I tend to enjoy biopics and movies that have a “based on true events” line splashed across the beginning of the film. I love going and researching the actual true events later or finding out more about the person featured. I was never a very good student of history, so these kinds of ...
As we enter an era when few living Holocaust survivors remain and when there is a concerted effort to ban books like Maus that directly confront the horrors of the Holocaust, it is important for art to continue to be made that passes these stories down. Barry Levinson’s latest film, ...
BY ALISE CHAFFINS There’s a saying that comedy is just tragedy plus time. Story-telling comedians like Mike Birbiglia, John Mulaney and Hasan Minhaj have proven this over and over in their comedy shows. And while Jerrod Charmichael has given us something closer to that brand of humor in ...
BY ALISE CHAFFINS Science fiction has been asking us to look at the dark side of artificial intelligence for a long time. Isaac Asimov gave us “The Three Laws,” and those have been used by filmmakers to ask questions about how AI might impact our daily lives. As devices like Alexa and ...
Moses Storm tells the audience in his new HBO Max special “Trash White” that he is not trying to teach anything. This isn’t something that’s intended to be important in the vein of Hannah Gadsby’s “Nanette,” but instead to be an actual comedy special. I would say that he half ...
Deesha Philyaw’s “The Secret Lives of Church Ladies,” published by West Virginia University Press, has gained national recognition and is slated for an HBO Max adaptation co-authored by Philyaw, who will also serve as executive producer, and actress Tessa Thompson. The book, released ...