By Rex Reed 10/23/12 7:47pm

movies

A wedding at Lake Qarga, Kabul, in The Black Tulip.

Full Bloom: A Light Shines Through as The Black Tulip Blossoms Amidst Harsh Censorship and Brutal Rule by the Taliban

Afghanistan has no film industry, which makes a new movie called The Black Tulip, about good people seeking some kind of normal life in modern Kabul despite the constant threat of violence, destruction and despair, doubly dangerous to have made and inestimably valuable to watch. Filmed entirely in a country where women’s rights are still tested daily and cameras are so verboten that even a tourist’s throwaway Instamatic is an invitation to trouble—and produced, written and directed by a woman, no less!—this is a gripping experience as politically enlightening and emotionally involving as it is educational and beautiful to look at.  Read More

By Rex Reed 2/29/12 9:53am

movies

Van Houten as teh tragic Jonker, whose poetry is inscribed in South Africa's history, as well as the flesh of those who carry it.

Black Butterflies: Ingrid Jonker, From a Cocoon of Darkness

The trenches of South Africa in the 1960s, in the grip of apartheid—the equivalent of the American Civil War fought on foreign soil—continue to provide fertile material for movies fueled by the flames of morality, conscience and the struggle for human rights. Along the way, new heroes are discovered and old oversights corrected. The latest is Black Butterflies, a footnote to history about the rebellious, courageous and tragic life of South African poet Ingrid Jonker (triumphantly played by Carice van Houten, the rangy, riveting Dutch star who skyrocketed to world acclaim in Paul Verhoeven’s World War II saga, Black Book). She’s not the only person to defy the government and speak out against racism during apartheid, but her story is unique because the odds she faced to improve conditions and ameliorate the fate of the disgraced country she loved were overwhelming. As the daughter of Abraham Jonker, the powerful, mean-spirited minister of censorship, she had no one to turn to for approval. Read More

By Lee Siegel 12/07/10 10:28pm

The Last Critic

Apocalypse Now!

I had something unpleasant happen to me in October. I met an old friend for lunch. Let’s call him Alan. I hadn’t seen Alan for years, not since we were the only male members of the Mahjong team in college. One day he popped up on my Facebook page, asking to friend me. I friended Read More

By Christian Lorentzen 11/03/10 2:55am

Internal Memo

Internal Memo: Sarah Palin

Another Freedom Day has passed and if it isn’t bright sunshine morning spreading its rosy-fingered lipstick out all over that greatest force for good in a world of brazen, extremist, pornographying, chain-smoking, pot-snorting liberal media outlets, America. And the America we have today is a far hue and cry from the unicorn ranch in fantasyland Read More

By Nate Freeman 10/05/10 4:40pm

Franzen Recovers Glasses After Brief Hostage Situation

Like many writers — or, rather, people who want to look like writers, or just look more intelligent in general — Jonathan Franzen wears glasses. They are black and fairly oval-shaped, with perked dimples on the top corners of the frames affixed with the usual silver droplet. He has minus eight vision so he wears Read More