The showcase for 34 new musicals on display during the New York Musical Theater Festival hasn’t thus far produced a longed-for miracle, though Flight of the Lawnchair Man—concerning a simple-minded soul who dreams of flying around the sky in a Wal-Mart lawn chair—certainly had its charms.
I thought very reluctantly, however, that its talented creators, Read More
The showcase for 34 new musicals on display during the New York Musical Theater Festival hasn’t thus far produced a longed-for miracle, though Flight of the Lawnchair Man—concerning a simple-minded soul who dreams of flying around the sky in a Wal-Mart lawn chair—certainly had its charms.
I thought very reluctantly, however, that its talented Read More
“We are in a street fight,” seethes Leonardo DiCaprio, as Howard Hughes in The Aviator, speaking about his nemesis, Pan Am owner Juan Trippe. “And I’m not going to lose.”
When last we met on the Harvey Weinstein–Martin Scorsese field of battle, it was about two years ago; the producer and the director were in Read More
A Life in the 20th Century: Innocent Beginnings, 1917-1950, by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Houghton Mifflin, 557 pages, $28.95.
In this lively, rather tender account of his first 33 years, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. presents a happy, steady progress from heir to arriviste . After growing into his father’s profession and politically moderate temperament, the Read More
Toward the end of Anne Bogart’s ambitious search for the real Orson Welles in War of the Worlds at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Welles’ friend, Webber, philosophizes about the nature of truth and all biography:
“What traces do you leave behind? What signs of life? What do you say before you go? At the Read More
The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst , by David Nasaw. Houghton Mifflin, 687 pages, $35.
In 1916, at age 53, William Randolph Hearst–already a media tycoon whose publishing empire included newspapers such as the New York Journal and San Francisco Examiner , magazines such as Cosmopolitan and some of the first motion picture Read More
Peter Bogdanovich’s Movie of the Week
One Manhattan night in 1969, Orson Welles and I had dinner at Frankie and Johnnie’s Restaurant with Norman Mailer, whom Welles had just met on a talk show, and as soon as we sat down, Mr. Mailer asked about a particularly memorable shot in Orson’s famous and infamous Read More
Peter Bogdanovich’s Movie of the Week
The 1941 Academy Awards are often denigrated as the year Orson Welles’ maverick Citizen Kane didn’t win best picture, and usually overlooked, therefore, is the movie that did win-one of the finest classic American films, though it’s about a Welsh coal-mining family, John Ford’s profoundly touching visualization of Read More
Of late I have been consumed by L.A. Confidential (directed by Curtis Hanson, from a screenplay by Brian Helgeland and Mr. Hanson, based on a novel by James Ellroy), as well as the overall phenomenon of film noir. From its first screenings at this spring’s Cannes Film Festival, L.A. Confidential has been deluged by critical Read More
