newcritics

What to make of John Adams, the highly-promoted mini-series now unwinding through the late 18th century on HBO? The formula of the weekly episode is well-set and sadly telegraphed: Adams unsure and agitated as portrayed by a bewigged Paul Giamatti, some heinous medical procedure filmed in gruesome detail, tension in the long-suffering but strong Adams [...]

Richard Widmark, who died today at 93, made his movie debut in 1947 as a giggling psychotic who pushed a woman in a wheelchair down a flight of stairs in “Kiss of Death.”
Nominated for an Academy Award, he went on to play villains over next decade but, approaching middle age, his maturing prototypical American face [...]

Can it be that after 30 years of having one book following a few paces behind any discussion of Joan Crawford, it is finally time for a revival?
A real revival, as an actress and screen presence, and not as some embalmed artifact of camp?
Could be, could be. Witness this new boxed set, with some movies [...]

We have the terrorists on the run. We’re keeping them on the run. One by one, the terrorists are learning the meaning of American justice.–George W. Bush, State of the Union address, January 28, 2003
We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will. We’ve got to spend time in [...]

Crimes against humanity come large now–wars, holocausts, ethnic cleansing–but sometimes a small horror rises from the past and pierces the heart. Such is the case of a man convicted last week of harvesting and selling body parts, including those of the most civilized man I ever knew.
For several generations of Americans, Alistair Cooke was the [...]

The late humorist Jean Shepherd was part Irish, which may explain why he was such a natural storyteller. During Shepherd’s first trip to Europe he explored Dublin and the surrounding countryside. On St. Patrick’s day in 1967, Shep describes his first impressions of Ireland as he walks the streets of Dublin and drinks stout at [...]

I recently saw two powerful expressions of the grip that alcohol has on the national imagination and soul of the Irish: the film Kings from Tom Collins, and the play The Seafarer, by Conor McPherson.
I met a psychiatrist once who believed that the national Irish affinity for drinking was a product of centuries of oppression/emasculation [...]

New DVD alert: Payday, the 1972 movie that many people consider Rip Torn’s greatest role, is now available in rental stores and through Netflix. Directed by Daryl Duke, Payday is a “lost movie” that was well received by critics at the time but overshadowed in theaters by crowd-pleasers like The Godfather, Deliverance, Cabaret, [...]

Some random notes on Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys on the way to a review of the movie Nancy Drew which came out on DVD this week but which is not going to be the feature for Mannion Family Movie Night because the guys think it looks goofy—I’ve seen it.  They’re right.  It [...]

It’s undoubtedly an oversimplification, but to me there are two fundamental models for rock bands–the first involves a style that is tight, punchy, and carefully arranged, the second involves a more ad hoc approach, a style that wheels and sprawls played by a band coloring outside the lines, piling lick upon lick, squealing uncomfortably to [...]

In an era of fake memoirs, Esquire now gives us a new variation on masturbatory journalism–the fictional diary.
For “a conceivable chronicle of Heath Ledger’s final days,” the editors explain, “writer Lisa Taddeo visited the actor’s neighborhood, talked to the store owners and bartenders who may have seen him during his last week, and read [...]

Alright ladies and gents, are you ready? Have the contestants been suitably humanized so that you care who wins or loses? Has that crazily-haired Christian burrowed his way into your hard little hearts? More importantly, are you ready for Posh Spice guest judging?
Frankly, that last bit, I am not. Posh [...]

Pauline Kael once broke up with a man because he loved West Side Story and she hated it. Twitted about this on a talk show years later, she said unapologetically, “well, taste IS the great divider.” Most of us aren’t quite that drastic, but it’s distressing to have someone hold in high regard what you [...]