Arts Review
Mary Shelley: Prometheus trivialized
By Joanne Laurier, 5 July 2018
A new film biography of Mary Shelley, directed by Saudi filmmaker Haifaa al-Mansour, coincides with the 200th anniversary of the publication of Shelley’s Gothic masterpiece Frankenstein: Or, the Modern Prometheus.
The second season of Netflix’s Dear White People: More of the same selfish, racial politics
By Nick Barrickman, 4 July 2018
The second season picks up where the first season left off: focused on the petty and self-centered exploits of a group of African American students at a fictional upscale university.
An interview with Mexican documentarian Juan Francisco Urrusti, director of In Exile: A Family Film
“The world should not be closing itself in—my father’s struggle was against all walls.”
By Kevin Mitchell, 2 July 2018
The WSWS spoke recently with the director of In Exile: A Family Film, a film about the Spanish Civil War and its consequences.
The Seagull: Is there a “Chekhovian mood” at present?
By David Walsh, 30 June 2018
Michael Mayer has directed a new film version of Russian writer Anton Chekhov’s play, The Seagull, written in 1895 and first produced in 1896.
Everything is Love? Beyoncé and Jay-Z flaunt their wealth
By Hiram Lee, 27 June 2018
The new album from music industry power couple Beyoncé and Jay-Z is primarily a repugnant celebration of their own wealth and acquisitiveness.
Dominican-American author Junot Díaz: the latest artist victimized by the #MeToo campaign
By Sandy English, 26 June 2018
Following a controversy that erupted in May, MIT recently completed an investigation into the conduct of Díaz, who teaches at the university, and cleared him of any sexual misconduct.
In Exile: A Family Film—Refugees from the Spanish Civil War
By Kevin Mitchell, 23 June 2018
An unusual documentary was recently released that traces the journey of the filmmaker’s grandparents and parents to Mexico in 1939 as refugees from the Spanish Civil War.
Survivors Guide to Prison: The American nightmare
By Joanne Laurier, 22 June 2018
This documentary exposé of the US prison and criminal justice system includes a host of celebrities commenting on the phenomenon of mass incarceration.
“Unfortunately, none of this happened”: Kirill Serebrennikov’s Summer (Leto), a take on the pre-perestroika period in the USSR
By Clara Weiss, 21 June 2018
Serebrennikov’s new film treats two of Russia’s most famous rock groups, Kino and Zoopark, in the early 1980s, while managing to avoid all the major questions of the time.
Ocean’s 8: A “gender-swapped” caper
By Carlos Delgado, 20 June 2018
The film stars Sandra Bullock as Debbie Ocean, a professional criminal who concocts a plan to steal a $150 million diamond necklace during New York City’s Met Gala.
The late American novelist Philip Roth attacked as a “misogynist”
By David Walsh, 18 June 2018
In the wake of writer Philip Roth’s death May 22, numerous commentaries have appeared accusing him of misunderstanding or being hostile to women and related failings.
A welcome development:
Actor Geoffrey Rush to return to stage with Melbourne Theatre Company
By Richard Phillips, 14 June 2018
Rush, the target of unsubstantiated allegations by Sydney’s Daily Telegraph, will play Malvolio in Twelfth Night.
Fifty years since the release of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey
By Joanne Laurier, 13 June 2018
2001: A Space Odyssey attempts to encompass four million years of human evolution, from prehuman man-apes in Africa, through to 21st-century space travelers.
Trump: An American Dream—Documentary traces rise of New York real estate billionaire
By Fred Mazelis, 11 June 2018
The series depicts the swamp of financial speculation, capitalist politics and degraded culture out of which Trump emerged to claim the presidency.
Solo: A Star Wars Story—Adventure without much substance
By Matthew MacEgan, 4 June 2018
The fourth Star Wars film released by Disney serves as a shallow adventure story with some reference to world politics, but very little that will be challenging to viewers.
Donald Glover’s hit music video “This is America”
By Zac Corrigan, 1 June 2018
Within 24 hours, “This is America” had been viewed 12.9 million times and the song debuted at #1 on the Billboard chart. It has now been viewed more than 200 million times.
Rapper Kendrick Lamar wins the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Music
By Hiram Lee, 28 May 2018
Pulitzer’s choice to recognize the rapper cannot be viewed as anything but a nod to identity politics and the Democratic Party.
Before the Fall: German and Austrian Art of the 1930s on view in New York City
By Fred Mazelis, 26 May 2018
The timeliness of this work hardly needs restating amid the social and political crisis on both sides of the Atlantic.
Philip Roth and the narrow framework of postwar cultural life
By David Walsh, 24 May 2018
Among Roth’s best known works are Goodbye, Columbus (1959), Letting Go (1962), Portnoy’s Complaint (1969), Zuckerman Unbound (1981), Sabbath’s Theater (1995), American Pastoral (1997), I Married a Communist (1998) and The Human Stain (2000).
Sri Lankan filmmaker Lester James Peries dies at 99
By Pani Wijesiriwardane and Gamini Karunatileka, 23 May 2018
Peries’s best films, like the great dramas directed by India’s Satyajit Ray and Japan’s Akira Kurosawa, have left their mark on Asian and world cinema.
Corporate: Offensive, pointed satire for a change
By Ed Hightower, 22 May 2018
A breath of fresh air, Corporate, directs its fire against the multinational corporation with considerable honesty and success.
#MeToo at the Cannes Film Festival: All about money and power
By Stefan Steinberg, 21 May 2018
An examination of recent movies by prominent women filmmakers reveals that they share the problems of their male counterparts.
Music streaming service Spotify initiates censorship against R. Kelly and XXXTentacion
By Zac Corrigan, 19 May 2018
Spotify inaugurated its “Hate Content & Hateful Conduct” policy by censoring the two singers based on allegations of “sexual violence.” Competitors Apple Music and Pandora Radio followed suit.
Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard: The cruelty of the motion picture business
By Joanne Laurier, 18 May 2018
The story of a struggling Hollywood screenwriter and his deadly encounter with a delusional silent film star.
Revisiting Hollywood’s Censor: Joseph I. Breen & The Production Code Administration (2007)
How the American establishment censored Hollywood during its “Golden Age”
By Charles Bogle, 17 May 2018
The bulk of Thomas Doherty’s work covers the period from 1934 to 1954, when his subject was the enforcer of the Production Code.
Machines: An unflinching look at an Indian textile mill
By Wasantha Rupasinghe, 15 May 2018
Rahul Jain’s austere but effective documentary focuses on one of the hundreds of textile plants in Gujarat state on India’s west coast.
The Jazz Ambassadors: An episode in the history of the American musical form
By Fred Mazelis, 14 May 2018
US foreign policy officials concluded that “jazz could give America an edge in the Cold War,” with mostly African-American musicians, “serv[ing] as Cold War cultural ambassadors.”
The downfall of New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman
By David Walsh and Eric London, 12 May 2018
On the basis of a May 7 feature article in the New Yorker magazine, “Four Women Accuse New York’s Attorney General of Physical Abuse,” the twice-elected Schneiderman resigned as of the following day.
Kanye West on slavery and Trump: Ignorance and the self-deluding influence of wealth
By Nick Barrickman, 12 May 2018
West’s disoriented statements and actions are in keeping with a persona that has been cultivated and praised in the press, including by the “left,” for over a decade and a half.
1945: The horrors of the Holocaust in Hungary
By Joanne Laurier, 11 May 2018
It soon comes to light that certain townspeople had a hand in the deportation of Jews from the Hungarian village to concentration camps and benefited in the confiscation of their property.
Christian Petzold’s Transit: The condition of refugees as hell on earth
By Stefan Sternberg, 9 May 2018
The fate of refugees is the subject of Transit, the latest film by prominent German director Christian Petzold, which featured at the 2018 Berlinale and is now on public release in Germany.
Is The Changeover just Twilight set in New Zealand?
By Tom Peters, 8 May 2018
The Changeover, highly praised in New Zealand, is a formulaic supernatural teen romance imbued with definite class prejudices.
The hypocritical, cowardly expulsion of Roman Polanski from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
1977 victim Samantha Geimer: It’s “an ugly and cruel action”
By David Walsh, 7 May 2018
The decision by the Academy, the industry body that hands out the Oscars, to expel filmmaker Roman Polanski is the latest atrocity attributable to the sexual witch hunt launched last October.
Tully, A Quiet Place, You Were Never Really Here: Every poor film is poor in its own way
By Joanne Laurier, 7 May 2018
It’s not clear that good movies resemble one another, but recent history certainly suggests there are many different ways in which films can be weak.
Artists on the Tate Modern’s David King exhibition, Red Star over Russia: “In essence the exhibition was anti-Trotsky”
By our reporters, 3 May 2018
The Tate Modern in London held an exhibition, Red Star Over Russia: A Revolution in Visual Culture 1905-55, from November 8, 2017 to February 18, 2018. The show used items from the David King collection, but adopted a hostile stance toward the October Revolution.
2018 San Francisco International Film Festival—Part 5
The generally—and genuinely—inadequate character of global filmmaking
By David Walsh, 2 May 2018
The impact of years of stagnation and official reaction still sharply influences artistic work.
“I Want to Be Rich and I’m Not Sorry”
New York Times columnist promotes “women who aggressively seek money and power”
By David Walsh, 30 April 2018
Los Angeles novelist Jessica Knoll spells out her credo in her NYT article: “Success, for me, is synonymous with making money …”
2018 San Francisco International Film Festival—Part 4
Documentary about singer M.I.A. (“Use your art to say something!”) and Paul Schrader’s First Reformed (small-town preacher struggles with life and death)
By Toby Reese, 30 April 2018
Matangi/Maya/M.I.A., a feature-length documentary about rapper-songwriter, “M.I.A.” is a breath of fresh air. First Reformed is a dismal, confused film about a middle-aged former military chaplain turned preacher.
2018 San Francisco International Film Festival—Part 3
Poverty, war and right-wing politics—and the lives of two artists
I Am Not a Witch, The Workshop, The Distant Barking of Dogs, Garry Winogrand and Louise Lecavalier
By Joanne Laurier, 27 April 2018
I Am Not a Witch in particular is an elegantly crafted tale that comments on the exploitation of Zambia’s poor by an elite that shamelessly promotes superstition and backwardness.
Interview with conductor William Barkhymer: “I think the world is just thankful we had Gershwin to compose Porgy and Bess”
By Barry Grey, 25 April 2018
“For me, Porgy and Bess is about a community, the people, how they interact with each other, how they hold together in good times and bad times.”
Final Portrait: Geoffrey Rush stars in affectionate film about Giacometti
By Richard Phillips, 24 April 2018
Stanley Tucci’s film, set in 1964, two years before Alberto Giacometti’s death, is about the artist’s portrait of James Lord, a young American writer.
The legacy of the Gershwins and Porgy and Bess
An interview with Marc George Gershwin and Michael Strunsky, nephews of George and Ira Gershwin
By Barry Grey, 23 April 2018
“What stands out is the genius of the music.”
Chappaquiddick examines 1969 tragedy and political cover-up
By Patrick Martin, 21 April 2018
The subject matter is the death in July 1969 of Mary Jo Kopechne, who was riding late at night in a car driven by Senator Edward Kennedy that went off an open wooden bridge and plunged into the water.
2018 San Francisco International Film Festival—Part 2
How are striking miners (Bisbee ’17), a great painter (Gauguin: Voyage to Tahiti), Native Americans (The Rider) and others treated by the filmmakers?
By Joanne Laurier, 20 April 2018
A further look at the recent San Francisco film festival and its variety of films. Interesting, complex subjects may still receive inadequate or uneven treatment.
2018 San Francisco International Film Festival—Part 1
Contemporary life, and those who make films about it (in Iran, the US, Russia, Switzerland, Kyrgyzstan …)
By David Walsh, 18 April 2018
The San Francisco International Film Festival, founded in 1957 and one of the longest-running such events in the Americas, this year screened some 180 films from 45 countries.
Director of The Loves of a Blonde, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Amadeus
Filmmaker Milos Forman (1932-2018), one of the leading figures of the Czech New Wave
By David Walsh, 16 April 2018
Forman was originally identified with the so-called Czech New Wave, a group of directors whose lively and honest films came to international prominence in the mid-1960s.
The death of rapper-producer Alias and the fate of “avant-garde” hip hop
By Nick Barrickman, 13 April 2018
Brendon Whitney (“Alias”) was a founding member of the experimental hip hop/electronic music label Anticon.
At the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester
Frankenstein: Exciting production marks 200 years since publication of Mary Shelley’s work
By Margot Miller, 12 April 2018
The Enlightenment ideas in Shelley’s novel speak forcefully to a modern audience, who can empathise with something created as an articulate rational being and reduced by society to a “monster.”
Restored version of Fassbinder’s working class drama Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day showing in US
By David Walsh and Joanne Laurier, 9 April 2018
The result is surprisingly optimistic and confident, not what one might have expected from Fassbinder, known for his emotionally dark, harsh and even cynical films.
Japanese animation filmmaker Isao Takahata, director of Grave of the Fireflies, dies at 82
By Elle Chapman and David Walsh, 7 April 2018
Takahata, one of Japan’s most influential animation filmmakers and co-founder of the famed Studio Ghibli, died from lung cancer in a Tokyo hospital April 5. We repost a review of his Grave of the Fireflies (1988).
68th Berlin International Film Festival—Part 8
Brothers (1929) and Comradeship (1931): Two films dealing with the workers movement
By Bernd Reinhardt, 6 April 2018
Two feature films, part of the Berlin International Film Festival retrospective section, reflect a militant mood among workers in the late 1920s, in particular their striving for a common struggle and international solidarity.
The controversy surrounding the Roseanne television series
By David Walsh, 4 April 2018
The first two episodes of the new season, broadcast on ABC back to back on March 27, were watched by more than 20 million people. The network has announced plans for an 11th season.
68th Berlin International Film Festival—Part 7
A fresh look at German cinema in the Weimar Republic era (1919-1933)
By Bernd Reinhardt, 3 April 2018
The major retrospective at this year’s Berlinale, “Weimar Cinema Revisited,” presented films—along with their directors in many cases—that have been forgotten for decades.
Babylon Berlin: A lavish television series about 1920s’ Germany
By Sybille Fuchs, 2 April 2018
Babylon Berlin’s action takes place in the German capital, then the third largest municipality in the world, at the end of the so-called Golden Years of the Weimar Republic (1919-1933).
Vertigo: Sixty years since the release of Alfred Hitchcock’s disturbing classic
By Joanne Laurier, 30 March 2018
Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece, Vertigo, endures as one of the most troubling American films of the postwar period.
Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread: Art for the artist’s sake
By David Walsh, 28 March 2018
Set in London in the 1950s, Anderson’s film concerns the relationship between a celebrated fashion designer, Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis), and a young woman, Alma (Vicky Krieps).
68th Berlin International Film Festival—Part 5
Central Airport THF: In Berlin, the end of the road for many refugees
By Verena Nees, 26 March 2018
Karim Aïnouz’s impressive documentary about the mass housing of refugees at the former Berlin Tempelhof Airport was awarded the Amnesty International Film Prize.
Shedding light on the conditions of “millions of women in the shadows of mainstream America”
Hold Me Down: A day in the life of a single mother in the Bronx
By Norisa Diaz, 24 March 2018
The 28-year-old Swedish director, Niclas Gillis, represents a new generation of artists and filmmakers responding to inequality and social misery.
An interview with filmmaker Niclas Gillis and Tanisha Lambright of Hold Me Down
By Norisa Diaz, 24 March 2018
Gillis and supporting lead actress Lambright spoke to the WSWS about the vast inequality in the most economically developed nation in the world.
Washington Post fulminates against Black Panther’s white supremacist supporters
By Nick Barrickman, 23 March 2018
Far from rejecting Black Panther’s “pro-black” message, white racists have endorsed its depiction of a feudal African monarchy whose rulers have sealed the borders.
May Your Kindness Remain from Courtney Marie Andrews
By Matthew Brennan, 23 March 2018
The new album from 27-year-old country singer Courtney Marie Andrews is a sensitive look at the lives of ordinary people struggling to stay afloat.
Evolve by Imagine Dragons: Noisy emotion without artistic depth
By Ed Hightower, 23 March 2018
The latest album by Imagine Dragons is part of a self-pitying and overwrought trend in pop music.
68th Berlin International Film Festival—Part 4
Styx and Eldorado: Once again on the plight of refugees
By Stefan Steinberg, 22 March 2018
A handful of movies at the 2018 Berlinale dealt powerfully and insightfully with the European Union’s criminal policy toward refugees.
Former Metropolitan Opera conductor James Levine files suit against “McCarthyite” sexual harassment charges and firing
By David Walsh, 21 March 2018
The lawsuit accuses the Met of organizing a “kangaroo court” instead of an impartial investigation and using “McCarthyite tactics,” including refusing to reveal the names of any of the famed conductor’s accusers.
68th Berlin International Film Festival—Part 3
The Waldheim Waltz: A timely film about the World War II role of former Austrian president
By Stefan Steinberg, 20 March 2018
The events surrounding Kurt Waldheim’s campaign and subsequent election in 1985-86 played a major role in uncovering the real role played by the Austrian ruling elite in the Second World War.
Call Me by Your Name: Academy Award-winning film from Luca Guadagnino
By Hiram Lee, 19 March 2018
Italian director Guadagnino’s film is beautifully photographed, and the performances are generally very good. Why, then, does the whole thing feel so flat?
Wonder Wheel: Woody Allen’s latest film—and the campaign to drive him out of the film industry
By Joanne Laurier, 17 March 2018
Woody Allen’s newest film, Wonder Wheel, set in the 1950s, involves four characters whose unhappy lives become entwined in Coney Island—New York’s iconic amusement park.
68th Berlin International Film Festival—Part 2
The shattering of what’s left of the American Dream: Generation Wealth, Game Girls, Lemonade
By Stefan Steinberg, 16 March 2018
Three films at this year’s festival shed a piercing light on social relations in the United States.
“A Weinsteinian sex pest”?
In defence of poet Robert Burns: “Ye know, and dare maintain, the Royalty of Man”
By Paul Bond, 15 March 2018
The ahistorical middle-class moralizing of the sexual misconduct campaign has perhaps reached a new low with an attack on the great Scots poet Robert Burns (1759-1796).
68th Berlin International Film Festival—Part 1
The 2018 Berlinale and the #MeToo campaign
By Stefan Steinberg and Verena Nees, 14 March 2018
The 68th Berlin Film Festival, whose 2018 edition ended February 25, is the world’s largest film festival open to the public.
Sweet Country: Bitter truths about Aboriginal dispossession in Australia
By George Morley, 13 March 2018
Warwick Thornton’s second feature is a visually striking and powerful historical drama, which confronts audiences with some ugly truths about Australia’s colonial past.
Craig Gillespie’s I, Tonya: Confessions of a media pariah
By Carlos Delgado, 12 March 2018
The film depicts the life and times of Tonya Harding, the former Olympic figure skater who became the center of a media firestorm after the assault on rival Nancy Kerrigan in 1994.
Armando Iannucci’s The Death of Stalin: A fatally ill-conceived “black comedy”
By David Walsh, 9 March 2018
Ianucci’s new film about the demise of the gravedigger of the Russian Revolution is not so much maliciously anticommunist as it is, above all, historically clueless.
Ursula K. Le Guin: Prominent science fiction and fantasy writer (1929-2018)
By Sandy English, 8 March 2018
Ursula K. Le Guin, one of the most significant and popular English-language writers of speculative fiction, associated with feminism and utopianism, died January 28 at the age of 88.
At the University of Michigan
Racialist attacks mar landmark performance of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess
By Barry Grey, 7 March 2018
Given the generally deplorable state of culture and intellectual life in contemporary America, it was perhaps inevitable that this remarkable event would be tarnished by the purveyors of racialist conceptions of art.
The Case of Sobchak: A film by, about and for the Russian oligarchy
By Clara Weiss, 7 March 2018
The documentary amounts to an appeal to the Kremlin, Washington and the liberal intelligentsia, to make peace and negotiate an orderly transition from the Putin presidency.
90th Academy Awards: Banal, conformist and 10,000 miles from reality
By David Walsh, 6 March 2018
The 90th Academy Awards ceremony Sunday night, as one media commentator observed, “passed off without a hitch.” How unfortunate.
American Socialist: The Life and Times of Eugene Victor Debs—A fatally flawed documentary
By Fred Mazelis, 5 March 2018
The movie, directed by Yale Strom, seeks to turn Debs’ revolutionary message into its opposite.
The Oscar speech we’d like to hear Sunday night: “Members of the Academy, what hypocrites and conformists so many of you are!”
By David Walsh, 3 March 2018
The 90th Academy Awards ceremony, ostensibly honoring the best films and performances of 2017, will be held Sunday evening at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.
“A world without nations”—On the death of German jazz guitarist Coco Schumann
By Bernd Reinhardt, 2 March 2018
The German jazz guitarist Coco Schumann remained active musically until near the end of his life. He ranks as a jazz musician with one of the longest musical biographies ever.
A conversation with Raoul Peck, director of The Young Karl Marx
By Fred Mazelis, 1 March 2018
Filmmaker Raoul Peck discusses his portrait of the young Marx and Engels.
“This is a great loss for both the community of San Diego and Tijuana”
Baja California and San Diego lose sole classical music station
By Norisa Diaz, 1 March 2018
The popular station was eventually forced off the air yesterday after struggling financially for over a decade.
Arts editor David Walsh speaks on the centenary of the October Revolution
What the Russian Revolution meant for modern art and culture
By David Walsh, 28 February 2018
This talk was given in Chicago and in Ann Arbor and Kalamazoo, Michigan, in late 2017 and early 2018 to mark the centenary of the October Revolution.
2013 Berlin Film Festival prize winner dies in poverty
By Stefan Steinberg, 26 February 2018
Nazif Mujić, according to first accounts, has died in extreme poverty in the impoverished hamlet of Svatovac in Bosnia.
Bill Frisell: A Portrait—an intimate documentary about a unique guitarist
By Richard Phillips, 23 February 2018
Emma Franz’s film is a fascinating overview of Frisell’s creative work and his constant search for new musical challenges.
A conversation with Emma Franz, director of Bill Frisell: A Portrait
By Richard Phillips, 23 February 2018
Filmmaker and musician Emma Franz speaks about her latest documentary and the political and artistic conceptions that informed her approach.
Film director Michael Haneke criticizes #MeToo movement on eve of Berlinale film festival
By Katerina Selin, 20 February 2018
The reactionary #MeToo campaign is playing a central role at the 68th Berlinale International Film Festival.
Failed by the State co-writer and presenter Ish: “I wasn’t trying to push agendas, I was just trying to tell the truth about Grenfell.”
By Robert Stevens, 16 February 2018
The World Socialist Web Site interviewed Ish about the making of Failed by the State, a documentary on the Grenfell fire, and the attack launched against it by the Daily Beast and right-wing newspapers in Britain.
Public outcry forces Manchester Art Gallery to restore censored painting
John William Waterhouse’s Hylas and the Nymphs (1896) taken down for a week
By Dennis Moore, 13 February 2018
The removal of Hylas and the Nymphs was never about a “conversation,” as gallery official claimed, it was an open act of censorship. Hundreds of visitors left notes expressing concern. The gallery’s website registered 1,000 comments.
Louis C.K.’s I Love You, Daddy: The tragic fate of a significant American film
By Zac Corrigan, 12 February 2018
After allegations of sexual misconduct against Louis C.K. became public, the distributor pulled the film, one week before its scheduled opening in November.
A conversation with film historian Max Alvarez: How the #MeToo campaign echoes the McCarthyite witch hunt of the 1940s and 1950s
“The climate is chillingly similar in terms of the massive capitulation and conformity”
By David Walsh, 8 February 2018
It is “Scoundrel Time” again in Hollywood, complete with denunciations, anonymous informants, humiliating “confessions,” trial by media and the banning of prominent performers.
Colors: Beck’s foray into mainstream pop
By Jay James, 5 February 2018
The 11 albums Beck released prior to Colors blended a dizzying array of genres, resulting in a series of psychedelic funk, soul, folk, hip-hop and and rock-infused anthems that have consistently topped the charts.
Jeff Daniels’ Flint: A drama about the former industrial city
Is it “all about the money” or all about race?
By David Walsh, 2 February 2018
Jeff Daniels’ drama is currently being performed at the Purple Rose Theatre in Chelsea, Michigan, some 60 miles west of Detroit. The play will run until March 10.
Marshall and #MeToo: A 77-year-old civil rights fight exposes the reactionary character of the sexual misconduct witch-hunt
By Fred Mazelis, 1 February 2018
The 1941 case, in which a black man was acquitted of rape charges, poses awkward questions for those who dismiss due process in their campaign against sexual harassment, both real and alleged.
Netflix: The Crown Season Two—Apologetics for the monarchy as sun sets on British Empire
By Paul Mitchell, 30 January 2018
The season begins with the Suez crisis in 1956 and ends in 1963 with the Soviet spy scare centred on War Minister John Profumo.
Actress Dorothy Malone (1924-2018)
By Hiram Lee, 29 January 2018
Veteran Hollywood actress Dorothy Malone, who appeared in the Douglas Sirk classic Written on the Wind, has died at the age of 93.
70 years since the release of John Huston’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
By Joanne Laurier, 26 January 2018
The classic film, based on the 1927 novel by German author B. Traven, is the tale of two down-and-out Americans in Mexico who join with an older prospector to dig for gold.
B. Traven, the author of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
By David Walsh, 26 January 2018
The author of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre was the left-wing writer known as B. Traven. Considerable mystery surrounds Traven, some of it sustained by the writer himself during his lifetime.
The 2018 Academy Award Nominations: A few worthy films, and others to fill quotas
By Hiram Lee, 24 January 2018
Guillermo del Toro’s film The Shape of Water led with thirteen nominations. Christopher Nolan’s World War II drama Dunkirk received eight nominations, while Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri received seven.
Dolores O’Riordan, lead singer of Irish rock band The Cranberries, dead at age 46
By Nick Barrickman, 19 January 2018
O’Riordan was pronounced dead on January 15 in her London hotel room.
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