Continue Reading...

J. and his ex dated as teenagers and had remained close friends since. At the beginning of our own courtship, I was wary of their relationship, unsure of how close was too close when it came to an ex. But as J. and I got to know each other better, I learned that he'd lost his father suddenly in early adolescence, that he'd become estranged from his mother in the aftermath of that death. He'd been essentially on his own since age 15, living off the kindness of teachers, friends, and residents of the town just outside Boston where he grew up, the same town I eventually left New York for in order to be with him. What I gradually realized was that this unique web of friends and acquaintances he'd amassed over the years served as the closest thing to family in his life, ex-girlfriends included.

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

For obvious reasons, a polygamous society needs lots and lots of females and far fewer males, and Warren Jeffs' Fundamental Latter-day Saints sect in Colorado City, Ariz. (known to its inhabitants as "the Crick"), is no exception. Over the years, hundreds if not thousands of boys and men have left Colorado City (or been told to leave) and descended on nearby St. George, Utah, with nowhere to stay, no education, no birth certificate and little or no understanding of the world outside Jeffs' self-appointed community of salvation. In many cases, they've never played a video game or watched a DVD, and haven't heard of Barack Obama or Adolf Hitler.

Continue Reading...

Are you bathed in a glowing light because it's time for you to lead your flock to the promised land, or because it's time to see an optometrist? Do you feel something violent and powerful moving inside you because God has chosen you as His prophet, or because you really shouldn't have had those fries and that chocolate shake after all?

Beware of God

Continue Reading...

With the series' controversy-stirring depiction of a secret LDS temple rite last week, the show stepped closer toward acknowledging the fact that religion, not marriage or sex, lies at the heart of the Henricksons' woes. Poor Barb, driven to the brink by the double-barreled conniving of Nicki and her own awful family, discovered she was about to be excommunicated from the LDS, and begged her mother and sister to help her visit the temple one last time. "This is just a foretaste of what eternity will be like!" rhapsodized her mother (the ever-masterly Ellen Burstyn), as the three women fluttered around what looked like the side lobby of a turn-of-the-century hotel, clad in gauzy wimples.

Continue Reading...

As tough as it is to understand, relate to or sympathize with Bill Henrickson (Bill Paxton), the Mormon polygamist at the center of HBO's "Big Love," through some delicate balance of wit, heart and high stakes, the show manages to transport viewers to an alternate universe where marriage is something shared not by two people, but by one man and three headstrong women. In other words, HBO's "Big Love" offers up subcultural rubbernecking at its very best.

Continue Reading...

In fact, the Mormon church had repudiated the practice of multiple marriage in 1890, although it continued in secret at least into the first decade of the 20th century. Needless to say, that didn't stop the pop-culture juggernaut from spewing out bigotry and misinformation, culminating with H.B. Parkinson's huge 1922 hit "Trapped by the Mormons," which produced a sequel ("Married to a Mormon") the same year and has now spawned a 21st century parody remake, starring a drag king as a seductive Mormon vampire.

Continue Reading...

But now they're all a Google search away: the foot fetishists, the lactose intolerant, the Dungeon Masters, the chronically fatigued, the Sailor Moon fan fiction writers, the plushies. Today, instead of making friends with like-minded hobbyists and Hobbits, you just wander around alone on eBay, or write elaborate posts on Amazon about your Japanese anime-punk wiki and your Kenyan emo and the really great Czechoslovakian graphic novel you're reading.

Nowadays, the underground is aboveground, and subverting the dominant paradigm is the dominant paradigm.

And a bottle of rum
What I really mean to say is that I hate pirates. I don't like their pierced noses or their eyeliner or their tangled hair or the way they talk like Keith Richards or the big hooks they use in place of their amputated hands. Pirates are just thieves and murderers who are romanticized because they roam the high seas. Come on now, who really wants to roam the high seas, vomiting and getting scurvy, except for the half insane?

Continue Reading...

The piece chronicles the growing bonds between a bunch of wives in a Michigan neighborhood after a season under the influence of HBO's "Big Love," the "three wives are better than one" soap opera about a polygamous household in Utah. Now, Op-Ed writer Michele Gazzolo and her friends didn't decide to share their husbands or trade them in for a singularly arrogant Mormon swine, but they did realize they were envious of the wives featured in "Big Love." Their easy intimacy -- attending to one another's children and cooking dinner together regularly -- made them consider what they were missing. So they embraced the polygamous lingo "sister-wives" -- as in "How about some dinner, sister-wife?"

Continue Reading...

The Soprano and Fisher families are threatened by the restless, centrifugal yearnings of their members; the Henricksons, the series takes elaborate pains to point out, are fiercely committed to their unity. On one side, they fend off the creepy, cultlike influence of Juniper Creek, the polygamist compound where Bill grew up, and on the other, their nosy mainstream Mormon neighbors (and employees and customers), who regard polygamy with a mixture of horror and shame.

Continue Reading...

Of course, as we get older, we learn that reality is a far cry from Busytown. Whether we grow up and move away to Lazytown or Grumpytown or Sleazytown, instead of happy little dog cabbies and polite piggy butchers, we encounter sullen bankers and angry waitresses and depressed customer service representatives, doing their tedious jobs with all of the raw enthusiasm and thoughtful effort of root vegetables. And even when the radish project manager and the turnip marketing associate at the office exchange terse words about the upcoming presentation, and the rutabaga accounts manager takes the afternoon off to place illegal bets, life in Dumpytown isn't nearly as interesting as life in Busytown once seemed.

Continue Reading...

Reviewing an IMAX film in aesthetic terms is like trying to discuss Mount Rushmore as a piece of sculpture. IMAX isn't about anything having to do with craft. It's about sheer spectacle, and in that sense, it's the perfect metaphor for what mainstream movies have become. Because "Ghosts of the Abyss" is in 3-D, you sit in front of the enormous IMAX screen wearing big flat-front black glasses that look like Yoko Ono's castoffs. The image is fuzzy and indistinct except in the dead center of the screen. The only way to see the movie in focus is to watch it with one eye shut.

Continue Reading...

But even when we disapprove of a character's desires or motivations, the vulnerability and veiled pain in Paxton's face keep us from turning away. He has a knack for keeping us well on his side, for refusing to let us pass judgment on a character too easily. Any actor can forge a character who commits horrible acts of deceit and murder for reasons we can't comprehend; Paxton has a rare gift for making the unthinkable seem perfectly comprehensible.

Continue Reading...

At one point in "Twister," a storm chaser calls a destructive F5 tornado "the finger of God," an awesome and almighty force spinning with beauty and wrath. In the course of the movie, Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton are so relentlessly obsessed with tracking down these divine tornadoes that they destroy their personal lives and their relationships. That might as well be a metaphor for the movie itself: Director Jan DeBont ("Speed") spends so much time and effort on the astonishing digital effects and their God-like powers that he carelessly ignores plot and character -- for him, those details only frame his computer graphics miracles.

Continue Reading...

The plot of "U-571" has to do with an American mission to board a crippled German U-boat and capture the gizmo that will allow the Allies to crack the German Enigma code. The sailors' ride home is torpedoed during the raid, so our heroes have to make it to safe ground on the damaged German sub. But the real story "U-571" tells is a familiar and depressing one in Hollywood: that of a filmmaker who gets a chance at a big-budget action movie because his first picture was a surprise hit -- and proceeds to obliterate all traces of the talent he showed.

Continue Reading...

These aren't the rubes of "Fargo," characters who exist only to be ridiculed. Raimi won't allow us that superior distance. Because we like these people, because we want desperately for them to be OK, we become complicit in their actions. "A Simple Plan" holds us in a state of horrified empathy. The characters suspect that everything is going to turn out badly, but they can't extricate themselves from the trap they've set in motion, and so the film takes on a feeling of inexorability. The snow that blankets everything in sight here lends an unsettling quietness to even the characters' most extreme actions.

Continue Reading...