Film/TV
680 results
Page 65
Sharon White's "Vanished Gardens'
A journey in a hiccupping time machine
In Vanished Gardens, Sharon White takes readers on an impressionistic tour de force through Philadelphia's green spaces, past and present. She's a stylish writer, but fitting all the pieces of her broad mosaic together is no easy task.
Articles
4 minute read
Bartusiak's "The Day We Found the Universe'
Our long march across the cosmos: Humankind gets something right
A talented science writer tells the story of one of history's great intellectual sagas: how a group of semi-rational primates on an obscure planet discovered the true size and scope of the universe.
Articles
5 minute read
Yale and those Muhammad cartoons
Great moments in publishing: Judgment by committee at Yale
To avoid potential violence, Yale University Press has announced that the controversial 2005 Danish newspaper cartoons satirizing the prophet Muhammad (like the one at left) will be omitted from a forthcoming book about the global riots provoked by those cartoons. Is this a case of responsible behavior or intellectual cowardice?
Articles
4 minute read
Christian Petzold's "Jerichow'
A German talent worth watching
Christian Petzold's Jerichow, a sly thriller from Germany that raises disturbing questions, recycles a twice-told noir classic, The Postman Always Rings Twice, but with the focus on the seeming victim rather than the seedy lovers. German film has never fully recovered from Hitler and rarely gets international distribution, but Jerichow announces a talent worth watching.
Articles
6 minute read
James Herrick's "Scientific Mythologies'
How many sci-fi writers can dance on the head of a pin?
James Herrick, a Christian apologist at a fundamentalist college, sees pop culture and science fiction supplanting traditional religious myths as the cutting force of spirituality today. Not to worry, professor: Steven Spielberg, Carl Sagan and the makers of Star Wars and Star Trek are mostly pouring old wine into new bottles.
Articles
3 minute read
"Bruno' and male neuroses
Who's that squirming in the audience?
Bruno, the latest comic vehicle for the entrapment artist Sacha Baron Cohen, seems at first glance a tasteless porridge of adolescent humor— a second serving of Cohen's parody of former Soviet republics, Borat. But look again: Bruno might be ripping off the scabs covering many of our cultural hang-ups, especially male ones.
Articles
3 minute read
Majidi's "Song of Sparrows'
Neo-realism from Iran
To a film buff who's unfamiliar with Iranian neo-realist cinema, Majid Majidi's Song of Sparrows is a revelation: a film so believable that I thought I was watching a documentary.
Articles
2 minute read
Martin Provost's 'Séraphine' at the Ritz Five
A few words about art
Martin Provost's Séraphine is a beautiful film based on the real-life relationship of an art critic and a self-taught artist on the eve of World War I. Provost intriguingly focuses not on the financial and artistic success that this partnership generated but on failures of communication between the artist and the wordsmith.
Articles
3 minute read
My personal Bad Cop Film Festival
L.A. Detrimental, or: My personal Bad Cop Film Festival
Movies about good cops gone bad are so fascinating that I've often wished some cable channel would assemble a Bad Cop Film Festival. They haven't, so I'm doing it here. Is it a coincidence that most of my choices are set in Los Angeles?
Articles
7 minute read
What Hollywood could learn from 1939
It was a very good year in Hollywood: What today's movies could learn from 1939
The Academy Awards committee recently increased the number of Oscar nominees for “Best Film” from five to ten. But today's ten best films would be hard-pressed to make the top 100 of 1939. What did Hollywood do right in that year when everything else in the world went wrong?
Articles
5 minute read