Progressive News Feeds

It’s difficult to write about Cloud Atlas , the sweeping adaptation of David Mitchell’s 2004 nesting doll of a novel, by Lana Wachowski, Andy Wachowski, and Tom Tykwer, if only because it’s doing so many different things, telling stories that range from the slave trade to multiple post-apocalypses, testing the limits of how big an independent movie can be and still be viable, and exploring the power of reincarnation and liberation movements. I don’t really think that Cloud Atlas works–it’s simultaneously too much, and too little–but while its characters are reaching for better lives, there’s a lot in Cloud Atlas that suggests what a better movie-going landscape might look like

Tags: #sports, climate, colleague, film, ideas, lgbt, movies, science, war

Over at The Atlantic, I took a look at NBC’s reboot of The Munsters , Mockingbird Lane , and beyond that, the question of what monsters are for and whether they can have any actual impact when they’ve become ubiquitous: So if we aren’t supposed to be frightened of the Munsters, what are they for? Mockingbird Lane has stripped away the working-class symbolism of The Munsters, which at the time was meant as more direct commentary on a kind of family sitcom that doesn’t quite exist anymore, replaced by self-aware, upper-middle-class juggernauts like ABC’s Modern Family. Herman no longer works at a funeral home, or even seems to work at all, and Lily’s so ethereal—she appears in clouds of smoke and wears designer frocks weaved for her by friendly spiders—it’s hard to imagine her starting up even so posh a business as a beauty parlor

Tags: alyssa, author, donate, economy, entertainment, facebook, family, health, media, movies, security, tweets

The latest numbers from Folio about who makes what in the world of magazine editing reaffirm what we already know: women make less money than men in comparable positions. Male editors-in-chief or editorial directors of magazines make $100,800 to women’s $85,100 . For executive editors, men pull down $84,200 to women’s $65,700.

Tags: alyssa, author, barack-obama, business, economy, movies, security, tweets

Word comes from the New York Times that, a year after Iran won its first Academy Award for Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation , Iran will boycott the Academy Awards in protest of “Innocence of Muslims,” a crude film about the prophet Muhammad that may not even exist as a feature film: The boycott appears straightforward: Mohammad Hosseini, Iran’s culture minister, on Tuesday confirmed that his country would not submit a film for consideration at next year’s Oscars in protest of “Innocence of Muslims,” the anti-Islam YouTube video that has sparked deadly riots.

Tags: academy-awards, action, actors, alyssa, barack-obama, election, free-speech, hollywood, movies, security, tweets

I’ve mentioned this on Twitter, though perhaps not on the blog: Asawin Suebsaeng, Mother Jones’ movie guy and I, are now doing a weekly podcast. Fittingly, because we spend a lot of time violently disagreeing, it’s called A Movie And An Argument With Alyssa and Swin

Tags: black, economy, election, ethics, media, movies, podcast, science, security, yahoo

It’s a twisty path we thread when we argue that popular culture has an impact in the real world. I believe, firmly, that what we see in movies and on television, what we read in the few books that become mass phenomena these days do shape our assumptions about what is normal and what is real, that we can help build the dream of a more just and inclusive world and work through the nightmares we may be building for ourselves.

Tags: action, alyssa, economy, election, fiction, islamophobia, media, mitt-romney, movies, popular-culture

I suppose I grew up with football as much as, or more than, any other sport.

Tags: action, alyssa, answers, child, climate, concussions, hockey, movies, thinkprogress, video-game

Memo to Brian De Palma, and folks who want to follow in the footsteps of Darren Aronofsky. Sometimes, when women have competitive or power-imbalanced relationships, we solve them in ways that don’t involve making out with each other in highly aestheticized settings! There is something really weird about the assumption that women who are rivals work that ish out by hate-banging each other

Tags: election, humor, media, movies, progressive news, security, world-series, yahoo

I recommend Cosmopolis, David Cronenberg’s adaptation of the 2003 Don DeLillo novel of the same name, in the spirit that I might recommend Scandinavian-style salted licorice. It won’t be to everyone’s taste, to put it mildly—even some Cronenberg devotees may be turned off by this movie’s icy, cerebral quality, its aggressive oddness. But at least it doesn’t taste like anything else out there

Tags: article-toolbar, arts, author, kristen-stewart, movies, predictable, science, slate, united-airlines, war

In a long piece on Parks and Recreation as part of Deadline’s look at Emmy-contending shows, I was struck by this section on what made the show successful, and how it’s influenced the television landscape: Producer Daniel Goor says that finetuning Poehler’s character was essential to assure viewers that she was not just a female version of Steve Carell’s self-absorbed Michael Scott of The Office .

Tags: bizarre, black, economy, entertainment, girls, marriage equality, movies, tweets, yahoo