Posts Tagged ‘review’
John Slater’s Lean
February 1, 2017
What is poetry, anyway? I found myself musing about this as I sat with John Slater’s stimulating new collection, Lean. First I recalled what I’d once heard poet Li-Young Lee say at a reading: In poetry, language is not the only medium; silence is also a medium. This is a difference of poetry from prose.…
Read MoreKathleen Wakefield’s Invisible Stenographer
December 20, 2016
You’ve got to meet this character. She’s a stenographer by trade: From the outset she was the obsessive type, maker of lists: dates, births and deaths, diagnoses, times of arrival and departure, the amassing of coins, weapons and works of art, portions of letters, speeches and grocery lists, though soon it was statements of motivation,…
Read MoreGod Ponders the Heart
June 23, 2016
In Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth, the writers frame the story in such a way that the common motivations are nested within, or are born from, a new one: the story opens upon a Scottish heath—damp, cold, and windblown—where the Thane of Glamis (Michael Fassbender) and his Lady (Marion Cotillard) stand at the graveside of their young…
Read MoreAnnie Spans the Gap, Part 1
April 26, 2016
The following appears as the editorial statement in Image issue 88. There is no such thing as an artist: there is only the world, lit or unlit as the light allows. When the candle is burning, who looks at the wick? When the candle is out, who needs it? But the world without light is…
Read MoreBetter Call Saul
March 23, 2016
Better Call Saul, a prequel to AMC’s milestone series, Breaking Bad, further establishes co-creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould to be among the most intricate moral thinkers working in the dramatic arts. Whereas the first series rendered the ethical decline of a dying man who makes something of a noble bargain with his conscience—attempting to…
Read MoreA Space Program
March 21, 2016
The tenth item on a list entitled “How to Watch This Film,” which accompanies Tom Sachs’ A Space Program, says that the film is “a love letter to the analog era.” That obsession with all things handmade and non-digital was obvious as I watched the film—even though I was sitting on my couch, streaming a digital screener on…
Read MoreThe Coen Brothers, Plato, and the Imagination
February 15, 2016
Note: This review contains mild spoilers. Hail, Caesar!, the Coen Brothers’ latest offering, tells the story of a pious hero on a religious quest, and by all appearances is a movie that asks to be interpreted in a theological way. A quasi-parable set in a big studio during the Golden Era of Hollywood, the film…
Read MoreFor the Love of Hank Stuever, Part 2
December 17, 2015
Continued from yesterday. Hank Stuever’s 2005 collection of essays Off Ramp: Adventures and Heartache in the American Elsewhere may not be the Good Book—as I said in the first part of this post—but you might be forgiven for thinking that I have treated it as such: My copy of the paperback edition’s spine was long…
Read MoreThe Affair and the End of It
October 29, 2015
The second season of Showtime’s The Affair premiered at the beginning of October. In the show, Noah, a forty-something apparently-happily-married novelist, goes to Montauk for the summer with his wife and kids. He meets Alison, who is also married, about ten years his junior, and still grieving the tragic death of her young son years earlier.…
Read MoreWish Upon a Lone Star
October 19, 2010
In hindsight, Shooting Star might have been a more fitting title for the fall schedule’s breakout network drama, given the advance blaze of glory with which Lone Star appeared on FOX, only to promptly disappear after two episodes due to dismal ratings. Originally titled Midland for the small Texas town in which it was partially…
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