My latest, in The American Interest: About ten minutes into Skyfall, the new James Bond film, I was already in love. Not because of the long, opening chase scene, which among its obligatory demolishment of fruit carts and motor vehicles, did feature one brilliantly iconic moment when Bond smartly straightens his cuffs after the narrowest …
Apart from that special day when the temperature was topping 90, a skunky stink was broaching the perimeter of the property, and poison ivy was breaking out all over my body–quite the trifecta!–nothing quite so pleased me this summer as those occasions when I happened upon Carly Rae Jepson singing “Call Me Maybe.” I know …
After a screening of Killer Joe at the Jacob Burns Film Center last week, the eminent director William Friedkin (left, with Janet Maslin) had an interesting comment about the influence of films in the Aurora shootings. Disagreeing with comments that Friedkin’s capable contemporary Peter Bogdanovich made in The Hollywood Reporter (“Violence on the screen has …
Searching for Sugar Man, a documentary by Swedish filmmaker Malik Bendjelloul, is an unbelievably uplifting film. It tells the story of Sixto Rodriquez, a man who lives in Detroit, who was a singer-songwriter of some promise forty years ago. He made two albums that received excellent reviews, but which did no business in the USA. …
“There has always been something uniquely brilliant about America,” said Mitt Romney at the University of Chicago yesterday. “I don’t believe this president understands this fundamental secret of America. And day by day, job-killing regulation by regulation, bureaucrat by bureaucrat, he is crushing the dream and the dreamers. If we continue along this path, our …
Simon Doonan had a wonderful article in Slate last week about his experience designing the installation for the auction of Marilyn Monroe‘s effects for Christie’s in 1999. Doonan says the process of cataloging her belongings took months, but “Right away, I discovered that Marilyn was shockingly and unimaginably slender. She was sort of like Kate …
With the premiere of Iron Lady approaching at the end of December, we are certain to be treated to a heavy dose of Margaret Thatcher‘s greatest hits. None will be more pertinent to the issues of this moment that the point she made in her final Question session as prime minister in 1990, shown in …
Sidney Lumet, the great film director, died on Saturday. He made some of the greatest movies of all time–dramatic, entertaining, thought-provoking, Here are scenes from three of the best: Dog Day Afternoon, The Verdict and the peerless Network.
In my interview with Robert Redford for Parade, the noted environmental activist had some pointed words about the current state of the environment: On how America is dealing with environmental issues. “Sadly, not well. The attempts of the previous administration to do away with all the laws and regulations that were put into place over …
Thanks to good luck and good connections, I got to write not one but two articles about The Conspirator, the new firm opening this week about the trial before a military tribunal of Mary Surratt, one of the alleged conspirators who joined with John Wilkes Booth to kill Abraham Lincoln and attack other high government …