Edmund Wilson once remarked, apropos his soon-to-be-sundered friendship with Vladimir Nabokov, that he felt for the great author "warm affection sometimes chilled by exasperation." That phrase springs to mind sometimes…
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So for some reason or other the "film criticism, que-est-ce-que c'est" question is heating up again, in venues far and wide. First it's the topic of discussion between the ever-insouciant…
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I have dealt with the actions of Victor Gollancz and the Wharton School and Richard Nixon because, although lots of time and space separates them, their behavior when faced…
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I enjoyed the tricksy Cabin In The Woods (featuring Kristen Connolly, Jesse Williams, and a one-way mirror, all seen above) a whole lot more than poor cranky Rex Reed did, as…
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Literary men now routinely tell their readers about their divorces. In newspapers. In columns in newspapers. Special columns devoted to the personal papers of literary men. One literary man who…
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It seems like over the weekend I've read and/or heard the phrase "star-making performance," or some variant thereof, something like a dozen times, relative to Jennifer Lawrence's performance in The…
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