The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti (2008) A plucky orphan with one hand and a deep conscience navigates colonial New England with a supporting cast of grotesque, mysterious and occasionally redeemable characters. Among them are a loyal murderer, an artistic dwarf, an ailing widow and a scoundrel lover, all crowding and competing in a vibrant […]
Author Archive
Weekend recs
How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, by Mohsin Hamid (2013) You start reading a novel you know nothing about. It’s written in the second person, which is rarely done and even more rarely done well. But as you read the story of a young man in an unnamed Asian city, you are first […]
Weekend recs
Orange is the New Black (2013- ) Series in the age of Netflix are designed for binge watching, and Orange, about a Smith grad who goes to federal prison, is a prime example. Season I is thirteen episodes and everyone you know has already watched the whole thing, so you might as well power through. The […]
Weekend recs
The Last Days of Emma Blank (2009), dir. Alex Van Warmerdam (available on Netflix Instant) Do NOT watch the trailer or read a review — all chock-full of spoilers — before seeing this movie. The pleasure is in the plot surprises revealed casually. I will tell you that it’s set in the Dutch countryside near […]
Weekend recs
This is the End, dir. Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen (2013) There’s something delightful about actors playing themselves as complete assholes, and the guys (and a few girls, including Emma Watson) in this movie are truly over-the-top — cursing, flailing, selfish, obtuse, wildly egotistical maniacs. If you see one movie all year with Michael Cera […]
Weekend rec
This should be required — not simply recommended — viewing for all Americans this and every other 4th of July weekend. Is there any more concise expression of why we should ambivalently love this country? What was the best holiday-related thing you watched or listened to this weekend?
Weekend recs
Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class, by Jefferson Cowie (2010) Like a What’s the Matter with Kansas? with liner notes, this book’s hook is how Cowie reads cultural products of the time as reflecting shifts in working class identity from the mid ’60s through the early ’80s. Paul Schrader’s […]
Weekend recs
Orphan Black (BBC America) Want to know why unknown Tatiana Maslany beat out Claire Danes, Vera Farmiga, and Elisabeth Moss this week at the Critics’ Choice Awards? Then beg, borrow, or steal your way to Orphan Black, Season One. Sarah discovers a doppelganger committing suicide by subway. Identity theft leads down a rabbit hole of […]
Weekend recs
Hollywood Lesbians by Boze Hadleigh (1994): Celebrity gossip is only enjoyable when the subjects themselves are compelling. Hadleigh interviewed mostly closeted lesbians from Hollywood’s Golden Age, a few from behind the camera like Edith Head, and got startlingly frank — if sometimes coded — responses out of almost all of them. It’s dizzying to watch […]
Weekend recs
Anselm Kiefer at Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea, NY. Der Morgenthau Plan, Anselm Kiefer’s show at Gagosian, is completely arresting. Expressive, imposing, somewhat menacing, and intensely, darkly vibrant, these massive paintings are named after US Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, who in 1944 proposed converting “post-war Germany into a pre-industrial, agricultural nation, allegedly in order to limit […]
