1.21 Wealth held by the world’s billionaires has grown from $3.4 trillion in 2009, right after the meltdown, to $8.9 trillion in 2017. (UBS and PwC Billionaires Insights via Bloomberg) The 3.8 billion people who make up the world’s poorest half saw their wealth decline by 11% last year. (Oxfam, which works to alleviate poverty, …
12.13 Margaret Atwood: The systematic effort to drive a rift between access to knowledge and the citizens of a country has a familiar ring to this dystopian novelist. When I wrote The Handmaid’s Tale, I made sure that nothing went into it that had not come from somewhere in history. I used journalists, historians, and …
DECEMBER 2018: “I WILL TAKE THE MANTLE FOR SHUTTING IT DOWN” Read More »
12.6 Tennessee Titans running back Derrick Henry tied the NFL record witha 99 yard touchdown run against the Jacksonville Jaguars, highlighted by three amazing stiff arms of would-be tacklers. 12.6 Geore W. Bush eulogizes his father: In his inaugural address, the 41st President of the United States said this, we cannot hope only to leave …
Ouch! Even though I was instantly thrilled when I saw that Guy Ritchie had made a movie based on the old Man from UNCLE television series, I was also suspicious that the release date had been scheduled in mid-August, which is usually a dumping ground for dead dogs and moldy cheese. My enthusiasm was further …
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 it was the only thing that movie won, it was going to win Best Picture. There was no way — …
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 marooned person who is running out of time and resources. It’s a fine film, very well directed, featuring two …
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 broached the idea of making a film about the venerable singer and drummer’s life. Helm had no interest in exploring the …
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 portrait of a gregarious, cranky, still-workin’ rock icon in winter. The film, shot in 2008 amd 2009, captures the man in …
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, but also of an also of a novel and of screenplays. Ann Kolson had assigned me to write …
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, the bad ones come to an end as well, and thanks to some much appreciated end of the …