Cosby & Sony scandals, streaming devices & High Maintenance, Top Five, and Foxcatcher. Paul and Elgin talk about Two of the top screen-related stories of 2014: Bill Cosby rape allegations and the Sony Pictures hacking scandal triggered by the movie The Interview. Dueling streaming “sticks”: A comparison of the Roku Stick, Chromecast, and Amazon’s Fire […]

Interstellar, Nightcrawler, and Birdman. Paul and Elgin talk about Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, starring  Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, and Michael Caine. We discuss this long, ambitious, operatic film, made by the creators of the Dark Knight Trilogy with a lot of input from physicist Kip Thorne. Do the film’s emotional themes and dramatization match its formal and technical bravura, including its special […]

Gone Girl, HBO Go-It-Alone, Transparent, Black-ish, and Twin Peaks redux. Elgin and Paul chat about Gone Girl, directed by David Fincher and starring Rosamund Pike and Ben Affleck. We discuss how social expectations about women and men, as well as the audience’s genre and narrative expectations, are played with by the filmmakers, including screenwriter Gillian […]

Houdini, Red Oaks, The Cosmopolitans, and Really. Paul and Elgin chat about Houdini, starring Adrien Brody. How does this History Channel miniseries depict the life of the magician? Was too much poetic license taken with his biography in this dramatized TV program? We discuss what was covered in depth (how he did his tricks and […]

This time Elgin and Paul talk about screen stuff that repeats in some way. Chatting about Wes Anderson’s latest effort, The Grand Budapest Hotel, starring Ralph Fiennes as the dandy concierge, M. Gustave, and Tony Revolori as his sidekick lobby boy, Zero (it also features cameos by several of Anderson’s regulars). Is Anderson growing as an artist as he […]

The Butler, Fruitvale Station, Fall TV Preview, Breaking Bad Reviews of Lee Daniels’ The Butler and Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale Station. * Must the majority of black films (greenlit by Hollywood) be about the struggle? Fall TV preview. * Covering some trends: Big stars come back to the small screen (The Crazy Ones starring Robin Williams, […]

Blockbuster bombs, cable TV, anti-heroes on TV, Blue Jasmine, Orange Is the New Black String of summer blockbuster bombs and contemporary film financing: Reactions to * Steven Soderbergh’s state of cinema speech at the San Francisco Film Festival this spring and * George Lucas and Steven Spielberg’s talk about film studio Armageddon at USC this […]