“Black Mass” – a film review by Gary Chew Without any surprise for me, there’s only one scene in Black Mass that doesn’t contain the use of that old stand by … the F-Word. It’s when, at the dinner table with his young son, notorious criminal Whitey Bulger is teaching his boy a life lesson...

Another terrible shooting at an American school. Hard to really understand how America can ignore a problem that affects them every single day. However, I’ve tried to do that over at The What & The Why, where I’ve written something about America’s gun culture and how it affects all of us.

I submit that most actors who appear in movies made by the Coen brothers must be falling all over themselves to get even a small part in whatever new project Joel and Ethan have hatched. Such is the case with the one that’s just opened...

Nefarious political critters are scrambling, backed into a corner by the “Panama Papers” It’s always educational to observe the behavior of wildlife in their natural habitat. For example, we learn that there’s nothing more vicious than a wild animal that’s cornered. I would add that there’s nothing more devious than a top political or corporate...

Astronauts aboard an International Space Station are on the brink of a discovery that will shake the whole human race. How it shakes out … is for you to see and find out. I will say, though, it does have to do with earth orbit space and...

Long-time Iowa farm cartoonist fired for factual cartoon criticizing Big Ag Rick Friday has been giving farmers a voice and a laugh every Friday for two decades through his cartoons in the Iowa publication Farm News. Now, in a case of blatant censorship in the service of Big Ag, the long-time Iowa farm cartoonist has...

First of all, you have to remind yourself that this movie was taken from a series of comic books lesser known to Americans. As with the plethora of action/hero films which US moviegoers are generously provided continually, that’s how...

Over at The What & The Why, I’m talking about the Paris attacks and making broad points about the whole troubled mess. I accept it won’t be to everybody’s taste but that was deliberately so. My views are atheist, sceptical, but also, I hope, humanist. Despite being cynical about most things, I’m no nihilist. I […]

You must let a few opening scenes of Youth filter through your brain to completely tune in to what’s up with it.

What Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is … is Mash on steroids — not in Korea, but Afghanistan. And alas, Alan Alda got no call back for this new Tina Fey movie. BTW, WTF is based on real experiences abroad. Just so you know, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot...

It was a notion of mine that The Meddler would backstory (a new verb?) as autobiographical. I was right. Lorene Scafaria’s new so-titled film — written and directed by her — is about Ms. Scafaria’s Mom. Susan Sarandon plays Mom. Her name is Marnie Minervini.

Mobile gaming has become one of the biggest business trend setters these days. As more and more people adapt to gaming on their mobile devices, there is a lot of gaming apps, which make poker and other card games all the more lucrative and worth a mention. With this said and done, as more and […]

There is a failure in our modern media to take a deeper look at the roots of the problems that ours and other societies are facing in the world. At present a huge wave of immigrants are racing across the Mediterranean to Europe to claim their stake in it. Most are fleeing the conflict...

When ‘free speech’ is for sale, big money drowns out the people. In today’s so-called “democratic” election process, Big Money doesn’t talk, it roars — usually drowning out the people’s voice. Bizarrely, the Supreme Court decreed in its 2010 Citizens United ruling that money is a form of “free speech.”

by Humor Times.Jack Ohman will be interviewed in May by Humor Times editor James Israel on Access Sacramento TV Humor Times editor James Israel will interview Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Jack Ohman on Access Sacramento‘s Soapbox Sacramento show (channel 17 on Comcast and channel 14 on AT&T U-verse), to air in May.

Even though Miss Sloane is constructed to satisfy a personal bias of mine — that being the passage of more sensible laws as to who may buy and own a gun, while not injuring the Second Amendment — it was a bit of a slog...

Good ol’ activism can unite us in the ethic of the common good. The list of progressive innovations at the grassroots level goes on and on, dealing with one big, complex issue after another that small-minded, corporatist ideologues refuse to tackle (often under the “principle” that government — i.e., the public, i.e., you and me...

Little known fact: Practically every skyscraper in every one of the world’s cities is essentially made of sand. As are nearly all shopping malls, condo complexes, office towers, parking garages, airport terminals, dams and other large structures.

The problem with an old-fashioned egging is that it lacks political nuance. Last Sunday’s assault on Young Conservatives in Manchester has quite rightly been greeted with universal disapproval by the media and it doesn’t really matter that 60,000 people didn’t hurl eggs. One chose to vent their anger in yolk form and it was wrong, […]

In America, we face a momentous choice: a food future rooted in the ethic of sustainable agriculture, or in exploitative agri-industry.