Author Archive for James Bliss
Taking Stock of College As Graduation Nears
As another school year comes to an end, another cohort of students must take stock of their relationship to “the real world.” This is experienced differently for different groups, of course.
A Broom Jumping Success
RING: “Jumping the Broom” manages to put a creative twist on the conventions of romantic comedy.
Ditch Master, Save Plan
Recently, an editorial appeared in the New U (“Time to Update the Master Plan?” April 26, 2011) that took stock of the University of California’s growing applicant pool, pondered the problems of rapid expansion for our grand old Master Plan, and offered a new vision for a University besieged by a state-wide budget crisis. Unfortunately, [...]
Five Times Faster
The last week of April is, for those in the know, Shakespeare Week: the week when the Bard of Avon was baptized (on April 26, 1564) and died (on April 23, 1616). To my mind, no film released this Shakespeare Week does more to honor his legacy than Justin Lin’s “Fast Five,” the fourth sequel to 2001’s “The Fast and the Furious” and the latest since 2009’s “Fast & Furious.”
Go Green? You First!
Earth Day has passed once again (let’s hope you planted a tree and picked up some litter this Saturday), but that’s no reason for us to get lax on our personal ecology. Saving the Earth is easy, after all. As a species we may be living at the edge of a precipice, but — if the “Go Green!” boosters are to be believed — there are simple things we can each do every day to avoid a cataclysm.
‘Atlas’ is a Laughingstock
There’s something almost poetic about seeing the first installment of a proposed trilogy of films based on Ayn Rand’s magnum opus, “Atlas Shrugged,” in Irvine. Something akin to a screening of “The Godfather” in the Italian countryside, or of “Star Wars: A New Hope” on Tatooine. Only two miles from the Ayn Rand Institute’s global [...]
“Arthur” Flops Badly
PASTICHE: This remake of the 1981 comedy falls short at almost every level imaginable.
The Mountain Goats Steadily Climb
TAROT: The consistently successful Mountain Goats fall flat on their latest album.
“Paul” is Out of This World
E.T.: The bromance between Nick Frost and Simon Pegg has led to another hilariously nerdy flick.
Racism, Still A Problem
There’s a broad strain of American political discourse that considers race a myth, an illusion that, if we work diligently to expose as false, will wither away into the dustbin of history. A greater and more pernicious one is the old myth of social progress; that racism is a musty old problem that, as time passes, becomes less and less of a vital issue.
