Category Archive

Steve is almost to the finishing line on his epic, part-by-part rundown of Kill Bill, Isabelle M. registers enthusiastic surprise at liking Dreamworks Animation’s latest offering, How to Train Your Dragon, and Adam Woerlein delivers a hilariously droll takedown of the Jeff Bridges vehicle, Crazy Heart.

D.J. Bigalke, whose blog is as ridiculously funny as it is informative and insightful, offers Playtime another gem, in which he (with the invaluable assistance of Tracy McCusker, Illustrator Extraordinaire), take down e-readers.

Steve P. continues his exhaustive Journey Through Kill Bill.  I really have nothing to add, since it really is exhaustive.

I finally got around to editing the Playtime staff’s list of its lists of the top ten films of the 2000s.  Not everyone submitted a list, of course, but I was happy with the fact that so many of our contributors took the time to assemble lists at all.  Thanks again, guys!   Read the rest of this entry »

I’ll get more egalitarian in the future, my fellow Playtimers. I promise.  At the moment, I’m just going to be egocentric and link my own recent articles for posterity’s sake.  First up (and most recently) is the Playtime roundtable discussion of the 2010 Oscars, in which I spend an awful lot of time ranting about how awful The Cove was.  (Here’s my original review as a primer.)  Then there’s my review of Shutter Island, in which I have the temerity to say that Scorsese’s gone mediocre, just like so many of his vaunted forbears.  So sad.  I’m also proud to say that I edited my old friend Scott’s first published piece for Playtime, a look back at the worst 2009 had to offer.  Very funny stuff.

My learned and erudite colleagues at Playtime have put their considerable skills and talent into the prodigious accomplishment of not only putting out a new update — the first of our April Edition — but an update two days early, just to coincide with April Fool’s Day!  The afore-mentioned acumen and erudition have been channeled into five very silly, very incisive, and very funny humor articles. Read the rest of this entry »

This week’s Playtime update wasn’t very big, but there’s still loads of good stuff, not least of which is the gallery accompanying Zach’s interview with Jessica Evalyn Valle.  She does a lot of portraits, and they have an appealing, otherworldly quality to them, like everyday life caught for a fraction of a moment by the camera of an interdimensional traveler from Earth.  The people and places in the photographs are mundane, familiar, but imbued with the strange physics that bend time and space to something that looks like magic to the human eye.

Izzy finally published her article on Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain.  It’s a great little review, full of infectious enthusiasm, with a judicious dollop of personal reverie.  I haven’t read these books — frankly, the literacy rate of my Playtime colleagues makes me look the ignorant dunce.  But Alexander’s series is now on my “must read” list.  Interestingly, one of his books was the basis for Disney’s The Black Cauldron, which I haven’t seen for many years.

So, yup, that’s the update for this week!  Bon appetit!