It’s hard to make a good movie. It’s even harder to make a good superhero movie, and Marvel Studios makes it look so easy. Through intelligence, wit, and sheer perseverance, not unlike their flagship character, they have become the gold standard in popular film entertainment. The Marvel movies stand above every other franchise, even the Star Wars series, in terms of (mostly) quality films. Consider that they didn’t have an easy time of it. Due to bankruptcy issues in the 1990’s, Marvel Entertainment Group filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. To dig themselves out of their... Read More

Not long ago, I read the incredible book “Strangers in their Own Land,” by the sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild. She visited Louisiana and interviewed scads of people to ask them about their voting habits. Specifically, she wanted to find out why these decent and smart people continually voted against their own interests. If you lived in a place like Louisiana, with gorgeous wetlands and lakes you could fish in and enjoy, why would you vote for people that would lift environmental regulations and pollute them at will? For many of them, they viewed it as a binary choice. You could... Read More

There’s an old expression* you’ve probably heard that says, “May you live in interesting times.” We have the misfortune to live in interesting times, particularly when several of the seemingly indestructible institutions of our society are crumbling before our eyes. One of those institutions is print journalism. After Woodward and Bernstein raked Nixon over the coals in the pages of The Washington Post, the business of investigative journalism became highly sexy. A number of bright and capable people saw a way to speak truth to power, to make a difference, and, what the... Read More