Noah Berlatsky

For a second, it looked like the rabid hordes of gamergaters would be joined by metalheads. But #metalgate was never meant to be.

Katniss is the voice of conscience and morality in the film, and in The Hunger Games series as a whole. In the just released last film in the series, she tries repeatedly to avoid unnecessary deaths. She insists that refugees from an attacked base be given an escape route, for example, and exposes herself in an effort to help them.

Scientists are hotly debating whether we should send messages into space. Perhaps they should consult Octavia Butler for some wisdom...

Rodriguez is confused when she says that people want her to steal white people's superheroes. But she also has a point.

While Atwood's feminist dystopia remains our favorite nightmarish future, Marge Piercy's Woman On The Edge Of Time is far superior.

Banks' "Ice Princess" video shows that it's not only white people who can pick up someone else's culture.

Who is memorialized in death has everything to do with race, class . . . and who you were in life.

Action movies don't usually bother much with romance. The trailer for The Transporter: Refueled certainly doesn't. The hero is cool — sexy women, plural, throw themselves at him, or at least stand near him and things blow up; there are fights and revenge and high production values. Romance is, at best, a secondary concern.

english lit academic. wish fulfiller. thwarted world-changer.

Talking about race can get you into a lot of trouble . . . especially if you don't have a lot of class power or status.