Melancholia
Lars von Trier, clowning around in his own inimitable fashion with the End of the World
Descendants, The
Charming, funny, but also morally serious, this is about as good as American movie-making gets these days
Entry from November 30, 2011
Today’s New York Times reports on the evidence given to the Leveson Inquiry into tabloid phone-hacking in Britain by one Paul McMullan, formerly deputy features editor at The News of the World — the Sunday tabloid that Rupert Murdoch closed down when the revelations about phone-hacking came out last summer. Here’s what Mr McMullan had…
We’re All Leninists Now
The brainy hero, though ubiquitous nowadays, is not to be taken seriously — from The American Spectator of November, 2011
Sex, lies and Amanda Knox
Who is the real me? Saint or devil? Wouldn’t you like to know? — From The New Criterion of November, 2011
Entry from November 28, 2011
According to New York Times blogger John Harwood “it is a measure of the altered political environment” since Joe the Plumber elicited from then-candidate Barack Obama in 2008 a purpose to “spread the wealth around” — a comment seen by candidate John McCain, among others, as worryingly “socialist” at the time — “that Democrats now see…
Entry from November 21, 2011
According to Cristina Odone in today’s London Daily Telegraph, “Bling’s out. Now brainpower is a force to be reckoned with. The word ‘intellectual’, once a term of abuse in English, has become a plaudit.” She may be right, but the fact that in the new James Bond film, Skyfall, Judi Dench’s M will be revealed…
Margin Call
Hollywood’s take on the financial crisis of 2008. Guess who gets the blame.
Man Nobody Knew: In Search of My Father, C.I.A. Spymaster William Colby, The
And here comes yet another baby-boomer with a lingering grudge against daddy. Stop the presses!
Entry from November 15, 2011
Having been away for awhile in the land of Silvo Berlusconi, I have missed my chance to ignore the last two GOP debates, including the one in which (so I’m told) Rick Perry scuppered his chances of the nomination by forgetting the third of the three cabinet departments he wanted to abolish. Horrors! That’s him…
Entry from October 31, 2011
Not that anyone cares very much about it, even in Britain, let alone in the United States, but before we are quite through with the subject of the British royal succession — at least until the next egalitarian change is mooted — I would like to say a word against the last one, which has…