After my wife died, music and movies we once loved became the very triggers I tried my hardest to avoid. A song, a poem, a scene from a film triggers memories. You’re startled, moved, shaken. And you’re faced with two options: 1) engage with the work and the memories it calls up, or 2) retreat, […]
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Posted inEditor's Pick
All the Young Girls
“Being a new girl [in New York] is a lot to process. Your dopamine receptors are haywire from so much of what feels like the right kind of attention and you preen out of paranoia. Sometimes you tap-dance about books, music, movies, food and politics for complete strangers. For hours. You mind-meld with people you […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3: Tony Scott Likes It Loud, Fast, and Profane
Why remake a bland but beloved thriller? Because movies should at least try to be as dangerous as life.
Posted inEditor's Pick
High-Wire Act
Neil Patrick Harris used to be an underage doctor on TV. Now he’s another Hollywood first: an out gay actor who can host award shows, play a womanizer, walk the red carpet with his boyfriend, and then get cast in movies as a straight dad. Neat trick.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Addicted to Cute
America has been flooded by a tsunami of cute–we’re drowning in puppies and kittens and bunnies and cupcakes–that is transforming marketing (the Geico Gecko), automobiles (the Smart car), and movies (Up). But is the world bound to sour on all this sweetness?
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Pleasures of Imagination
While reality has its special allure, the imaginative techniques of books, plays, movies, and television have their own power. The good thing is that we do not have to choose.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Bill Murray Is Ready To See You Now
He is one of the greatest comic actors alive. A man who’s navigated his career with a peerless instinct for quality and self-respect. The man behind movies—from Caddyshack to Stripes, from Rushmore to Lost in Translation—that seem to have defined a dozen different moments in our cultural life. But he is also a man beholden […]
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Tabloid Takedown
Tabloid Takedown The John Edwards tale began, like so many National Enquirer investigations, with a phone call. When the tip line rang in the paper’s Santa Monica office, reporters often raced to answer it. Rick Egusquiza grabbed it late one afternoon in fall 2007, knowing full well that nine out of 10 calls were worthless, […]
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The Day the Movies Died
The Day the Movies Died “Fear has descended,” says James Schamus, the screenwriter-producer who also heads the profitable indie company Focus Features, “and nobody in Hollywood wants to be the person who green-lit a movie that not only crashes but about which you can’t protect yourself by saying, ‘But at least it was based on […]
Posted inBooks, Member Pick, Nonfiction
‘Quebrado’: The Life and Death of a Young Activist
“If you survive me, tell them this: I never gave up.”
