Emmanuel Carrère’s La Moustache, based on a screenplay by Jérôme Beaujour and Mr. Carrère (in French with English subtitles), opens a Pandora’s box of paranoid suspicions after a man, acting on a whim, changes his appearance by shaving off his mustache. When no one notices the change—not even his wife of many years—the shorn narcissist Read More
Emmanuel Carrère’s La Moustache, based on a screenplay by Jérôme Beaujour and Mr. Carrère (in French with English subtitles), opens a Pandora’s box of paranoid suspicions after a man, acting on a whim, changes his appearance by shaving off his mustache. When no one notices the change—not even his wife of many years—the shorn narcissist Read More
The Foster design.
Plans for a cultural center in Hong Kong that would have included space for MoMA and Guggenheim museums have been scratched.
The decision is a setback for several major museums. The Georges Pompidou Center in Paris and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and the Museum of Read MoreStephen Chow’s Kung Fu Hustle, from a screenplay by Mr. Chow, Tsang Kan Cheong, Xin Huo and Chan Man Keung, is difficult for me to evaluate. I know next to nothing about Mr. Chow, even though he’s been appearing in Hong Kong films since 1988, with more than 50 action-comedy performances to his credit that Read More
Peyton Amberg , by Tama Janowitz. St. Martin’s Press, 335 pages, $24.95.
Trashy books fall into two basic categories: first, those bodice-rippers with puffed fuschia-lamé lettering and “sizzling!” blurbs by daytime-soap stars. This group includes Jackie Collins, Sidney Sheldon and Judith Krantz-authors who know exactly what they do and love it, and drive red Read More
The McSweeney’s tribe thinks that the book-reviewing trade has become a little too toxic. They worry that snarky reviewers might steer people away from interesting, earnest books. (See Heidi Julavits’ piece in The Believer magazine.)
Well, Believer it or not, we couldn’t agree more. So we’re turning the book reviews over to plants. (We actually Read More
My
Country Versus Me: The First-Hand Account by the Los Alamos Scientist Who Was
Falsely Accused of Being a Spy , by Wen Ho Lee, with Helen Zia. Hyperion,
332 pages, $23.95.
The title of this gripping memoir of one scientist’s battle with the system gone awry-which included a torturous
nine months in solitary Read More
Yue-Sai Kan, the most famous woman in China, was sitting in her office in her enormous, opulent townhouse on Sutton Square on Manhattan’s East Side. I had been gazing longingly out the window at the huge backyard she shares with United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, architect I.M. Pei, singer Robert Goulet and eight others. Read More
François Ozon’s Under
the Sand , from a screenplay by Mr. Ozon with the collaboration of Emmanuèle
Bernheim, Marina de Van and Marcia Romano, is about as good as it gets in the
current crapshoot of moviegoing. This is to say that the screen is awash with
unconventional attractions that are original without being overwhelming. Read More
“So what am I supposed to eat?” asked my son in a belligerent tone as he scanned the menu at Ping’s Seafood in Chinatown. “Dried frog? Organ belly?”
I had been told to expect changes in a sweet 12-year-old on the cusp of adolescence. But this boy had always been a fearless eater. He’d ordered Read More
