The First Webbie The First Webbie
Say what you will against the Hollywood event film, and you can say it twice about Spider-Man. Twice, because this movie has been so successfully pre-sold, mall-booked, cross-m...
May 9, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
Oprah Learns Her Lesson Oprah Learns Her Lesson
Is this it? The end of the Oprah Book Club as we know it? It's Thursday, April 4, at approximately 3:45 pm. In less than twenty-four hours, virtually everyone in America will ...
May 2, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Kathy Rooney
History in a Blur History in a Blur
It seems scarcely to have required a great philosophical mind to come up with the observation that each of us is the child of our times, but that thought must have been receive...
Apr 25, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Arthur C. Danto
The Days of May The Days of May
What date shall I assign to Chris Marker's magnum opus, A Grin Without a Cat? This rugged oak of an essay-film, whose gnarls trace the growth and withering of decades of leftis...
Apr 25, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
Talking With Jeff Tweedy Talking With Jeff Tweedy
Jeff Tweedy may be best known to Nation readers as Billy Bragg's collaborator (along with his band Wilco) on the Mermaid Avenue recordings of recent years--two great albums that s...
Apr 11, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Hillary Frey
The Show They Love to Hate The Show They Love to Hate
There is an overall disposition to approach each Whitney Biennial as a State of the Art World Address in the form of an exhibition, organized by a curatorial directorate, present...
Apr 11, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Arthur C. Danto
African Queen African Queen
Filmmakers in sub-Saharan Africa tend to divide their attention between city life today and village life once upon a time. This rule has its exceptions, of course; but if you're s...
Apr 11, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
Folk’s Missing Link Folk’s Missing Link
I was in high school in the 1960s when I first saw Dave Van Ronk at the Gaslight, one of those little cellar clubs that used to line a Greenwich Village that now lives in myth an...
Apr 4, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Gene Santoro
Oscar Opens the Door Oscar Opens the Door
As Halle Berry elegantly strode to the podium to accept her best actress Oscar, the first for a black woman, she wept uncontrollably and gasped, "This moment is so much bigger tha...
Mar 28, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Michael Eric Dyson
Have Car, Will Travel Have Car, Will Travel
If you're in the mood to see great acting, I recommend that you watch Aurélien Recoing get caught in a lie in Laurent Cantet's Time Out. As Vincent, a French management con...
Mar 28, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans