The Toll Booth — Unsettled Desperation in Turkey
The Toll Booth (2014), more accurately, the” toll taker,” has a nice play on words in it, at least in …
Category Archives: Art & Culture
Hell and Good Company: The Spanish Civil War….
The civil war in Spain, 1936-1939, was the dark warning to the world of the war to follow, in almost every …
Women say: Hands Off! — Three Films of the Changing Conversation in Islam
The long fight for autonomy, independence and freedom against enemies canny and brutal, is one of the most popular subjects …
The Big Short: The Street, The Book, The Movie
There are no good guys in Adam McKay’s new movie, The Big Short, nor in the book of the same name …
Walking Through Spain, A Villanelle
Walking Through Spain, A Villanelle Walking through Spain on knotted, riven knees toes soaked in pain backs bent to the …
Enough! — Algerian Film Maker looks at War
Djamila Sahraoui (b 1950) Algerian born director, now living in France was 41 when the thirteen year civil war erupted in …
Halfaouine: Boy of The Terraces –Coming of Age in Tunis, 1990
Every once in a while the unexpected out does itself. In Halfouine, Ferid Boughedir’s small 1990 movie from Tunis not …
William Faulkner and WW I: A Fable
Since I’ve been sparse in posting these last weeks, for various (all good) reasons, I thought I’d re-post this look …
The Vice of War
William Faulkner, in his little known (Pulitzer) novel, A Fable, has many pungent things to say about man and war, …
Thinking of the Tao Te Ching After the (Persian Gulf) War
A poem by by Thom Tammaro: “Lao Tzu, I think of you at the gates of Chou near Han Ku Pass, …
Ninah’s Dowery
Whew! Watching Ninah’s Dowery (2012), a movie from a small Camaroon film crew, directed by the sure-handed Victor Viyuoh I was carried into the …
A Stray Bullet — a Poem by Mazen Maarouf
A Stray Bullet After crossing the living room, the library, the corridor and the photo that brings us together on …