newcritics

This week will feature a TV feast of his movies, showing the seriously sexy young stud of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” “The Long Hot Summer,” “The Hustler,” “Hud,” “Sweet Bird of Youth” and others that brought Paul Newman fame in his thirties.
But almost alone among superstars of our time (Clint Eastwood is [...]

It’s been a week of certifiable madness.
Stock market insanity; bank and company failures on an epic scale; the dollar amount of 700 billion said with a straight face.
And now the maddening reality of the loss of Paul Newman, who embodied the sea change of generational sensibility that is rocking Don Draper’s world.
The gang at Sterling [...]

I believe we must treat our political foes with respect in the arena of public opinion. And so I will dedicate this post to the Governor of Alaska. This is Banned Books Week, and it’s always appropriate to look at what drives literary censorship in this country. According to the American Library Association, more than [...]

Paul Newman was one of the Oscar head-scratcher stories; long career, widely respected, clearly popular… yet no Oscar. For years. And years. His first nomination was in 1958 (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, as Brick). His big loss was for The Verdict in 1982. It was a long, long time. So long, that the [...]

It’s the old story of stealing from the rich to give to the poor. Well, kind of.  In the Showtime Series, Dexter, it’s more like savagely murdering the criminal to protect the innocent.
When I first heard the premise, a show that centers around a serial killer as our hero, I was a bit skeptical. Nothing [...]

Welcome to another edition of Wednesday Night at the Movies. Sorry about the mess. I’ve been sick in bed all day with a cold, an how appropriate is that, irony-wise? At any rate, I haven’t had time to clean the apartment and get things ready for company. Let’s just get this [...]

For many years now, curmudgeon-blogger-painter-author James Howard Kunstler has been predicting the downfall of America’s vast consumer society in stark terms, in his non-fiction books (like his 2006 The Long Emergency) and on his iconic blog, Clusterfuck Nation. Read Kunstler for a couple of weeks, and he will piss you off. Read him for [...]

Tonight marks Round 2 of Wednesday Night at the Movies here at Newcritics. This week’s selection: Sweet Smell of Success. Join us here at 9 pm Eastern time for the open thread and let’s talk about this cookie full of arsenic, which for many is the movie about New York City.

At the time the Siren [...]

As I mentioned in our last outing, the life in the edges in Mad Men is often more entertaining than the faux suburban turmoil that makes up the lives of Don and Betty Draper. The world of Sterling Cooper is really coming into its own in season two, even as the cardboard angst of Ossining [...]

Welcome to Wednesday Night at the Movies: New York City of the Mind. Our first open thread is on Alfred Hitchcock’s very great Rear Window.
The Siren spent a number of her early New York years in a rundown apartment on the fuzzy border between Harlem and Morningside Heights. Everything about it was ramshackle, including the [...]

After an adventurous weekend that involved attending a wedding at a beach resort during a tropical storm, the Siren is back in warm, safe, almost-dried-out Brooklyn and ready to announce the Next Big Thing. No, no, not the New York Film Festival–the New York City of the Mind edition of Wednesday Night at the Movies [...]

Is boredom of interest? The affliction troubling the two main characters of AMC’s wildly popular Mad Men seems to be some type of low-grade non-fever, the after effects of a suburban existentialist bomb that exploded far off camera leaving viewers wandering the frozen landscape of Draperville without the pleasure of fire. Don and Betty Draper [...]

Whoever did this site did a wonderful job. You might not appreciate it as much if you’re not a fan of BSG. But the images of Col. Tigh and Laura Roslin from Battlestar Galatica and the images of McCain-Palin are classic: