“Everything is Awesome,” the song heard at the beginning of The Lego Movie, sets the mood for the film right away: it’s fun, hilarious, and unapologetically zany. Remarkably, writer-directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller—known primarily for their work on Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and 21 Jump Street—sustain this[Read More…]
Film and TV
Oscar Predictions
The A&E team takes on four of the prominent categories at next week’s Academy Awards by offering probable predictions and wild card scenarios for each. Best Actor: Bruce Dern — Nebraska Leonardo Di Caprio — The Wolf of Wall Street Chiwetel Ejiofor — 12 Years a Slave Matthew McConaughey —[Read More…]
Spoiler alert: Breaking down House of Cards Season 2
Given the straightforward in-season narrative structure that House of Cards introduced in its first installment, the question for Season 2 wasn’t What are they going to do?, but rather, How are they going to do it? We knew that Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) would almost certainly be making the jump[Read More…]
House of Cards reshuffles its deck for a slightly inferior second season
The release of House of Cards Season 2 last Friday may have been the closest we’ve come as a species to matching the amount of spoiler-induced anxiety that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows generated when it first became available. For fans of the show who weren’t able to take[Read More…]
Oscar shorts
For most Academy Awards viewers, the two short film categories represent a void in the ceremony that lacks the familiarity of the other televised fields. To help you avoid the otherwise inevitable unpreparedness, the Tribune compiled cheat sheets that will provide all the knowledge you need to fill out an[Read More…]
Flowers in the Attic comes out wilted
Flowers in the Attic, the made-for-TV movie adaptation of the eponymously titled novel that premiered on Lifetime Network last weekend, resembles a mash-up of A Series of Unfortunate Events and the most disturbing rendition of The Little Red Riding Hood you can imagine. The plot, originally penned by V.C. Andrews[Read More…]
The film that cried wolf
What would you do with a $100 bill? Deposit it in your bank account, perhaps; or maybe buy that new sweater you’ve been eyeing for a while. If you’re Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), however, the bill is perfect as a crumpled wastebasket ball—or for snorting cocaine. In DiCaprio and director[Read More…]
Falling in love with Her
Is it possible to fall deeply in love with your talking operating system? Spike Jonze makes us believe so. In Jonze’s most recent film Her, broken-hearted writer Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) lives an introverted life balancing between work, video games, and occasional dates since his wife Catherine (Rooney Mara) left[Read More…]
TV spectrum
Homeland As fun and compelling as Homeland was at first, the show’s inherently limited premise left viewers wondering where the series could possibly go in future seasons. However, the central concept of a possible undercover terrorist on the loose in the United States was so compelling that it seemed worthwhile[Read More…]
Con-artist comedy is no fraud
Let’s go back to the late ‘70s with American Hustle, where the costumes are glamorous, the hair fake, and the cleavage exposed. Director David O. Russell comes back after last year’s hit Silver Linings Playbook with a comedy that employs the same sharp humour. Punctuated by flashbacks and voice-overs, we[Read More…]