The Influencers: Buster Keaton
Along with Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton was seminal among silent film actors. What’s more, like Lloyd, Keaton was a courageous stunt performer. In 1996, “Entertainment Weekly” rated Keaton […]
Butler. Photo by Adalena Kavanagh.
The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act
What constitutes good acting? Honesty? Authenticity? Realism? Charisma? The culture critic Isaac Butler explores these questions as well as past as prologue in his absorbing new book, The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act. In this […]
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All That Jazz
It’s been two years since live theater closed curtains. During this period of no staged drama, musicals, or comedy, we were relegated to the confines of late-night television comedians, sans in-person audiences. During this time of quarantine and pandemic […]
Lucy and Desi
With Aaron Sorkin’s drama exploring one challenging week in the lives of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz in Being the Ricardos and the Amy Poehler directed documentary, Lucy and Desi (both currently streaming on Amazon Prime), the breakthrough […]
Manuel-Miranda
Hamilton
“A Bastard Immigrant, son of a whore” — this is the unflattering but accurate description of one of this country’s most brilliant founders, Alexander Hamilton, who became the nation’s first […]
We Need To Talk About Cosby
We Need to Talk About Cosby is a four-part docuseries directed by W. Kamau Bell (who also proves to be a probing and effective interviewer); it’s currently streaming on Showtime. Early […]
Reframed: Marilyn Monroe
It’s too easy to characterize women performers as sex objects rather than talented, charismatic people. Handsome men — such as Clark Gable, Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Tom Selleck, Brad Pitt, etc. — […]
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Reopening Night
Reopening Night, a documentary movie by filmmaker Rudy Valdez, gives an up close examination of the Public Theater’s 2021 summer reopening in New York City’s Central Park, subsequent to being shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic and […]
Houdyshell
The Humans
As with so many monster movies, The Humans, like The Blob, The Shining, and The Bad Seed is a simple title but with horrific implications. Out of an ordinary occasion we encounter troubling, mysterious circumstances. The difference between “The Humans” […]
The Civil War (Or, Who Do We Think We ARe)
Documentarian Rachel Boynton has crafted an informational film titled Civil War (Or, Who Do WeThink We Are). A starting point for this probing documentary (now airing on cable television’s MSNBC) is that the American […]