A collection of 882 posts
In the age of the smartphone, people ‘read’ more than ever before. But the reading of books, newspapers, and other long-form content has fallen dramatically—with detrimental effects for society.
A look back at the cinema of Stanley Kubrick on the eve of a massive new Criterion retrospective.
Rest in Peace, Jeffrey Archer—politician, novelist, and reviled human being.
A look back at the heyday of cinema’s lurid Nazisploitation subgenre, from ‘Ilsa’ to ‘The Night Porter.’
A wonderful new book by Stephen Wade, America’s greatest living folklorist, chronicles the history of the country’s folk music.
John Updike, Alice Hoffman, and the golden age of “witch lit.”
If you’re not already familiar with the casus belli that ignited the Gaza war, watching the fifth season of ‘Fauda’ will be good for you, but it will also be bad for you.
U2 reconsidered at fifty.
Why is masturbation so shameful?
Name-calling, guilt-by-association, and other unscrupulous methods of argument are polluting our discourse.
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.