According to a recent LA Times article, the story of Jesus a billion people have heard all their lives will finally receive a cinematic treatment courtesy of an Iranian director. Read More »
Screened at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival Jackie Salloum's 9 minute short, "Planet of the Arabs" is a montage of the dehumanizing and vilifying depictions of Arabs in contemporary American film.
This Absolut ad. garnered a lot of attention lately and has apparently earned the ire of many Americans for its depiction of the pre-1848 borders that made what are now the states of California and Arizona as part of the Mexican nation. Read More »
A recent BBC report documents the emergence of a tent city in Los Angeles filled with people who were unable to make the mortgage payments on their houses. Based on the comments in the Youtube clip and the Digg.com posting people seem to be less than sympathetic towards those who were forced into tents and trailers when the mortgage bubble finally burst. However, to simply chalk up these people’s situations as indicative of their inability to make good, educated decisions is a gross oversimplification of the problem. Read More »
In a recent Today Show panel discussion about New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, Dr. Laura Schlessinger said that often when a man cheats its because his wife "does not focus in on the needs and the feelings, sexually, personally, to make him feel like a man, to make him feel like a success, to make him feel like her hero." Read More »
Though some people may think focusing on moments like this are just a litany of redundancy, they are actually quite momentous and powerful given the cultural power of the media and the notoriously conservative Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Read More »
An article about the Prophet Muhammad in the English-language Wikipedia has become the subject of an online protest in the last few weeks because of its representations of Muhammad, taken from medieval manuscripts.
In an attempt to debunk Internet rumors that he is a Muslim who studied at a strict madrasa in Indonesia where he was taught Wahabism, was sworn into the United States Senate with a Qur'an, and that he refuses to pledge allegiance to the United States flag because of the aforementioned statements (or some variation thereof), Barack Obama has launched a website and EMail campaign complete with Youtube videos to try and re-assert his Christianity today. Read More »
I read this headline on the flat panel in the elevator at work today (yes, DC is the land of random flat panel TVs) and I wondered how Musharraf and his cronies don't understand what democracy really means? Read More »
Obama or Hilary, which would say more for American progress? Its a question that people have been throwing around for a long time including two of the greatest MCs of the time - Lupe Fiasco and Rhymefest. Read More »
Though it may not be much of a cinematic accomplishment (considering it was directed by Mike Nichols and features Philip Seymour Hoffman in a prominent role) Charlie Wilson's War makes a much needed statement about American foreign policy. Read More »
Since the Afghan diaspora first discovered it, Khalid Hosseini's landmark debut novel The Kite Runner has managed to be one of the most loved and loathed pieces of cultural art ever. Everyone had their opinions on the novel and its companion film -- was it good for Afghans or just "lifting your skirt over your head" as Afghans would say?
Now, the same questions are being asked of Hosseini's second novel A Thousand Splendid Suns. Having recently read it in its entirety in a single 24-hour period I can say that A Thousand Splendid Suns is indeed good for Afghans, and more importantly for Americans wanting to understand historical and political situation that created the current state of affairs in Afghanistan.
Shortly after the events of 9/11 Afghanistan, the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and Osama Bin Laden dominated the news, as if they all naturally went together and the Afghans had control or even a true engagement with the post cold war politics of Afghanistan.
I found that on Digg.com today and it reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend recently about Americans, "democracy," and the accesibility of politics done behind closed doors in a language the average person living in America would be hard pressed to understand.
This week the screen adaptation of Pulitzer Prize winning author Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake is released on DVD. The novel and film follow Gogol Ganguli, the American born son of Indian immigrants as he struggles with and rejects his Indian culture.
In a recent entry on The Huffington Post, producer Jermaine DuPri boldly asserts that “a good album is more than just a collection of singles.” There's no doubt that JD is absolutely correct in his statement, but when it's read within the context of his argument, it's a little misguided, if not flawed. Read More »
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