Woody Allen once sardonically described the fans of his films as being divided between those who liked the “early, funny ones” and the later, darker pictures. Much the same might be said of another famous WA: Wes Anderson, who has established himself as one of American cinema’s most significant auteurs despite no longer living in
“I’m very, very proud of making pots,” says Edmund de Waal. “I don’t call myself a conceptual artist.” He is putting the finishing touches to an exhibition of ceramic sculptures at Gagosian’s Beverly Hills gallery. Around the walls are sleek, tiered vitrines filled with porcelain vessels, along with a sequence of smaller gold-painted boxes –
The scene is the imperial palace on the Palatine Hill in Rome in the 2nd century. The philosopher Favorinus is waiting to greet the emperor Hadrian when a grammarian corners him and launches into a lecture on the grammatical qualities of the word penus, meaning “provision.” “Well and good, master, whatever your name is,” Favorinus
The beginning of Crucible, the writer and Oscar-nominated director John Sayles’s eighth novel, opens with a feint. A couple of journalists are taken for a mock-perilous test drive at the presentation of Henry Ford’s latest automobile. On their return, what starts as a humorous Q&A becomes increasingly restrictive as it becomes clear there is to
Airplane hijacking, like the mode of transport itself, became common in the 1960s. A practice largely confined to the United States, it was invariably a means for ordinary criminals to extort ransom money or flee to Cuba. In 1968, the hijacking of an El Al flight by the left-wing Popular Front for the Liberation of
“WAITING FOR GODOT IS A RUBBISH PLAY.” So declared Keith McNally in an Instagram post that caught my eye. “I urge you not to see Waiting for Godot.” Accompanying the statement was an image of the two stars who headlined this fall’s production at Broadway’s Hudson Theater, Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter. The play is
Orson Welles (1915-85) considered the notion of posterity vulgar, but he knew that he’d be loved once he was dead. That death came suddenly, just over 40 years ago, on October 10, 1985. There was a poignancy to the way death took him – sitting at his typewriter after appearing on Merv Griffin’s talk show.
This book shouldn’t work. A memoir written by a 60-year-old actress – who, frankly, has never threatened to become a major movie star – hardly sounds promising. Then there’s the author’s personal baggage. Since 2014, Cheryl Hines has been married to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the raspy-voiced Health and Human Services Secretary who served as
Which is your favorite Jane Austen novel? OK, maybe not a conversation prompt appropriate for every setting, but a reliable one, I find, to break the ice at DC dinner parties where I’m not well acquainted with my fellow guests but spy someone who seems likely to know her work. I also ask it of
Henri Rousseau (1844-1910) was so earnest that it landed him in jail. When a former student asked him to use forged identity papers to open a bank account, Rousseau, who was then in his sixties, was happy to help out his old acquaintance. He seemed unaware that he was doing anything more than a favor,
For people from the former Soviet Union, the holiday season brings with it two certainties: mayonnaise and movies. Mayonnaise, because no winter festivity is complete without the traditional mayo-infused salads with such evocative names as “herring under a fur coat” and “Olivier,” which are eaten for days straight. These calorific concoctions are best accompanied by
It is no overreaction to look at the current state of western culture, through academia and the arts alike, and to feel that Rome has fallen all over again. Whether it’s a crowd chanting in support of terrorists at Coachella, or a horrific political assassination on a university campus, cheered by some, we are witnessing
Jon Fosse, the Norwegian novelist who won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature, has sat center stage in the recent revival of interest in Scandinavian literature. Fosse’s one-time creative-writing student Karl Ove Knausgård became the very definition of a publishing sensation when the first volume of his six-part memoir Min Kamp (“My Struggle”) – in
When the novelist Richard Yates, who was born in February 1926, was interviewed by the magazine Ploughshares in 1972, the conversation turned to the neglected writers of his generation. Yates, a man of remarkable acuity and taste, was typically incisive about the likes of Evan S. Connell, Brian Moore and Edward Lewis Wallant – and,
Humor has become serious business. A nation of anxious primates trapped in a silicon casino of likes, retweets and dopamine-soaked drudgery, America is suffering from what the comedian Norm Macdonald called a “crisis of clapter.” Terrified of saying the wrong thing, needing punchlines to be spoon-fed – what was once the funniest place on Earth
Those who think it’s chic to dismiss Renoir have a rethink coming, courtesy of the absorbing, highly informative exhibit Renoir Drawings, now on view in New York. Not so long ago, the idea of ousting Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) from the canon of western art sparked a movement of sorts. “RENOIR SUCKS AT PAINTING,” proclaimed a protester’s
Why do we raise monuments? Why do we tear them down? These questions hover over MONUMENTS, now on view at Los Angeles’s Museum of Contemporary Art and the Brick. The premise is straightforward enough: gather the remains of America’s shattered sculptural conscience – decommissioned Confederate statues and their graffiti-marred plinths – and display them alongside
Amid the many disappointments and commercial flops the music industry saw this year, perhaps the most egregious was the complete failure of Arcade Fire’s album Pink Elephant. The failure represents not merely the probable end of the band, but also the death of Obama-era rock. Pink Elephant received dismal reviews and didn’t even chart on the Billboard
For all the billions Taylor Swift has made from guiding her career into carefully delineated “eras,” it was Bob Dylan who pioneered this career path. With practically every new album, Dylan traded one persona for another. There’s the folkie hobo of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, the pill-popping beat poet of Blonde on Blonde, the cleaned-up country crooner
Everybody criticizes Wikipedia, but everybody uses it. Having spent my childhood cross-legged on my carpet reading dictionaries and encyclopedias, I found it a revelation and refuge from the get-go. Google could never emotionally compete. While some AI products have become useful knowledge tools, there is still nothing like Wikipedia’s hyperlink paradise, which allows nights to