News from Comic-Con that has next to nothing to do with comics, though it is comic in the “broadly humorous” sense: Apparently director Walter Hill is at work with Warner Bros. on a remake of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, the sixties Grand Guignol freakout wherein Baby Jane torments her sweet, paralyzed Read More
We were talking about Bette Davis. I told The Smartest Man I Know that I thought the way she habitually flounced into a scene and seized it by the nape of its neck indicated that she was a bit of a ham.
“She wasn’t a ham,” he replied, “she was a hysteric.” The Smartest Man Read More
We were talking about Bette Davis. I told The Smartest Man I Know that I thought the way she habitually flounced into a scene and seized it by the nape of its neck indicated that she was a bit of a ham.
“She wasn’t a ham,” he replied, “she was a hysteric.” The Smartest Man Read More
Beauty, talent and charisma are such rare commodities these days that we are lucky to find an actress with even one of them. In Being Julia, Annette Bening miraculously displays all three at the same time. Am I losing it, or is she a 21st-century movie miracle? Is this the good turtle soup, or merely Read More
Mongo: Adventures in Trash , by Ted Botha. Bloomsbury, 243 pages, $23.95
This is the ideal time to release Mongo: Adventures in Trash , Ted Botha’s paean to the garbage foragers of New York. All summer long, as students vacate their dorms and prosperous young families head to the beach, the city’s curbs fill Read More
Bette Davis Keeps Watch
Over Soho’s V.I.P.-less Cub Room
If you are a close follower of restaurant reviews, you might think the business is all about novelty-new chefs serving exotic new ingredients in new and ever wilder settings. And since trendy bars and fashionable restaurants have a notoriously short life span in the city, Read More
Me Times Three , by Alex Witchel. Alfred A. Knopf, 304 pages, $22.
“Funny business, a woman’s career. The things you drop on your way up the ladder, so you can move faster-you forget you’ll need them again when you get back to being a woman. That’s one career all females have in common, whether Read More
If I’d listened to the Weather Channel, I would never have made it to EQ the other night. Temperatures were in the 90′s and a major thunderstorm–possibly even a tornado–was expected. “Stay away from windows and remain indoors until 10 P.M.,” we were told. But restaurant critics are like hurricane chasers, diving recklessly into the Read More
Returning recently to the premises that once housed the Black Sheep restaurant in the West Village, I was reminded of a Bette Davis movie called June Bride . She plays a bossy magazine editor who goes to an old Victorian house in preparation for a wedding. Before you can say “less is more,” all the Read More
