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To her biographer, Simone de Beauvoir confided a less than rhapsodic one-night stand, in 1946, with the Hungarian malcontent Arthur Koestler: "One night I got so drunk I let him come home with me

Star vehicle?

After last year's brouhaha surrounding the presentation by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences of a Lifetime Achievement Award to Elia Kazan, one member of the academy had an idea.

*Last year, I was the guest editor of The Nation's first issue devoted exclusively to Hollywood and politics.

The Nation asked seven prominent members of the independent film community, including several filmmakers who released major films this year, to take the temperature of the movem

The film Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop will be released in 2000...we hope.

Remember those great scenes in Blues Brothers 2000 that evoked the urban grit and soul of southside Chicago and Joliet? Well, sorry.

It was, of course, predestined that the top-grossing movie of 1999 would be Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, which outstripped its closest competition by nearly $200 million to rac

Special thanks to Alison Mann.

The most important day in the history of American independent film was May 8, 1947, which witnessed the opening of a picture so personal--no, so heedlessly self-revelatory--that viewers today sti