Attila The Hun and Mao Tse-Tung in Song and Dance
I managed to crowd my Opera season into two evenings a few weeks ago, no longer able to afford the tariff for …
Category Archives: Art & Culture
Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry — An Artist, An Organizer, A Movie
Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry is a documentary film that’s a three-fer. It will be interesting and instructive, even moving, to …
A First Birthday
At 4:01 in the morning I awake, exactly 58 years of life on earth and this the first that …
Outcasts Cast Their Lots Together
So I have no idea why the excellent French movie, titled Intouchables in French, is being marketed as “Intouchables” in …
Nuclear Summer: Remembered in Song
Every August, the four days of the 6th through the 9th ring like a mournful bell in the memories of …
The Devil in the Flesh: Adultery in WW I, France
Raymond Radiguet, the 16 year old author of The Devil in the Flesh / “Le Diable au Corps,” 1923, died …
Post War: A History of Europe since 1945, Tony Judt
Tony Judt’s magisterial work, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 wasn’t his last before his sadly premature death, but it was …
The Absolutist: A Novel of War Time Refusal
John Boyne, born in Dublin in 1971, manages to summon the spirits of two very particular men, sent to fight …
The French Resistance, A Priest and Dammed Desire
Updated at * below… Jean-Pierre Melville, whose well-regarded noir gangster film are on every Francophile or film-buff’s list of must-sees, …
Beasts of the Southern Wild: A Report
Beasts of the Southern Wild has been wildly praised in many parts. We went to see it despite some trepidation …
Message of Love from Valdemar Gris — Miguel Labordeta
MESSAGE OF LOVE FROM VALDEMAR GRIS by Miguel Labordeta From my own man sadness wrenched out in bits of bitter …
Cities of Salt: The Trench — The Pit in the Desert
Abdelrahman Munif‘s trilogy,* Cities of Salt is one of those era-defining efforts of literary imagination and craft. It has been called …