newcritics

Personally, I think one of the hardest challenges for a critic is high praise; when you love something, it’s hard not to go overboard. It’s easy to write a savage pan - just ask Rex Reed - but much harder, I think, to praise a work without drifting into the tendency to make something [...]

It all started innocently enough over at my place when I put up this charming clip.
One of the two or three regular readers of my blog, who chooses, perhaps out of laziness, to go by the moniker Anonymous, left this comment:
Great 60’s Male Vocalists in No Particular Order:
John Lennon Elvis Presley
Paul Jones Paul McCartney
Roy Orbison [...]

Our Wednesday Night at the Movies open thread on Doctor Dolittle is now open. Come on in. Watch where you step though. Lots of animals here. They can talk, they can cook, they can help sail a ship, but they can lift a shovel or push a broom and clean up [...]

I woke this morning to the sad news of George Carlin’s passing. I’ll leave it to others to chronicle his career and analyze his impact on the world of comedy and our culture. What I’m interested in at the moment is setting the record straight. George Carlin did not mellow as the [...]

Hey, y’all. Welcome to our second open thread on the Oscar nominees for Best Picture of 1967. Tonight’s feature is In The Heat Of The Night starring Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger. The thread officially opens at 10 PM Eastern, but if you’ve arrived a little early, don’t worry yourselves none. [...]

At 78, Tom Wolfe is being immortalized with the reissue of ten of his books in covers “designed to appeal to a new generation.”
But before he is embalmed as a writer of satirical novels like “Bonfire of the Vanities,” someone should remind readers how he helped change the face of American journalism and, in no [...]

Greetings. Relax. You have not been drafted. I’m just welcoming you to the first open thread in our new newcritics series of open threads, Wednesday Night at the Movies. The thread officially opens at 10 PM, Eastern. But if you’re here a little early, don’t be chagrined. Step right [...]

When I told my mom I wanted to hijack the family TV for the premiere of Swingtown, her first two words were: tawdry and cheap.
It wasn’t much of a hijack, anyway; given that the regular TV season has limped to a close, there aren’t many choices on TV, certainly not in new scripted dramas (summer, [...]

New feature will get underway next week.
necritics’ Wednesday Night at the Movies, hosted by Lance Mannion.
Wait a minute! That’s me!
Starting next Wednesday, June 11, and for the four Wednesdays after that I’ll be hosting an open thread right here at newcritics devoted to each one of the five Oscar nominees for Best Picture for [...]

Amost one hundred years later and with just one survivor still living, to say that the Titanic story is irresistible is about as original as remarking that this Cary Grant fellow was really quite attractive. We’ve cycled through books and movies and musicals and miniseries and a hundred years from now they’ll no doubt be [...]

Among the first generation of rock and rollers, the class of 1955–I’m talking about the greatest generation here: Chuck Berry, Elvis, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, etc.–Bo Diddley sometimes seemed like the forgotten man. He wasn’t a wild child like Richard or Jerry Lee, a virtuoso guitarist and writer like Berry, or a looker like [...]