Everything, Everywhere, Everyday
Those of us who have been watching Michelle Yeoh with admiration for decades have unearthed the eternal motherlode.
films that matter
A Touch of Zen (Again)
A cli-fi masterpiece of nature and power, violence and the sacred.
Cli-Fi: Merry Christmas, Peace On Earth
Harman’s animated anti-war masterpiece is both a harrowing and instructive climate fiction about what happens when humanity pushes itself and its planet (and that planet’s myriad species) to the brink of extinction.
Chasing Ice And Coral, Running Out of Time
It is my honor to be writing for the Center for Biological Diversity’s shiny new publication, The Revelator. My first piece is an interview with the fearless Jeff Orlowski, director of Chasing Ice, and now, Chasing Coral.
Cli-Fi: Coral Vs. Ice, We Lose
We are slaves to fossil fuels, Chasing Ice director Jeff Orlowski once told me. His new film, Chasing Coral, may find that we have also broken our (food) chains.
It’s Hard To Be Utopian: Director Matthew Rankin On The Tesla World Light
When I first learned that Matthew Rankin was crafting a surreal short about Nikola Tesla, I knew I soon would be picking his fertile brain about free energy, bird love, and why dystopians are marching to the sixth mass extinction.
Cli-Fi: The Breadwinner Patiently Arrives
An international collaboration directed by Cartoon Saloon’s Nora Twomey, and co-produced by Angelina Jolie, whom you may have heard of
Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth to Power
Al Gore once famously asked, “Well, what can you do?”
Here’s what.
Cli-Fi: When Two Worlds Collide
The Amazon’s lethal, exponential extractivism comes fearsomely into focus
Neil Gaiman (Finally) Gets His Biopic
Neil Gaiman is also one of the nicest people on Earth.
Cli-Fi: Director Tomm Moore’s Song of the Sea
Like his Oscar-nominated feature debut The Secret of Kells, his new stunner Song of the Sea is steeped in regional folklore but still a universal wonder. But it is a more personal epic, about the extinction of mythological seal people called Selkies, as explored through a lighthouse family riven by loss and misunderstanding but healed by history and magic.
Bilbo the Billionaire: A Short History of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Greed Wars
J.R.R. Tolkien legendarily wrote In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote, one Oxford summer while “laborious[ly]” grading papers for some always welcome side money. Both of us, he could have added, will be stinking rich someday.
Ten Lessons Of The Environmental Movement, According To A Fierce Green Fire
I spoke with A Fierce Green Fire‘s director Mark Kitchell.
Genndy Tartakovsky Schools Hollywood On Cartoon Physics
“We moved to completely copying realism. Maybe this is a good time to start going back to the old ways, where anything can happen.”
Patagonia Rising’s Water Shock Doctrine
Set in South America’s breathtaking Andes landscape, the visually sweeping new documentary Patagonia Rising bills itself as a frontier story of water and power. But both its frontier and its story nevertheless belong to anyone on the planet that needs water to live.
Daniel Clowes + Wilson + Death Ray = Hollywood Comics Smarts
At last Hollywood is turning back to Daniel Clowes, one of indie comics’ crossover titans.
Resurgent Lord of the Rings Rules Fantasy
Peter Jackson’s CGI-soaked fever dream of innocence and evil revolutionized blockbuster cinema in the early ’00s and made a zillion dollars to boot.
Five Shamless Sci-Fi Oscar Robberies, Spearheaded By Avatar
UPDATE: This goofy roundup on Avatar‘s repurposed return has also been published by my pals at The Huffington Post and Bright Lights Film Journal. Stop by and mouth off. Riding […]
Cerebral Sci-Fi Classics Wipe Minds
George Orwell’s future-fascist classic Nineteen Eighty-Four was really about 1948, although it was published in 1949
In Praise of Ralph Bakshi, Animation Pioneer
One of animation’s most influential artists, Ralph Bakshi made his mark on pop culture by refusing to sacrifice his singular vision to popular tastes and trends.
Name That Film-Based Band!
Murder By Death is one of the most ridiculous, and ridiculously hilarious, spoofs of all time. A smoking cast, a conscienceless goof on mystery greats like Hercule Poirot and Sam […]
Firefly Reboots! And Other April Fool Headlines
Sigh. Do you ever wish for the return of Joss Whedon’s Firefly, a reunion of the original Pink Floyd lineup, great films made from Alan Moore’s brain-melting comics, Neuromancer the […]
Superman + Batman = Public Enemies
Superman/Batman: Public Enemies packs more heroes, action and political satire into a couple hours of entertainment than either icon’s animated series did in the course of several seasons.
Happy Birthday, The Matrix!
The movie took cyberfiction staples like those found in William Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy and mashed them together with anime, wire-fu, postmodernism, metaphysics, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulations, and a torrent of other texts and contexts.
Watchmen’s Clockwork Origins Span Comics, Lit, Film, Physics
From Mars’ Galle crater to comics, literature, music, politics and even quantum physics, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons borrowed from a stunning wealth of sources.