The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach

Category: review

  • Review: Marc Cohn at the St. George Theater

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    Marc Cohn with Toby Lightman St. George Theater, Staten Island, NY Thursday 2008 August 21 This is another in my ongoing series of reviews of Marc Cohn shows. See this earlier one and this one as well for comparison. The St. George is a beautiful venue, an old vaudeville theater (I assume) which has been…

  • Review: Counting Crows with Maroon 5

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    Counting Crows with Maroon 5 Also with Sara Bareilles Thursday 2008 Aug 7 PNC Bank Arts Center Holmdel, NJ My usual way to review a show would be to give the playlist and say what I did or didn’t like about each. That’s not going to work this time for a host of reasons. First…

  • Review: Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog

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    (Updated 2 PM 2008 Jul 20) The latest Joss Whedon effort, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is a short musical made available on the Web and starring Neal Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion (better known as Doogie Howser and Capt. Malcolm Reynolds, respectively). The plot revolves around the titular villian — more like, villian wannabe —…

  • Review: Serenity Found

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    Serenity Found: More Unauthorized Essays on Joss Whedon’s Firefly Universe edited by Jane Espenson Rating: 3 out of 5 What can I say? Meh. Another collection of essays (following the superior Finding Serenity) discoursing on the deep meanings to be found in the universe of Firefly, a short-lived TV series as well as Serenity, its…

  • The decline of American political reporting

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    As always, let me begin by stating I am an Obama supporter, so I’m a mite sensitive on the following. But it shocked me this morning to hear NPR’s coverage of the “debate” last night. We’ll leave aside the astonishing fact — which they tried to explain away — that forty minutes (nearly half the…

  • Star Wars at 31

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    Apparently Spike TV is running all of the Star Wars movies as a “mega saga event” over the course of the next weekend. I happened to come across their “ultimate trailer” online, which stitches together bits from all six movies. And strung together like that, all those bits suddenly make clear what’s gone so horribly…

  • Review: His Dark Materials

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    His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass The Subtle Knife The Amber Spyglass a triology by Philip Pullman InstaRating: 4 out of 5 This trilogy has apparently sparked quite the bitter controversy, especially online. It’s a tale of High Fantasy, quite consciously in the vein of Tolkein or C.S. Lewis, but it takes a tack quite…

  • Review: Charlie Wilson’s War

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    Charlie Wilson’s War screenplay by Aaron Sorkin starring Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Philip Seymour Hoffman InstaRating: 5+ stars out of 5 It took less than five minutes for this film to remind me why I miss Aaron Sorkin on TV.

  • Review: Marc Cohn at the Highline Ballroom

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    As is my wont whenever Marc Cohn wanders into the New York-Philadelphia corridor, I went to see him perform — this time, at the Highline Ballroom in lower Manhattan. True to form, it was a fantastic show with Marc the consummate showman. The opening act was Amy Correia and this time, Marc played with a…

  • The Mongrel Dogs at Sea (4): Review: Next

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    Insta Rating: 4 out of 5 OK, it’s a little odd to be reviewing a movie when I’m supposed to be off on a wonderful cruise. But as mentioned before I was pretty wiped out, so I decided to take advantage of the onboard movie theater and catch Next starring Nicholas Cage and Jessica Biel.…