Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood, The
Ya Ya? Oh No! It’s yet another chapter in the continuing soap opera of Strong Southern Women and their heroic dysfunctions.
Lady and the Duke, The (L’anglaise et le duc)
Another autumnal triumph from the world’s greatest living film director.
Entry from June 4, 2002
A Dr. Weevil of http://www.doctorweevil.org writes: I”m 90% sure that you were the one who wrote a piece I read a few years ago arguing that America”s teenagers do not need less violence in their movies, but more, as long as it is “sensible violence”, and specifically recommending The Sands of Iwo Jima. Am I right…
Taking Ourselves Seriously
After September 11th, what we need in government is, apparently, more whimsy.
— From The New Criterion
Entry from May 31, 2002
The joint tour of Africa Paul O’Neill, the Secretary of the Treasury, and the Irish pop star who calls himself Bono may represent the wave of the future. Politicians have been hanging out with the stars for some time now, of course, hoping that a little of their glamour will rub off, but until recently…
Sum of All Fears, The
If the administration really wants to suppress the latest adaptation of a Tom Clancy novel, it can hardly be because of its closeness to reality. Perhaps it is just good taste.
Piano Teacher, The (La Pianiste)
Another weird but weirdly captivating film from the Austrian director, Michael Haneke. Is this guy for real?
Entry from May 29, 2002
Footnotes — To “The Day the Music Died,” my Wall Street Journal article of April 22nd about the decline of classical music on the radio: Lately I have heard a promotional message for WGMS — the commercial classical station in Washington, D.C. mentioned in the article that programs its snippets and gobbets of music to…
Importance of Being Earnest, The
Nobody could be in favor of Victorian hypocrisy anymore. So why do we continue to bash it — and congratulate ourselves for being superior?
Entry from May 24, 2002
There’s something not quite persuasive about what Jack Shafer writes in Slate concerning the sacking of Andrew Sullivan from the New York Times Magazine by the Times’s editor, Howell Raines. Although this “makes it easy to villainize Raines as the autocratic boss who squashed the Weblogger with his mighty thumb,” he writes, we can hardly…