Film Critics & The Audience: Peeing on the Professionals

Steven Boone redefines the relationship between the critic and the audience, using metaphors that would be right up James Agee’s alley.

Obama Speech vs. Zohan Movie Night

A short film set in a halfway house. Our hero, Steven Boone, traverses the odds to hear Obama’s historic acceptance speech for his party’s nomination.

The Dark Knight is Killing Us. Felon Fest.

“Yo, Steve, you got any movies, my dude?”
One of the youngbloods, a relatively new arrival here at the halfway house, is standing by my bunk with a look of desperation. It’s Sunday afternoon and he’s too broke to do anything but languish in here with us old timers. I slide my pile of Brooklyn Public [...]

Tropic Thunder: Hollywood Will Gently Nibble Itself

I wish I had smuggled the Polaroid snapshot of Nolte from my former employer, a men’s homeless shelter. Nolte wasn’t his real name, but I’ll be damned if the scruffy, gin-blossomed, gravel-voiced Vietnam veteran wasn’t a ringer for Nick Nolte playing a Nam burnout. He wore mirror shades and ratty field jacket festooned with medals [...]

Barack Obama: The Movie

Will Michael Mann direct, with Jamie Foxx as Jesse Jackson? Or will Robert Zemeckis shoot the whole thing green screen? Steven Boone imagines what the inevitable Obama biopic will look like.

US-China Relations Cemented By Mummy Threequel

Steven Boone reports from China, where the third MUMMY movie is working diplomatic magic.

A Cinema of Loneliness: How WALL-E Was Ruined By Its Score

Steven Boone explains why WALL-E qualifies as “another brilliant and devastating visual statement on American life dulled and softened by an overbearing orchestral score that says, ‘It’s only a movie, y’all…’”

Felon Fest: Television on DVD

Kid and Hef, two old-timer felons, shame CSI with their collection of crime dramas (which includes a “bitchslapping” Perry Mason)

A Mid-Summer Report Card From Steven Boone

“Isn’t it inspiring for you as a young black man to see a black man standing up, flying around, fighting crime, saving people’s lives?”

“Nah, he was drunk and joint.”

Alex Gibney on Gandalf, Obama and the Death of the American Dream

Steven Boone talks to Hunter S. Thompson’s documentarian about, among other things, how the writer “got very depressed when Bush won in ‘04 and not long after that he committed suicide.”

Marguerite the Whore

A short story by Steven Boone––by a film critic, about film critics, meant exclusively for an audience of film critics.

Felon Fest: Notes on Camp

Steven Boone on Susan Sontag: “She didn’t know shit.”

Crashing the Set of ‘Brooklyn’s Finest’, Part II

Steven Boone returns to the continuing saga of the Antoine Fuqua film shooting in his Brooklyn neighborhood. This week, a chat with the film’s tollbooth worker-turned-screenwriter.

Sex and the City: Not Just For Rich White Chicks

Steven Boone talks to three black women about Sex and the City, and how it alternately reflects, influences and ignores their experiences.

Crashing the Set of ‘Brooklyn’s Finest’, Part I

Steven Boone wanted a $10 phone card. He got an afternoon on the Brooklyn set of Antoine Fuqua’s next film.