By Ben Smith 12/08/03 12:00am

Master Howard Dean

Before Howard Dean was a country doctor, before he was the tight-fisted governor of Vermont or the angry champion of dispossessed Democrats, Howard Brush Dean III was a Madison Avenue baby.

Those were the days when Madison Avenue ran in two directions. Young Howard-no one called him Howie-walked a block east each morning from his Read More

By Rex Reed 12/23/02 12:00am

Gangs Looks Good, But Disappoints

Not bad enough to dismiss but too dense and boring to praise, let’s just call Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York the year’s longest and most expensive cinematic disappointment. Massively overproduced and confusingly overpopulated with people and ideas that choke on their own cross-purposes, it’s a major director’s ambitious attempt to chronicle the crime and Read More