Every week, With a Little Help from Our Friends highlights the best pieces of writing on film, television, and literature published around the Internet. Check out the links, and feel free to share more good stories in the comment section.
For your reading enjoyment …
“Different Rules Apply” by Matt Zoller Seitz
“Out of the blue his dad told he should always be grateful for the greatest gift his dad and mom ever gave him. ‘What gift is that?’ my friend asked. ‘Your white skin,’ he said. ‘If you’re white in this country, you’re ahead of the game. You get more chances. You get more second chances. That’s the gift your mother and I gave you—and we didn’t have a damn thing to do with it!’”
“Why the MPAA thinks all gay people should be rated ‘R’” by Stephen Whitty
“But what kind of information are they really providing? And what are they assuming we want to protect our children from?”
“Can Writing Be Taught?” by Rivka Galchen and Zoe Heller
“So the question of whether writing can be taught for me metamorphoses into the question of why it is, when thinking about writing, we are disproportionately detained by the question of teachability. Is it just that it’s somehow flattering to feel one’s endeavor is more gift than labor, and are writers more in need of such flattery than others?”
“The History of Rock ‘N’ Roll in 1 Song” by James Parker
“To write about the sound of Jimi Hendrix, the actualnoise of him? Wow. There’s a theme to beggar your lexicon and freeze you at the frontiers of sense.”
“26 Hard-To-Find Movies That Remind Us Why VHS, DVD, And LaserDisc Still Matter” by Alison Wilmore
“Bill Allen plays a small-town guy named Cru Jones trying to make it in the cutthroat world of competitive BMX racing, while Full House’s own Lori Loughlin plays his love interest — they fall in love doing bike tricks at a school dance.”
“Not to sound ungrateful for something that’s brought the best of “The Simpsons” back to everyone’s attention again, but doesn’t this violate the spirit of the whole idea of airing the series uncut? The show didn’t switch to 16:9 until 2009, about a third of the way into season 20, so that’s the bulk of the series that’ll suffer.”
“Capturing the Defining Images of Hip Hop History” by Dan Solomon
“’It was good being there at the beginning of a lot of artists’ careers,’ he recalls. ‘When NWA first came out, I was there on the scene with them. I got to see Ice Cube (become) a solo artist. It was interesting to see how people parlayed things from the beginning of their careers.’”
“Videogaming is no longer a man’s world” by Kabir Chibber
“The growth in the US mobile games market—6% in 2013, after a whopping 50% and 30% annual growth in the previous two years—means that the US is poised to overtake the $1.1 billion Japanese mobile gaming market by next year, Euromonitor says.”
“Why great comics don’t always make great movies” by Noel Murray
“But while cinema and comics are both strongly visual mediums, they follow different conventions. Superhero comics in particular often depict action and dialogue happening simultaneously, in ways that would be impossible to film. And comics of all kinds often vary perspectives from panel to panel, in ways that would look choppy and visually incoherent if a movie did the same.”
“Doctor Who: Older, Wiser, Sexless” by Ted B. Kissell
“While the entire original run of the series maintained a strict no-hanky-panky-in-the-TARDIS rule, the ill-fated 1996 movie introduced an element of romance to the character, one that the 2005 re-launched series enthusiastically continued. Doctors Eight to Eleven (not counting the recently shoehorned-in War Doctor) all gave and/or got at least one kiss. As current companion Clara Oswald only slightly exaggerated, the TARDIS had turned into something of a ‘snog box.’ Well, fuckity-bye to all that.”
