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We've just closed a fantastic five-part film series hosted by Lance Mannion here at newcritics, some of the best live-blogging we've had since our launch 18 months ago - but it was also interrupted by a hacker-induced breakdown of the site's infrastructure. And that reminded me that we needed to improve or perish, so we did. And now I'm asking for all good newcritics to come aid of our group blog with a small contribution against the costs of keeping the doors open. I won't wear you out, but we occasionally need to fix the plumbing and we've moved to a much better server. And can you imagine life without Project Runway blogging, Mad Men blogging, Oscar blogging, two dozen Rolling Stones posts, assorted cultural festivals, theater reviews, and literary gabfests? I cannot! So please click on the sponsor link and do what you can to keep newcritics flying. Do it for culture! Read more

After an attack by "malware" hackers last week, newcritics looked more like Bonnie & Clyde's bullet-sliced sedan than the functioning cultural colossus that it is has been over the past year and half. Well, the site's back up, folks, and it seems like most of the data is intact. Finger crossed, of course. A huge note of thanks to a (thus far) silent newcritics supporter, Wordpress expert Larry Aronson - a great man indeed who helped us with the scarred and riddled chassis, and got this thing running again (with an assist from Howard Greenstein). Let's all thank Larry. And speaking of a hail of bullets, this thing's running just in time for Lance's cimematic shin-dig tomorrow night. Fingers crossed, of course. Read more

If it had only been the whistle, Earle Hagen would have qualified for major send-off from TV Land. That's his own windy pursed lips at the beginning of The Andy Griffith Show as Andy and Opie head to the fishing hole, and it's his tune as well. But Hagen, who died this week at 88, was a prolific television themesman. He also wrote the opening riffs to The Dick Van Dyke Show, Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer, Gomer Pyle USMC, That Girl, I Spy, Eight Is Enough, and The Mod Squad. Quite the line-up. His Mayberry theme and Dick Van Dyke work open two of the great sitcoms, instantly recognizable. But Hagen also scored Call Me Madam and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, played trombone with the big bands of Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman and Ray Noble, and wrote Harlem Nocturne as a tribute to Duke Ellington. So in Earl's whistling honor, a list of sorts - please add to it. My favorite television theme songs, in no particular order: - The Rockford Files (Mike Post)- Sanford and Son (Quincy Jones)- The Honeymooners (Jackie Gleason)- The Dick Van Dyke Show (Earle Hagen)- The Bob Newhart Show (Patrick Williams)- The Odd Couple (Neal Hefti)- The Andy Griffith Show (Earle Hagen)- The Sopranos (Rob Spragg)- The Office (Jay Ferguson)- Underdog (Ortala le Clerc Germaine)- Dragnet (Miklos Rozsa)- Chico and the Man (Jose Feliciano)- Miami Vice (Jan Hammer)- Fat Albert (Herbie Hancock) Read more

James Wolcott's right: "it's wealth that's required, not scrappy resilience." So we won't be reviewing Shine a Light here, because I haven't yet seen it. In lieu of the requisite Scorcese-mauling, how about a brief Tattoo YouTube for a Friday night, a shambling mess of videos that just percolated up from the series of tubes. Classic 1974 Keith Richards interview. Read more

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 marriage, and lush and gorgeous locations and set design. The medical tic particularly detracts. Yes, we know all about smallpox and the gory separation of limbs from wounded bodies in naval settings - we learned at the literary knee of Stephen Maturin, after all. What made John Adams a great man, always my favorite Founding Father, wasn't his exposure to nasty colonial doctoring. His greatness originated in the rare combination of political philosophy with political tactics, wrapped into a sturdy bulldog temperament. Giamatti's Adams occasionally captures this quality, most memorably during the too-short portrayal of negotiations of the Second Continental Congress. But too often, this Adams looks like a second-tier player, a utility infielder among revolutionaries like Washington, Franklin, and even Jefferson. In reality, Adams was the indispensable political engine; Washington regarded him as the Revolution's most able political actor and for good reason. The latest episode portrays virtually his entire European diplomatic forays (there were two in the 1770s, the series conflates them) as personal failures, massive wastes of time. In fact, as David McCullough's fine biography - upon the which the HBO series is based - conveyed, Adams provided a valuable counterbalance to Franklin's more easy-going diplomacy. While Franklin undoubtedly knew the French, Adams pushed for the fledgling republic's immediate needs; without Adams' urgency, Franklin's success was hardly guaranteed. Read more

William F. Buckley may be twisting painfully in the eternal hellfires right about now, condemned for rejecting civil rights in a cynical wager against his own views of liberty, but his passing does recall a type of conservative who would gladly make a public argument on the relative merits - and not try to merely shout the opposition down with bully talk and cheap sloganeering. His death also removes another one of those classic 60s and 70s television personalities from the talk show set, a singular face and voice and style that those of us who can feel those years mourn the dearth of these days. From his half recline, one arm thrown back over a corner of the chair, a pen clutched in the other, Buckley unpacked slow-moving questions on Firing Line - big slow righty curves compared to today's 'roid-raged speedballers - and he inhabited a public world of curling cigarette smoke in black and white, talking world that included names like Mailer, and Vidal and Capote. Read more

Tonight, some of us will gather at the Paley Center for Media to celebrate the first year of this little cultural experiment we call newcritics. It's going to be a great night, thanks to our host Ellen....er...the fabulous Ms. Peel! You know, on some level this blog feels like a gathering of superheroes in the League of Justice hall - sure some of us use our real names, but the pen names are better. Lance Mannion and Tony Alva - they could be 70s crime shows starring James Garner and Mike Connors. Blue Girl and the Self-Styled Siren are like characters out of a Dashiell Hammett novel. We've also got The Shamus, Viscount LaCarte, Neddie Jingo, Trickster and Gotham Gal - what powers go along with those virtual superhero constumes?I love the names, and I love this community. It began very simply and a year later, it remains so.You know, newcritics is non-influential. It is non-profitable. Indeed, by any standards of the day it is non-successful. And yet a year on, we gather to revel (some in person, some virtually) in the minor media glory - but the sweet karmic profit - of this little blog. Read more

David Johansen swung into Babylon on Friday night at Irving Plaza, the dank old Polish Army Veterans headquarters that has stood at 15th Street and Irving Place since 1914 - or about as long, in living memory anyway, as Johansen's grinning Our Gang mug has looked out over New York audiences with that front stoop familiarity that makes him the living dean of local front men. Johansen turns 58 next week and over the last couple of years has added yet another persona to his long career of poses - the old glam star who put the remnants of the band back together, one more time. The band is, of course, the New York Dolls, a veteran team where the dead members outnumber the living originals by a score of 4-2 and where the term "creative hiatus" stretched to three decades. Now they're back on the circuit - three years after their reunion concert and the almost-immediate death thereafter of bassist Arthur Kane from leukemia, and a year removed from the release of the big comeback record One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This. In their hour-plus shows these days, Johansen and his lone surviving bandmate, the former taxi driver Syl Sylvain, belt out a tight and pleasant variety of old "hits" - if the Dolls can be said to have had them - and new numbers, which are far better than old fans expected them to be. The new band includes veteran session guitarist Steve Conte, bassist Sami Yaffa (formerly of Hanoi Rocks), and drummer Brian Delaney. But in truth, it's a David Johansen gig - and, I suspect, an attempt by an artist of some real repute and accomplishment to capture a measure of the historic role for his band and their work that he undoubtedly believes they deserve. Read more

Every year, I find myself engrossed in the New York Times Magazine's collection of brief epitaphs of Americans, famous and not-so-much, who died during the previous year. But when I pulled the issue from the blue plastic wrapper this morning and thumbed through it, there was a stronger, more personal reaction to one remembrance. Matt Bai's piece captures Steve Gilliard's life beautifully, and leans on his contribution to a national discussion from his perch in East Harlem. As readers know, I was a big Gilliard fan - we were acquaintances and occasional correspondents. Steve was generosity personified, generous with links and advice; when I launched newcritics.com in January, he eagerly signed on here as an occasional contributor, planning to write about his beloved classic rock. Sadly, those few, short posts came during the early part of his final illness - but they struck me as yet another example of how it was impossible to buttonhole Gilliard. He was an angry anti-war progressive with a love for military history, a black guy who dug the Beatles and the Stones, a generous, warm-hearted misanthrope. I think Bai captured the inherent conflicts in Steve's life that made him so interesting:

It was a life both short and loud. What began with a bad cough just after Valentine’s Day became a spiraling infection that ravaged Gilliard’s vulnerable heart and kidneys, and he spent most of his last four months hospitalized. The identities he kept separate for most of his 42 years collided in the days after he died; the few dozen mostly white bloggers who came to Harlem for the funeral saw for the first time the stark urban setting of Gilliard’s childhood, while his parents and relatives groped to understand what kind of work he had been doing at that computer and why scores of people had come so far to see him off. They must have been confused when Gilly’s online pals, sickened by the way some right-wing bloggers were gloating over his death, advised them not to disclose where he was buried, out of fear that someone might deface the site. The grave, like Gilliard himself, is known only to a few.

Please read the whole piece. I was saddened to come upon it this morning over my second cup of coffee, but also thrilled that Steve's prominence in our ongoing discussion was so well-recognized. Read more

I'm sure newcritics bloggers and readers will join me in sending condolences to one of our regulars. Dennis Perrin, whose sister-in-law was tragically murdered Friday in what seems to have been a random act of violence. His post on the tragedy is here, but I was particularly moved by this excerpt:

Whenever tragedies like this happen, the survivors always paint the deceased in bright colors. To be expected and not to be dismissed. But please trust me friends when I tell you that Holly was one of the sweetest, most positive individuals I've ever known. Holly faced some serious adversity in her life, but it never seemed to drag her down. She remained optimistic and upbeat no matter what. I don't know how she swung that, but I'll always be amazed and impressed that she did.

Our best wishes to Dennis and his family. Read more

A lengthy and elegant mess of a film, Todd Haynes' not-so-experimental I'm Not There is nonetheless a beauty of a wreck, a "non-biopic" about Bob Dylan that mainly ignores that facet of Dylan that always hides in plain site when analysts look for meaning in the minstrel poet's own life - his music. Oh, there are plenty of songs in it - originals and those recorded by a variety of artists for the inevitable soundtrack. Some interesting choices too. But the story never connects to the songs, the movie's plot arc of Dylan's life - told in six intertwined parables with six different actors portraying Dylan-like characters - doesn't account for the music, for the brilliant synthesis of American music that makes Dylan the most important singer-songwriter of the last half century. What we get, in amazing photography and some fine performances, is pretty much a glorified and well-shot episode of Behind the Music, the old hackneyed story of every star: the backstory, the self-invention, the rise, the drugs, the women, the fall, the comeback, the discovery of faith...and so on. At the end of it, we're all wowed by the detail and the ambition of it, but we don't know any more about Bob Dylan than we did going in - or about ourselves, for that matter. Read more

Last summer, another occasional blogger on this site gave me a sterling backstage view of Parliament, a thoroughly enjoyable excursion through wood-lined passages and old stone arches, into robing rooms and vaults and the like. So I was thinking of that very tour as The Deal unfolded on my screen recently - a tight, well-acted bit of British political drama in Westminster that follows the rise and rivalry of a pair of prime ministers, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in their evolution from old Labour back-benchers to New Labour Titans. The Deal, written and produced by Peter Morgan, came to America via HBO (I Tivo'd it) and was directed by Stephen Frears, who brought us The Queen in all its Mirrenesque splendour (yes, I'll spell it that way, thank you) and it stars David Morrissey as Brown and Michael Sheen once more as Blair. Indeed, I wondered momentarily if Frears and Sheen filmed it as part of The Queen set-up, the way Peter Jackson did The Lord of the Rings trilogy in one, long shoot. In the same week, I also watched the conclusion of a bit of mildly entertaining fluff from BBC One called The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard, about the unlikely rise of a middle-aged woman from supermarket manager to Number Ten on the back of a purple women's revolution. It aired on PBS' Masterpiece Theater, which has really stretched its modifier in recent years - this was no master work. Just a Parliament-based soap opera with a fairly dour, depressive cast. Nothing like the fabulous House of Cards, for instance, a 1990 series that chronicled the rise of a ruthless British conservative to power in a post-Thatcher Britain. The Andrew Davies script of a Michael Dobbs novel was written for Sir Ian Richardson, who inhabited the Shakespearian villain, Francis Urquhart, to a rapacious turn. They don't do Whitehall like that any more. Read more

I'm still laughing. Or perhaps cackling, chortling or guffawing. Engaged in mirth. And thanks to co-organizers M.A. Peel and Jason Chervokas, newcritics' first-ever blogathon went off spectacularly last week. I've been under the weather, so this note is a bit late - but how great was that blogathon? Great, great posts from some many bloggers here and lots of wonderful links out in greater blogland. M.A. kept the round-up here. And please take another look at these epic posts - an impressive line-up: Read more

When it arrived on NBC three years ago, The Office seemed certan to be a soft and slender knock-off of its British ancestor, the riotous and brilliantly cruel Ricky Gervais combination of mockumentary and sitcom set in the non-careerist backwater of Slough, an exurb of London. The UK Office denizens sliced and diced the various British working castes, and made the social climbing and career grasping of David Brent the comic fulcrum of the series. It was funny just on the writing and the brilliant performances; but it was deadly if you got the inherent British disapproval of social and economic ambition. Bringing it to America presented problems with the premise. We're supposed to adore ambition, and reward it with fame and fortune in our media channels. Steve Carell's Michael Scott, the manager of a dismal regional sales operation for a second-rate paper company, was sketched as ambitous, hard-working, sales-oriented, and wiling to do almost anything to succeed. A hero, in the conventional wisdom of the American national character. We're supposed to love guys like Michael Scott, whose ambition makes our economy grow. But Michael Scott is a hilarious, pitiable character - the middle manager we ridicule with joy every week - and the conventional wisdom with regard to our societal love for ambition is wrong. Read more

There is a moment in Alan Bennett's wonderful novel in miniature, The Uncommon Reader, recommended here by Maud Newton, when the royal literary figure in question realizes the joy of discovering a favorite writer has been hiding in plain sight, awaiting only discovery and a hundred or so quiet evenings. A few years ago, I had that delicious immersion in the work of Richard Russo, a famous modern writer whose work I'd lazily ignored since his first novels of the 1980s. Discovered, the Russo canon became a sprint through the lives of drifters and losers in a string of upstate New York towns, a pleasure-filled reading dash along the broken-down mainstreets of Mohawk and North Bath and Empire Falls. Russo used the economically-depressed real world of upstate to craft his entirely fictional alternate universe, where seemingly minor happenings become major events in the lives of his compelling characters. Some public building was always burning, some love affair was ending, some failed, hard-drinking son was fighting with his failed, alcoholic father. And the mill was always closing down. Yet these small lives had meaning in Russo's literary vocabulary; they amounted to nothing, barely a headline or two in the local weeklies and never registered to the fast set in the world capital down the Hudson. But Russo dressed those lives in detail, in connections, in the creation of small societies of men and women. So too do they still matter in Russo's epic Bridge of Sighs, in many ways his most ambitious novel, which occasionally wanders to New York and Long Island and even Venice - but whose beating heart remains in Thomaston, New York, another failing town where the tannery has poisoned the water and boosted the rate of deadly cancers. Read more

Like Bob Dylan and a few others, Peter Townshend understood the 20th century version of the successful artist, which combined the cultivation of a pop sensibility and the cash it brought with some vein of purity in exploration. As the Who has recycled a long strong of Townshend's pearls - on TV, in advertising, in compilations, on their latest geezer tour, and in the new biopic Amazing Journey: The Story Of The Who which premieres in the U.S. at the Paley Center for Media next week - so to has its master creator continued to explore. Townshend's latest rock opera, The Boy Who Heard Music, took shape as a blog, a dissembled convocation of voices brought together online. Earlier this year, Townshend put the algorithm behind the synth opening for Baba O'Reilly and Won't Get Fooled Again online and let musicians (including me) upload pieces of recorded music and get back synthesized loop patterns. The Who made the cash, and a commercial legacy that keeps in giving, but throughout the band's 20-year dry spell Townshend worked as an artist, and still works into his 60s. Was Townshend's best work was in his 20s? Perhaps, like Dylan's. But he keeps on, like Picasso an aging combination of pop sensibility and persona, continuing to work. Paul McCartney, a comtemporary, wrote his own epitaph, a grand old painter's evocation of his death. Townshend still flays the guitar and his Internet explorations - at present, silent - have given his work a new flavor, and a direct channel to his audience. But Townshend's finest work was his most complete as an artist - and not particularly successful commercially, but it endures. Quadrophenia is the one Who record I still return to year after year; a complete story with recurrent themes, and a fantastic composition and performance. Quadrophenia grows and I grow with it. Into my 40s and Townshend's 60s, it still feels relentless and lasting. Read more

In October, 1960 in New York, at the annual Al Smith dinner at the Waldorf - the traditional gathering of politicos and Catholics - Senators Richard Nixon and John Kennedy wore formal white ties and made jokes, as is the custom. Here's a taste of JFK's monologue:

Cardinal Spellman is the only man so widely respected in American politics that he could bring together amicably, at the same banquet table, for the first time in this campaign, two political leaders who are increasingly apprehensive about the November election [laughter] who have long eyed each other suspiciously, and who have disagreed so strongly, both publicly and privately, Vice President Nixon and Governor Rockefeller [laughter].

Mr. Nixon, like the rest of us, has had his troubles in this campaign. At one point even the Wall Street Journal was criticizing his tactics. That is like the Observatore Romano criticizing the Pope. [Laughter.] But I think the worst news for the Republicans this week was that Casey Stengel has been fired. [Laughter.] It must show that perhaps experience does not count. [Laughter and applause.] On this matter of experience, I had announced earlier this year that if successful I would not consider campaign contributions as a substitute for experience in appointing ambassadors. Ever since I made that statement I have not received one single cent from my father. [Laughter and applause.]

Kennedy was the lighter side of 1960 politics, the playboy Democrat - but Mad Men's creators chose the dour Republican who, though of the same WWII generation, clearly represented the dark side, and not just in retrospect. Nixon is the one for Sterling Cooper and it's a choice that informs the whole series, which concludes its first run tonight. History records 1960 as a bright, forward-looking year, a time of optimism and possibility. Despite the Soviet fears and our own internal struggles over race, the dawn of the 60s was a time of sleek design, bright colors, consumer culture. How ironic that an iconic show about Madison Avenue - the ground zero of this bright consumerism - is so dreary and dark and filled with death and failure and loathing. Why did they choose the darkness - which could have, in surer hands, been more interesting - and why did they create a 1960 ad agency with no bright ideas, populated by hacks and frat boy towel-snappers? Tonight, Mad Men hits Thanksgiving, post-election, post office orgy, post-heart attack, post-suicide, post cowardly sniffling by the unmanly Don Draper. While those big balloons floating down Central Park West change the mood? Back soon to find out. And here we go... As Jim Wolcott notes: "Since the series has been renewed for a second season, tonight's homemade popcorn party will be able to unwind without any valedictory notes muting the festivities, and the program is being presented without any commercial interruptions so that the actors on screen can squeeze in an extra smoke or two." Will there be a Harvest of Shame reference? Edward R. Murrow's famed TV documentary on working conditions of migrant workers aired Thanksgiving weekend, 1960. I remember my grandfather bringing out those carousel slide holders on Thanksgiving and showing al the grandkids pics from his travels. I still have some stored away. Geez, Glen lost a tooth. The shunning of flesh and blood, Don passes his curse of ambition to Peggy (via Ayn Rand). Read more

Ten minutes into last night's House, one of the famed doctor's underlings gave their gravely ill patient a couple of pills and said: "Take these, you'll be better within an hour." I turned to my daughter, a major House junkie. "He's a dead man," I said, and so he was, but not for another 48 minutes, a time punctuated by the kind of medical madness that would cause the closure of House's hospital even in less-regulated states than New Jersey. House is yet another occasionally brilliant show done in by its premise - by which to say, its formula. In year three, it's clearly run its course and not even Hugh Laurie's convincing portrayal of an American can save it. Read more

Last week, I just missed Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad up at Columbia, but I did dodge the motorcades and frozen zones around the United Nations, and undergo the requisite pat-down at the Clinton Global Initiative. What a wild week in New York, and it reminded by a little bit of 1960, the year of our blogging discontent. A year after Cary Grant's Roger O. Thornhill dodged assassins under the gaze of Hitchcock at the UN in the clearest stylistic model for Mad Men, Cuba's Fidel Castro hit the streets of New York and the right-wingers in the press went wild. Castro spoke to the UN the last week of September, 1960 - by my estimation a month or so after the current episodes are taking place (I'm going by the comparison of the Nixon and Kennedy ads post-convention). Castro went a bit north of Morningside Heights, staying in Harlem at the Theresa Hotel, where he held court for notables from Malcolm X to Langston Hughes. Ahmadinejad didn't speak in Harlem, but he did mix things up at Columbia, bringing the tabloid fangs down on the University, much as they descended on the entire Harlem community in 1960. I wonder if the writers will work in a Castro/New York reference in one of the final three episodes of this first run like they've felt compelled to cram in every 1960 pop signpost - "hey, how about that Psycho, huh?" Tonight, Sterling Cooper deals with the near-fatal heart attack of a partner and tries to hold on to its clients. The agency feels like it's in a spiral right out of Vertigo, and man, that's not a great vibe for the canyons of midtown, believe me. Back shortly - we commence at 10, and tonight I'll keep my thoughts strictly in the comments section. Just easier that way. Read more

Here's the lead: Bruce Springsteen's deep and nourishing Magic, released today, isn't on a par with Born to Run or Darkness on the Edge of Town. But it's firmly on the next level down, alongside The Wild, the Innocent & the E-Street Shuffle, Nebraska, The River and Tunnel of Love. And that's saying something for a rock star of 58 years in age who has nibbled around the edges of pop music for the last two decades without fully wading in. Magic is a self-referential work of mature genius, a work of its time, and a record built on the foundations of others, from Brian Wilson and Roy Orbison to the Byrds and Dylan and Phil Spector. Unlike The Shamus, whose terrific review appears below, I've spent several weeks with Magic and have listened to its best tunes dozens of times - it's frankly brilliant, and worthy of the best in the Springsteen canon. It's the work of an older man, the rare record recorded by a star in late middle age who drops the teen angst and captures both those long decades and the deep pop groove, filled with happy hooks and fills. Further, there's a darkness there that I admire deeply - a writing in the shadows that rekindles what I first loved about Bruce Springsteen's writing, when I was a skinny teen and he was a skinny 25-year-old. Read more

Earlier today on another blog far, far away Blue Girl suggested that the last episode of Man Men (the best in my opinion) reminded her of far away New York and made her wish she was here. I didn't see it - even the famed "New Amsterdam" episode (the only other one I actively enjoyed, outside of this blogging crowd) didn't quite get there in terms of its Gothamicity. The whole thing seems confined to studio sets, and a bit too clean for an active represenation. Then too, the accents don't work because they're basically not there. Not is the stance, the attitude, the posture. Any episode of, say, Sesame Street seems much more New Yawkish than Mad Men. Bugs Bunny too. And then there are all the TV shows gone before that were set in New York and its environs: The Odd Couple, the Dick Van Dyke Show, All in the Family (and Maude and The Jeffersons), Car 54, Seinfeld, The Cosby Show, I Love Lucy and the Honeymooners. Some filmed in studios here, most filmed in studios there - meaning California. And yet evocative. Mad Men is too laconic for New York, too Steve McQueen and not enough Archie Bunker - who, after all, sat first in his chair in Queens just a decade later. Ironic, of course, that the rabid anti-Semitism portrayed in 1960 New York shuts its place-in-time cultural consciousness off from the dominant Jewish-inflected humor of the city. It's a loss. Read more

Saw a headline right out of The Onion today: Rock Stars More Likely to Die Early. Yes, it was an actual study conducted by academics in England, the blockbuster follow-up to their famed Drunks More Likely to Suffer From Liver Maladies work. No kidding around, this was a real study:

A study of more than 1,000 mainly British and North American artists, spanning the era from Elvis Presley to rapper Eminem, found they were two to three times more likely to suffer a premature death than the general population. Between 1956 and 2005 there were 100 deaths among the 1,064 musicians examined by researchers at the Centre for Public Health at Liverpool John Moores University.

Turns out that rock stars are "at a disproportionate risk of alcohol- and drug-related deaths." Color me gob-smacked. But it was a good excuse to start a list. The ten best rockers to depart before their times. No oldies: Carl Perkins, Muddy Waters, Johnny Cash, even Jerry Garcia (53), Roy Orbison (52), George Harrison (58), Johnny Ramone (56), and John Entwhistle (whose coke-inspired demise came at 58) and the like all had their time. So, sub-50, taken from us. In their prime. In order. Here goes: 1. John Lennon2. Elvis Presley3. Otis Redding4. Johnny Thunders5. Duane Allman6. Keith Moon7. Buddy Holly8. Kurt Cobain9. Jimi Hendrix10. Gram Parsons Elvis is the only guy (and they're all guys though Nico almost made it) over 40. He still had so much to give. Who's on your list in the little outfit I call, The Great Hereafter? Read more

According to the previews, tonight's episode brings the Nixon account to the fore at Sterling Cooper - the account being the 1960 presidential campaign of Richard Milhous Nixon, the bright young Vice-President from California. Widely viewed as the first mass media election in U.S. history, the Kennedy-Nixon race was fought on television and on a national scale, filled with advertising and slogans and images. Nixon's crew had some Mad Men in it, most notably the driven advance man H.R. Haldeman, a World War II vet and Californian who worked for J. Walter Thompson for 20 years. He failed Dick Nixon in 1960 but was widely credited for pushing Nixon over the top eight years later - and he later did 18 months in Federal prison for his role in Watergate. A model for our man Don Draper? Perhaps, but Haldeman had moregoing for him than the dour and strange Draper. He had ambition, he had plans, he had moxie - even if he was a famed Republican felon in the end. The stiffs in Mad Men have none of it. They're old men before their time, slumping through their days on booze and pathetic jokes. Read more

Most of the characters in Claire Messud's lush and vicious fourth novel, The Emporer's Children, are funny, bright, entitled New Yorkers - and they're all fairly horrible human beings. You recognize them, you walk along with them, but you don't sympathize. And why would you? The "emporer" of the title is lordly literary genius Murray Thwaite, an overblown writer and man of both letters and talking head territory - a haughty waste of a man surviving on his reputation and cruel to boot. He seduces his 30-year-old daughter's best friend, ignores his loyal wife, looks down his nose at his upstate relations, and enables his daughter's failures. Yet, the world of Messud's tale revolves around Murray's dwindling light - until the karmic bill comes due in September, 2001. I appreciated that Messud didn't avoid stereotypes; she plumbed their depths and found some wellspring water instead. And she captured the climbing, selling, soul-numbing existence that's necessary - absent evident and productive brilliance - in New York's literary business. In the end, these truly horrible people finally confront an emotional crisis and the idea that that an outside world can indeed puncture the ambition of their reading circles. The question at the end is simply "why?" Were these self-absorbed people worth plumbing - or was their shallow narcissism the very point. Messud's book came out last year, but I read it last week and it seemed a good marker against some of my other summer reading, fictional side of the coverlet. It left me unsettled and unsatisfied; I admire the skill in crafting the relationships and the storyboard, but wondered about the flimsy underlying message - did I somehow miss it? In terms of self-absorbed New Yorkers - and women who write and aspire - I much preferred Laura Jacobs' 2003 novel, Women About Town, which I read earlier this summer. Why? I liked those characters, especially the loony lampshade designer with the blue-blooded pedigree. They were more of a gas to hang out with. (So call me shallow. Go ahead. I dare you.) Read more

"With Summer TV this Good, Who Needs Fall?" asks the TV Addict. And I'd answer: me. I'm looking forward to the new season, and hoping against hope that House will be less formulaic. I think the summer season is vastly overrated - I'm don't care for John from Cincy, except to see old Deadwood actors gainfully employed. Damages? Army Wives? The Closer? Nah, parting gifts for all, Johnny Olson. But Mad Men...well, it's held our interest. And I do mean "our." I'd have checked out halfway into week two without the crowd on this lovely blog. (I'll admit it here: The Bronx is Burning is better than I originally gave it credit for). But I must admit, lately I've been thinking a lot about George Blandings. Now, Mr. Blandings was first and foremost an advertising executive, before he tried to be a general contractor on a fixer-upper in Connecticut - a good 60 years before Flip this House hit cable. I've also thought a lot about Mrs. Blandings. that would be Myrna Loy, but it's for a whole other reason, and really a bit prurient for this post, I'd think. Myrna Loy. Well. But back to Cary Grant's George Blandings. A dullard really, with good comic timing - and not much of an ad man besides. Sort of like Don Draper - except for the comic timing. Don's a dullard, a lousy ad man, and he's no fun at parties. Can't do the pratfall. No self-deprecation in his bag of tricks. No, Blandings was the better character. And his slogans were better than Draper's:

Compare the price - Compare the slice. Take our advice: "Buy Wham!" If you'd buy better ham, you'd better buy Wham! This little piggy went to market,as meek and as mild as a lamb.He smiled in his tracks when they slipped him the axe -He knew he'd turn out to be Wham!

Beats the hell out of the Bethlehem Steel work, that's certain. Amazingly, Cary Grant played not one but two crucial ad men on the screen: Blandings and Roger O. Thornhill from North by Northwest. Both careers were merely foils, silly little pursuits that set up situations the directors could exploit - comedic or dramatic, or both. Read more

Once upon a time in the west - and in gritty noir backlots - rough and ready men carried guns, drank hard liquor, and made violence a part of their daily lot. That's the way they were portrayed, at least. And the idea of "real men" inhabiting a cushy mid-town Manhattan office building was a ludicrous as, say, Cary Grant's Roger Thornhill being a secret agent in North by Northwest. See, Hitchcock got the joke. But as David Hinckley points out in today's Daily News, our idea of tough guys has changed.

"Mad Men" also reflects something else that's been brewing on TV for quite a while, however: a long-term shift in the professions to which we look for swagger. Once upon a time, American swagger was largely defined by physical guys like cowboys, G-men, explorers and soldiers. Think John Wayne. Sure, there's always been swagger in other fields of endeavor. While Wild Bill Hickok was galloping through the West, robber barons like Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan were accumulating insane levels of wealth simply because there was no one to stop them. But in general, swagger once had a blue-collar aura, reflected in the Westerns that dominated early television.

Live-blogging of the frustrating and fascinating Mad Men continues tonight. [Note: our hosts at Yahoo appear to be on the slow side tonight, so bear with us and dump that crappy YHOO stock.] Live-blogging has moved here. Read more

Tonight is the second episode of what has already become something of a touchstone series this summer, AMC's Mad Men. To be sure, what has drawn viewers and thoughtful critics - like our own M.A. Peel - is the pure style of the thing. Matthew Weiner's vision comes as an onslaught of slim-cut suits, deep colors, Barcelona chairs, panelled walls and office chic. It's just a thing of beauty to look at. And really, isn't there just as rich a vein in our television and film consciousness about exactly this group of people - the same depth of cultural experience that both informed and propelled The Sopranos? Not mobsters, of course, but the Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956), North by Northwest (1959), The Apartment (1960), and Bewitched (1964). We knew Tony Soprano so well because we knew Michael Corleone and Jimmy Conway; we know Don Draper because we knew Roger O. Thornhill and Darren Stevens. Read more

When I got there, the Bronx had already burned. In the mid-80s, I was a reporter for The Riverdale Press covering Bronx politics. The borough was still reeling from the abandonment of the previous decade, and a covey of politicians had its hands out for Federal rebuilding dollars. The Bronx was open for business, but a lot of the money went into the pockets of prominent Democrats. A young Federal prosecutor named Rudolph Giuliani was making his name bringing cases against virtually the entire political leadership of the borough, working in tandem with a wily old District Attorney named Mario Merola - a Democrat who was prosecuting his fellow clubhouse members. It was great time to learn the reporter's craft, and as the scandals hit our front page, George Steinbrenner brought Billy Martin back for the third of four tours as manager of the Yankees. He broke his arm that September in a fight with pitcher Ed Whitson. I spent a lot time around the Bronx County Courthouse and the Stadium neighborhood, covered regional planning issues and listening to community leaders who vowed to bring the borough back. In those days, rubble-strewn lots and burned-out building shells were common; one misguided program put decals of fake curtained windows - complete with shades and flower puts - up over the grim, empty window frames. It was also the time when Steinbrenner first started talking about moving the team to New Jersey or elsewhere. Strangely, the Bronx plays the smallest of supporting roles in The Bronx Is Burning: 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City by Jonathan Mahler - about what the character of Mickey Rivers gets in the highly-promoted ESPN mini-series, which kicked off this week with a disastrous bit of television programming: a 70-minute delay while the network waited for Vlad Guererro to win the increasingly lame homerun hitting contest at the All Star festivities. The Bronx may be burning, but the borough itself is forgotten. And if the first installment is indicative, the whole venture may well lack the real heat of what should be a compelling take. One thing's for sure: without John Turturro's stunning potrayal of the mercurial Martin, the series might have the vibe of a sloppy History Channel re-enactment. Read more

Ladies and gentlemen, Johnny Thunders & the Heartbreakers. Just because it's great, because it's Wednesday, because Johnny's still dead, because Max's is a faint memory, and because there's a lightning storm sweeping across Manhattan. And it's not the Grateful Dead. Comment away. Read more

Six months ago, it was cold. So I downloaded Wordpress and started this blog. And stayed inside. Time well-spent, I'd say - though it was just the smallest spark that provided a hint of hint of fuel for all the cultural combustion that has come this way since. I just keep the lights on here most of the time: the bloggers and commenters make this place live. Yes, newcritics is six months old now, a blogging toddler learning to walk. Are you pleased with it? I am, certainly. The range of posts has been stunning. Sure, we trend a bit toward boomer tastes in music, we look backward for film greatness in lieu of the local multiplex, and we obsess over television shows that never saw the light of the 1980s. We write about obscure cartoonists, off-Broadway minutiae, and bands that never existed. Yet, somehow it works - or does it? I'm asking seriously: How can we make this better? Should we continue? Have you learned anything? Met anyone? Read a book you otherwise wouldn't have read, downloaded a song you otherwise would have ignored, added a strange new title to your DVD list? Does anyone notice the changing art in the header? In six months, we've had 210 posts from 35 authors, inspiring more than 1,700 (real) comments. Those are the stats that matter. I've had the please of meeting many of the authors in person; others are virtual relationships. Yeah, it's been a rich six months. So what're you looking for, kid? Read more

So lush is the detail in Michael Chabon's brilliant The Yiddish Policemen's Union, so developed the back-story, the alternative history, that it's the rare short novel that feels long - like you want to live in its dark and distinct precincts a little longer. Chabon has described the book as an ode to Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and Ross Macdonald, and it continues his long fascination with detectives who descend from the lineage of Sherlock Holmes. A writer of short stories, essays and anthologies, Chabon has produced one other novel of massive creation - the wonderful The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, published in 2000. Like The Yiddish Policemen's Union, it created a world of characters and places, and a code - or index - to what was happening: an incredibly deep encyclopedia of small chapters, clippings of the "past," timelines, and people. His latest work tops that achievement; it feels like Chabon wrote many thousands of pages of extra material and then synthesized it all to a tight crime drama featuring a small circle of dark and damaged characters - like he wrote big, boiled some water, and published the infusion. The tea drinks well. Of course, The Yiddish Policemen's Union revolves around an imagination-grabbing premise. A swath of Alaska has been set aside as the Jewish homeland, with its capital in the former frontier town of Sitka. The book is filled with Yiddish, and you'll acquire more of a working knowledge of that evocative tongue by reading it. And at the center is a detective. A great failed, jaded, sad and sickly shadow of a Jewish dick. Read more

Tomorrow, I shall take my breakfast under the covers - a twice-yearly occurrence around case Watson (birthday, too!) - and I shall enjoy the mild but heartfelt tribute to my fatherhood. Later, I'll give my old man a card and a gift, and char a few burgers in his honor. And I will feel well-satisfied at having appeased the greeting card holiday gods for another year. But the arrival of the joyous Father's Day season (rough on the orphans or the abandoned amongst us, I must agree) also got me thinking about how the role of "father" is laid out in the cultural scripture of the land. By which I mean television, of course. So to the wordpress I dashed to throw down a few words: first off, it's clear that our common idea of how fathers should behave begins with Ward Cleaver and his clan. Secondly, single fathers actively raising the children would seem to greatly outnumber those found in the general population on a percentage basis by a wide margin; indeed, it appears to be the inverse of single moms - of which there are many in the real world, but relatively few in the Shirley Patridge mode. The single fathers list is huge: Steve Douglas (Fred MacMurray), Jed Clampett (Buddy Ebsen), Ben Cartwright (Lorne Greene), Fred G. Sanford (Redd Foxx) - not to mention the Bachelor Father (John Forsythe) and Eddie's Father (Bill Bixby). The small town of Mayberry supported two single fathers during its decade-long run on the backlot: Andy Taylor (Andy Griffith) and Sam Jones (Ken Berry). Single dads have held a wide variety of jobs - the professor to Juliet Mills' dishy Nanny (Richard Long), a gun-flipping Rifleman (Chuck Connors), a Florida park ranger who befriends a ridiculously smart dolphin named Flipper (Brian Kelly), and a judge (Tony Randall). Read more

The earnest thump-thump-thump of the bass drum on Dad's Gonna Kill Me - the headline-grabbing anti-war single from Richard Thompson's new Sweet Warrior album - creates a rhythm that doesn't exactly match that of Baghdad, the song's setting and the "'Dad" of its title. The backing rhythm there, of course, is not so regular as deadly, and the thumping, discordant IEDs are clearly on Thompson's mind these days. The record crashes with songs of warfare, some of the battlefield variety, but more of the type that has typified the work of the prolific singer-songwriter-guitarist for four decades - roadside bombs of the romantic variety being Thompson's stock-in-trade since the late 60s. Sweet Warrior is (critical cliche alert!) a smashing return to form for the brilliant Mr. Thompson, if any be needed. The record is filled with hooks and sweet melodies, arcane rhyme and story-telling, rolling staccato guitar leads and buttery chord changes. It suffers only from the occasional over-swinging by the spry 58-year-old (a reaction to the old charge of non-singing from his early post-Fairport days) and the huge expecations of a small but intensely loyal fan-base that expects immense and drawn-out guitar soloes and snarling lyrical charm at every turn. Thompsons erect the warrior theme and dances carefully through its twists and turns. With 3,500 odd western soldiers dead over the last four years and the echoes of "Islamofacism" lumping together all those who turn toward Mecca (and Thompson has been one of these) in the pall of world violence, concocting a rock record that blends wit with tragedy, war-time violence with romantic disunion, for an audience of Anglo-Americans (and the artist lives half-time in both lands) is, to say the least, a delicate mission. It succeeds. But ultimately, Sweet Warrior must also pass the hum test - and for this critic, it lands a strong grade on that particular exam. Read more

One of the great voices of the shared Internet is gone: blogger Steve Gilliard (who blogged here at newcritics before his illness) died today at age 41. I didn't know Steve very well personally, but he was a brother in the virtual sense. His voice was entirely his - a true iconoclast with a strong, unyielding point of view. We met a couple of times. Mainly we corresponded in email, in comments, on his blog, on my blog. Just before his illness, he agreed to join our little cultural blogging group here. I treasure the fact that his name appears there as an author. He wrote about The Magnificent Seven and its place in cold war culture, and Revolver - to Steve, the Beatles' true breakthrough record. There is another important aspect to Steve - one that I think may be a true legacy beyond his pioneering political blogging. Gilliard brought real perspective to race relations in New York and beyond. An African-American who was unafraid to talk about race, Steve willingly jumped into the deep end on many issues that frankly scared a lot of the mainly-white, predominantly middle-class, well-educated lefty blogosphere. His work during the transit strike, for instance, brought insight that none of New York's newspapers even came close to. And to me, he wasn't predictable. He did relationship advice. He did military history. He did classic rock. He did food. He did technology. He was a big man in every sense. Steve didn't suffer fools, but he was an open source kind of guy - bring it, he'd say, and back it up. His partner in the Newsblog, Jen, told us that Steve came to know just how much his voice was missed during his long, terrible illness. I'm glad of that. But the feed's been empty for too damned long now. And it's going to stay that way. UPDATE: Thanks to Jon Swift, a compendium of links and tributes - some great (and sad) reading: American Street, Firedoglake, Mad Kane's Political Madness (featuring a short interview with Steve), Sisyphus Shrugged, AlterNet.org, Daily Kos, skippy the bush kangaroo, State of the Day, The Carpetbagger Report, TalkLeft, August J. Pollak, Jesus' General, All Spin Zone, the talking dog, The Impolitic, Happy Furry Puppy Story, The Democratic Daily, culturekitchen, Comments From Left Field, Brilliant at Breakfast, Digby, Orcinus, Avedon Carol's The Sideshow, Meteor Blades, Making Light, Off the Kuff. Read more

A pirate walked up to me in the mall this holiday weekend as I was loitering outside of Anthropologie, waiting with only moderatre patience for The Artist. "Hey big man, I've got Pirates and Shrek 3 on DVD. Twenty bucks." I shooed him away with a suave "belay me buck-o, and be about yer business." But I also found it strange to be offered a pirated Pirates of the Caribbean - for which I'd laid out considerable scratch at the local cineplex two nights previous. Then again, perhaps twenty bucks was a bargain. Why shouldn't the Motion Picture Association endorse pirating a movie that glamorizes rapine plunder? Pirates3 gets a sad thumbs down from this reviewer: it's too long, too unemotional, and too driven by computer graphics and a thick and clumsy plot (if it can be called that at all) that had me trying to fathom the many competing pirate curses that seemed to spout up like stranded whales as excuses for some battle or swordfight. A huge Hollywood mess, in other words - one that will rake in tens of millions of dollars (a success!) and satisfy audiences' desire for a big, sweeping epic. Problem is, this thing screams "big sweeping epic!" without actually providing the sweep. Or for that matter, a single convincing character...save one. And I'm not talking about Keira Knightley, though her presence - all angular profile and Oxbridge enunciation - is one of the few reasons to sit through the flick. Read more

There is a scene in The Plague, the relentessly grim post-war novel by existential icon Albert Camus, that still shocks: the hopeless, tortured death struggle of a beloved child - made worse by his father's plea to the protagonist Dr. Rieux to "save my boy." It's a scene (and I say "scene" because I find Camus to be deliberately cinematic) that does not dissolve; it remains with anyone who reads it. The wrestling match with mortality drew me back to Camus recently, perhaps by my own creeping middle age and perhaps by the events of recent years. The war is endless, yet soldiers perservere. They serve and die. Why? This question is at the center of The Plague, where the death count is not man-made at all, but just inherent to the imperfection of life. The standard view of Camus always comes back to this question: if we're all fated to die anyway, what's the purpose, what's the reason? But that's too simple, really. It neglects all the flavors of experience in The Plague, which features a wide and interesting group of characters, all trapped in plague-ridden Oran for months. The North African city (as yet unblemished by the violent Arab revolt and French reprisals of a few years later) turns inward upon itself as the bacillus spreads and kills. Camus makes wonderful use of architecture and weather, using the layout of the city to create a vivid portrait of a closed port with armed guards on the city walls. Further, The Plague is so clearly a post-war work - indeed, it is often at odds with purity of philosophy in Camus's Myth of Sisyphus essay, which was published in 1942. The long war and its mass murder revelations made the "purely absurd" view of human existence seem frivolous; this is my view, Camus never said it. But there is no view of the trial of Oran's disease-stricken citizens that suggests pure absuridity, pure existentialism. Indeed, human love is a strong motivator and some characters chart a noble path of sacrifice. Even religion is not entirely mocked; the pompous priest still achieves some respect. Read more

It's not that Holland Cotter is routinely deranged; the Times art critics wrote a wonderful piece debunking the common myths surrounding Islamic art a while back, and maintains a healthy distrust of the invesstment-fueled "art market" as a driver of real taste and value. No, Cotter is solid. He did, however, become conspicuously unhinged and scatter his critical parts like some culturally-disjointed Mr. Potato Head all over the Times' art section last Friday. Holland Cotter, it seems, reveres not the accomplishments of Edward Hopper. Ostensibly, Cotter was criticizing a retrospective at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, but his real target was Hopper's reputation as a master of American art. Cotter attempts to tear Hopper down, remove that master tag, and relegate him to the dreaded status of "clever."

To some of us, Hopper was an illustrator from first to last, a just-O.K. brush technician, limited in his themes. His main gift was for narrative paintings with graphic punch and quasi-Modernist additives: Manet touches, de Chirico props. And like any shrewd storyteller, he knew the value of suspense. Reveal just so much of a plot — no more. Mystery keeps an audience hanging on.

Get the hint? Hopper was "shrewd" and did a lot with a little talent, by using cinematic suspense; he borrowed the flourishes of others like some velvet-Elvis-painting crafts show salesman moving twenty-dollar units out of the back of his minivan at the flea market. Sniff-sniff, not real art at all. Read more

You don't have to ask Kirk Douglas for his favorite film role - it's already on his lips. "Van Gogh." He's referring to Lust for Life, the 1956 MGM movie about the life of the Dutch painter, based on the 1934 novel by Irving Stone, directed by Vincente Minnelli and George Cukor, and produced by John Houseman. "Yes, Van Gogh. For the first time in my acting career, the part took me over. He took over. You know, I slept in the room where he committed suicide." I listened in something approaching open-mouthed awe to Douglas during his talk (an interview with Mort Zuckerman) at the 10th annual Milken Global Conference in Beverly Hills this week. I was there to cover the proceedings for onPhilanthropy, but for a few moments I allowed myself to play the fan, chatting briefly with him afterwards as he signed a book for my father. I couldn't help it. Douglas is a living link - among the last - to a generation of actors, of real stars, of men and women who created the film industry. The co-stars alone dazzle and tingle the nerves: Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Mitchum, Rosalind Russell, Michael Redgrave, Raymond Massey, Burt Lancaster, Linda Darnell, Ann Sothern, Rudy Vallee, Anne Baxter, Cornel Wilde, Lauren Bacall. And that's just the 1940s. Kirk Douglas is 90 years old. He's smaller, a littled crooked, but he moves with real determination. The eyes twinkle and laugh. His speech isn't perfect ten years after the stroke, but no matter: he'll talk your ear off, and with attitude and delivery. This nice little old gentleman is still Kirk Douglas. Read more

In honor of Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer, here's a repost of a piece I wrote back in October, when The Road seemed like a metaphor for our national trajectory. Not much has changed: A portion of my evening reading has been keeping me up deep into the night, placing me in the uncomfortable territory between sleep and thought, between the world of dreams and productive consciousness. It's not Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, a real reporter's book by Thomas Ricks, which painstakingly lays out the claim for utter incompetence in Iraq. Nor is it Plan of Attack, by the former reporter Bob Woodward, an insider who flips on his Administration sources and gets them to turn viciously on each other. Both books are chilling - horrific tales of a failed Presidency and an immoral foreign policy. But with those, I can take a sip, switch off the light, and slip into what Bob Dylan calls "a temporary death." Not so with The Road. Cormac McCarthy's brilliant portrait of humanity's winter is a short read, but a very, very long digestion. Read more

Kurt Vonnegut proposed an alternative version of World War II glory, a writhing and brutal portrait of internal turmoil and loss and madness that manifested its horror in a seemingly charming and picaresque line: foot-soldier Billy Pilgrim had become "unstuck in time." Slaughterhouse-Five belongs to the rarified antiwar prose of the post-war writing generation that includes Joseph Heller and Norman Mailer, the brand of story-telling that went beyond the "war is hell - but damn, it's a great story" method of pulp fiction and John Wayne. He wrote about inner damage in the guise of science fiction and fantasy; Vonnegut created a terrifying alternative universe created on the ruins of still-living souls who had witnessed first-hand the worst men can do to other men. But damn, if it wasn't accessible to a 14-year-old. The combination of humour, and sex, and sci-fi, and words put Slaughterhouse-Five on every adolescent reading list my generation; it didn't have to be assigned - it was sought out. When news Vonnegut's death broke early this morning, I immediately remembered that period of discovery - of revelation - that reading Slaughterhouse-Five and the canon of Vonnegut novels brought on. Those precious, quiet moments alone with the words and the realization that freedom of thought was entirely real, and that some people explored that freedom to the fullest. Read more

I've never read a Harry Potter. But JK Rowling is among my favorite living authors. I owe her a deep and simple debt - the love of reading, and literature, and story-telling that all of my children have embraced. Rowling didn't do it all, of course; there was Seuss and Stevenson, Tolkien and Margaret Wise Brown. But she did cast an enduring spell - thousands of pages worth. And now my youngest is on the second-to-last Potter, racing the clock till Rowling's much-anticipated final volume is out. Like his brother and sister, he sometimes dons Harry's glasses, slips into a Hogwarts robe, and waves a facsmilie wand. (And when he Googles Potter star Daniel Radcliffe, his mother and I know it's time to install a search-filter). Such is the hold of Harry Potter on our book-filled household So when I returned from the UK this weekend after a blogging/business trip to Oxford, the kids were waiting with their questions: "So Dad, was it just like Harry Potter?" Read more

The recent news that the Irish and the English come from the same ancient genetic stock, by and large, should be no shock to anyone who contemplates the greatest contribution of the cultural Irish diaspora: the language of their sometime enemies across the narrow Irish Sea. Now that the mitochondrial mystery has been solved at Oxford, we may as well be honest about the great irony of the grand old land. English and its artistic advancement is the great cultural achievement of the Irish. It all makes sense that today we'll swill German beer with a green food dye additive in franchise "Irish" pubs licensed to Italians and Greeks, while paying tribute to a Roman born in Britain. And we'll grow teary-eyed at brief passages of Joyce and Yeats, while gobbling soda bread around the big flat screen as John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara cavort in John Ford's mythic Ireland of our dreams. All in English, of course - wonderful English, blissfully enunciated, emotional, profane, onomatopoetic English. Yes, English, the great gift of the Irish. `A beautiful, pure, sweet, mellow English tenor,' said Aunt Kate in Joyce's sublime The Dead, arguably the greatest short-form prose employment of modern English. Written, of course, by an exile who gave to the world his gift beautiful, pure, sweet, mellow English. Read more

A few years ago, the Rolling Stones covered the greatest song in the history of rock n' roll. No, this list isn't about that. It's about the guy they covered - probably the most covered song-writer in the last 45 years: Bob Dylan, of course, our national poet. And if the Stones didn't get the irony of covering Like a Rolling Stone (they probably thought the song was about them, didn't they, didn't they?) they certainly knew they were joining a long, long list of musicians who've found musical inspiration and lyrics worth repeating Dylan. To follow up on the weekend's excellent thread of greatest rock covers, I thought I'd drill down here on the man whose works were mentioned the most by newcritics readers. OK, so most people would say All Along the Watchtower is the greatest Dylan cover. The Hendrix version rearranges the Dylan original, famously adding the cigarette-lighter slide licks and some screaming wah-wah solo work. It was the only Top 40 song of Hendrix's living career. Heavy virtuosity aside, the song remains essential Dylan - the joker and the thief, the evocative chapters and the overall set piece. And that's true of all the Dylan covers. Read more

Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine... When Van Morrison wrote the classic Gloria as the B-side to Them's 1964 hit Baby Please Don't Go, he couldn't have suspected what a kid from New Jersey would do with his song a decade later. But I suspect he was thrilled. After all, Patti Smith's cover of Gloria on her incredible 1975 debut album Horses stands as the greatest rock cover performance (studio release) of all time. At least, that's my choice. You may cue up something else. But consider the guidelines: we're talking post-Beatles, singer-songwriter era. And we're talking interpretation, ownership, stye. And Patti's Gloria leaps to the top. Even now, 30 years after I first heard it, the song can bring chills - that opening, the free-form poetry, the anger and sexual tension, the drive of the band, as it swings in and around Smith's lyrical riffs. Christ, it is rock. No matter that Patti didn't write the song - she wrote the track. Read more

I'm writing here about a television series I have never seen, but intend to, as my schedule allows. It's a replacement series - your garden variety mid-season fare - except that two critics I respect had completely opposite initial reactions. And that suddenly got me interested in a network series I might otherwise have ignored (and still may). The show is The Black Donnellys and the critics are Lance Mannion and Jason Chervokas - or, ahem, newcritics is more accurate. Lance only gave it 15 minutes and flicked his remote control to visit other lands; he didn't like it much. Jason led his post with one word: "Wow!" Why all the fuss? Read more

Pete Townshend is writing his memoirs. Or rather, he's blogging them. This differs from a decade ago, when Townshend signed with Little Brown to write his autobiography. Work commenced, but the book wasn't finished. So now, Pete's blogging his memoirs - on one of two blogs he's launched in the last week or so to replace his online diaries. He can explain:The backbone is complete, all the research is in place. And yet, because my creative and professional life is still so active, I feel I will never catch up with the present unless I retire simply to write. To retire, simply to write, when I am already a writer, presents a contradiction. So rather than endlessly write, I am going to publish. I think this is brave and interesting, continued evidence of Townshend's rare open mind, even as he cranks out another whopper of a Who tour at age 62. It's a performance artist's call. Read more

Today we focus on movies by way of a glitzy, Vegas-style revue show that has almost nothing to do with brilliant film-making. It's Hoillywood celebrating Hollywood with schmaltz, and it's evolved from a rather subdued black tie dinner at Sid Grauman's theater to a megcast shown around the world and widely reviled for its length, its lack of pacing, and its tacky showbiz numbers. Through the years, there have been a number of "Oscar moments" by way of the television product - the streaker behind David Niven and Marlon Brando's non-acceptance leap to mind. We're celebrating the Academy Awards here on newcritics in words and commentary, but I thought we could use some video - at least as a preview of tonight's madness. So I did some YouTube research and - after the jump - found some Oscar gold through the years. Enoy the preview! Read more

When I was young, the Academy Awards still retained an unmistakeable aura of glamor and remove. There in one big room for one long evening, we all watched American royalty - the truly big names. The real stars. Cary Grant. Katherine Hepburn. Jimmy Stewart. John Wayne. Bette Davis. Lauren Bacall. Henry Fonda. Burt Lancaster. Bing Crosby. Bob Hope. Ingrid Bergman. Elizabeth Taylor. Laurence Olivier. Read more

The voice seems familiar, but the venue's different. I'm driving down the highway, and there's a guy on the radio talking about a record he's about to play. I'm not sure what station's on, but that voice...the emphasis on the last syllable of each sentence. The late-middle age growl. The cynical humor, a sardonic grin in every other word. It's Bob Dylan, deejay. Then I remember. The car's got satellite radio, XM to be specific and Dylan hosts a weekly one-hour show called The Theme Time Radio Hour on several of the couple hundred channels. This week's installment, in honor of Valentine's Day, centers on the heart. And it's brilliant, half performance, half ... ok, all performance. Halfway between an epic Dylan story-song and a chapter from his wonderful Chronicles book. Eclectic references - did you know that Valentines Day is named for three Christian saints? Or the riff after a Billie Holiday's Good Morning Heartache: "I know a lot of people who've kicked heroin, but I don't know many who've gotten off television." Read more

Just a month ago, newcritics hit the feed-stream as an experiment: could a few bloggers come together to write about culture without killing each other. The answer, a month in, is a Beatle-like yeah. Not the bouncy 1963 "yeah!" but more a 1969-style, slouching "yeah..." Followed by "man." Which is perfect really, because this is a secondary outlet for most of the authors here - a hang-out, a back room. We've got no expectations really. What's really, though, is the new conversation we've started - 15 bloggers (so far), dozens of commenters, thousands of readers. I'll give you the basic stats: 45 posts and 181 comments, within 22 categories. More than 11,000 sessions and 50,000 pages. Small stuff still, but I'm enjoying the ride. And really, what a great lineup of bloggers. Think about the output in on month, and the variety of posts. If this was a magazine, I'd buy it. But it's not - it's a blog. So you're in charge here, to the degree I can control it. Your ideas and suggestions are encouraged. Your comments power newcritics. Roxtar says newcritics is "Slick as snot on a glass doorknob, and as cool as the other side of the pillow." Love it! But we're only a month old. Can't hardly walk yet. But we're learning to crawl. Stay tuned. Read more

Watching Anthony Kiedis sleepwalk through the motions while the rest of the Red Hot Chili Peppers delivered a technically brilliant and emotionally spirited set last week in Tampa, the mind of this 44-year-old rock fan turned to an elder of the genre. There were times when the lead Chili (also 44) acted like Iggy Pop, but man, he didn't deliver like Iggy. He didn't sell it. He didn't leave it up there. He didn't bleed. Of course, the irony was rich - there were Kiedis and Flea doing their best Iggy impressions and raking in millions, filling arenas, and putting up hits all over the chart for a couple of decades. Iggy Pop, aka James Osterberg from suburban Michigan, never put up the chart-toppers, never filled arenas, never toured in an armada of tractor trailers, elaborate staging, and handlers. Yet, four decades into his long and often strange career, Iggy Pop remains as influential as ever. Iggy turns 60 this year, the reunited Stooges have an album in the wings, and Iggy is the subject for the first full-blown, fully-researched biography of his long life. Paul Trynka, former editor of Mojo, has crafted a superb reader that captures the manic energy of "Iggy Pop," and the restless, intellectual wanderings of Jim Osterberg. Iggy: Open Up and Bleed (due on April 17 from Broadway) explores the depths of madness and energy that have always keyed the Iggy Pop personal, melding the hypersexual wide-eyed rock-and-roll man-child with a fascinating cast of characters that tells the story of rock from the mid-60s to the latest playlists on iTunes. Read more

So much to read, so little time. Welcome to the occasional newcritics linkfest (or blog-whoring as the estimable Shakespeare's Sister would call it). It's three-dot time, friends. Jim Wolcott pans Woody Allen's Scoop ("There's a lot that doesn't seem to have reached Mr. Magoo."), a flick that was panned here by Lance Mannion, who gives a long and sincere thumb's up to a celluloid winter's tale, The Big White. Maud Newton's not a fan of winter's epidemics, but being laid up gave her the chance to review The Mighty Boosh, via YouTube, by way of the BBC. She likes. And if you're got the bug, use the wifi and the day off from work to read Grasshopper's Diary of a Heretic, a work in progress. Michael Stickings blogs a winter painting. Blue Girl loved Nora Ephron's latest, especially the black turtlenecks. Gotham Gal pans the International Center of Photography's exhibits. Nancy Nall thought Dreamgirls was OK, but she didn't find the real Detroit. And the Slacktivist has a CEO's ode to Yertle the Turtle. Oh, and Hugh Hewitt apparently thinks the widely-loved fantasy series 24 is somehow real. Read more

Senator James Webb invoked Andrew Jackson in his response to President Bush on Tuesday, he used a classic bit of the novelist's art put the weight of Ole Hickory's plain political talk at the service of criticism of modern corporate greed. It fit, but the edges were knocked off. Such is also the case with the landscape of the New Vietnam that the soldier-author chronicles in his 2002 novel Lost Soldiers, parts of which became briefly controversial during Webb's contest with George Allen in Virginia. Webb's modern Vietnam is seen through the eyes of an old soldier who remains besotted with the land of his conflict, and newly enamored of a young girl who happens to be the American-influenced daughter of a communist official. The American's job is to work with the government to repatriate the bones of dead soldiers. Suffice to say, a political complication arises. But that made-for-Hollywood plot (which ends in a Bangkok shoot 'em up) is far less interesting than the relationship between the American and the Vietnamese whose lives still revolve around the outcome of the war. When it's good - and at times it's very good indeed - Lost Soldiers forms a worthy bookend to Graham Greene's classic tale of French colonialism and American intrigue, The Quiet American. Read more

Lance Mannion, who graces newcritics with his presence, runs one of those wonderfully just-because online events that attracts the right crowd: I refer to his weekly live-blogging fest of Aaron Sorkin's much-maligned Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Lance's commentpalooza has been on hiatus with the show, but it returns to tonight and we urge visitors here to repair over there around 9:30 EDT, 8:30 Central and log on in. The banter is mostly better than the show, whose main topic is, basically, banter. From this couch, the problem with Studio 60 isn't so much the over-stylized walk-and-talk tic that Sorkin has developed (and patented, apparently); it's that the show is supposed to be about a show that's funny, about people who are funny. But they're not. (Except for erstwhile network "suit" Amanda Peet, who is occasionally hilarious in the classic wacky-beauty way that Sarah Paulsen is supposed to be, but isn't). Ken Levine noted this and other factors in an LA Times piece, eliciting a thin-skinned attack from Sorkin (who took Levine's considerable writing credits in vain),which in turn prompted this blog post from Levine. Ah, Hollywood. Thy charms are many. Ironywatch: the whole Levine-Sorking-Mannion episode is far more interesting than your typical week of Studio 60! Then again, I only watch it for the blogging. Read more

There's a distinct darkness on the edge of the old towns along the coast of southern Sweden in the dangerous world created by Henning Mankell and inhabited by his brilliant and reluctant police inspector Kurt Wallander. I've ploughed through nearly all of the ten or so Wallander books in translation over the past few months, set in Skane just across the water from Copenhagen, an area of ancient villages, flat and barren landscape, farms and beaches. They're among the best detective books I've ever read, falling into the police procedural sub-genre; Mankel leads the reader matter-of-actly through the dogged, often mundane pursuit of criminals. But he has also created some of the most horrific killers ever to prowl a novelist's page, monsters who terrorize the farmsteads and quiet flats of Skane. Read more

Televised executions are all the rage these days, but the long drops in Iraq brought to mind two made-for-television movies that I saw decades ago, but remain fairly vivid for their imagery and their unshaking lens. They were seen as anti-death penalty arguments on the small screen, but as I remember, both The Execution of Private Slovik and The Executioner's Song were delivered straight up. And because we don't televise our executions in America, they became stand-ins for what was then a raging discussion about the morality of capital punishment, as the death chamber came back into active use across the United States. Read more

Much critical ink has been spilled, and deservedly so, on the merits of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as a writer. King was a master of the language, and indeed his use of the written and spoken word created the center of his power as a leader, and preserved his image as an icon. [I wrote about this last year on this day]. And of course, King's image is manifest throughout the documentary arts - in spoken word recreation of his speeches, on television. But what of Dr. King as a character, as a figure worthy of potrayal? Not much, at least that I know of. The main vehicle was Paul Winfield's 1978 miniseries portrayal in King, which I saw in reruns on TBS a few years back. Cicely Tyson played Coretta Scott King, Ossie Davis was the senior Rev. King, veteran TV actor Cliff DeYoung was Bobby Kennedy, Heat of the Night's Howard Rollins portrayed Andrew Young, and Tony Bennett played himself. But I wonder, where are the other King docudramas and feature films? Has he grown too iconic to portray? Or too sainted of memory to be interesting to filmmakers? Nearly three decades after his death, is it time for a major project? Read more

New Criticism was a movement among early 20th century writers and critics of English that argued a strict adherence to a series of absolute truths, the most important of which was that everything that can be known about a work of literature can be found in its published text. Almost a century later, technology and media distribution have changed the mean of the most important word in that description - "text." These days, the text is never finished and it goes far beyond the written word. Further, criticism, once the province of a few well-educated, semi-cloistered academics, is now the work of the masses. Critics today must either wade into the crowd, or be left on a remote shore. In this Wordpress-powered "anomalous experiment" - TS Eliot's description - we do not adopt the principles of close reading so favored by the New Critics of old. But there is one element of the namesake school that is the key to this group blog - ambiguity. Different critics see different books, films, television shows, music, poetry, performances in vastly different ways. Further, the best works about human life are far from absolute, even the most moralistic of tales. Here, many different voices explore iconoclastic reactions to media - and the rest of us react to those reactions. That's the goal; we'll see how it works out. Read more

A fortnight after I finished it, Richard Ford's trilogy-ending novel The Lay of the Land was still with me. And yet, I cannot tell you what happens in the book, what plot developments drive the last chapter in the saga of Frank Bascombe, what the story really is. There are some bits about a funeral, cancer treatment, real estate sales, and broken marriages. A lot of driving around New Jersey. And there's a violent ending that doesn't fit at all. But like a good cover of an old blues song, the latest Ford does not get by on what happens in its 800-plus pages, but how it makes you feel. Here's how: thoughtful. Even more mortal. A little sad. But ultimately less cynical. A strange combination, and that's the book's brilliance. Read more

James Wolcott beat me to a post I've been meaning to write for a while: praise for a wonderful BBC radio program that I've enjoyed as a podcast on many a train ride:

I also want to direct attention to the excellent trove of replayable broadcasts of Melvyn Bragg's superb In Our Time series on BBC 4. Each weekly installment is devoted a historical theme hosted by Bragg, with frighteningly articulate guest experts, and provides an invaluable tutorial on a vast range of topics--everything from negative numbers to Catherine the Great to the Scottish Enlightenment to the evolution of pastoral poetry to (my most recent listen) Samuel Johnson & his circle.

I can't recommend it enough (my last listen was the Alexander Pope segment). The range of topics is brilliant, the style straightforward and occasionally humorous, the total, enlightening. Read more

Shakespeare's Sister writes a brief and heartfelt homage to Iwao Takamoto, who created Scooby Doo, and died at age 81:

I can't begin to explain how much I adored Scooby-Doo as a kid. For my birthday one year, all I wanted was a Scooby-Doo record player. Never mind that they didn't make Scooby-Doo record players. Mama Shakes bought a little blue record player and decorated it with Scooby-Doo stickers. When I opened it, I thought it was the best thing I'd ever seen in my life. Many an evening was spent in my room dancing to my single of Eddie Rabbit's I Love a Rainy Night spinning away on that Scooby-Doo record player.

Shakes also notes that he also created the wonderful Muttley from the Penelope Pitstop oeuvre. And she puts some great faux final words in Takamoto's mouth: "...would have made it to 82 if it weren't for those meddling kids!" Read more

Elderly rock stars have this gift for introspection and analysis; they look back with a clarity not present during the drug binges, and there's a received wisdom that comes with the long-term attainment of stardom - a been there, done that shrug. Two of 'em - roughly half a rock generation apart - write a couple of fine personal journals. In recent posts, both David Byrne and Pete Townshend give homilies on performing and the current scene. Great reading, guilty pleasures. Read more

Twenty years ago, a friend of mine pointed to the rusted and abandoned elevated railway bed in Chelsea, which I'd barely noticed before, and proclaimed: "There are a couple of real estate bigshots fighting for that - it's gonna be valauble some day." That day has come, but not in the developer-oriented vision my friend once had. Friends of the High Line, which is redeveloping the old passage for open space and limited mixed use building, is planning to hold the first Highline Festival this May. Chairman? One David Bowie, newly sixty and readying for a public celebration of that advanced age. Apparently, he found his glam venue. Fred Wilson has some details. Will this become a permanent part of the New York festival scene? Read more

A great post from the always inventive, eminently book-worthy Maud Newton, the famed literary blogger - read it all but here's a taste:

Calvin Baker’s strangely neglected Dominion is one of the books I admired most this year. I understand that a novel so allusive, in which invocations of myth abound and the richness of language recalls the King James, isn’t going to appeal to everyone. But I look at some of the hyped-up claptrap that has critics pulling out their trumpets this year, and am amazed that a story this good hasn’t garnered so much as a review in a major newspaper.

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I'm not a film completist; with three children and a limited window of screening opportunities outside of video-on-demand, my year's best, non-kiddie category, is scant by definition. So my "best of" list in the cinematic arts is limited to exactly two pictures, the only two to really cut through the mist of over-production and bad popcorn, and to stick to my intellectual ribs like butter on a toasted corn muffin. Both are deeply English, more so in language than in culture. Both have all their crucial action scenes in and around London. And both deal with government and with the power of perception in the masses, a crucial factor in self-governance and the source of legitimacy of power. V for Vendetta caused one right-wing reviewer to rant that the film was "a vile, pro-terrorist piece of neo-Marxist, left-wing propaganda filledwith radical sexual politics and nasty attacks on religion and Christianity." Others took it as a parable of neoconservatism run wild: its core story of America in ruins, and Britain run by a brutish totalitarian regime is filled with torture, secret imprisonment, the end of fair trials, and a government spying on its citizenry. Read more

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