Shud He Have Been a Contendah? Shud He Have Been a Contendah?
The inevitable controversy--presenting name-naming film director Elia Kazan with a Lifetime Achievement Award--has unfolded like an accident waiting to happen, aggravating the A...
Mar 18, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Cliff Rothman
American Graffiti American Graffiti
It's true--and a cliché--that Hollywood films hold up a mirror to American society. It's equally true--and equally a cliché--that Hollywood films fail to reflect Am...
Mar 18, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Susie Linfield
Too Many Cigarettes Too Many Cigarettes
Monday: Screening of Garry Marshall's The Other Sister, which seems to be about a goldfish.
Mar 11, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
Correspondance School Art Correspondance School Art
If we think of a historical period as defined by what the French have usefully designated a mentalité--a shared set of attitudes, practices and beliefs--then periods end ...
Mar 11, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Arthur C. Danto
Kazan and the Bad Times Kazan and the Bad Times
Dalton Trumbo, a militant blacklisted screenwriter and novelist, commenting on the fifties struggle against government attempts to throttle the American left, said that in that b...
Mar 4, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Arthur Miller
Touched by an Angel Touched by an Angel
It's characteristic of Erick Zonca's extraordinary first feature, The Dreamlife of Angels, that we never learn how Isa got that scar across her right eyebrow.
Mar 4, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
Screendance Screendance
I grew up on dance films, although they weren't known as such; they were called musicals.
Mar 4, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Valerie Gladstone
Oscar Who? Oscar Who?
Although the producers of the Academy Awards ceremony like to boast that a billion people watch their broadcast, I take comfort in knowing that another 5 billion do not.
Feb 25, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
The Dynasty of Mingus The Dynasty of Mingus
For the past year and a half, I've been spending most of my time between 1922 and 1979--the years of Charles Mingus's birth and death, since I'm writing his biography, due to be ...
Feb 18, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Gene Santoro
Nonsilence = Death, Too? Nonsilence = Death, Too?
In seven novels and a collection of essays published since 1981, Sarah Schulman has methodically chronicled the history of her longtime neighborhood, Manhattan's East Village.
Feb 18, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Mark J. Huisman