoff for The Walking Dead. Of course sometimes these attempts at milking the cash cow make a little less sense, and a lot…
In case you’ve been living under a rock for the last decade, superhero movies and television shows have become pretty popular. Now that Hollywood has the technology to really bring comic books to life, movies about Batman and Iron Man are pretty much the surest recipe for box office success that there is. And now…
We all know the annoying jingles and obnoxious mascots trying to pimp a corporation’s wares. For the most part we assume that the names and faces associated with corporate mascots are made up in a boardroom by people tossing around the latest trendy buzzwords with the hopes of turning a higher profit, and that’s often…
Making movies is expensive. There’s no way of getting around that, especially these days with 3D, huge special effects and massive movie star contracts coming into play. It’s easy for a movie these days to soar into nine figures, and chances are that unless your movie costs at least eight figures it’ll never see the…
Everyone knows that celebrities are basically just big shills half the time. After all, these are the same people who get paid thousands of dollars to mention a brand name on Twitter. And really, who can blame them? Even star athletes like LeBron James and Tiger Woods make more money for their endorsements than they…
We have nothing but respect for anyone who’s won an Academy Award. That’s not an easy thing to accomplish, as Leonardo DiCaprio will back us up on. Some people burst onto the scene and deliver the goods in a high profile part early on in their careers, like Jennifer Lawrence and Lupita Nyong’o, but for…
Whether or not you participate in it yourself, it’s hard to deny that on occasion online gambling can be fun. Betting on a horse race or maybe playing a hand of blackjack gives you a pretty tremendous rush of adrenaline, and this is especially true when you actually win. Of course at the same time,…
When you think of reality television stars, the first word that springs to mind generally isn’t “talented.” Amazingly, however, there have been a startling number of reality stars who took their 15 minutes of fame by the throat and refused to let go, branching out far beyond what we ever could have expected of them…
It’s nice to think that television and movie sets are utopias where everyone gets along like the Brady Bunch. Sadly, that’s not always the case — sometimes, the scene resembles that of a family that constantly bickering over the gravy at Thanksgiving dinner. Such blowups are the stuff of Hollywood legend, though others come from places…