By Rex Reed 11/16/11 10:21am

movies

The Descendents.

A Tropical Melodrama with Bright Stars Is an Alexander Payne-ful Watch

The Descendants is a soap opera with Hawaiian shirts. It’s worth seeing for the sharp but uneven human observations in the script and direction by Alexander Payne (Sideways), and sometimes it’s fun (but mostly exasperating) watching George Clooney trying to act as he struggles through the role of a man trying to raise two needy daughters while grieving over the loss of his wife in a boating accident. Clichés ensue. Clooney fans may be pleased to see their hero in a sentimental tearjerker, but the fawning and gushing of so many astute critics who have greeted this plodding melodrama with raves on the film-festival circuit mystifies me. The Descendants has moments, and I give it high marks for making literal sense at a time when few movies do, but it isn’t original or revealing enough to merit a running time of just under two hours. To me, it doesn’t come close to this year’s other George Clooney potboiler, The Ides of March. Read More

By Jason Horowitz 2/20/08 4:43pm

At Clinton's Morning-After Rally: Defiance

After suffering her ninth and tenth consecutive losses in a row last night, it’s understandable that Hillary Clinton this morning called for an alternate reality.

“Let’s get real,” she said in a Hunter College auditorium that seemed to be packed mostly with the middle-aged women who make up her base. “Let’s get real about this Read More

By Staff 12/04/06 2:59pm

Parties

Okay — get your business cards ready. Here’s a list of some of the political holiday parties taking place around town.

I’ve noted the who and the when, but to keep the party crashers at bay, I’m withholding the time and location. Because honestly, there’s only so much booze an open bar can serve to Read More

By Staff 8/06/06 11:10pm

The Less Discovered Cook Islands

AMANDA: “Are there any cannibals there?” asked my culturally sensitive fiance, Dan, referring to the Cook Islands, the current focus of our honeymoon saga. We both have demanding jobs where the honeymoon is the one acceptable time to go away for a long while. So we’re trying to make the most of it Read More

By Terry Golway 2/13/06 12:00am

Making Sweet Music On a Sunday Night

It might seem fair to say that Rich Conaty slips into a time warp every Sunday night from 8 p.m. to midnight. As the host of a program called The Big Broadcast, which airs at that time on WFUV-FM, Mr. Conaty plays and talks about music from the 1920’s and 1930’s—music made decades before his Read More

By David Thomson 2/06/06 12:00am

Promising, Flawed Novel Yo-Yos From L.A. to S.F.

The Ruins of California is a great title, even if it’s hard to know where a name like “Ruin” comes from—and actually, in California, people do still come from somewhere other than a scenarist’s treatment. Take Inez Ruin, a child in 1969 and the narrator of this book. She’s the daughter of divorce: Her mother, Read More

By David Thomson 2/06/06 12:00am

Promising, Flawed Novel Yo-Yos From L.A. to S.F.

The Ruins of California is a great title, even if it’s hard to know where a name like “Ruin” comes from—and actually, in California, people do still come from somewhere other than a scenarist’s treatment. Take Inez Ruin, a child in 1969 and the narrator of this book. She’s the daughter of divorce: Her mother, Read More