Moneyball
Nerds continue their reign as Hollywood’s favorite heroes, though in real life they are rarely so clever as we want to believe they are
Hedgehog, The (Le Hérisson)
Class struggle in the French cinema of today
Entry from September 30, 2011
A Letter to the Editor of The Times of London (pay wall) yesterday from one Graham Cox of Hothfield, Kent, complained about the difficulty of understanding Shakespeare’s language today: According to Ben Macintyre, “You can do almost anything to Shakespeare, and he always bounces back” (Sept 27), commenting about performances at the Globe in 37 languages….
Heaven Help Us
My Fifth Summer Film Series looked at the afterlife — From The American Spectator of September, 2011
The Incivility of Civility
The arts of persuasion are superfluous to those whose readers already agree with them — From The New Criterion of September, 2011
Entry from September 28, 2011
“Seizing Populist Mantle, Obama Pushes Jobs Bill” headlines The New York Times. More importantly, he has dropped the pretense that his populism is not “class-warfare” with the announcement that he considers himself “a warrior for the middle class.” But whom is he a warrior against? The rich? The labor market? Or the capitalist system which was…
Entry from September 26, 2011
An interesting article in The New York Times by Danah Boyd and Alice Marwick about bullying makes the valuable point that it is a problem which is likely to remain intractable to adults at least until they learn to see it through the eyes of those most affected by it — and that those most affected…
Entry from September 21, 2011
Dana Milbank of the Washington Post is just one of many on the left who has welcomed what they see as a new assertiveness, not to say aggressiveness, on the part of President Obama, a new willingness to stand and fight instead of making deals on Republican terms, as they imagine he did during the…
Entry from September 19, 2011
No one should be surprised to see from last night’s Emmy awards that the TV and media culture’s love affair with Matthew Weiner’s “Mad Men” continues unabated. If you didn’t know that the show had already won as best drama series — though TV’s own “Mad Men” style hype prefers outstanding drama series — three years…
Guard, The
An imperfect attempt to merge Irish blarney with heroism but worth seeing for the funny dialogue