It’s Sunday. Let’s begin with a parable. Paul de Man was one of the foremost deconstructionists of the 1960s and ’70s, a friend of Jacques Derrida’s and a partner in tearing down the traditional bulwarks of philosophy. De Man died of old age in 1983, only about a year before Foucault succumbed to AIDS-related complications.… Read More Let’s Stop Defending Trump, Please
We may have known, thanks to pundits and pollsters, that Donald Trump would win South Carolina’s Republican primary, and perhaps handily. It doesn’t make the night of and the days immediately after feel any less like a movie. One of the best scenes in Malcolm X, for my money, is the one where Malcolm stands… Read More Unraveling the Trump Phenomenon
(Link to the song is here) Stephen Sondheim will turn 86 in a month and change and while I’m rooting for him to be like a relatively similar 20th Century genius, Oscar Niemeyer, and live past 100, I don’t know that it’s in the cards. His musicals, especially the five from his fabulously productive and… Read More “Losing My Mind,” from Follies
Cursory glances at America during the second half of its century evince a clear and depressing pattern: small moments of sunlight, of genuine progress, are outweighed by massive, costly, counterrevolutionary actions. An idealistic, forward-thinking president was gunned down before being able to do more than draw blueprints. Freedom Summer was followed by the assassinations of… Read More Cynical Expectations of Government
Dir. Ron Howard. Starring Tom Hanks, Ed Harris, Gary Sinise. This started because I wanted to talk about Argo. (Right now, and don’t hold me to this, the plan is to talk about Argo in conjunction with another movie of similar quality and subject matter). Argo is not a bad movie, necessarily, but I’m not sure it holds up… Read More Apollo 13 (1995)
Dir. Frank Lloyd. Starring Diana Wynyard, Frank Lawton, Una O’Connor For folks who lived in the 20th Century, or for people who can remember it, even, we’re at an increasingly strange point in our history. Super Bowl L (“50,” because now it makes sense to ditch the Roman numerals) is nigh. The 88th Academy Awards… Read More Cavalcade (1933)
I’ve never posted here about a stage show before, for the plain and good reason that I don’t see stage shows. They are expensive and I live in America’s backwash. I am not going to be able to write here about acting, dancing, sets, costumes, lighting, etc.; all I have to go on is the… Read More Hamilton
Dir. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Starring Moira Shearer, Anton Walbrook, Marius Goring I have been vexed occasionally in the past year because I wanted to write something about a Powell and Pressburger film but couldn’t think of a good way to do it; as a general rule I don’t like to talk about what… Read More The Red Shoes (1948)
Dir. William Wyler. Starring Fredric March, Teresa Wright, Dana Andrews In 1979, Jimmy Carter gave a speech that, in my mind, ranks with George Washington’s Farewell Address or Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural as one of the most important in the history of the American executive. The “Crisis of Confidence” speech speaks to a statistic that… Read More The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
Dir. J.J. Abrams. Starring Daisy Ridley, Harrison Ford, Adam Driver This is absolutely riddled with spoilers. If you want a review without spoilers, this is not the one you’re looking for. Let’s get this out of the way. The Force Awakens is a good movie. It is not a great movie, but it is significantly… Read More Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens
Seeing Things Secondhand 