Four Lane Highway
Sensitive writers rendered dysfunctional by their dysfunctional families — hm, where have we heard something like that before?
Rule Britannia?
Small wonder that national honor is not understood when personal honor is unvalued — From The New Criterion of May, 2007
End of Story
Cartoon heroes are death not only to the imagination but also to the capacity for story-telling — From The American Spectator of May, 2007
Entry from May 25, 2007
There seems to be a recurring bifurcation in American political life between those who would rather be right and those who would rather be president. The longer the debate over the Iraq war goes on, the more often I keep coming back to Senator Jim Webb’s reply to President Bush’s State of the Union Address…
Golden Door (Nuovomondo)
A never-less-than-watchable film about the immigrant experience in America that diminishes its own considerable power with touches of magic realism
Our Childless Dystopia
The vision of the future in P.D. James’s novel Children of Men could hardly be more different from that of the movies. So guess what the movie version of it looks like — adapted from The New Atlantis of Winter, 2007
Children of Men
[See “Our Childless Dystopia” in The New Atlantis of Winter, 2007, under “Articles”]
Feared, Loved, Ridiculed
The British and American versions of the popular TV comedy series ‘The Office” both debunk the authority of the boss, but in ways that distinguish the two cultures — From The American, Jan/Feb, 2007
I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone (Hei Yan Quan)
A bleak, Third World love story that requires — but does not necessarily repay — a good deal of patience
