Email Author Alan Scherstuhl

2013 Stories by Alan Scherstuhl

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  Other Ozzes, Great and Terrible (But Mostly Terrible)

  published March 6, 2013

  Twenty minutes into the first full-length movie based on L. Frank Baum's most beloved novel, a duck pukes into the face of Larry Semon, the... More >>

• Horny Holy Men! The Monk Crosses Godly Rites and Vile Sin

  published March 6, 2013

  Here’s proof of the continuity of the human imagination: If you were an HBO exec cooking up an adults-only show about the perverse doings... More >>

• Old Hats Doesn't Make Clowning New--But Does Make It Excellent.

  published March 6, 2013

  It can't be a coincidence that “one-upmanship” has that “man” right in the middle of it, can it? Guys' hopeless need to... More >>

• The Other Side of the Ice Straddles the Line Between Magnificence and Mundanity

  published March 6, 2013

  Part home movie, part reality TV-style confess-to-the-camera bitchfest, and part low-key adventure doc, Sprague Thobald's The Other Side of... More >>

• Citizen Hearst: More Context Needed

  published March 6, 2013

  Hearst the man dies a half hour into Citizen Hearst the film, a biographic doc true to the letter of its title if not the spirit: The... More >>

• Reading Around: Mary Shelley Meets Grave Robbers, Movie Stars, and Other Monsters

  published February 27, 2013

  Chief among the dark oddities of life in 18th- and 19th-century London is that the city, which produced so many dead, was itself forever in... More >>

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  The Fascinating Everyday Lives of the Flying Wallendas Explored in The Show Must Go On

  published February 20, 2013

  The worst happens some ten minutes in to The Show Must Go On, an engaging, low-key doc on The Flying Wallendas, the wire-walking circus... More >>

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  Dark Skies: Why Do Aliens Dick Around in Our Bedrooms for Weeks Before Finally Abducting Us?

  published February 20, 2013

  Neither execrable enough to warrant being so unceremoniously dumped into theaters, nor so thoroughly un-excerable that we should be outraged by... More >>

• Beautiful Creatures, the Ravishing Chastity Fantasy

  published February 13, 2013

  Here's a question you can spit back next time someone complains that our popular culture is top-to-bottom depraved: "Then why are our... More >>

• Daniel Day-Lewis Looms Over Museum Re-enactment Acting of Saving Lincoln

  published February 13, 2013

  Here's one bit of luck enjoyed by Salvador Litvak's Saving Lincoln, the offest off-brand version of a story recently told by the... More >>

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  Die Hard's Latest Breaks New Ground in Incoherence and Stupidity

  published February 13, 2013

  Before anything else, here's how dumb things get in A Good Day for Die Hard–Related Media Product, which is being sold as a... More >>

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  Identity Thief: Body Horror

  published February 6, 2013

  Just a week or so after the Pentagon reversed its ban on allowing female soldiers into combat, here's another breakthrough, of a sort: The... More >>

• Dave Grohl and Other Rockers Toast L.A.'s Sound City

  published January 30, 2013

  Here’s something you don’t get to say too often: It’s a shame when Paul McCartney turns up. Before McCartney arrives,... More >>

• Al Pacino Deserves Better Than Stand-Up Guys

  published January 30, 2013

  Based on what Al Pacino suffers in Stand Up Guys and the identical humiliations visited upon Robert De Niro in Little Fockers,... More >>

• Knife Fight: Political Plots Ad Nauseum

  published January 23, 2013

  From its first moments, the wish-fulfillment political-campaign comedy Knife Fight serves as an accidental demonstration of the value of... More >>

• Werner Herzog Brings Happy People to Light

  published January 23, 2013

  Calling Happy People: A Year in the Taiga a Werner Herzog film is something like calling the dozen 2012 books with James Patterson's... More >>

• Stolen Seas: In Deep With Honest-to-God Pirates

  published January 16, 2013

  'If the state can't stop 12 guys in a boat, how powerful is it?" asks Matthew Raffety in Stolen Seas, Thymaya Payne's investigation into... More >>

• Soldier Songs: An Operatic Suite Metallica Might Love

  published January 16, 2013

  The rare show to warrant adjectives like wrenching and harrowing, David T. Little's 60-minute operatic suite Solider... More >>

• Clandestine Childhood

  published January 9, 2013

  A charming, involving first feature, Clandestine Childhood muscles its familiar coming-of-age material into something more vibrant and... More >>

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  COVER STORY

  The Man Who Killed Spider-Man

  published January 9, 2013

  Think of a smart kid retelling a favorite adventure story. The breathless investment in each beat of the narrative, the tendency to linger over... More >>

• Reading Around: Fantasies, Tamed and Not

  published January 2, 2013

  In an age when the price of a movie ticket can get you three hours of hang-time in Middle Earth, fantasy worlds aren’t exactly at a... More >>