Despite some attempts to set the record straight, the story persists that Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, starring Kirsten Dunst as the Austrian girl who becomes the Queen of France, was generally despised at this past spring’s Cannes Film Festival, and that the French particularly hated it. The movie did draw some scattered boos at the Read More
“Using every threat, contract, and influence I could muster”: That’s John Huston in his 1980 autobiography, An Open Book, on how he fought Warner Bros. to release his 1967 adaptation of Carson McCullers’ novella, Reflections in a Golden Eye, in a diffuse amber wash that would give the film a golden tint. Warner agreed to Read More
Her shoes should have warned him. The shoes that Barbara Stanwyck’s Phyllis Dietrichson wears in the 1944 Double Indemnity—pumps with an unsightly ruffle of tulle on the toe, bedroom slippers with a puff of marabou—tell you everything you ever need to know about her, everything that her patsy-in-waiting, Fred MacMurray’s Walter Neff, misses.
Her shoes should have warned him. The shoes that Barbara Stanwyck’s Phyllis Dietrichson wears in the 1944 Double Indemnity—pumps with an unsightly ruffle of tulle on the toe, bedroom slippers with a puff of marabou—tell you everything you ever need to know about her, everything that her patsy-in-waiting, Fred MacMurray’s Walter Neff, misses.
As femme Read More
The unsigned editorial in last Friday’s New York Times made all the appropriate noises:
“For almost five years now,” it began, “we have carried around the legacy of Sept. 11. There is no sunny morning that does not revive its memory. The news of a terrorist plot against America-bound airliners yesterday called up feelings that Read More
The unsigned editorial in last Friday’s New York Times made all the appropriate noises:
“For almost five years now,” it began, “we have carried around the legacy of Sept. 11. There is no sunny morning that does not revive its memory. The news of a terrorist plot against America-bound airliners yesterday called up feelings Read More
If part of Hollywood’s appeal is the lure of the artificial—not the entirety of its appeal, but some—then Jayne Mansfield is irresistible. For everything unbelievable, garish, overdone, over- everything about her, there’s also something beguiling, funny, even touching.
Her story isn’t pretty (especially as told in the shallow, sensationalistic style of the A&E Biography—par Read More
If part of Hollywood’s appeal is the lure of the artificial—not the entirety of its appeal, but some—then Jayne Mansfield is irresistible. For everything unbelievable, garish, overdone, over-everything about her, there’s also something beguiling, funny, even touching.
Her story isn’t pretty (especially as told in the shallow, sensationalistic style of the A&E Biography—par for that Read More
About a month ago, I was having dinner in a West Village bistro, eavesdropping on two young men who were discussing the American invasion of Iraq. Neither was for the war (nor am I), but it became clear that one of them could not wrap his mind around the possibility that the other could both Read More
About a month ago, I was having dinner in a West Village bistro, eavesdropping on two young men who were discussing the American invasion of Iraq. Neither was for the war (nor am I), but it became clear that one of them could not wrap his mind around the possibility that the other could both Read More
