Posts by Sean Fennessey

  • Your Semiannual Reminder That Dirk Nowitzki Is a Self-Aware Genius

    This is Dirk at a charity soccer match, living that Arjen Robben life. Notice the wry smile at flop’s end.

  • Michael Shannon

    A Menagerie of Maniacs: The Everything Guide to Michael Shannon

    Kneel before Michael Shannon, for he is the character actor of our time, a living embodiment of the madness inside us all. And now, little more than 20 years after his first onscreen appearance as “Fred,” a WWF-loving newlywed in 1993’s Groundhog Day, Shannon becomes a household name. Or, at least, a household name in […]

  • Will Smith

    How We’d Fix Will Smith’s Career in Six Simple Steps

    Twenty-seven million dollars. Flat. That’s what After Earth, Will Smith’s new science-fiction epic/offspring-stardom delivery system, grossed at the box office this weekend. Plainly, this is a disaster. Once upon a time, Will Smith wouldn’t get out of one of the many mahogany beds in his 25,000-square-foot “sylvan Shangri-la” for that kind of money. Today, he […]

  • Not Fade Away

    You Should See ‘Not Fade Away,’ a Great Movie That Should Have Been a Greater TV Show

    Last October, between the Tarantinos and the Spielbergs, the Hanekes and the Bigelows, the first glimmer of another little auteurist movie trickled out. Over Keith Richards’s bending guitar strings on “Parachute Woman,” a curled-lip kid from Jersey whines about leaving home. “I think we should all move to the East Village,” the kid says to […]

  • Ben Mendelsohn

    In Praise of Ben Mendelsohn and the Evolution of ‘That Guy’

    Derek Cianfrance’s new movie, The Place Beyond the Pines, is a winding local epic about two generations of men failing at life in the rural-suburban sprawl of Schenectady, New York. Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, and their screen sons are at the center of things, but there’s another guy tucked into the story who steals every […]

  • Live Reading of 'Glengarry Glen Ross'

    We Went There: The Brass Balls of an All-Female Live Read of ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’

    “The melancholy of the blues and the immediacy of jazz … his characters are hard-hearted and hardheaded, so I thought Women can do that.” That was how critic and curator of the Film Independent at LACMA Film Series Elvis Mitchell wryly described David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross before introducing the conceit of last night’s Live […]

  • New York Mets

    The Mets’ Outfield Could Be the Worst Unit in Professional Sports, and Maybe All of Life

    According to a list published by Forbes last summer, the New York Mets — crippled by a Ponzi scheme, castrated by incompetent ownership, and eviscerated by Little Brother Syndrome — are the 49th most valuable franchise in professional sports. This is remarkable and not at all surprising. The Mets are located in (the outer reaches) […]

  • Oscar Travesties round of 32

    Oscar Travesties, Day 2: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Is America’s Foremost Troll

    In the epic, contentious, slanderous 40-person e-mail chain that kickstarted this endeavor a few weeks back, I slavishly recalled more than 20 perceived Oscar Travesties™ occurring before 1972, our cutoff year in this arbitrary contest. (Here’s one: Paul Lukas in Watch on the Rhine beat Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca for Best Actor in 1942. Think […]

  • Unpopular Opinion Alert

    Unpopular Opinion Alert: Justin Timberlake’s Comeback Is a Bad Idea

    It has been 2,342 days since Justin Timberlake released FutureSex/LoveSounds. There’s a case for it as the century’s best album. It’s of its time (Three 6 Mafia cameos, beloved Timbaland productions, that horrifying faux-futurism title) and it lives beyond. In the terrifying world of nightmarish wedding DJ scenarios, there are three Timberlake songs any guest […]

  • Azealia Banks, A$AP Rocky, Angel Haze

    New York Is Killing You: A$AP Rocky, Azealia Banks, and Angel Haze

    Calendars turn, but rap beef knows nothing of space and time. It was just three days into the New Year when the first feud of 2013 began to roil. The inciting incident, because this is 2013, was a tweet. On January 3, Azealia Banks, the fashion-fetishized rapper from Harlem, sent out the following missive: Seriously, […]

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