A collection of 872 posts
Anna D. Shapiro’s recent revival of Eric Bentley’s 1972 play about the HUAC hearings offered entertainment along with the pleasures of moral certainty and ideological reinforcement.
To be naked is to give up obsessive self-presentation and take off the mask.
Watching Gillo Pontecorvo’s film six decades after its release permits a nuanced understanding of the events that it portrays, which was unavailable when it first came out.
A thrash-metal classic turns forty.
A new exhibition curated by Lars von Trier provides a fascinating look at who and what has influenced one of the world’s most prodigiously gifted and provocative filmmakers.
The rise, fall, and rise again of one of the 20th century’s most important journalists.
There is a rather large difference between the banned books promoted by celebrities and genuinely transgressive and provocative writing.
American individualism and the western, from Fred Zinnemann and John Ford to Larry McMurtry and Taylor Sheridan.
A look back at the 20th century’s most entertaining literary spat—one of the few such encounters that Orwell emphatically lost.
Frank Miller’s valuable new memoir explores the creative life of one of America’s most gifted writers and artists.
Lars von Trier’s harrowing but resplendent story of suffering and grace turns thirty this year.
Homer’s epic provides a window on to a strange, paradoxical, fascinating, beautiful, and terrifying world that is at once familiar and unfamiliar.
Artists increasingly insist that their work and their politics are indivisible. They should not be surprised when the institutions that fund them agree.
Christopher Nolan’s creation is a big movie in every technical sense. But inside, it is diminished and faded: heroes who aren’t allowed to be heroes and gods who aren’t allowed to be gods.
Men are quietly leaving the workforce—not for lack of jobs, but for lack of purpose.