Culture Snob 
Mark Stuart has only himself to blame. The name was his idea – even if he didn’t mean it to stick – and the stories associated with it are good ones. But Stuart is considering hanging up Bastard Sons of Johnny Cash as a band name when he moves to Austin, Texas, from San Diego next year.
Sarah Silverman is no Snakes on a Plane, but the slapdash movie bearing her name suffers from the same problem: overexposure.
Much like the Boston Red Sox, the movie Game 6 hauls so much baggage that triumph seems nearly impossible. It’s akin to being down three games to none to the Yankees in a best-of-seven series. Lo-o-o-o-o-o-o-ong odds. But somehow … .
The article begins innocuously enough: “Hollywood’s depiction of the U.S. military is often laughably inaccurate to many Americans who wear their country’s uniform.” But then … .
While it’s worth debating the aims and functions of criticism, there’s a larger issue that’s rarely discussed: ethics in entertainment journalism. Critics have a credibility problem, and I think it’s the primary source of their diminished stature these days.
So we’ve dealt with opening shots and isolated shots, and now the House Next Door asks a different but related question:
“What single movie image or moment do you think of more often than any other?” My answer comes from my iPod.
The Netflix Rolling Roadshow is doubtlessly a brilliant piece of marketing, but the core concept celebrates the sense of place that movies can conjure or capture. But none of this summer’s selections can match the inspiration behind the showing of Field of Dreams this past Friday at Left and Center Field of Dreams.
We rarely take a Faulkner sentence and examine it in isolation. We generally don’t inspect a song’s introduction, or chorus, or bridge, without even dealing with the context of the whole. We don’t study the corner of a painting, pretending that there’s nothing beyond it. Maybe we should.
The film’s subject makes it bluntly political, yet Syriana nearly demands multiple viewings to even understand its plot, let alone its meanings. It is intended to illuminate that the business of oil is a dirty one, yet even people who pay close attention to the movie will come away from it more confused than enlightened.
