January 2014 - The Culture Mom

24Jan

Book Review: Beautiful Ruins

Posted by The Culture Mom Leave a Comment

I recently broke a reading drought with Beautiful Ruins, a remarkable and transporting novel that swept me away not only to a remove village in Italy on the coast but also to Hollywood. It goes back and forth in time to tell the full story of a group of people whose lives intermingle. There's a famous film producer, his assistant, a once known actress, the real Richard Burton during the time he broke up Elizabeth Taylor's marriage, an Italian fisherman and his family and a struggling screen writer. It doesn't take long for the reader to figure Read More

21Jan

A Few Days in San Francisco with Kid (s)

Posted by The Culture Mom Leave a Comment

If you follow me over on Instagram, you know that I love to travel, take photos, explore, with kids/without kids, eat, study a city's history while I'm there and wander. Head over right now and you'll follow my recent travels while visiting the wonderful city of San Francisco. It's a city I've ventured to many times in my life, probably around a dozen, having had close friends and family out there to visit throughout my adulthood. Each time I go, I experience a new feeling. When I was younger, I experienced its culture seeing Lily Tomlin live on Read More

17Jan

Why Does the Academy Snub My Oscar Picks?

Posted by The Culture Mom Leave a Comment

While I don't feel completely adequate to write a full response to the Oscar Academy nominations, for reasons none other than the fact that I didn't go to the movies enough this past year, I do feel like speaking very briefly about the snubs. You know why? They were some of the only films I saw last year and I thought they were excellent! I'm talking about Enough Said (come on, not even a posthumous award for James Gandolfini? Julia Louis-Dreyfus was SO good and writer/director Niclole Holofcener ROCKS.) The Butler (Oprah wasn't great, but the Read More

13Jan

On Woody Allen’s Involuntary Twitter Confinement

Posted by The Culture Mom 4 Comments

If you read my site semi-regularly, you know that I'm a big Woody Allen fan. I've been a die-hard fan of for most of my life. My infatuation started in high school and then, as a film minor in college, I watched all his movies and analyzed them (I have the papers to prove it). I was a walking Woody Allen encyclopedia and have been going to his movies the night they premiere (ask my husband as he's typically my companion). for years. I even slipped my resumé under the door of his production office after arriving in NYC a few years later. I've been to Read More

11Jan

Women in the News

Posted by The Culture Mom Leave a Comment

Lots boiling regarding women in the news, here are my top 5 stories: 1. Meryl Streep took the stage at the National Board of Review awards gala in New York to present an award to Emma Thompson for her role in Saving Mr. Banks. She started out with praise for the actress, but according to Variety and other sources, Streep soon launched into a little speech about Disney’s anti-Semitic. racist and sexist views. She also declared Thomson as a "rabid, man-eating feminist. How I loved this speech. Check it out here. 2. Lena Dunham still has to explain why Read More

07Jan

Getting My Indie Film Fix on Netflix

Posted by The Culture Mom Leave a Comment

When we first got Netflix, I was initially excited to catch up on series I'd yet to see, like Friday Night Lights and Breaking Bad. Then I reveled in watching old movies from the 1970s and 1980s with my kids like Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller's Day Off and The Breakfast Club. Then I ventured into classic films starting many of the greats like Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman and Bette Davis. And now? Now I'm relishing in independent films, as I continue to find one golden indie after another that I either loved or had never seen before. Read More

06Jan

Orange is the New Back Takes on Twitter

Posted by The Culture Mom Leave a Comment

If you’re impatiently waiting for season 2 of Orange is the New Black, you're not alone. A quick jump on Twitter and a glance at hash tag #Ask Orange will make you feel a lot better. The show is using a smart PR firm who has every single member of the show’s cast tweeting and they gather them regularly to talk candidly with their fans. They don’t talk specifically about what’s going to happen next season or about what’s taking place during the filming of the show (which is happening right now at Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens, New York ), but they Read More

02Jan

Girls HBO: Questionable Goods

Posted by The Culture Mom 2 Comments

About two weeks ago, I came home to find a large box on my doorstep. It was right around the holidays but was still a bit of a mystery of whom it was from. When I opened it, this is what I found. Okay, pretty amazing. I was actually expecting something to arrive from the TV show, GiRLS, on HBO, after an unexpected tweet from their handle a few weeks prior via direct message, but I wasn't sure what would come. First came the letter, which called me the voice of "A" generation. I liked the wording. I'm not at all the age bracket of the girls on the Read More

01Jan

Winter Break in Montreal with Kids

Posted by The Culture Mom 1 Comment

Every year we do something during break but we usually have two stipulations: 1. We choose a destination in driving distance and 2. We choose a place within a reasonable budget. While we would love to pick up and go visit our family in the UK more than anything in the world, it's just not feasible this time of year. We wanted some place exotic and adventurous so Montreal with kids immediately came to mind. There are so many reasons to take your kids on a trip to explore Montreal. For one thing, it’s the Europe of North America and you can introduce Read More