Presidential candidate Mitt Romney (he stopped being governor of Massachusetts awhile back) recently ran into a bit of trouble for using the phrase “tar baby” during an Iowa fundraiser to describe the Big Dig fiasco. As you may (or may not) know, “tar baby” is considered a derogatory term among many African Americans; Gov. [...]

I was recently in L.A. More on that in another post. On the airplane the movie Glory Road was showing, so I watched it. A decent flick, but not great. If it’s on tv, it’s worth flipping to, but not worth going out of your way for. Anyway, [...]

PBS ran a special showing the other night of All the President’s Men, followed by a documentary segment on the Watergate scandal. One of the most interesting points made by the documentary was that those involved in the conspiracy and election tampering (of which the Watergate break-in was simply one incident) honestly believed that [...]

First off, X-men III rocks as a movie. I highly recommend it. Great special effects, solid acting, nice plot, and even some deeper issues hidden beneath the surface. So, in honor of the greatest comic book movie franchise of all time I thought I’d tackle one such topic on leftfielder.
At one point [...]

I’m fed up with the perpetual controversy over The DaVinci Code and all the other non-standard interpretations of Christianity floating around the media. But the fault doesn’t lie with any particular author, religious scholar, theologian, director, or actor. The fault lies with the Christians who let themselves get riled up about this kind [...]

I recently caught an excellent documentary on AMC entitled Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust, that looked at various Hollywood portrayals of the Holocaust and the controversy that those portrayals caused. According to the documentary, some of the first serious Hollywood portrayals of the Holocaust (a TV mini-series Holocaust, Sophie’s Choice, etc.) were controversial [...]

One of my favorite movies is the original Manchurian Candidate. For those of you who haven’t seen it, the film revolves around a powerful, Joseph McCarthy-esque Senator, his manipulative wife (Angela Lansbury as the most frustratingly evil woman you will ever see in a movie), and her son by a previous marriage, a Korean War [...]

The darkest chapters in American history always start with an exaggeration. Indians are threatening to over-run our frontier. Carpet-baggers are destroying the South. Japanese spies have infiltrated the West Coast. Soviet sympathizers are working in the State Department. None of these statements were out-right false at their time. There were Native American raids on frontier [...]

Go see Hotel Rwanda. One of the best movies you’ll ever sit through. And also, as far as I can tell, one of the most accurate, which is absolutely the most horrifying thing about it. Go see it. and if you want to learn more about Rwanda, read We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow [...]