Una LaMarche
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Recent Articles
Girls ... With Children
Once you pop out a kid, it’s hard to fit into pop culture
May 7th, 2013
I started thinking about moms in American pop culture, ironically, while watching an episode of Girls. Specifically, it was the scene in which two of the series’ (platonic, female) twenty-something protagonists bond by way of a shared bath. My first thought was, I have never casually bathed with a friend while discussing my relationship problems. My second was, I would literally pay someone if they could guarantee me a bath that no one else would try to climb into. You see, I have a toddler. He is there when I bathe. He is there when I pee. He is always there, like another limb that just happens to lurch around independently of the rest of my body. And he has changed everything.
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Improving Oscar
The Academy bets on Seth MacFarlane to be their pied piper of youthful viewers
January 10th, 2013
No sooner than the ball dropped in Times Square and Ryan Seacrest stepped out of his lifts and powered down in his cryogenic chamber, all entertainment talk turned to the Academy Awards. What will people wear? What ill-advised stunt will the Academy pull this year to spice things up? (A barbershop quartet made up of former Best Supporting Actors? Those suits from Ernst & Young bursting into a number from Les Miz?) Most importantly, will anyone watch?
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A Cinematic Dumpster Dive
Gauging potential hits and misses of the chilly winter season
January 3rd, 2013
The first months of the year are known as the “dump months” in Hollywood. It’s a bleak stretch for cinephiles, traditionally packed with movies that studios dislike, and want to release with little fanfare. In the Hollywood ecosystem, the dump months serve an important purpose; not only is winter often a low point for movie revenue, regardless of content (the top-grossing film of January generally earns half of the haul brought in by December’s top grosser), but padding theaters with celluloid sacrifices allows for all-important Oscar coverage to dominate the news cycle.
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What to Expect When You’re Special-Effecting
This blockbuster season brings manly sequels, vibrating inventions and Channing Tatum’s rippling pecs
May 10th, 2012
The summer movies are stampeding into Las Vegas theaters like drunken, pool party-bound tourists, leaving dollar signs and crushed popcorn in their wake. Over the next three sweltering months you’ll be subject to a nonstop onslaught of 3-D, CGI-stuffed action and spectacle, tempered with a few broad comedy bunts, arthouse indies and the requisite buzzy horror flick (Chernobyl Diaries, out May 25, from Paranormal Activity writer/director Oren Peli). But looking over the season’s roster, it’s hard to miss a few unmistakable patterns:
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Beasts of All Kinds
From vamps to blondes to Victorian sleuths, winter movies offer an entertainment menagerie
November 17th, 2011
The fact is that except for New Year’s Eve (Dec. 9), Garry Marshall’s follow-up to 2010’s Valentine’s Day that seemingly stars every single actor in Hollywood with a SAG card, November and December are nearly schmaltz-free. Instead, they’re full of Oscar bait and big-budget franchises.
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Contagion
(R) ★★☆☆☆
September 15th, 2011
If you’ve ever wanted to see Gwyneth Paltrow die a horrible death, you’ll love Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion ... for the first 10 minutes, anyway.
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Ante Up!
Picking the winners for TV’s biggest night.
September 15th, 2011
The 63rd annual Emmy Awards ceremony—those magical three-plus hours of television during which you stop watching regular TV shows to watch people who appear on TV shows looking nervous while wearing industrial-strength Spanx—airs on Sunday, and I couldn’t be more excited.
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Going Viral
Contagion’s pandemic panic is deadly but dull
September 8th, 2011
Much like the deadly virus central to its plot, I suspect that Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion will cause a ripple effect through the population.
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Think Inside the Box
Fall premieres bring female leads, couples’ capers, high-concept dramas and a few Mad Men clones
September 1st, 2011
It seems like just yesterday that I was bemoaning the summer TV drought, resigning myself to three long months of watching people wearing helmets and their last remaining scraps of dignity bounce painfully off of giant rubber balls. But hallelujah, brothers and sisters; salvation has arrived, for September is upon us.
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Idiot-Proof Performance
Paul Rudd expertly plays a naïf who ruins his three sisters’ lives. Hilarity ensues.
August 25th, 2011
Ever since he broke out in the 1995 Jane Austen-goes-to-the-Valley romp Clueless, earning teen idol status for the somewhat questionable act of kissing his underage onscreen stepsister, Paul Rudd has carved out a niche for himself in Hollywood as the go-to hapless everyman.
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