Gatsby Fails to Resonate

I wanted to love the Great Gatsby adaptation so much.  I tried, I really did.  But when a studio moves a prominent release from prime Oscar season to the following summer, that’s usually a bad sign for the movie’s prospects.  And in this case, smoke meant fire. Fitzgerald’s Great American Novel is set in the…

Green Day’s Trilogy of Desperate Hope

In the summer of 2011, I was privileged enough to see Green Day play an impromptu, intimate concert at an Orange County, California venue normally reserved for bands who have sold about 1/100th as many records as they have.  I had just moved out to southern California, and the area greeted me by placing me within…