On "Biological Warfare: A Scenario"
Author and Journalist Annie Jacobsen imagines a nightmare scenario which takes us to at least one terrible place where Americans have already been
The Continental Congress
Highly opinionated cultural commentary from a Hollywood veteran delivering heterodox analysis of the kind you won't find in the Trades...
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How Hollywood Lost the Hollywood Press
Corporate money very rarely mixes well with art.
The Jack Trainer Principle
Why Hollywood keeps learning the wrong lessons when female heroes underperform at the box office.
OK fine... Let's Argue About "The Odyssey"
Perhaps you’ve heard that director Christopher Nolan has a new movie coming out in July based on Homer’s manly epic “The Odyssey.” Until a few months ago there was nearly universal excitement over this prospect.
"And You're the Only One Who Knows..."
"Truth" and the modern celebrity streaming documentary
Chasing Immortality in Hollywood
“When a man comes to this point in his life, he wants to turn over the things he’s been blessed with… turn them over to friends… as a reward for the friends he’s had…and to make sure that everything goes well after he’s gone.” - Hyman Roth “The Godfather: Part 2”
Misunderstanding Mr. Spock
How the "centering" of alien characters over human ones helped destroy one of Hollywood's most durable sci-fi franchises
When Hollywood Did It Right: Pirates of the Caribbean
(Note: This is the seventh in a series of deep dive essays into some of Hollywood’s greatest, most popular and most-enduring movies… as defined by me.
Hollywood Dodges a Bullet
The pleasantly surprising news that Paramount, not Netflix, came out on top in the Warner Bros.
One Step Closer to the Edge
Partisan politics comes for the WB merger