Mark Edmundson of the University of Virginia has published a fascinating article in the latest Chronicle of Higher Education, describing the current generation of students. They are an active, intelligent, vulnerable bunch: “Its members have a spectacular hunger for life and more life. They want to study, travel, make friends, make more friends, read everything…

When you have a well-known story about a political leader in eighteenth century England who sets out to abolish the slave trade based on his Christian convictions; and when the sub-plot involves the epiphanic conversion of the man who wrote the most influential hymn of all time, Amazing Grace; and when the screenplay of a…

Maybe the only way to make films set in places that people have too precise an idea about is to indulge that idea, make it even more precise, to the point where it becomes a caricature of itself. In other words, go ahead and give them what they expect, so that something larger and more…

Robert Benchley once said that there are two kind of people in the world: Those who divide the world in two kinds of people, and those who don’t. I’m more prone to trilogies myself. The world is a set of triangles; not railroad tracks. Therefore, I start with Super Bowl XLII. As you must know,…

After reading reviews for Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, I became frustrated. The consensus about its central character, Daniel Plainview, was that he was “a great oversize monster who hates all men including therefore himself” (Roger Ebert). My problem? Watching the film, I had related to Daniel. Anderson, who compares Daniel to Dracula,…

Hollywood often says that movies reflect the culture. That’s mostly a lie, I suspect. Rather, they reflect what will sell. Or more likely, what the producer’s think will sell. Or even more likely, what the producers want to sell. I mean, how many producers perform Margaret Mead field surveys of the “culture” under some soul-bound…

I have to admit: I would love to see the Oscars cancelled. Not for the power trip that we, the lowly scribes of the Writers Guild, brought Hollywood to its knees; I would be just as happy, if not more so, to see a union of caterers or make-up artists do the same. Nor for…