Recently in film Category

At the culmination of last year's year in review, I told 2008 that I was 'glad to meet her acquaintance.' I take it back. What a jerk she turned out to be.

Music

Album sales continue to plummet while digital downloads continue to rise. iTunes reached one billion sales for the first time ever and vinyl records had its biggest year (1.88 million units) since the Nielsen SoundScan began tracking album sales in 1991.

Rage Against the Machine made waves at the 2008 Republican National Convention, solidifying them as the most prolific political band of my generation.

Chinese Democracy, the first Guns N' Roses album in 17 years, was finally released after years of speculation.

Britney Spears has seemed to turn it around, making us forget that she went completely psycho.

Columbia University graduates Vampire Weekend burst into the mainstream seemingly out of nowhere, and aren't going anywhere.

Politics

The United States of America made history this year by electing its first black President, Barack Obama.

Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich cast a dark cloud over his home state just as they were reveling in the victory of Barack Obama.

Politics and pop culture become one.

The GOP's choice of Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate proves that nobody in the Continental United States has any clue about what goes on in Alaska.

The Al Franken/Norm Coleman Senate race in Minnesota Senate race still isn't over.

Sports

Our hometown Philadelphia Phillies won the World Series this year, breaking a 25 year championship hiatus in Philadelphia. There were bigger sports stories this year, but not in my house.

Sports Illustrated named 2008 the Best Year Ever. I'll leave it at that.

Film

Like last year, I didn't get to the movies too much this year. I did see a few, however.

2008 marked the year that I saw my all-time favorite movie, In Bruges.

Heath Ledger's performance in The Dark Knight deserves an Oscar, regardless of what anyone says.

Wall-E will go down in history as the best animated film to ever grace the silver screen.

Television

AMC's Mad Men officially replaces The Sopranos as television's best show.

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow became cable television's new media darling.

Elvis Costello's new show on Sundance, Spectacle, proves that rock n' roll is intelligent.

The Office continues to be network television's best comedy, while The Colbert Report, in my view, surpassed The Daily Show.

Technology

Google continued its quest to take over the world in 2008, providing us with interesting yet frightening new technologies what seems like on a weekly basis.

Unique visitors to Facebook have skyrocketed since September 2007 (up 116%), making it the top social networking site and second to Blogger as the top social media site. With numbers like that, it won't last long.

Apple reached its goal of selling 10 million iPhones in 2008 by October while setting record profits. PC sales, especially Dells, continue to stall.

Books

Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series continued to dominate the market this year, claiming four of the top five spots in USA Today's top 150 best sellers for the final week of 2008. The other? J.K Rowling's Tales of the Beedle Bard.

The most interesting book I read this year was Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor's My Stroke of Insight.

Next on my list is Malcolm Gladwell's latest, Outliers: The Story of Success.

Business

Ouch. I don't even want to discuss it.

2009...can it actually be worse than 2008? Let's hope not.

I'm a Dumbledork

When it comes to Harry Potter, I'm pretty much a nerd. In the summer of 2000, when J.K. Rowling's fourth installment in the Harry Potter Series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, was published, I became fascinated with Harry's adventures at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The series was recommended to me by a friend, and I pretty much laughed it off as fairytales and nonsense. My job for that summer, however, was incredibly boring. I proceeded to read all four novels in two weeks, and my inner geek inside was at an all-time high. Until now, that is.

There's a sick irony in crime fighting. Fighting is a crime. Killing is a crime. But crime fighters fight. And crime fighters kill. They must.

People die during crimes and people die as punishment for those crimes. This, again, is a conundrum. Death beget death? This article isn't about capital punishment, but keep it in mind.

Kool Thing

The Oscar nominated film Juno had its fair share of surprises along the way when I first saw it last December. Amongst them was a key moment in the film when a discussion about the value of a version of the song "Superstar" by legendary art-punk band Sonic Youth, originally appearing on the A&M Records compilation tribute album to the Carpenters, I Wish I Were A Carpenter (1994). As Jason Bateman turned up the stereo and instructed young Ellen Page to listen, my immediate thought was, “Holy hell, I actually have that album. How cool am I?” It actually turns out that it just shows my age, but whatever.

Read The Art of Storytelling (Part 1): How Movies Have Revolutionized Performance Art.

The Turning of the Tides

By the 1920s, motion pictures were taking America by storm. Movie stars were just that, and the modern celebrity was born. The great American novel became an underground art, and the theatre and opera were reserved for high society. With this new medium, filmmakers began looking for new stories to tell, ultimately turning to books for inspiration. The first film adaptation came in 1924 with Erich Von Stroheim’s Greed, a literal adaptation of Frank Morris’s novel, McTeague. Due to Von Stroheim’s meticulous nature, the resulting film was an overwhelming 16 hours. When it was finally cut down to two hours, the result was an incoherent nightmare. The processes of adapting novels and plays began to grow as an art, ultimately leading to screenwriters consistently looking to adapt both books and theatre for the big screen. This of course, includes television, but that's another story.

Roots

Since the advent of language, people have been creating their own venues in order to tell their stories, whether the stories have a specific purpose or are strictly for entertainment value. Every ancient civilization has their legends, myths, and stories, just as every culture has their renowned storytellers. Primarily, storytelling was conducted in the oral tradition in combination with expressions and gestures. Another primitive form of storytelling was through art, as seen in cave drawings. In the oral tradition, the storyteller provides the audience with mental images through words, songs, and movements to get his message across. Audience would then, in turn, interpret the story through their own personal experiences. No two stories were ever told in the same manner, nor were the audiences’ interpretations of the story. The experiences of both the storyteller and the audience, and how they interact are what make storytelling special. Storytelling is, indeed, the first true art form.

That rug really tied the room together

Actually it was Grace Slick that said, "Feed your head." The Dormouse said, "I wasn't asleep, I heard every word you fellows were saying." And What the Dormouse Said is a book by John Markoff. The subtitle of the 2005 non-fiction tome is "How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry." And now the computer is the rug that ties the room together. Are you with me?