Rising spirit
Folks don’t discuss D’Angelo’s singing. They talk about his movement. His calling. His having been chosen as the next rung in black music’s evolutionary ladder.
Not fade away
The first stab at rock crit legend Lester Bangs’ life finds the heart of a man who became the walking archetype for the aspiring rock writer.
S/he loves me (not)
Strauss’ wistfully comic opera ponders mortality and bends gender….
42 Up
This is the sixth installment of a series of documentaries by British director Michael Apted which began with 7 Up in 1962 and which has followed, at seven-year intervals, the fortunes of a group of boys and girls (now men and women) from varying backgrounds. Part anthropological treatise and part marathon soap opera, the series…
Cotton Mary
Even though the most successful films made by the Merchant Ivory team (Room With a View, Howard’s End) are costume epics about English repression and hypocrisy, a large part of their prolific output has dealt with the British in India. Cotton Mary, directed by Ismail Merchant, epitomizes these films, where the allure of exotic India…
Croupier
Casinos spend a lot of time and effort presenting a shiny surface of glamour and easy money, but croupier Jack Manfred (Clive Owen) sees it from the other side. Night after night, he deals blackjack and spins the roulette wheel, getting an adrenaline rush from watching gamblers lose over and over again. Even though casinos…
Titus
Anyone who thinks Shakespeare has to be endured instead of enjoyed won’t be swayed by Titus, director Julie Taymor’s audacious reimagining of the historical tragedy Titus Andronicus. Taymor, the acclaimed avant-garde theater director who found mainstream fame with The Lion King, has turned one of William Shakespeare’s least-acclaimed plays into a postmodern spectacle. It’s interesting…
Four-color opera
Although P. Craig Russell has left a mark on mainstream comics, he has never been one to shy away from broadening the scope of what comics can do. Alongside the superheroes, he’s found a place for the classics, first by adapting the Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde and then turning to his love of opera,…
Spooktacular fun
Jill Thompson first brought her Scary Godmother to the world in the form of a fully painted hardcover graphic novel. The tale of Little Hannah and her trips to the Fright Side quickly won over fans of all ages with its oddball flavor and lovable cast of frighteners. Now after a couple of one-shots it…
Peeping Tom
When director Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom was first released in Britain in 1960, its reception was not only dismissive but filled with angry disgust, as though the critics had found something slimy and pulsating in their popcorn. Had Powell been a director who had built up a reservoir of good will — like Alfred Hitchcock,…
