In today’s Daily Comment, Adam Gopnik looks back on the work of Ray Harryhausen, a legendary filmmaker and titan of special effects, who died earlier this week: http://nyr.kr/132Dvc2

(Source: newyorker.com)

Richard Brody’s review of “The Great Gatsby”: Try Again, Old Sport http://nyr.kr/15vCLn6

Richard Brody’s take on “Iron Man 3” which he calls “a minor masterwork of synergy between actor and director”: http://nyr.kr/YAZDy9

A slide show of vintage New Yorker ads that evoke the gin-fuelled Gatsby era of “flaming youth” and Prohibition, flapper culture and cabarets: http://nyr.kr/ZLAFeg 

(Source: newyorker.com)

(Source: newyorker.com)

In this week’s issue, Ian Parker profiles the writer and director Noah Baumbach: “Baumbach has discovered that elective frugality gives him power.” http://nyr.kr/1798GXk

In last week’s issue, John Le Carré reflected on the process of adapting his book “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold” to the screen, which David Denby writes is “one of the most truthful and emotionally resonant movies made in the entire Cold War period.” http://nyr.kr/14pFPka

“Pines” is supposed to be about turbulent male relationships through the generations—what fathers and sons give to one another and withhold from one another. I’m all in favor of experimental narrative forms and deep thematic undercurrents, but this movie feels patchy and underdone.

David Denby reviews Derek Cianfrance’s “The Place Beyond the Pines,” and Antoine Fuqua’s “Olympus Has Fallen”: http://nyr.kr/13g0Vkb

(Source: newyorker.com)

   Before there was François Truffaut, with his gargantuan series of interviews with Alfred Hitchcock that became a book, there was Peter Bogdanovich, who, in his early twenties—fifty years ago—was, in effect, New York’s première activist on behalf of the classic American cinema and its luminaries (most of whom were still alive and working)… 

Richard Brody on Peter Bogdanovich and Alfred Hitchcock: http://nyr.kr/10dViND

Photograph: NBC.

(Source: newyorker.com)