Welcome To All That

Let me interrupt the regular flow of pop culture commentary for a quick note on the World Cup. First, briefly, the substance (more…)

Even people who have seen and loved it, tend to shake their heads when I tell them that I rewatch Gregg Araki’s Mysterious Skin (2004) at least twice a year. It’s a great movie, they say, but isn’t it enough that it has burnt itself onto my memory once? I see their point – a physically and emotionally brutal drama, it’s not exactly feel-good material – but at the same time, I sense that there’s something else to their reluctance: Is it even possible to love a movie about child abuse? And, if so: Should you feel bad about it? (more…)

Having been on hiatus since February, it felt like the right time to bring back the regular edition of the SMA. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy doing the ‘Twenty over 30′ edition in April, but since the inception of this blog, the SMA has sort of become part of its backbone. But it’s easy to see that it has been away for awhile. When I discarded with the March edition, Nick Hoult of A Single Man looked set to dethrone Logan Lerman and take the top spot he had been angling for ever since the very first SMA. Sure enough, Logan Lerman, offered little help from my watching Gamer, was dethroned, just not by Hoult. Rather, Me and Orson Welles helped Zac Efron to top honors. The June DVD release of A Single Man should give Hoult a prime opportunity to take what was once his, however. (more…)

There are lots of reasons to admire film critics. First, it can be a thankless job. You have to sit through unfathomable amounts of crappy movies, and the price for getting to see them in advance and for free, is that you can’t leave them unfinished or simply dispose of them once they’ve flickered before your eyes. Or at least not if you aspire to be a good critic. Instead, you have to do a writeup as if the movie hasn’t already left your mind, perhaps even give it more attention than you think it deserves. (more…)

You may have noticed that the tagline for this blog has changed lately. It used to be something like Gays. Guys. Movies. Music. Politics. Pop culture. All that and then some, and I liked the way that played off the blog’s title (Welcome to all that (and then some, get it?), but now it instead read Introspection masked as culture criticism. I changed it because I wanted to warn the reader that although this blog is concerned with the popular culture at large, it’s also a deeply personal blog. (more…)

Bryan Borland is practically glowing these days. His first poetry collection, My Life as Adam, has just been published, and he’s obviously proud of it. Or at least I think he’s glowing. It’s hard to know when you do an interview via Facebook and email. But judging from the enthusiasm of his responses, this is something he really wants to do. Or, rather, needs to do. He doesn’t need the recognition, necessarily, but like anyone who has ever struggled with words even semi-professionally, he knows that although they can be your friend or your foe at different times, one thing never changes; they need you to express them. I throw a sort of stock opening question at him (‘What are your views on inspiration?’), but while his answer has things in common with what any self-respecting writer will tell you, it has the rhythmic energy readers will come to appreciate in the Borlandian school of poetry; a belief that being serious about your craft doesn’t have to mean you can’t also be playful. (more…)

The rise of social media was supposed to make it easier for people around the world who share the same interests to interact with each other, and to keep up to date on interesting developments. This should be true for fan culture as well. Therefore I was actually somewhat ashamed when I discovered that the new Hanson EP Stand Up Stand Up had been out for weeks when I finally heard of it during Christmas. Sure, I was hospitalized at the time of its release, and thus I had a decent excuse for why I wasn’t up to date, but still, ain’t a real Fanson supposed to get around such minor inhibitions when new material is made available? Of course he is. I took about thirty seconds to beat myself up about it and making a mental note that ‘becoming a better Fanson’ should be among my New Year’s resolutions, before I delved hungrily into the matter at hand. (more…)

The stability in the top spot masks some true drama in the struggle for top honors on the first Sexiest Males Alive list of the new decade (see #1-10 below). The two guys to fight it out for Climber Of The Month, Jay Brannan and Leonardo DiCaprio (climbing eleven and ten spots, respectively), have one thing in common: Their complete refusal to be written off. They may be down for a while, and you may be hard pressed to find a reason for them to bounce back anytime soon, and then, BAM, they rocket upwards nonetheless. For Brannan, his impressive improvement should be attributed to his new single, Christmas Really Sucks, and the cover art that came with it, while Leo was helped by my accidental rewatching of Titanic. (more…)