Emma Thompson

Content Creation: Your Characters Are Family

This was going to be a review of John Lee Hancock’s Saving Mr. Banks. I’d read somewhere in the British press after it debuted at the London Film Festival that it was the one to beat, that there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. In reality it’s simply the most obvious chunk of Oscar bait this season, so much so it’s a caricature of an Oscar-bait film. In this respect it is meta, but I doubt deliberately so; children’s author Pamela Travers didn’t want to sell the rights to Mary Poppins to Walt Disney because she was afraid it would be turned into a cartoon. Aaaaaand, violà! Her own life story has been rendered like a diorama at Disneyland,

Sookie the Vampire Layer

THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

by James Killough

There are a few things I just don’t get about popular culture, but which most people seem to go bat shit about.  One is Michael Jackson.  I never got him.  I hate his voice, it sounds creepy; he is one of two people who will cause me to change the channel or turn off the radio/TV the instant I hear him squeak.  The other is George W. Bush.  And his dancing looks silly, like he’s a gaudy Sicilian marionette being manipulated by a meth head.  The way he dressed was also ridiculous, eccentric in a bad fashion way, because he was absolutely insane.  And his infantilism made me embarrassed for him; I wanted someone to cover him up, to help him not be himself so much.

Anna Paquin's breasts have more character than her facial expressions.

I don’t get vampires, either.  I think it’s for the same reason I don’t really date guys from my socio-cultural background: effete and posh isn’t a turn-on.  Add  pale, slimy skin to that and I’ve got myself a stomach-churner every time I see one of those dudes bare his fangs, be he Alexander Skarsgård or not.