Category Archives: Television

Favorite Media

Movies

Comedy

  • Adaptation
  • Amélie
  • Being John Malkovich
  • Groundhog Day
  • Moonstruck
  • My Fair Lady
  • Princess Bride
  • Tampopo

Drama

  • 12 Angry Men
  • 12 Years a Slave
  • All About My Mother
  • Amadeus
  • Baadasssss!
  • Beautiful Mind, A
  • Before Sunrise
  • Bernie
  • Black Book
  • Blue is the Warmest Color
  • Casablanca
  • Cinema Paradiso
  • City of God
  • Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover, The
  • Cyrano de Bergerac (Depardieu)
  • Dangerous Method, A
  • Departed, The
  • Do the Right Thing
  • Ed Wood
  • Elephant Man, The
  • Elmer Gantry
  • Experimenter
  • Fargo
  • First Reformed
  • Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The (Swedish)
  • Goodfellas
  • Inherit the Wind
  • Ikiru
  • Jackie Brown
  • Jules and Jim
  • Kinsey
  • Liberty Heights
  • Lighthouse, The
  • Like Water for Chocolate
  • Lives of Others, The
  • Lust/Caution
  • Master and Commander
  • Miller’s Crossing
  • Moonrise Kingdom
  • Mud
  • My Left Foot
  • Network
  • Nightcrawler
  • Pan’s Labyrinth
  • People vs Larry Flynt, The
  • Pianist, The
  • Punch Drunk Love
  • Romance & Cigarettes
  • Royal Tenenbaums, The
  • Scenes from a Marriage
  • Separation, A
  • Straight Story, The
  • Take This Waltz
  • Three Kings
  • Truly, Madly, Deeply
  • Two Family House
  • Vicky Cristina Barcelona
  • Witches of Eastwick
  • Zed and Two Naughts, A

Sci-Fi / Fantasy / Horror / Documentary / Other

  • Arrival
  • Contact
  • Dark City
  • District 9
  • Downsizing
  • Edge of Tomorrow
  • Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, A
  • Ex Machina
  • Fly, The (1986)
  • Her
  • Inception
  • Let the Right One In (original)
  • Lobster, The
  • Mad Max: Fury Road
  • Marjoe
  • Prometheus
  • RoboCop (1987)
  • Solaris (2002)
  • Sorry to Bother You
  • Starship Troopers
  • Sweeney Todd
  • Synecdoche, NY
  • Thor: Ragnarok
  • Total Recall
  • Truman Show, The
  • WALL- E

TV Shows

  • Altered Carbon
  • Big Mouth
  • Brooklyn 99
  • Black Mirror
  • Cosmos
  • Good Place, The
  • Knick, The
  • Office, The
  • Parks and Recreation
  • Star Trek: TNG
  • Wire, The

Desperate Housewives Debate

From an article in Ms. Magazine:

Dear Jessica,

It’s no wonder right-wing culture warriors such as Carlson and Fields love a show whose worldview harks back to a time when two-parent, middle-class families could comfortably thrive on single incomes, women’s identities were primarily determined by the men they married and the children they raised, and husbands were not expected to trouble themselves with such pesky matters as child care and housework.

Dear Desperately Hating,

Its stealth feminism has not been lost on the “values” crowd, including Rev. Donald Wildmon’s American Family Association (AFA), which predictably denounced the show as immoral. Not surprisingly, Wildmon’s group condemned its adulterous antics but not the murderous ones, singling out Gabrielle’s affair with a hunky teenaged gardener. Disgusting, isn’t it? Adult women finally get to ogle hottie jailbait without feeling like Mrs. Robinson — a visual droit du seigneur long enjoyed by men.

Richard Speck

Thank you, Mad Men, for this:

From Wikipedia:

Richard Franklin Speck (December 6, 1941 – December 5, 1991) was a mass murderer who systematically tortured, raped, and murdered eight student nurses from South Chicago Community Hospital on July 14, 1966.

And, this:

In May 1996, Chicago television news anchor Bill Kurtis received video tapes made at Stateville Prison in 1988 from an anonymous attorney. Showing them publicly for the first time before a shocked and deeply angry Illinois state legislature, Kurtis pointed out the explicit scenes of sex, drug use, and money being passed around by prisoners, who seemingly had no fear of being caught; in the center of it all was Speck, performing oral sex on another inmate, sharing a huge pile of cocaine with an inmate, parading in silk panties, sporting female-like breasts (allegedly grown using smuggled hormone treatments), and boasting, “If they only knew how much fun I was having, they’d turn me loose.” The Illinois legislature packed the auditorium to view the two-hour video, but stopped the screening when the film showed Speck performing oral sex on another man.

Continue reading Richard Speck

Johnny Carson

The Ultimate Carson Collection: Vol. 3
May 21, 1992: Guests Bette Midler and Robin Williams (then filming Toys). Williams jokes that H.W. Bush told Quayle to talk about Jerry Brown and Quayle, confused, spoke about Murphy Brown: “‘Jerry Brown, Jerry Brown, Jerry Brown, Buster Brown, Buster Brown, Buster Brown, Buster Brown, Audie Murphy, Audie Murphy, Audie Murphy…Murphy Brown! Murphy Brown makes me so….’ Don’t you realize that he’s rain man”?! Continue reading Johnny Carson