The Big Short goes long on greed
Movie review: The Big Short
Capitalizing on his comedy savvy talent, director-writer Adam McKay turns Wall Street's crooked ways into a fragmented farce that makes us laugh at our own funeral
Bolshoi Babylon breaks ballet’s legs
Movie review: Bolshoi Babylon
Documentary filmmakers Nick Read and Mark Franchetti go behind the red velvet and once iron curtain to unveil the ugly beauty that is Russia's legendary ballet company
Does Mad Men Make Women Angry?
Podcast: Pop This!
The digital divas take on the tale of two Mrs. Drapers, television's serial rape culture, and whether the chair-spinning moment in The Voice is a thrill or flat contrivance
Featuring Lisa Christiansen and Andrea Warner. Produced by Andrea Gin.
A sampling of what you might hear in this week's episode:
"I did not care for the end of Mad Men, I hated the final episode."
"At what point am I complicit in the rape culture by tuning in?"
"I celebrate shows that have lots of sex."
"Girls is over..."
"I highly recommend Casablanca, the original, not the Pamela Anderson remake."
...and so, so much more.
For past episodes, click here. Or subscribe to Pop This! on iTunes.
THE EX-PRESS, December 20, 2015
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Romancing the Swine
Mob Rule: Part 37
Jack and Lyndon come face to face with the devil called politics and those who wear their mother's laundry in the Deep South
By John Armstrong
We convened a nervous war council in the station’s coffee shop, with three hours before our train to Tallahassee. The only other departure between then and now would have taken us back through Alabama to Memphis and that didn’t seem like any real improvement over where we were, so we sat tight and waited. I repented of our decision to trim the touring party down for the Deep South campaign. We’d left the bulk of the staff and most of the guns behind us in Texas, the brain trust reasoning a larger party could seem confrontational, particular one with a dozen or so hired gunsels in it.
There’s an old theory that in a dangerous situation, you’re sometimes better off to be unarmed, because it makes you tread carefully where you might not with a gun in your hand. That may be so, but I had two guns under my ...
Look away, look away, Dixieland
Mob Rule: Part 36
Jack lands in the heart of Klan land where the air smells of smoke and cordite, and the Civil War apparently never ended
By John Armstrong
It had been a long, hot muggy ride from Baton Rouge to Montgomery and by the time we arrived I felt like I might as well have swum. I could have wrung my shirt out like a bathing suit. Redcaps at the station loaded us into cabs and I climbed into one with Otis and Vanessa. When I gave the driver the name of our hotel he looked at me with saucer-sized eyes in the rearview mirror and said, “All y’all staying at the Hampton?”
“That’s right. Why?”
“’Cause your friend going to be the first colored to spend the night there.”
“Shit,” Otis said. “I wondered when Jim Crow was going to show up.” He said to the driver, “Thanks for telling us. Where would you suggest as an alternative?”
The driver pulled us out into traffic and said, “I favor the Hotel Sapphire. My sister works the desk and ...
On Leonard Cohen and Pistachio Cranberry Icebox Cookies
Food: Pistachio Cranberry Icebox Cookies
There is a crack, a crack in everything, which makes icebox cookies soft, chewy, and beatifully malformed treats.
By Louise Crosby
Most people know that perfection is an unattainable goal, that striving for it is futile. It’s the flaws that make life interesting, as Leonard Cohen reminds us in his beautiful song Anthem: “There is a crack, a crack, in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”
And so it is with icebox cookies. Such a wonderful invention – you prepare the dough, form it into logs, wrap them in plastic and refrigerate until you have a hankering for a little something sweet. Then you slice and bake, and voilà, fresh-baked cookies in less than half an hour.
Not to put you off making these – because they are easy and delicious and cute as buttons – but as in all of life, there’s another side of the story. When you add nuts, chocolate chips, dried fruit and other solid things to icebox cookie dough, a ...
Mississippi Grind percolates
Movie review: Mississippi Grind
The team behind Half Nelson and Sugar return with a film about chronic gambling that isn't as depressing as it probably should be, thanks to a pair of pocket kings in Ryan Reynolds and Ben Mendelsohn
A dog movie unleashes emotion in Marrakech
Festivals: Festival International Du Film De Marrakech
Liberated from the Oscar bait vying for her attention in New York, veteran film critic Thelma Adams lets go in the exotic darkness of a Moroccan movie palace
By Thelma Adams
MARRAKECH, MOROCCO -- "Each person dies as best they can," says Julian (Ricardo Darin) in the Spanish-language dramedy Truman, screened out of competition at the Festival International Du Film De Marrakech. Julian is a self-involved and straight-shooting stage actor riddled with cancer and reluctant to go another round with chemo. His best friend Tomas (Javier Camara) travels to Madrid from Montreal for a reluctant reunion. It will likely be their last.
In this Spanish-Argentinian co-production there will be tears and tenderness, shared memories and wine bottles, conflicts and revelations – and steamy sex. In Spanish director Cesc Gay's seventh film, there is also a very large, soulful hound named Truman that Julian is seeking to surrender to a new ...
Theeb: A Middle Eastern Western
Movie review: Theeb
Jordan's official nomination for the best foreign film Oscar is a tightly wound adventure story about a Bedouin boy learning how to be a man on the eve of the First World War
