Maria Full of Grace (Maria, llena eres de gracia)
The Blessed Virgin as drug smuggler? It’s OK, folks, as long as her own drug of choice is the blessed freedom — and wealth — of America
Corporation, The
A pack of left-wingers, familiar and unfamiliar, gets together to explain why the world needs to be protected from jobs and prosperity
America’s Heart and Soul
. . . And now Lewis Schwarzberg raises the question: does being a patriot require you to be a sentimentalist as well?
Not Made Up But Unmade
What’s the difference between knowledge and information? If you can bear to read it, Bob Woodward’s book provides the answer — From The New Criterion of June, 2004
Notebook, The
Romanticism gives way to blatant sentimentalism in Nick Cassavetes’s tribute to lifelong love. . .
Hunting of the President, The
Funny — isn’t it? — that if you believe the movies, American presidents are either moral monsters (Republicans) or the victims of moral monsters (Democrats)
Fahrenheit 9/11
The media’s almost universal treatment of Michael Moore as if he had something serious to say tells us a lot about their own fundamental lack of seriousness
Around the World in 80 Days
The curse of Disney strikes again, ruining another fine filmic property as only the Evil Empire knows how to do
Stepford Wives, The
Like other sorts of horror movies, The Stepford Wives, has now gone postmodern and ironic, for who today is terrified of being forced to be a housewife?
Entry from June 10, 2004
Chips from the workbench. . . Two other thoughts inspired by this week’s remarkable burst of Reaganolatry in the media are (1) how fickle the media are, like the mob in Shakespeare — as someone once said of the Arabs, they are either at your throat or at your feet — and (2) how little…
Entry from June 7, 2004
All the eulogies for Ronald Reagan suggest that, remarkably, it is no longer controversial to speak of him as a great man — though those of us who thought so back in 1980 and before cannot but feel a certain ruefulness about it. This isn’t what most of his eulogists now were saying about him…
Jeux d’Enfants (Love Me If You Dare)
Are even the French beginning to get a little tired of existential angst? See Yann Samuell’s movie and judge for yourself