Earn This breaks 25,000 visitors

We are celebrating at the Earn This office because we just broke 25,000 viewers a few days ago! A big thank you from the bottom of my heart to Grant and Colton for agreeing to put their wisdom into digital ink for this blog, to the many readers, to the few subscribers, and to Google…

The End of Two Eras

Goodness knows there are more active musical artists today than there were thirty years ago – or five years ago, or yesterday.  Just like the global population, the “band population” has a birth rate that exceeds its mortality rate.  (Don’t ask for an analogue for shifting line-ups or new group formation – it gets gruesome.)…

A Few Thoughts on Aaron Sorkin

Today, The Social Network—aka “The Facebook Movie”—comes out to widespread anticipation and Oscar buzz.  Upon first glance, I was barely interested in this project, but then I learned that Aaron Sorkin wrote it.  And yes, the trailer was promising, the subject matter naturally relevant, and the hype and advance buzz have been so deafening that…

The American President: A taste of things to come

Part 3 of our Aaron Sorkin exploration… Rating: 3 and a half stars (out of 4) The opening sequence of The American President is so good, it would be enough to carry the rest of a mediocre film into watchable status.  Thankfully, though, it doesn’t represent the extent of the pleasures here, in the film…

Charlie Wilson’s War: Where did it all go wrong?

Our next Aaron Sorkin exploration… Rating: 2 stars (out of 4) The trailer for Charlie Wilson’s War and its IMDB page promise two very different movies.  The latter will remind you of the tremendous amount of talent that has been gathered in front of and behind the camera, but the former promises only a breezy,…

A Few Good Men: And one great writer

With the much-anticipated The Social Network dropping in theaters this Friday, I thought it appropriate to look back on the career of the inimitable writer Aaron Sorkin.  A comprehensive piece will be arriving later this week, but for now, let’s review a few of his most prominent films. Rating: 3 stars (out of 4) A…

The Town: Just keep directing, Ben

Rating: 3 stars (out of 4) Is The Town ‘Heat meets The Departed,’ as the ads portray?  No—it’s better.  Is it Gone Baby Gone, Ben Affleck’s scintillating first directorial effort?  Not quite, although comparing anything with a Dennis Lehane adaptation (hello, Mystic River and Shutter Island) is unfair.  Should it put the final nail in…

Green Day, Live and Under Review

“Silence is the enemy.” At some point on this past August 11th, at Jiffy Lube Pavilion in Virginia, it all went away.  At some indefinable moment, while realizing that time had seemed to stop as Green Day obliterated tedium on their way through a legendary, two-hour-and-45-minute show, while observing that Billie Joe Armstrong is a…