Film/TV
687 results
Page 62
Michael Douglas as the 'Solitary Man'
The comedown kid
Sometimes it takes a bad film to draw out an extraordinary performance. So it is when Michael Douglas plays Ben Kalmen in Solitary Man, another in his gallery of self-destructive heroes. Kirk should be proud of Michael's work here.
Articles
5 minute read
Stieg Larsson's not-so-radical thrillers (2nd comment)
The girl who captured 35 million readers: Stieg Larsson's debt to Tarzan
The novelist Stieg Larsson may have been a radical journalist, but his view of Swedish society doesn't look that radical to a reader familiar with the thriller genre.
Articles
5 minute read
John Waters and his "Role Models'
Beyond Pink Flamingoes
The renegade filmmaker John Waters's latest book is a paean to reading as a revolutionary act. His recent appearance at the Free Library was tame by comparison.
Articles
5 minute read
"Sex and the City 2'
No sex, no city: Why young mothers love this film
This movie-going mom thinks critics should stop whining about Sex and the City 2. I got my mojo boost from seeing four of modern America's sexiest women falling into the patterns of matrimony and parenthood— my patterns.
Articles
4 minute read
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Ben Yagoda's "Memoir: A History'
Everybody's doing it: On remembering your pasts
From George W. Bush to Facebook to Twitter, these days everyone is writing a memoir of some sort. Ben Yagoda catalogues the phenomenon from ancient times to the rest. But he left me wondering: Do we understand each other any better as a consequence?
Articles
4 minute read
Stieg Larsson's Swedish feminist heroine (1st comment)
Sweden's darker side, and a feminist avenging angel
What Ingmar Bergman did for Swedish private life— that is, expose its dark side— Larsson did for Swedish public life. His novels expose corruption and sexism in high places and provide a uniquely believable but heroic female figure to combat them.
Articles
5 minute read
Stephen Miller's "Conversation'
Have a conversation (before we forget how)
Stephen Miller traces the art of conversation from ancient Sumer to its high point in 18th-Century British coffee houses to its terminal phase in the age of TV, rap artists and the Internet— a gloomy conclusion to an engaging book.
Articles
3 minute read
"Vincere' and the pitfalls of passion
Going belly-up for Mussolini
How could a society nurtured by Dante, Michelangelo, Verdi and Puccini fall in love with a tacky bully like Benito Mussolini? Marco Bellochio's remarkable Vincere goes a long way toward supplying the answer.
Articles
4 minute read
Atom Egoyan's "Chloe'
Who's doing what to whom?
Veteran filmmaker Atom Egoyan's latest, Chloe, features a lethal sex triangle in which the victims are hard to tell from the victimizers— or is there a difference at all?
Articles
3 minute read
Dickstein's "Dancing In the Dark'
Great Depression, greater paradox
Morris Dickstein's cultural history of the Great Depression has elevated our intellectual level several notches, revealing clearly and eloquently how the many pieces of a complex industrial culture fit together.
Articles
3 minute read