Film/TV
683 results
Page 63
Fritz Lang's "Metropolis,' restored
Metropolis, as Lang intended it
Fritz Lang's futuristic 1927 silent masterpiece, Metropolis, isn't for everyone. But the recent discovery of a missing hour's worth of footage will help untangle some of the film's conundrums.
Articles
3 minute read
In defense of Jane Austen's prose
Jane Austen is still good in bed
Some folks rejoice at the current spate of Jane Austen film adaptations because they find her novels impenetrable. But if Austen's books are such a slog, why have they remained in print continuously for almost 200 years?
Articles
4 minute read
James Ellroy's "Blood's A Rover'
Through an American dream, darkly
James Ellroy's American dream is a high-definition nightmare of total political depravity that infects every character in his fiction, from presidents to bellhops. It is totally fascinating, perhaps because there is the sting of truth at its basis.
Blood's A Rover. By James Ellroy. Knopf, 2009. 656 pages; $28.95. www.amazon.com.
Articles
5 minute read
Jane Austen novels on DVD
Jane Austen is ready for her close-up (and always has been)
Jane Austen's impenetrable prose is difficult to slog through— but her novels translate marvelously to the screen, as two DVD adaptations remind us. This is no accident. Long before the invention of cinema, Austen understood— as, say, Dostoyevsky or Proust or Mailer did not— the power of visual imagery.
Articles
5 minute read
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Howard Zinn and Mary Daly: Up the academy
They rattled our ivory towers
Howard Zinn and Mary Daly, who died last week, shared a penchant for challenging smug academic certainties. To college presidents and deans, they were perennial pests; to society's underdogs, they exemplified what a free society is all about.
Articles
3 minute read
Salinger's "Catcher,' then and now
The power to cut through cant
J.D. Salinger's fundamental resistance to adult delusions spoke powerfully to a high school freshman like me. But his message didn't resonate with everyone, even my age.
Articles
2 minute read
"Avatar' vs. "The Imaginarium'
Technology vs. imagination: The Avatar of Dr. Parnassus
James Cameron's Avatar dazzles us with expensive high-tech special effects. But Terry Gilliam's Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus dazzles us with the more substantive power of human imagination.
Articles
7 minute read
David Owen's "Green Metropolis'
Do fence me in
A Connecticut suburbanite extols the environmental virtues of dense big cities.
Articles
3 minute read
"A New Literary History of America'
If scholars wrote blogs, here's what they'd say
From Vespucci to Obama, it's the mesmerizing mix of old chestnuts and unseen treasures in A New Literary History of America that gives this communal blog its intellectual weight. And it triggers memories for this old American studies academic.
Articles
7 minute read
"Fly By Wire' and that "miracle' on the Hudson
That Airbus landing on the Hudson: Not so seat-of-the-pants after all
When a crippled Airbus airliner landed in the middle of the Hudson River without loss of life, was it a miracle? If so, this new book persuasively argues, it was a miracle born not out of divinity but of human design, dedication and skill.
Articles
4 minute read