-
Cartoon by Bruce Eric Kaplan. For more from this week’s issue: http://nyr.kr/XwcHyZ
-
"The initial, heedless reactions to Ms. Sandberg’s book spoke to a larger problem, namely the pressures that the twenty-four/seven hamster-wheel pace of the contemporary media puts on writers: to speed up rather than to slow down, to shoot first and ask questions later, to create drama, and, sometimes, to operate from a place of bad faith and fixed biases."
— Anna Holmes weighs in on the backlash to Sheryl Sandberg and her book “Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead”: http://nyr.kr/12p6dcR(Source: newyorker.com)
-
"A philosophical travelogue, an allegorical romance, a grandly symphonic visual realization of cultural history—“Interlude” is one of Sirk’s densest and wildest films, which dramatic action and directorial detail converge to sharp points of insight. It’s high on the list of cinematic masterworks in need of revival and rediscovery."
— Richard Brody on Douglas Sirk’s “Interlude,” a hidden masterwork: http://nyr.kr/15afDHy(Source: newyorker.com)
-
"When you’re the President, probably the only times you can be impregnably alone are in the bathroom. I imagine Bush cherishing eight years’ worth of accumulated memories of comfort and various forms of relief in ceramic sanctums…"
-
Last week, I wrote a column about Lena Dunham’s HBO show “Girls.” I had a bunch of abstract, cranky, intellectual goals: I wanted to pluck “Girls” out of the debate about Millennials, for starters. I wanted to analyze its critical reception. I wanted to put the discussion of “privilege” in a different light. And I wanted to talk about “Girls” specifically as television.
But that’s just one way of doing criticism, and last night’s excellent episode, “One Man’s Trash,” deserves a more direct response…
Emily Nussbaum writes about the sex scene on last night’s episode of “Girls”: http://nyr.kr/XCn2KG
-
Thank You, John Lahr
After twenty years as The New Yorker’s chief theatre critic, John Lahr will give up regular reviewing to focus on the Profiles he also contributes to the magazine, as well as on book projects.
Photograph by Jill Krementz.
-
The Movies Aren't Dying (They're Not Even Sick)→
Richard Brody responds to the “greatly exaggerated” claims about the death of cinema: http://nyr.kr/P9Xyz6
-
Audio Slide Show: Peter Schjeldahl on "Regarding Warhol"→
This week in the magazine, Peter Schjeldahl reviews “Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a show that juxtaposes examples of Warhol’s paintings, films, and sculpture with works by sixty other artists who were influenced by his legacy. ”The sixty artists are well chosen but, in truth, too few. For or against, what artist of the past half century hasn’t reacted to Warhol’s reduction of art’s once sacred aura to a cult of the obvious?” Schjeldahl writes.
In this audio slide show, Schjeldahl remembers seeing “Cow Wallpaper” in an exhibit in 1966: “There were drifting Mylar balloons, and this gorgeous and perfectly idiotic wallpaper. Everybody looked great, was stoned, and in my memory it was the absolute highlight of the nineteen-sixties—everything went to hell after that.” He also analyzes a selection of his favorite works from the show.
Click-through to listen now: http://nyr.kr/Sa7a2K
-
"Citizen Kane” isn’t even Welles’s best film, and therefore can’t be the best film of all time. But why did it hold the title for so long? The answer to that question is equally simple…"
— Richard Brody on why “Vertigo” surpassed “Citizen Kane” to become the best film of all time: http://nyr.kr/Tis1B3(Source: newyorker.com)
-
The Intersection of Expertise and Taste: A Critic's Manifesto→
And so the fact is that (to invoke the popular saying) everyone is not a critic.
Daniel Mendelsohn on the role and responsibility of a critic: http://nyr.kr/POAGGq
