by Jack Brown | May 8, 2017 | Arts, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured, Film, News, Newsletter
For such a rich subject, films about art and the people that make it all too often feel either forced and flat or ridiculously over the top. Better, usually, to take the documentary route, and let the art speak for itself. That’s the course taken by directors Timothy...
by Jack Brown | May 1, 2017 | Articles, Cinemadope, Columns, Film, Newsletter
In the world of film, it is sometimes depressingly simple to point out why a given film is popular: perfectly groomed stars with gleaming teeth, things going boom, good over evil. I get it — we are, by and large, easy to please, and that’s okay. It’s just not that...
by Jack Brown | Apr 24, 2017 | Articles, Cinemadope, Columns, Film, Newsletter
While the idea of a “mockumentary” now seems almost old-hat, in 1984 director Rob Reiner gave birth to the zany medium. His ridiculously entertaining satire about life on the road with aging, British metal band Spinal Tap during their American comeback tour was mostly...
by Jack Brown | Apr 18, 2017 | Articles, Cinemadope, Columns, Newsletter
TED talks — the bite-sized presentations given at the organization’s annual Technology, Education, and Design conference — have become an oddly popular cultural phenomenon. At once elitist and public-spirited (a standard conference membership will run you 10 grand,...
by Jack Brown | Apr 10, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Cinemadope, Columns, Film
Maine Course Like so many of my middle-aged compatriots, I seem to have adopted food as a new hobby. Not cooking, necessarily — quite a bit of this particular enterprise is taken up simply by watching other people cook, it turns out — but eating, at least. And what...
