A Joke Too Far?
Todd Phillips’s unfairly reviled sequel raises interesting questions about the artistic licence auteurs take with well-known properties.
Allan Stratton
· 11 min read
Art and Culture
A collection of 716 posts
Blonde on Blonde
Andrew Dominik’s much-maligned film about the life and death of a screen icon claws through the sentimental myth-making in search of terrible truths.
Charlotte Allen
· 32 min read
Culture of Complaint and the New Deal Murals
Art in public spaces will always be scrutinised for the propriety of its iconography, and it will remain under attack as long as its guardians are willing to pander to the narcissistic impulses of the activists.
Julia Friedman
· 7 min read
Tales of Creation and Adaptation
The journey of two novels from mind to page to silver screen.
Allan Stratton
· 22 min read
Death of a Repentant Iconoclast
Steve Albini and the new problem with music.
Ari Gandsman
· 25 min read
Talking Nick Cave Blues
As the Bad Seeds begin touring their acclaimed new album, ‘Wild God,’ Quillette chatted with Australian academic and “Caveologist” Tanya Dalziell about the artist’s music, ideas, and enduring appeal.
David Cohen
· 13 min read
The Totalitarian Artist: Politics vs Beauty
After Duchamp, the art world came to view the pursuit of beauty as naïve and gravitated toward political art in their search for meaning. But this is a Faustian bargain: you can have meaning, but you do not get to make it for yourself.
Megan Gafford
· 27 min read
Born to Boss
Springsteen and the rock critics.
David Cohen
· 14 min read
Monstrous Things
Dostoevsky, Alice Munro, and the nature of fiction—what does our inability to forgive do to our ability to confess?
Allan Stratton
· 11 min read
A Filmmaker in Spite of Himself
Sacha Guitry disdained cinema as an art form, but with a slew of recent Blu-ray releases, his acidic comedies are finally receiving the attention they deserve.
Jaspreet Singh Boparai
· 22 min read
Seventy Years of Spite and Sophistication
Elvis Costello at three score and ten.
Dave Thompson
· 20 min read
Killing for a Quiet Life
John Krasinski’s dystopian horror trilogy imagines a biblical plague visited on the din of modernity.
Thomas Larson
· 7 min read
America’s Last Great Political Novel
In anticipation of the Democrats’ Convention in Chicago, a look back at Joe Klein’s splendid 1996 novel ‘Primary Colors’—a fascinating snapshot of Democratic Party politics at the end of the 20th century.
Kevin Mims
· 22 min read
Texas Porn Star Massacres
Ti West’s clever and original ‘X’ trilogy is elevated postmodern horror at its finest and its director’s best work to date.
Allan Stratton
· 12 min read
Rereading Philip Roth Today
Roth’s early works portray Jewish characters who are fearful of antisemitism in America as paranoid. He later changed his mind—and so have I.
Peter C. Herman
· 12 min read