The question of whether James Gandolfini was the greatest actor of his era will be settled sometime in the future. Commentators will have to decide whether an 86 hour performance as one character (plus 25 or so stellar supporting performances) required more of an actor, and delivered more from an actor, than did, say, twenty …
Here is my new article in Success magazine, about chef Ryan Umane, and the pop up restaurant phenomenon: The intersection of 79th and Third is close to the bull’s-eye center of Manhattan’s Upper East Side, whose residents are as rich, glamorous and well-fed as those of any piece of terra firma. Standing there on a …
As a toy soldier collector, I was charmed by an article Mark Wallace wrote in the Times about H.G. Wells. His book Little Wars, published in 1913, after Wells “created a set of rules that the `recumbent strategist’ could use in his parlor or garden.” As Wallace tells us, “Wells entertained a number of notable …
My friend Dave Jensen and I had a terrific time last Friday night at the Tarrytown Music Hall where we say a program of songs of The Band, performed by Jimmy Vivino, Byron Issacs, Jim Weider, Randy Ciarlante, Amy Helm, and as a special treat, the immortal Garth Hudson, and as a very special treat, …
Originally published in The Huffington Post on April 9, 2013: Anyone who spends any time watching cable television is bound to develop a fairly depressed view of the American character. Vain housewives, self-absorbed designers, responsibility-denying restauranteurs, narcissistic chefs, fascistic dance teachers, scheming survivors, snide judges–altogether we see a whining, insecure, blame-shifting, easily-insulted mass of humanity …
ROGER EBERT, LEVON HELM, RODRIGUEZ: RETURN OF THE STOIC HERO? Read More »
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 …
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 …
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. …