newcritics

I did it again, getting suckered into seeing a Woody Allen dud!
Jerry Lewis had France, and until recently Allen Spain, adoring him. But to their credit Spanish critics did not fall for the crass pandering to their own clichés and stereo-types financed by Catalan tourism budgets: this movie was unanimously panned not just in Spain [...]

Prospekt means Boulevard in Russian. Hence Sunset Prospekt, referring to Gloria Swanson’s near-dying-swan performance and the protective but violent butler/ex-husband plus a self-doubting visiting lover completing the dramatic triangle in Sunset Boulevard. The plot of the movie serves as a perfect metaphor of Volga chandeliers and political vitriol. Anthony Steyning gets interviewed about this [...]

(unedited - subtitle: Solemnity Does Not A Truth Make)
“Modern art is what you can get away with,” Andy Warhol told us, suggesting ‘artistic’ works get approved not just by the few acting out of sometimes perplexing conviction, but by all those who mindlessly tag along. And in this way the limit of the credible often [...]

Don’t get me wrong, A Streetcar Named Desire’s a great rhythmic title and it’s what Tennessee Williams was truly terrific at: seductive titles firing up our imagination before even taking in one of his plays. In fact he makes you wonder if he didn’t hit upon a grand title first, then managed to write a [...]

Got suckered into seeing Atonement. A fetching, brief love scene between Keira Knightly (what’s in a name?) and James McAvoy but otherwise a static British bore of a movie. Another of those Ivory-Merchant-like jobs, written and directed for Laura Ashley, about as thrilling as wallpaper. It’s not easy getting confronted with careful class crap and [...]

Tell him that you saw us… Didi pleads with the boy somewhere in the middle, then gets reiterated towards the end in Waiting for Godot—- easily the most searing line of the play. I first saw Godot some twenty years after it premiered in Paris: I didn’t understand it at all. Later on, I bought [...]

Jean Fanchette, a doctor, a poet and a publisher, personally acquainted with Henry Miller, and an intimate of Anaís Nin and Lawrence Durrell, wrote a short treatise on Humour. He quoted Freud and Jung all over the place as his own specialty was neuro-psychiatry, whatever that entails. He sent me an advance copy of his [...]

Item: I’ve decided against a military career. It’s too hard on poor front page editors. Though when something goes wrong their indignation doesn’t extend to construction workers and others who die on the job. And yet they’ll desperately call the cops of whom dozens get killed each year, should their own house get blown up. [...]

I visited East-Berlin a few years after the wall came down, the moral stench still there, you could feel it, almost touch it, caked into ugly buildings everywhere. In Britain you practically need an act of Parliament to detain deeply suspicious, self-proclaimed enemies of the State beyond a couple of weeks. On the other hand, [...]

-(husband in bed, trying to kiss and fondle unresponsive wife) Are you angry?
-(wife, just back from the village) No, I’m worried about my aunt.
(Sudden off-screen heavy breathing, the said horny husband masturbating instead)
If you think this is not frank, daring movie imagery, I share your feelings. This is pathetic, particularly as an attempt [...]