From the category archives:

Culture

What I Love And Don’t Like About “Mad Men”

August 9, 2010

AMC’s Mad Men is yet one more product of television’s new golden age.  The same combination of mindless leftism, foreign funding and ill-treatment of writers that caused the possibly fatal decline of American movies has chased talent and excellence to the little screen and shows like Mad Men are the delightful result.

If it had nothing [...]

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Movie: Salt

August 6, 2010

Sux.  Okay, maybe that’s a little harsh.  Phillip Noyce is a highly skilled director (he made the excellent little thriller Dead Calm – if you haven’t seen it, stop reading this and go watch it now – and those fun Harrison Ford Tom Clancy films) and the action is well filmed.  Also, the set-up’s intriguing [...]

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Tudors Revisited

August 5, 2010

Back in June, I put up a post on the first season of Showtime’s The Tudors.  I enjoyed it but found it mostly a costume soap opera, heavy on the gratuitous sex scenes, light on the history.
I’ve now finished all four seasons and I’d like to revise that opinion upward – way upward.  By the [...]

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Anne Rice Quits Christianity

August 4, 2010

Spanking porn author Anne Rice has announced on Facebook that she’s quitting Christianity.  According to John Nolte over at Big Hollywood, she made the announcement on Facebook thusly:
I quit being a Christian. I’m out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial [...]

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I Spy

August 3, 2010

Two nice reviews of Otto Penzler’s excellent spy story anthology Agents of Treachery single out yours truly for praise.  In the Chicago Tribune, Julia Keller points out that, with Salt in theaters and Covert Affairs on TV, there’s a lot of espionage in the entertainment world this summer–but she says Agents is “the best of [...]

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American Movies, Foreign Minds

August 2, 2010

Two articles in the Wall Street Journal this week confirm a lot of people’s feelings about modern American movies.

The first article, a witty tirade by Joe Queenan, asks whether 2010 is the worst year for movies ever:
Go into a movie theater any day of the week and watch as the audience sits listlessly through a [...]

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Nude Scenes: Prime Cut

July 31, 2010

When I was a little kid, my friends and I used to dig holes in the backyard, imagining, and half believing, that if we went down far enough, we would come out in China.  Well, that’s not right exactly, but it is true that if you go down far enough when you’re making a movie, [...]

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Super Mario Galaxy 2

July 28, 2010

This was lots and lots of fun – then wasn’t.  Super Mario in all his various incarnations is still the closest thing we have to a perfect video game character.  He’s lovable, courageous, courtly, talented–and if your toilet backs up, who ya gonna call?

As with Super Mario Galaxy 1, this game takes you around various [...]

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Me in City Journal on the Media

July 27, 2010

The truly estimable City Journal has posted my reaction to–well, to several things:  Journolist, Breitbart and the cancellation of my novel Empire of Lies in France for “political and religious” reasons:
The book’s French cancellation is, I realize, a rather small cultural event. Yet it gives specific color to the recent revelations on the [...]

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Notes on the Culture

July 26, 2010

INCEPTION
Well, it works, which, given the concept, is a small miracle in and of itself.  Plus, about two of its two and a half hours are really involving and entertaining and, in this summer of mostly crummy movies, that makes it feel like some sort of masterpiece.  But what Inception really is is a good [...]

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