Looking over Jezebel’s listicle of 20 Feminist TV Characters (thanks Dana!), we’re starting to think that there’s something to the TV format that makes intelligent, empowered female characters more interesting and compelling than, say, their movie counterparts. After all, the list is pretty impressive, including Maude Findlay from Maude, Murphy Brown, 30 Rock’s Liz Lemon, [...]

The 35th American President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was born 92 years ago today, which makes this the perfect occasion to count down memorable screen incarnations of the nation’s favorite playboy head of state and mysterious martyr. Enjoy John in all his forms and incarnations with our 7 Stately Screen Versions of JFK.
Clone High

Having him play [...]

In a recent synergistic extravaganza, the folks at Slate and one of their related publications Foreign Policy held an exhaustive list-making drill on international relations in film. It started with Stephen M. Walt’s list of 10 (including Casablanca, Dr. Strangelove and – gasp – Independence Day), followed by Daniel W. Drezner’s top 8 rebuttal (which [...]

When it became apparent that Arnold Schwarzenegger wouldn’t overturn the old “gotta be born in the U.S. to be the President of the U.S.” law, we were a little disappointed. Having been born outside the country as well, we were resigned to never becoming Prez. Then we realized that this was a blessing in disguise: [...]

Sure, advertising today gets away with a strange post-gender extremist sexism, but back in the day there was a kind of homey casualness to sexist advertising. This doesn’t make it okay, of course, hence Neatorama’s listicle of 10 Chauvinistic Vintage Ads, which features all manner of casual condescension and hot normative action.
Like the couple at [...]

It’s funny to remember that 50 years ago, mainstream American films couldn’t show married couples sharing a bed, or that at the time, a couple kissing in any pose not completely upright was basically screenwriter code for sex. We’ve come a long way, haven’t we? Future of Classic’s Tim Dirk suggests as much, with his [...]

We’re big fans of nicknaming, except on the rare occasion that we become marked with some unhappy moniker. At one point in middle school, we’re not quite sure how, we became nicknamed “Futon”, a nonsensical alternate name that stuck especially long because it so annoyed us.
Good thing we’re not president, then, because if we were [...]

Today is May Day! Get out of the office and go unionize some exploited workers or something. Failing that, waste some company money and time checking out our listicle of 14 Priceless Capitalist Costumes. Workers of the world dress up!
The Pot of Gold

She’s got the Midas touch.

One of our absolute all-time favorite Onion articles was this hilarious piece about an ill-conceived McDonald’s mascot named the Hammurderer, who killed the restaurant’s other mascots and stole their burgers to satisfy his cravings. Certainly no real restaurant promotion has ever failed so disastrously, but several featured in mental_floss’s listicle of 7 Food Promotions Gone [...]

Did you ever see the Eddie Murphy-Steve Martin comedy Bowfinger? No? Well, it wasn’t an Oscar bait film (in fact it was pretty grossly under-rated), but at one point Murphy’s action movie star character Kit Ramsey points out that black men only get nominated for Oscars if they play slaves, and even then it’s the [...]