This morning, while riding the downtown 6 train to work, I saw the actual Abraham Lincoln. He walked into the subway car, ducking beneath the doorframe a little awkwardly, like my uncle Sherman, when we finally got him to do the limbo at my cousin Josh’s bar mitzvah.

The first thing I thought was, Wow, Lincoln is tall.

The second thing I thought was, What the hell is Abraham Lincoln doing riding the 6 train?

Continue reading about a strange encounter with President Abraham Lincoln on the NYC subway system: http://nyr.kr/X2Szag

Hendrik Hertzberg looks at the allusions to Lincoln, Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr. in President Obama’s second inaugural speech: http://nyr.kr/WkhLWs

Photograph of Lincoln’s second Inaugural Address by Alexander Gardner/Courtesy Library of Congress.

The Oscar nominations were announced this morning, with “Lincoln” garnering a leading twelve nods from the Academy. Richard Brody has already shared his thoughts. Here is how the magazine covered the nine Best Picture nominees: http://nyr.kr/UQ8VV6

“Lincoln” vs. Lincoln: Hendrik Hertzberg on what Spielberg’s film got right, and what it got wrong: http://nyr.kr/U4D3sN

Interestingly, while having a sense of humor, or at least the appearance of one provided by comedy writers, has become a necessary characteristic for an American President in our time, in the nineteenth century, too much humor was considered a liability. And that was the case for Lincoln…

Bob Mankoff on Abraham Lincoln’s sense of humor, and ”the sense of the ridiculous,” a political liability in the early 19th cent: http://nyr.kr/VeNhcT

Michelle Dean reconsiders Mary Todd Lincoln, and explains why Sally Field was perfect for the role in Spielberg’s film: http://nyr.kr/10oHfWa

Abraham Lincoln loomed large in the imagination of the director John Ford, as seen in the 1939 drama “Young Mr. Lincoln” (which I discuss in this clip), an ingeniously tight-focussed yet historically resonant view of the future President’s rise to prominence. 

Richard Brody on his DVD-of-the-Week, “Young Mr. Lincoln”. Click-through for more.

The title suggests a monolith, as if going to this movie were tantamount to visiting Mt. Rushmore, and the running time, of two and a half hours, prepares you for an epic. Yet the film is a cramped and ornery affair, with Spielberg going into lockdown mode…

From next week’s issue, Anthony Lane reviews Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln”.