10 Most Anticipated Films of the Holiday Movie Season
(Photo: Columbia Pictures, Universal Pictures, DreamWorks Animation, New Line Cinema) The year’s not over yet. Following some middling box-office fare the year before, 2012 was supposed to be our cinematic salvation with superhero spectaculars aplenty, an “Aliens” prequel, and remakes that promised to exceed the originals. Well, for every “Avengers”…
Female Fights: #1 Sandra Fluke
Radio show host Rush Limbaugh called the Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke a “slut” for advocating contraceptive health coverage, vaulting both of them to the forefront of birth control debates in 2012. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Chris Carlson/AP Photo) In 2012, women put up a good fight to defend their interests, even…
From ‘Wizard of Oz’ to ‘Troy’: Ten Cursed Films
Photo: Everett Collection Scary movies are orchestrated to pluck at our nerve endings. But what might be scarier are movies that have been cursed themselves. What does cursed exactly mean? Did a black specter really hover over “Rebel Without a Cause” (1955), “Superman” (1978), or “The Dark Knight” (2008) because…
Unwrapping Milla Jovovich’s famous costume from ‘The Fifth Element’
photo: Columbia/Everett Collection Time for sci-fi “fanboys” and action-heroine worshipers to pay some respect. Whatever you might think of “Resident Evil” (“Retribution,” the fifth in the series, comes out September 14) the franchise has made actress Milla Jovovich today’s reigning action star — a destiny that can be traced back…
Y! Big Story: How the media should cover mass shootings, and why it can’t
The ghastly theatricality of the July 20 shooting in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater guaranteed nonstop media attention, amplified by social media. What wasn’t guaranteed, yet inevitable, would be the dizzy scramble to name the offender, count the bodies, release unconfirmed details, speculate on madness — and then criticize the…
Decisions, Wildfires, Health Care Act (June 2012 Buzz)
Colorado wildfires Decisions, decisions. About halfway through the year’s a good time to make them, and many were laid out judicially (although to some thinking, not judiciously), politically, competitively, and romantically. Some decisions though are beyond that of man and instead are up entirely to Mother Nature: Disastrous floods, roiling…
Y! Big Story: “Fast and Furious” meets “The Wire”
“Fast & Furious” (Jamie Trueblood_Universal Pictures) The federal investigation into Mexican gun-trafficking was dubbed Operation Fast and Furious, because the suspects involved liked a little auto-sideshow action. The better analogy might be “The Wire”—to cover a roiling case of vindictive office politics, cowboy agents, sensationalized reporting, the clash of Second…
Y! Big Story: Operation Fast and Furious timeline
Funeral for fallen Border Patrol agent Brian Terry Fortune magazine released a six-month investigative report in Operation Fast and Furious. Here’s a timeline based on that report and other sources. —1993-2005: ATF reputation suffers in high-profile cases. —October 31, 2009: Operation Fast and Furious is launched. —December 2009: David Voth…
Y! Big Story: Operation Fast and Furious timeline
Fortune magazine released a six-month investigative report in Operation Fast and Furious. Here’s a timeline based on that report and other sources. —1993-2005: ATF reputation suffers in high-profile cases. —October 31, 2009: Operation Fast and Furious is launched. —December 2009: David Voth heads Phoenix Group VII, which lacked funding, to…
Y! Big Story: Bumper-sticker politics
Retiring a slogan (Justin Sullivan:Getty Images) Stand Your Ground. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Show Your Papers (Please). Reducing a complex concept into a slogan is an uncertain art, but one that people have tinkered with for centuries. The word “slogan” itself hails from the Gaelic sluagh-ghairm—a battle cry, one that…