Al Gore

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Interview: Davis Guggenheim, director of Waiting for Superman

Out with the Old School
Davis Guggenheim has always been a man on a mission.
By TOM MEEK | October 04, 2010

How to beat the heat

Big Fat Whale
Modern ingenuity finally cures swamp ass
By BRIAN MCFADDEN | July 28, 2010

Back to the future

Comedy Central resurrects Groening's other show
Comedy Central resurrects Groening's other show
By RYAN STEWART | June 26, 2010

Can WRNI supplant the ProJo as the state’s news king?
Rhode Island’s upstart National Public Radio affiliate, WRNI, aims to be nothing less than a major media player here. And in the space of just a couple of years, the station has taken some impressive first steps.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | June 10, 2010

Shaking up the school system

The Reformer
Rhode Island education commissioner Deborah Gist’s take-charge style could make a winner of a state that often seems destined to fail. But critics say her free-market approach won’t work.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | April 21, 2010

The Big Hurt: Say anything

The week in YouTube comments
It’s almost impossible to read a single page of YouTube comments without being confronted by society’s ugliest afflictions: ignorance, pointless fights, horrifying racism, and unfair criticism of Justin Bieber’s haircut.
By DAVID THORPE | April 12, 2010

Tanked

A few guppies short
The term "think tank" looks as if it signifies something impressive.
By AL DIAMON | March 17, 2010

Tea-bagger Brown triumphs

Obama must rally independents
Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley may be a good person and a dedicated public servant, but thanks to her gut-wrenching loss to tea-bagging Republican Scott Brown in the race for the US Senate seat held by the late Ted Kennedy, Coakley is now — quite rightly — a figure of local scorn and national derision.
By EDITORIAL | January 20, 2010

A weed grows in Boston

What's a suburban soccer mom who was once fervently anti-drug doing running a business growing and selling pot?
Even though it's a crisp November day, the flower boxes of Mary Jones's neat little bungalow are overflowing with brightly colored blooms.
By VALERIE VANDE PANNE | December 04, 2009

Letter Rip

The Phoenix discovers secret messages in Hollywood-connected political correspondence
Hollywood celebrities who fancy themselves pols and pundits don’t just bring impassioned everyman views to the legislative banquet.
By CHRIS FARAONE | November 12, 2009

By | January 01, 0001

Review: It Might Get Loud

Davis Guggenheim films his essay on the electric guitar
Some guitar teachers will tell you there’s a right way and a wrong way to play the guitar. But Davis Guggenheim’s rousing new documentary, It Might Get Loud, reminds us that that’s not true at all.
By MIKE MILIARD | August 27, 2009

Ted Kennedy's real record

A note on the 32-year-incumbent's accomplishments
When a 32-year incumbent seeks re-election, there is a long and well-documented record that can be examined. So it's disconcerting to note that admit all the miles of newsprint and videotape that have been expended covering the US Senate campaign, little has been said of what Ted Kennedy has or hasn't accomplished.
By AL GIORDANO | August 26, 2009

Interview: John Legend

A different kind of R&B star
Despite being one of the most successful R&B singers of the decade — with six Grammys and three top-selling albums — John Legend is something of an oddball.
By BEN WESTHOFF | August 05, 2009

Generation Green

Once derided as tree huggers, eco-friendly youth are now the nation's most powerful (and feared) voting bloc. So why isn't the GOP listening?
Republicans have a lot to say about the immorality of saddling the next generation with our national debt. But when it comes to leaving them a wrecked, depleted, and rapidly warming planet, they are taking the exact opposite line.
By DAVID S. BERNSTEIN | May 11, 2009

Food unfarmed

Pollan and Schlosser, on message, in Food, Inc.
Following in the Peabody Award-winning footsteps of Aaron Wolf's congenial, informative documentary King Corn, Robert Kenner's omnibus agri-doc Food, Inc . offers a bleaker portrait of America's food economy at this year's Food+Farm event series, centered at SPACE Gallery from May 7 to 10.
By CHRISTOPHER GRAY | May 13, 2009

Review: We Live in Public

Call it Woodstock crossed with Salò and The Real World
Josh Harris might not have contributed as much to the Internet as Al Gore, but as Ondi Timoner's lively and chilling documentary reveals, he did embody its excesses of narcissism and puerility and its delusions of grandeur.
By PETER KEOUGH | September 02, 2009

By | January 01, 0001

Firing back

A girl's best friend is her yogurt
"Yogurt is the official food of women." Or so enthuses TV writer Sarah Haskins in her sarcastic three-minute video "Target Women: Yogurt Edition."
By CAITLIN E. CURRAN | March 26, 2009

Play by Play: March 27, 2009

Plays A to Z
A compilation of theater productions in and around Boston
By CAROLYN CLAY | March 24, 2009

Hey guv: stop slashing!

State budget cuts just make the recession worse
It seems as if there’s no light at the end of the state’s gloomy fiscal tunnel.
By LANCE TAPLEY | December 31, 2008

Harvard Beats Yale 29-29

Scores in nearly every department
Kevin Rafferty's 40th-anniversary documentary about the fabled Game of 1968 — when both teams were unbeaten and Harvard, after being completely outplayed by the 16th-ranked Elis, scored 16 points in the final 42 seconds to "win" — has no designs on being innovative: contemporary interviews with the players are intercut with slightly fuzzy but quite acceptable footage of the game.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | November 24, 2008

Bull disclosure

As the candidates prep for the final debate, it’s a fitting time to ask: why do some journalistic conflicts of interest become scandals, while others get almost no attention at all?
As the presidential candidates prep for the final debate of 2008 — which will take place on October 15 in Hempstead, New York, with CBS’s Bob Schieffer moderating — it’s a fitting time to ask: why do some journalistic conflicts of interest become semi-scandals, while others get almost no attention at all?
By ADAM REILLY | October 22, 2008

A real cool hand

Whether acting, acting up, or sharing his wealth, Newman was the man
Sad news got to P+J about the passing of American legend Paul Newman.
By PHILLIPE AND JORGE | October 01, 2008

Odium at the podium

This year, with such a close contest, the debates could have an impact like never before. Here’s what to watch for.
In most presidential elections, the importance of the debates is over-rated.
By STEVEN STARK | September 25, 2008

Granite up for grabs

Why McCain, Obama, and their supporters are swooping down on New Hampshire
Presidential candidates and their surrogates spend most of their time in high-population, close-contest areas.
By DAVID S. BERNSTEIN | September 17, 2008

The enthusiasm gap

This election, with Obama having stoked pennant fever in Denver, it is the Dems who have cornered the excitement market
The selection of gun-shooting, anti-abortion, creationist, doctrinaire conservative Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as John McCain’s vice-presidential nominee has finally got the GOP’s conservative base excited.
By DAVID S. BERNSTEIN | September 03, 2008

Too scared to win?

Barack Obama must fight for his principles, or he’ll give away the keys to the White House
What people want is someone who knows what he believes, says so, and stands up for it even in the face of criticism.
By JEFF INGLIS | August 13, 2008

Leggo my ego!

The GOP is smearing Obama as a narcissist. So why is the press playing along?
If Barack Obama loses the presidency this November, it won’t be because of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, or “Bitter-gate,” or sundry other vulnerabilities.
By ADAM REILLY | July 30, 2008