As I watched the Oscars last night – or perhaps “endured” is a better word, because Huge Ackman prancing around with his nipples all stiff over the return of The Musical! (come […]
ArtSunday: Tess of the Boomervilles
The new season of PBS’s long running series Masterpiece Theatre, now known simply as Masterpiece, kicked off last Sunday with a new adaptation of Thomas Hardy‘s brilliant examination of gender relations and […]
ArtSunday: the nonlinearity of influence
“I’m interested in what motivates you, and how you understand the world.” He glanced sideways at her. “Rausch tells me you’ve written about music.” “Sixties garage bands. I started writing about them […]
ArtSunday: the Blade Runner Effect
Last night we watched the Final Cut of Blade Runner again, and if you don’t have this package I can’t recommend it highly enough. 25 years on, Ridley Scott was able to […]
ArtSunday: Vicky Cristina Barcelona, professional reviews, and other opinions
by Earl Brandt When it comes to films by great filmmakers, especially those by living filmmakers, I try not to read reviews, criticism, or even summaries prior to seeing the films for […]
Shaping Memory—Review: These Honored Dead by Thomas A. Desjardin
The Battle of Gettysburg certainly ranks as one of America’s great stories—but how it became such a great story is a story unto itself. That’s the focus of Thomas Desjardin’s book These […]
Double-O-Hum?—Review: Devil May Care, the new James Bond adventure by Sebastian Faulks
James Bond is back in print, and the new novel, Devil May Care, reads just like the old ones. That’s both good and bad. British author Sebastian Faulks is the scribe behind […]
Beneath the comic-book mask: The Dark Knight
by JS O’Brien For better or worse, cultures tend to rank genres of fiction. So-called serious works, written by the likes of William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce, rate well above […]
On the 145th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg—Review: Causes Won, Lost & Forgotten by Gary W. Gallagher
One of my main interests is how we know what we know about the Civil War. My fascination in the topic stems not only from my work doing public history on the front […]
ArtSunday: Godard says everything is cinema – except when it's politics, perhaps…
Jean Luc Godard’s 1968 epic WeekEnd closes with the following end title: END OF CINEMA Leonard Lopate of WNYC has a terrific interview with Richard Brody, film critic for The New Yorker […]
