In Wreck-It Ralph, the Disney film up for an Oscar for Best Animated Feature, the hero Ralph, voiced by a croaky John C. Reilly, opens by brooding about his fate. Shrek-chested, with arms so thick they rip his sleeves, Ralph was born to play the villain, programmed into a retro-chic arcade game where he has the Sisyphean task of pummeling a pixellated building. Each time a kid drops a quarter, Ralph is expected to Wreck. The result is that those who dwell in his game—residents of the threatened building, the angelic hero "Fix-It Felix"—despise him. READ MORE >>
The Expat Factor
On Super Tuesday, the first votes to be registered in the presidential primaries were not in Georgia, West Virginia, or New Jersey, but in Jakarta, Indonesia--where Barack Obama spent four years of his childhood, and where early polls showed him trouncing Hillary Clinton. READ MORE >>
