THE STOIC
Searching for Sugar Man, a documentary by Swedish filmmaker Malik Bendjelloul, is an unbelievably uplifting film. It tells the story of Sixto Rodriquez, a man who lives in Detroit, who was a...
View ArticleWILLIAM FRIEDKIN ON AURORA
After a screening of Killer Joe at the Jacob Burns Film Center last week, the eminent director William Friedkin (left, with Janet Maslin) had an interesting comment about the influence of films in the...
View ArticleMY SUMMER HIGHLIGHT
Apart from that special day when the temperature was topping 90, a skunky stink was broaching the perimeter of the property, and poison ivy was breaking out all over my body–quite the trifecta!–nothing...
View ArticleBOND, THE TEMERAIRE, AND TENNYSON
My latest, in The American Interest: About ten minutes into Skyfall, the new James Bond film, I was already in love. Not because of the long, opening chase scene, which among its obligatory...
View ArticleTHE TOP TEN OF 2012
This year that is fast disappearing will not be remembered in these quarters with very much warmth. It was a fairly hideous, sickening year, the year that I felt I got old. But like all good things,...
View ArticleHENRY BROMELL, 1947-2013
Three of the most interesting hours of my life were spent in the company of Henry Bromell, who died the other day at the age of 65. Henry was a writer–of short stories and television scripts mostly,...
View Article`AIN’T IN IT FOR MY HEALTH’ SCREENING
My friend Ken Smith and I were invited to the Knitting Factory in Brooklyn attend a screening of Jacob Hatley’s documentary about Levon Helm called Ain’t In It for My Health, a lovely, interesting...
View ArticleREVIEW OF `AIN’T IN IT FOR MY HEALTH’
This article first appeared in the Daily Beast today, April 21, 2013. “I don’t want a biography,’’ Levon Helm told Jacob Hatley in 2007 when the young director came to Helm’s Woodstock home and...
View ArticleTHE WOLF HAS ALL THE GRAVITY
The Oscars will be presented tomorrow night, and right now smart money for Best Picture is on Gravity, an engrossing and technically advanced film about one of the oldest plots in the book, that of the...
View ArticleRUSH TO JUDGMENT
Yesterday, noted cineaste Rush Limbaugh offered some ex post facto commentary on the selection of 12 Years a Slave as Best Picture. “There’s no way that movie was not going to win!’’ said Limbaugh. “If...
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