U.S. Media’s Election Coverage—Biased, Sure, But Why?

November 7, 2006
By

It’s Election Day, as you’ve probably heard, incessantly. The race for control of the U.S. House and Senate, between two political parties representing different sets of powerful, elite fatcats, is a close one, and hence the press coverage has been intense and hysterical. Given that the story is the potential displacement of the Somewhat Left party (the Republicans) by the Rabidly Left party (the Democrats), Republican partisans have identified an excessive glee among the press, who are widely and accurately documented to be composed almost…

Read more »

Flicka Flick

November 6, 2006
By
Flicka Flick

Critics tend to look down on movies like Flicka, the new film based on the oldtime bestselling novel My Friend Flicka, which has been filmed a couple of times previously, about an adolescent girl who adopts a wild horse against her parents’ wishes. Flicka fails to undermine bourgeois values, show the family to be an outmoded and socially destructive phonomenon, attack free enterprise as an invitation to greed and exploitation, and demonstrate the superiority of personal autonomy and pleasure-seeking over selfish, socially destructive notions such…

Read more »

The Deep Meaning of “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan”

November 4, 2006
By
The Deep Meaning of “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan”

  Naturally it’s tempting for critics to see Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan as a satire against political correctness, as Peter Suderman has gamely attempted to do on National Review Online. When something gives us pleasure, we really want to believe that it is good. But that’s simply not the way things work, and it is certainly not the way Borat works. Sacha Baron Cohen, the comedian who wrote and stars in the film based on his HBO…

Read more »

New Primetime TV Serials Floundering—Here’s Why

November 4, 2006
By
New Primetime TV Serials Floundering—Here’s Why

Except for a couple of big successes—NBC’s Heroes and ABC’s Ugly Betty—this year’s new primetime network TV serialized dramas are tanking. As the Washington Post’s Lisa de Moraes reports: The outlook for the many of this fall’s new serialized dramas is not good. ABC’s "Six Degrees" isn’t working; ditto its "The Nine." And Fox’s "Vanished" appears to be on its way soon to join "Smith," "Runaway" and "Kidnapped" in the Great Freshman Serialized Drama Hereafter That’s a pretty strong trend. De Moraes quotes a source…

Read more »

The Real D-Wade

November 3, 2006
By
The Real D-Wade

Miami Heat NBA superstar Dwyane Wade has a new slate of commercials appearing on television as the pro basketball season starts, and they’re an interesting phenomenon. Directed by Spike Lee, the commercials purport to show the "real" Dwyane Wade, the man behind the basketball player. Mostly, they are just shots of Wade sitting on a chair on a basketball court, talking directly to the camera. As the Sun-Sentinal reports: From behind the camera, Lee asks Wade questions about his life on and off the basketball…

Read more »

The Future of Christian Cinema

November 2, 2006
By

In commenting on our discussion of Christian cinema (see posts immediately below), some visitors brought up a couple of interesting points. One is that any kind of Christian movie ought to be acceptable to both critics and audiences, and the other is that the economic realities of making Christian films today require a more encouraging stance than Barbara Nicolosi and I seem to have taken regarding Facing the Giants. Clearly both these observations are well-intentioned, but I think that adopting these recommendations would greatly harm…

Read more »

A Bad Sign for Christian Cinema

November 1, 2006
By

Screenwriter and script analyst Barbara Nicolosi is extremely disappointed by the Christian-produced film Facing the Giants. I have not yet gotten around to seeing the film, but I suspect that Ms. Nicolosi is quite right. She points out that Facing the Giants is the cinematic equivalent of Contemporary Christian Music, bland nonsense meant to make Christians feel good and thereby bring in a steady stream of money from a highly defined market segment, what is known in the entertainment business as a cash cow. In…

Read more »

Demise of Studio 60: The Social Reality Behind It

October 31, 2006
By
Demise of Studio 60: The Social Reality Behind It

In a comment on yesterday’s report on and analysis of the ratings woes of NBC’s Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Missy makes the following observations: Studio 60 is very like West Wing when Sorkin was involved. Since I liked West Wing then, I like Studio 60. The pace, the characters, they’re very similar. . . . I’d hate to see it go, if these rumors end up being true. If nothing else, I love watching these actors work together. I think that Missy is…

Read more »

“Studio 60″ Demise Imminent—Why It’s Happening

October 30, 2006
By
“Studio 60″ Demise Imminent—Why It’s Happening

NBC’s Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, one of the network’s most highly anticipated new shows of this fall, is about to be cancelled, according to reports. The show draws less than half as many viewers as CSI: Miami, which regularly wins the Monday 10 p.m. EST time slot Studio 60 occupies at NBS. What is even more damaging is that the Aaron Sorkin-produced Studio 60 suffers a huge drop in viewership from its lead-in program, the new series Heroes. Last week, the surprisingly popular…

Read more »

The Art of “The Batman”

October 28, 2006
By
The Art of “The Batman”

I’ve been out of town at a conference for the past few days, and haven’t had much of a chance to post items on the site. I’m back, however, and you can expect the flow of wisdom to become a ferocius torrent. One thing that struck me recently was upon viewing an episode of the current Warner Bros. cartoon series The Batman, which runs on KidsWB, a Saturday morning block of cartoons. The program premiered in 2004 and is in its fourth season, somehow. What…

Read more »

Lord Darcy Online

October 25, 2006
By
Lord Darcy Online

I have some good news for you regarding Randall Garrett’s Lord Darcy mysteries, which I highly recommend for a bit of fun and somewhat meaningful reading—see article here and excerpts from that article below. The good news is that two complete Lord Darcy stories (novellas, really) are available online, at the site for Baen Books, the publisher of the Lord Darcy omnibus collection. The Darcy mysteries were written in the 1960s and ’70s and are set in an alternative twentieth century in which the Reformation…

Read more »

Jonathan Creek Arrives

October 24, 2006
By
Jonathan Creek Arrives

Today, at long last, Jonathan Creek comes to DVD in the United States. This excellent British TV mystery series was shown in the UK from 1997 through 2004 and has been seen on BBC America and some PBS stations in the United States. (BBC America still shows episodes occasionally late at night.) There were about two-dozen episodes produced, most about an hour long and three done as 90-minute TV movies. The series is a rare TV entry in the "impossible crimes" form, and was a…

Read more »

Enchanting Within Limits—Christopher Nolan’s “The Prestige”

October 23, 2006
By
Enchanting Within Limits—Christopher Nolan’s “The Prestige”

The latest movie about magic and magicians, The Prestige, opened this past Friday to middling reviews but good box office, winning the weekend by an estimated $1.1 million over the number two attraction, Martin Scorcese’s The Departed.     The movie is worth seeing if you don’t expect too much. The filmmakers have clearly tried very hard to make it both entertaining and meaningful, but The Prestige just barely manages to achieve either of those goals. The plot is complex, the characters’ motives are often…

Read more »

America’s REAL Top Sleuths

October 22, 2006
By
America’s REAL Top Sleuths

TV "Best of" lists are usually at best arguable and often fatuous, but the Sleuth Network’s program on America’s Top Sleuths is an especially annoying addition. The comments of the "experts" on the 90-minute program aired recently are nearly uniformly unoriginal, wrong, or both, and the program is thoroughly dull and silly. Its contribution to the public’s knowledge and understanding of the film and television mystery genre is absolutely nil, and in fact probably negative. After watching the program, an individual who knew nothing about…

Read more »

Madonna’s Crucifixion Reported Cancelled

October 20, 2006
By
Madonna’s Crucifixion Reported Cancelled

The American Family Association has announced that NBC TV has decided to delete the mock crucifixion scene that was to appear in a concert special starring rock singer Madonna. As reported on this site on September 20, NBC TV is pondering what to do about rock singer Madonna’s upcoming TV special on the network. A video of the middle-aged pop star’s latest  concert will be broadcast on the network in November. The problem: Madonna sings one song, "Live to Tell," while suspended on a cross,…

Read more »

Subscribe here

Subscribe to email alerts


 

Follow us on Twitter!

Follow the American Culture and S. T. Karnick on Twitter! Send message "follow stkarnick1" to 40404 on your cell phone or go to twitter.com.

Advertisement

"Culture is the expression of the guiding philosophy of the day."—Murray Rothbard
"To judge the quality of a cultural product is not to begrudge the preferences of the people who purchase it. It is simply to apply timeless, objective standards in assessing these products."—Ilana Mercer

Archive

Packages Seo