The Republican debates are more than just long. No, really. To the one-thirteenth of all Americans who watched the latest GOP debate, congratulations on surviving the political equivalent of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. You just climbed Campaign Everest. Strapped to a pair of debates. Or to be more precise; a pair of mind-numbing...

by Humor Times.Jack Ohman will be interviewed in May by Humor Times editor James Israel on Access Sacramento TV Humor Times editor James Israel will interview Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Jack Ohman on Access Sacramento‘s Soapbox Sacramento show (channel 17 on Comcast and channel 14 on AT&T U-verse), to air in May.

There are two big things to report out on having seen Atomic Blonde. First of all, this Charlize Theron vehicle finally provides us with a more extended fight scene than the seems-like-forever fisticuffs we endured between Roddy Piper and Keith David in John Carpenter’s creepy, dystopian...

Republican vs Democratic debate styles If the disappointment of everyone expecting fireworks at the first Democratic debate exhibited itself as perspiration, we could declare the California drought over. A few soggy matches might have been lit but that was it. Heavy on the smoke: non-existent on the flame.

Debating the merits of the republican party is futile, because they don’t have any. Endlessly conveying to my blogvesary how discourse is dead has become, Ray Charles at a shooting range, aimless. Polarization has led us to this place of irreconcilable political differences. To his credit, Pokey saw this coming too. Whereas he blames liberalism for creating an immoral societal malaise, I place the…

I submit that most actors who appear in movies made by the Coen brothers must be falling all over themselves to get even a small part in whatever new project Joel and Ethan have hatched. Such is the case with the one that’s just opened...

An early example of minimalist filmmaking is Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope. More recently, minimalist movies that have come our way are Jim Jarmusch’s Down By Law with Tom Waits; Alfonso Curarón’s Gravity with George Clooney and Sandra Bullock; and a superb far out sci-fi trek that Jonathan...

We’ve seen a million or more police procedurals in movies and on television; they began well before TV’s Joe Friday was around keeping Los Angeles safe. Time enough has slipped by for us to now learn the intricate steps of the drone procedural.

“Spotlight” – a film review by Gary Chew Seeing Spotlight almost made me feel homesick. Not for a place, but for a place in time when covering important events was not supplanted with infotainment or blatant propaganda. Tom McCarthy’s film, which he and Josh Singer wrote, gives us a look into how the investigative team...

“The Intern” – a film review by Gary Chew After making the mistake of installing Windows 10 in my PC and trying to figure out what to do next, I hoped all of my files hadn’t been swept away with a single click. Then I realized I was a reasonable facsimile of Robert De Niro’s...

George Clooney’s new directorial effort is a period piece — dark with satiric messaging. Time is set in a swatch of American history all too clear...

The Tony Award-Winning San Francisco Mime Troupe continues its 56th season with free performances of “Freedomland.” A door is blown off its hinges! Into a blasted room of scarred walls and shattered windows, armed with M-16’s, America’s bravest duck and dodge for cover, finally training their deadly gunsights on … an old black man.

Bill Murray is simply the best of the SNL bunch that migrated from 30 Rock to Sunset and Vine. Most often, Murray plays himself, or to say it another way, the character he crafted Saturday nights on NBC.

Even cast members of Logan Lucky don’t really know who Rebecca Blunt is. A person so named is credited with writing the screenplay for this new Steven Soderbergh film. If a woman, perhaps she’s a sister to Emily Blunt… though I’d guess not.

If you’re a Franz Kafka or Henry Miller fan and have some curiosity about Sigmund Freud, Anomalisa is a movie you have to see.

Which are we? The America of courage, or of fear? Are we the great America of courage, spunk, openness, inclusion, opportunity and democratic promise — as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, the Preamble to the Constitution, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms and Emma Lazarus’ sonnet engraved on the Statue of Liberty?

What Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is … is Mash on steroids — not in Korea, but Afghanistan. And alas, Alan Alda got no call back for this new Tina Fey movie. BTW, WTF is based on real experiences abroad. Just so you know, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot...

The vast inequality that’s rending our society is not a natural, inevitable or accidental phenomenon — it’s caused intentionally by policy decisions that corporate and political officials make, often in tandem.

We survived our Italian summer – it was tough, but someone’s got to do it! It’s hard to learn even the most basic tourist phrases of another language (hello; excuse me; pardon the fart; where is the toilet?; waiter, the check!; please remove your thumb from my nose) in 4 weeks.

It was a notion of mine that The Meddler would backstory (a new verb?) as autobiographical. I was right. Lorene Scafaria’s new so-titled film — written and directed by her — is about Ms. Scafaria’s Mom. Susan Sarandon plays Mom. Her name is Marnie Minervini.