It is odd to say that the book on writing by a famous writer is a curious beast; there are, after all, so many of them, how odd could they be? But they occupy a very strange niche in the literary world. They’re something akin to a Lifetime Achievement …
It happened while my partner was watching Keith Richards: Under the Influence. “This isn’t bad,” she said, “but it seems so much like an advertisement for his book.” I couldn’t help but agree; taken all in all, Under the Influence, Life, and Crosseyed Heart seem less like disparate threads in one man’s artistic …
Ever since the Hays Code took a fatal nosedive in the 1960s, movies have been cursing like there’s no tomorrow. At one point, movies, no matter how much they sublimated their sex and forefronted their violence, were as sanitary as a dentist’s tools. Sometimes this resulted in some finely suggestive …
Fargo was such a singular movie, such a unique and multilayered take on the typical heist-gone-wrong film, that it was almost unthinkable that it could be remade, rebooted, adapted or made sequel in anything like a satisfying manner. That someone actually managed to do so almost twenty years later — …
As campaign season rolls on, we are being treated to the usual colorful fall display of Republicans showing off their economic policies. Well, it’s actually not all that colorful; in fact, it’s downright monochromatic. The G.O.P. doesn’t like to talk about economic policy very much, because they don’t really have …
The problem with the comedy of humiliation… No, no, let’s start again. That seems dated. Ever since Seinfeld creator Larry David unleashed his… No, that’s predictable. Everybody’s gone there already. Might as well be doing riffs on the American Office. Let’s try one more time. When you’re making a comedy about extremely …
Paul Kingsnorth is the co-founder of the Dark Mountain Project, a collective of artists and intellectuals who believe that mankind has irretrievably poisoned the environment. They are producing writing, art, and thought informed by the idea that we are living in the last days of human dominance; their ideas are …
For many first-time visitors to the United States, an understanding of its culture can be hard to come by. Despite the American entertainment industry’s never-flagging efforts to export the nation’s finest bullet- and fart-joke-imbued movies and television programs to far-flung parts of the globe, many foreign tourists have been insufficiently …
Today is the United Nations’ International Day of Peace. You would be forgiven if you think this is another fake celebration of high ideals cooked up by public relations interns, and, in truth, a lot of it is. Hashtag marketing, pointless celebrity endorsements, feel-good concerts and media events, and related …
Well, that was edifying, wasn’t it? Last night, CNN gathered a bunch of rich assholes together to pretend that Barack Obama is Stalin reincarnated and to explain in vague terms about how they would restore America to its vanished glory by taking medical care away from women and poor people …
We must all of us, always, strive to have sympathy for our fellow man. If all were judged equal, who should ‘scape whipping, and so on; it is the part of the righteous to understand that there but for the grace of God go we, and to hold no one …
Anyone with a pair of testicles can be a man. And it’s always possible to receive a field promotion to captain, however little time you may have actually served in the military. It thus falls to “doctor” to be the most unearned title in the world of super-humans. While lesser …
Pitchfork, the music website that everybody loves to hate, has just released a list of the alleged 200 best singles of the 1980s. Response on the internet has been, well, response on the internet: discussion of the merits of the songs included is vastly outweighed by outrage at the absence …
Greetings, extraterrestrial visitors! Ever since our own American astronauts, Lt. Chup Munnler and Captain E.G. “Spurts” Grandango, made contact with the people of Proxima Centauri VII eighteen years ago, Earth has become a popular tourist destination for visitors from every quadrant of our galactic sector. We’re pleased to welcome our …
Straight Outta Compton is in theaters as I write this, and like just about everything the former Andre Romelle Young touches, from subpar headphones to white dingbats from Detroit, it has turned to gold, raking in over $100 million at the box office so far. What exactly this means for …
