Ron Buckmire
Ron Buckmire is the chair of the Mathematics Department at Occidental College in Los Angeles, CA. He blogs about issues of interest to him as Mad Professah at The Mad Professah Lectures
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Articles by Ron Buckmire
January 29, 2009
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is one of the best films of the year; with outstanding performances by both lead actors and an intriguing plot devices that provides an opportunity for self-reflection.Running Time: 2 hours, 46 minutes, MPAA Rating: PG-13.OVERALL GRADE: B+/A-.ACTING: A.
IMAGERY: A-.
PLOT: B+.
IMPACT: B+.
December 27, 2008
Doubt is in the hunt for Oscar nominations, especially for its high-powered cast of Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams and Viola Davis.
Doubt is written and directed by John Patrick Shanley (who won the 1988 Oscar for Moonstruck) and adapted the screenplay from his own play, Doubt: A...
December 27, 2008
Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire is the critic's darling of 2008. MadProfessah has been a big fan of Boyle's previous films, especially 28 Days Later... and Sunshine (see my review) although the director is probably best known for Trainspotting.
Boyle's lastest film is a heart-racing look at Ind...
September 14, 2008
The French film Tell No One (Ne Le Dis A Personne) has been getting some of the best reviews of the year.
It is a fascinating crime thriller, based on a novel of the same name by Harlan Coben. The plot is incredibly intricate, and the cast is superb. The main protagonist is played by Francois C...
August 24, 2008
Saw the movie WALL-E last week and it has taken me awhile to think about my review. It is definitely another hit in Pixar's amazingly long list of consecutive succesful films, both artistically and commercially. Wall-E is the ninth film in a row from the computer anination geniuses who brought the w...
July 30, 2008
Saw Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy 2: The Golden Army this weekend while Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight was crushing box-office records.
The sequel to the 2004 Hellboy has been received relatively warmly by critics and the public in general (87% critics and 80% users at rottentomatoes.com).
...
August 02, 2008
The Other Half and Mad Professah saw Iron Man opening weekend and were pleasantly surprised not to be overly disappointed.
Although it is definitely a Big Action Summer Movie, it is (mostly) redeemed by the performance of Robert Downey, Jr. Also in the cast are Oscar winner Gwyneth Paltrow, Oscar...
August 03, 2008
I read The Emperor of Ocean Park by Stephen L. Carter a few years ago in hardback and in eager anticipation of his second book, New England White, I
re-read it in paperback over the summer. I would preface my review by saying that I am an avid fan of the mystery genre (I'm currently working my way ...
July 28, 2008
THE VISITOR is a wonderfully moving film featuring standout performances by HAAZ SLEIMAN and RICHARD JENKINS about immigration and the true meaning of being American.
July 28, 2008
Stephen L. Carter's New England White is the sequel to his The Emperor of Ocean Park (see MadProfessah's review), which was a delightfully amusing and densely plotted murder mystery containing trenchant social commentary on academia, race, law and political correctness.
Since New England White is...
July 28, 2008
THE DARK KNIGHT is is an incredibly entertaining way to spend almost 3 hours in the dark.
January 29, 2008
Michael Clayton is an effective, affecting legal thriller with notable performances by George Clooney, Tilda Swinton and especially Tom Wilkinson.
November 30, 1999
Faithful readers know my Ongoing Quest For Excellent Caribbean Food West Of The Mississippi. Sadly, the reason the quest is "ongoing" because it has been spectacularly unsuccessful so far. I have discovered and favourably reviewed Joan and Sisters, a Belizean restaurant. A while back I made it to Ti...
December 12, 2006
After shopping at the Santa Monica store of west elm, the hip interior furnishing outlet of Williams-Sonoma, the spouse and I decided to check out the Border Grill since it was a mere two doors away on the same side of 4th street (near Broadway). Although I immediately run to change the channel when...
November 26, 2007
The Emperor of Ocean Park by Stephen L. Carter a few years ago in hardback and in eager anticipation of his second book, New England White, I
re-read it in paperback over the summer. I would preface my review by saying that I am an avid fan of the mystery genre (I'm currently working my way through...
December 31, 2007
On Christmas Day saw Juno starring Ellen Page, Michael Cera (Superbad), Jason Bateman (Arrested Development), Jennifer Garner (Alias), Allison Janney (The West Wing) and J.K. Simmons (Spider-Man). The film has been getting rave reviews from such heavyweights as Roger Ebert (Best Film of 2007) and ma...
December 31, 2007
Saw Ridley Scott's American Gangster starring Oscar winners Denzel Washington (Glory, Training Day) and Russell Crowe (Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind) from a script by Steve Zaillian (Schindler's List) at my favorite second-run theaters in Pasadena (Regency Academy Theaters) this weekend.
Although i...
December 28, 2007
FX's Damages starring Glenn Close and Rose Byrne (Sunshine, 28 Weeks Later) has been a guilty pleasure during the slow television times this summer when favorites such as Lost, 24, Heroes and Gray's Anatomy were off the air. Thank goodness, Nip/Tuck will be returning next week on Tuesday, and appare...
December 28, 2007
The long awaited final book in Frank Herbert's much celebrated Dune series, Sandworms of Dune, written by the author's son Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson has been released and soared to the best seller lists. Since the first 6 books of the series have been some of my favorite books, Mad Profess...
November 28, 2007
The user reviews for 3:10 To Yuma were impresssive so Mad Professah and the other half went to our favorite local multiplex in Alhambra and caught a weekend screening of the Russell Crowe-Christian Bale remake, rejecting Jodie Foster's revenge fantasy The Brave One and a repeat viewing of Matt Damon...
November 27, 2007
1. S. Williams USA d. M. Sharapova RUS, 6-1 6-2, Australian Open final, Melbourne.
After a horrible 2006 where her ranking had fallen out of the Top 100, Serena Williams was completely disregarded as a possible factor in the 2007 Australian Open, even moreso after she lost in the quarterfinals of...
November 27, 2007
Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men is a very different kettle of fish from Curse of the Golden Flower. Based on British best-selling author P.D. James' dystopian future novel The Children of Men, the movie features a killer premise, a very talented director (he directed the 3rd and widely regarded as ...
September 07, 2007
Octavia Butler's twelfth (and last) book came out in paperback recently and I got a copy for my birthday in May. Some of you will remember that I knew the author personally and blogged about my encounters with her previously.
fledgling is a brilliant re-imagination of the vampire myth by one of t...
September 02, 2007
Between semi-final matches of the WTA Acura Classic a few weeks ago MadProfessah attended a screening of The Bourne Ultimatum at an Ultra-Star Theater in Carlsbad, CA on Saturday of opening weekend. There was a line to get into the theater and the particular screening was packed.
After having see...
August 30, 2007
Saw the new Danny Boyle film Sunshine last night. Boyle is the very stylish director of 28 Days Later..., Trainspotting and Millions. His two collaborations with screenwriter Alex Garland are both re-imaginings of genre films which remain completely faithful to their source material. 2002's 28 Days ...
August 27, 2007
The movie Fracture stars Sir Anthony Hopkins and Best Actor Oscar nominee Ryan Gosling in a taut thriller directed by Gregory Hoblit.
Although the film did not get very good reviews on its initial release or perform very well at the box-office The Other Half and I still went to see Fracture (albe...
July 26, 2007
Although Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was released two years ago but Mad Professah re-read it this week in preparation for my perusal of the final installment of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows which occurred this week.
The only thing I still remembered fro...
July 23, 2007
My copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was on the stoop whenthe other half woke up late Saturday morning (Mad Professah was up early in order to atend an all day board meeting for Center for Health Justice) but I didn't start reading the seventh and final book in the best-selling Harry Pott...
July 16, 2007
Mad Professah saw the new Harry Potter movie, the fifth one in the series, called Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, on Thursday at the Edwards Renaissance Theaters in Alhambra. The screening was packed so I'm not surprised to see that the movie mad $140 million dollars in its first 5 days o...
July 06, 2007
The first Die Hard (1988) movie by director John McTiernan is one of the great action movies of all time. The latest installment, the fourth in the series is called Live Free or Die Hard and stars Bruce Willis as John McLane, divorced New York City cop with the estranged family and a Superman comple...
July 06, 2007
The other half and I saw Ratatouille last Friday, the day it came out, primarily because we are fans of Brad Bird, the director of the film, who was also the main creative force behind The Incredibles, my favourite film of 2004. Plus, Pixar's track record at making computer animated films with intel...
June 07, 2007
Saw Shrek the Third last week (immediately after 28 Weeks Later). I thought that Shrek 2 (2004) was an unmitigated disaster, especially in comparison to the delightfully irreverent original Shrek (2001). Happily, the latest Shrek is not a "waste of digital storage space" like the 2004 version was bu...
May 31, 2007
28 Weeks Later is the sequel to the surprisingly well-made 28 Days Later (2002). The first film was directed by Danny Boyle and starred then-unknown actors Cillian Murphy (Batman Begins) and Naomie Harris (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men's Chest).
The film was made for an estimated $8 million ...
April 02, 2007
Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake is one of my favorite novels. The weekend of March 9 an eponymous film adaptation directed by Indian Mira Nair and starring Kal Penn (Superman Returns, Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle) opened on a limited number of screens around the country.
This weekend I finally ...
April 02, 2007
The movie 300 (an adaptation of a Frank Miller graphic novel directed by Zack Snyder) has had huge buzz for weeks and a very effective marketing and advertising campaign that has been emphasizing the amazingly unique look of the film, the breathtakingly beautiful nearly-nude male physiques and the v...
March 22, 2007
Our nation's long nightmare is now over. My ongoing quest for good Caribbean food in Los Angeles has been completed. I have finally discovered Ackee Bamboo restaurant in Leimert Park. Aparently it's been around for over a year beause I saw a commendation signed by former Inglewood City Councilman (n...
February 24, 2007
MadProfessah's Oscar nomination prediction accuracy rate in the Top 8 categories (Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, Original Screenplay and Adapted Screenplay) was an impressive 29 out of 40, or 72.5%. EW.com has a very cool Flash-powered game where you can ent...
February 24, 2007
I saw Martin Scorsese's The Departed in mid-December at the second-run Regency Academy Theaters in Pasadena.
The first thing I noticed about this film is how overwhelmingly white (some would say aggressively racist) it is. The very first lines of voice-over dialogue by 3-time Academy Award winner...
February 21, 2007
Zhang Yimou is China's most celebrated film director and in the 1990s made a series of films (Raise the Red Lantern, Ju Dou, The Story of Qiu Ju) with Gong Li, one of the most beautiful actresses in the world, which brought acclaim and success to both artists. The two severed their professional rela...
February 21, 2007
On Valentine's Day the other half and I went and saw Pan's Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno) in at the Edward's Renaissance Theaters in Alhambra. The film has been nominated for six Academy Awards (Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Original Score, Best Foreign Language Film, Best ...
February 17, 2007
I saw a screening of Blood Diamond starring Leonardo Dicaprio, Jennifer Connelly (Best Supporting Actress, A Beautiful Mind) and Djimon Hounsou (Best Supporting Actor nominee Amistad, In America) at a private residence Saturday night. The audience, which was nearly 30 people, was also overwhelmingly...
January 23, 2007
On Sunday, I saw Casino Royale, which has been the best called "the best James Bond film since Goldfinger (1964)" and is currently enjoying a 95% favorable critical consensus (and 93% from users) at rottentomatoes.com. Although not a big fan of the James Bond oeuvre overall, I did enjoy Halle Berry ...
December 23, 2006
I saw Little Miss Sunshine earlier in the fall at the Pasadena Laemmle 7 Theaters. It is hysterically funny. It is also an interesting commentary on body image, particularly in children.
It was released on DVD recently, in time for the holiday season (no, I'm not going to use the "C word") and th...
December 23, 2006
1. A. Mauresmo FRA d. J. Henin-Hardenne BEL, 2-6 6-3 6-4,Wimbledon Championships final.
Despite dropping the first set in under a half an hour, the Frenchwoman was able to come back and regain her nerve and win her first Wimbledon title and complete a Grand Slam championship. Bonnie DeSimone of E...
December 15, 2006
1. R. Nadal ESP d. R. Federer SUI, 6-7 (0) 7-6 (5) 6-4 2-6 7-6 (5), Rome ATP Masters Series final.
An instant classic. It is already considered by some as one of the Top 10 matches of the 21st Century. 5 hours and 5 minutes long. 3 tie break sets. 2 match points saved by Nadal. The shot making w...
December 08, 2006
Mad Professah has been busy catching up with some films now that the other half is in town for the Thanksgiving holiday. Tuesday night I saw The Illusionist because a friend had said it was at least as good as The Prestige, which I thought was an absolutely brilliant movie. "It's probably better tha...
December 05, 2006
As most gay cinephiles, Mad Professah is a huge Pedro Almodóvar fan. Of the sixteen movies directed and/or written by him that have been released in the United States, I believe I have only missed seeing two, Kika and Tacones lejanos ("High Heels"), in the movie theater. So, I was quite excited to s...
November 26, 2006
I finally got around to seeing the movie Quinceañera at the Regency Fairfax Theaters (corner of Beverly Boulevard and Fairfax Boulevard) Tuesday night. For someone who has lives East of downtown Los Angeles for over a decade the movie is a very involving montage of familiar and pseudo-familiar local...
November 25, 2006
I saw The Prestige at the Los Feliz 3 cinemas on Friday October 27. Christopher Nolan has directed another absolutely excellent movie, following his successes with Memento (My favorite movie of 2000), Insomnia and last year's Batman Begins. I was surprised by the somewhat tepid reviews on KPCC's Fil...
November 08, 2006
In California, "Republican" Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger beat challenger Democratic State Treasurer Phil Angelides by over a million votes, 55.8% to 39.2%. The rest of the statewide races went along with Mad Professah's pre-[election endorsements, which were all won by Democrats except for one: Li...
November 02, 2006
I'm off to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada today to see the Edmonton Opera's performance of Don Giovanni on Saturday November 4. While I'm gone I will reiterate all of my electoral endorsements for the November 7 election with probably no blog updates. I sent in my absentee ballot yesterday.
Office ...
October 31, 2006
The Washington Blade has an informative summary of the rash of ballot measures on same-sex marriage and civil unions up for a vote in various states this November.
ARIZONA
Amendment would limit marriage to unions of one man and one woman and foreclose the possibility of civil unions.
COLORADO
...
October 17, 2006
The California statewide election is Tuesday, November 7, 2006. Exactly 21 days away. My absentee ballot has arrived and I will be voting for:
Office Endorsed Candidate
Governor Phil Angelides
Lieutenant Governor John G...
August 20, 2006
The following quote by Marianne Williamson (attributed to Nelson Mandela in the film) is extremely central to Akeelah and the Bee which I saw earlier this summer at my favorite second-run movie house, the Regency Academy Theaters in Pasadena. Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deep...
August 05, 2006
I think a capsule review of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy of books would be the following analogy: His Dark Materials is to the Harry Potter series as the Lord of the Rings is to Star Wars series. In other words, HDM are critically successful, artistic, mature, dark and almost overwhel...
July 22, 2006
My favorite gay mystery writer John Morgan Wilson is back with a seventh Benjamin Justice novel, Rhapsody in Blood. Benjamin Justice is a 40-something, HIV+ white gay man missing one eye who lives in West Hollywood and is a disgraced former Los Angeles Times reporter who was forced to return a Pulit...
May 12, 2006
Hat tip to Doug Ireland for publicizing the International Day Against Homophobia (IDAHO), which is May 17. This is an incredibly exciting development to me, since I was on the board of dircectors of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission for 6 years, from 1996-2002. I have always ...
May 04, 2006
Yes, I know it is called "M:I:III." The third entry in Tom Cruise's Mission: Impossible franchise is helmed by Hollywood's latest wunderkind J.J. Abrams (creator of television's popular and cult favorites Lost and Alias and potential saviour of Star Trek) and written by Abrams and his Lost and Alias...
April 15, 2006
The Los Angeles Times reported in Thursday's California section that the City of Los Angeles has reached a tentative million-dollar settlement of the civil lawsuit filed by the mother of a 13-year old African American boy shot to death by a latino LAPD officer in February 2005:
The city of Los An...
March 14, 2006
"But, ya are, Blanche, ya are!" goes the line from the camp classic Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? starring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford and something I read recently made me hear the line again in my mind. In the Sunday edition of the Los Angeles Times California section comes the news that a nu...
February 28, 2006
Black gay bloggers and science fiction fans are both saddened today by the news of author Octavia Butler's death this weekend in Seattle, WA. Black people and science fiction fans are often not thought of as having any common members, but clearly the death of the first African American female (and l...
December 27, 2005
Right before leaving for the year, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed an immigration bill. The bill was described by Mexican President Vicente Fox as "shameful" in the New York Times. It's main sponsor was the odious James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin). It is unlikely that such ...
December 10, 2005
In the midst of the Roberts, Miers and Alito nominations to the U.S. Supreme Court, I have been repeatedly commenting about the vacancy on the California Supreme Court and Governor Schwarzenegger's hesitancy in filling the seat vacated by Janice Rogers Brown on her elevation to the D.C. Circuit Cour...
November 27, 2005
Professor Goodwin Liu of UC Berkeley Law School has a devastating analysis of Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito capital punishment jurisprudence in today's Los Angeles Times entitled "Life and Death and Samuel Alito." Liu points out that while most of the media attention has been paid to Alito's vi...
November 24, 2005
Former California State Supreme Court justice Janice Rogers Brown (who some people think lacks judicial temperament) has issued her first ruling from her new perch on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and President Bush has nominated two people to the U.S. Supreme Court in the five and ...
November 24, 2005
Best Women's Tennis Matches of the Year
2005 Wimbledon Final. V. Williams d. L. Davenport 4-6, 7-6(4), 9-7.
This was a match they will be talking about for years. Venus Williams was the #14 seed and had not been in a Grand Slam final for two years and and had not won a major title for neary four...
November 10, 2005
After one abortive fling and a long and fractious courtship, gay media titans PlanetOut Inc (PlanetOut.com and gay.com) and LPI Media (Advocate.com, OUT Magazine) have agreed to merge. Interestingly, it will be a merger between corporate cultures as well. PNO is based in frigid San Francisco (obliga...
October 29, 2005
The Alaska Supreme Court issued a ruling on Friday in ACLU v. State of Alaska which overturns a lower court decision which said it was legal for the City of Anchorage to bar same-sex domestic partner benefits to public employees. Further, the Court said that it was unconstitutional to not provide be...
October 19, 2005
Noah's Arc is premiering on cable TV (LOGO) tonight at 10pm in Los Angeles. Noah's Arc is the brainchild of Patrik-Ian Polk, the man who brought you the black gay classic film "Punks" (which included Rockmond Dunbar and Vanessa L. Williams from Showtime's "Soul Food" and Seth Gilliam from HBO's Oz a...
October 15, 2005
The Governor didn't veto all the good legislation passed by the Democratic-dominated State Legislature in the last session. Apart from the numerous gay rights measures I have mentioned earlier, he also approved some important HIV-related legislation: AB 228 (Koretz), AB 547 (Berg) and AB 1142 (Dymal...