Mr. Brown Versus

The last time I watched Divergent , I thought it was Summit Entertainment trying to cash-in on the success of big-brother parent company Lions Gate's The Hunger Games series, as well as the film borrowing from other respectable films and young-adult novels such as Harry Potter , Ender's Game and The Giver , without a hint of originality of it's own. But since the film made $288 million worldwide on an $88 million budget, a sequel was green-lit, and so we have the big followup in Insurgent , the second installment in the series. Maybe they'll finally get around to explaining how the existence of "Divergents" threaten the system. Perhaps we'll see star Shaileen Woodley unleash her inner Black Widow and do some serious damage on the bad guys. Or maybe they'll start borrowing from The Matrix films as well as Inception ! You know, I was joking when I commented that the second installment would start borrowing from Lana & Andy Wachowski and Chri

Allow me to switch gears for a minute and turn my attention to small screen. The 3rd season of Netflix's immensely popular House of Cards  is now streaming, and it's wicked fun to see America's favorite amoral scumbag, Frank Underwood, return, along with his wife, Claire, who is just as Machiavellian as he is. However, not everyone feels the same way, which is fine and is their right, but when you see something so astronomically stupid as to why something (in this case a show) is awful, you just have to address it. Frank Underwood disapproves...severely. Enter the fine folks at News Busters , a conservative media watchdog exposing "liberal media bias" wherever it exists, or simply just simply gin up fake bullshit/outrage because complaining about Obama and every other media outlet not named Fox News gets repetitive real quick. But in the interest of being fair (and hopefully avoiding being on the site's shit list), let's hear why they're so ou

I've spoken my peace about the worst movies I saw last year, and now it's time to honor the very best that 2014 had to offer in this two-part special. These are the 10 movies I loved, the group that had something to say, and also made it entertaining to watch in some respects. What do pop stars, children, apes and activists have to say about us? A lot, as it turns out. 10. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes  - Of all the sequels, reboots and superhero fare that came out in the summer, Matt Reeve's take on the second outing to the Apes series stuck with me the most. Visually, this might just be Weta Digitial's best outing yet, as they continue to push the boundaries on motion capture performances, with the talented Andy Serkis leading the charge once again as Caesar. On an emotional level, Dawn succeeds by not letting the visual wonders tell the story, but by serving to enhance character, story and themes. It's been 10 years since the events of 2011's Rise of the