Reviews Of My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?; Cave Of Forgotten Dreams; And Into The Abyss

  I recently streamed and watched three recent films by the great German filmmaker Werner Herzog. The first was a fictive film- My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?- which, despite my… Read full post »

DS: As I embark on a fourth DSI sojourn with one of today’s leading writers and thinkers, Steven Pinker- noted cognitive psychologist at Harvard University, I want to first thank you for agreeing to be queried. Since several other interviews have occurred in this series, you know that I have st… Read full post »

DS: Pete Hamill, thank you for agreeing to be interviewed for The Dan Schneider Interview series. The very purpose of this series is to combat what I call the ‘deliteracy’ of current and common culture, i.e.- the active dumbing down of art and discourse. Nowadays, many magazines that used/… Read full post »

  Watching documentaries on Netflix can be engaging yet frustrating. On a single afternoon I watched a 2009 Discovery Channel documentary, called The Science Of Sex Appeal, which offered insights into the whys and wherefores of its titular subject matter, then watched a 2008 theatrical documenta/… Read full post »

While perusing through the DVD racks at a local Half Price Books I came across a package with two DVDs and a bonus CD, called An Adaptation Of H.G. Wells’ Classic The War Of The Worlds. Thinking it was a version of the classic sci fi film from the 1950s, I… Read full post »

DS: This month the Dan Schneider Interviews series interviews one of the intelligentsia’s ‘rock stars,’ philosopher Daniel Dennett. I use the term ‘rock star’ because, despite the dumbed down and deliterate culture we live in, there are still a few public people whose so/… Read full post »

DS: Thank you for inaugurating the Dan Schneider Interviews series. As my first guinea pig I may stumble a bit in finding my legs, but the purpose for this series is what I have spent years decrying (in person and on my website) as not only the lack of true intellectual/… Read full post »

On Howard Bloom’s The God Problem: How A Godless Cosmos Creates

  In any given month, because of my having a popular arts website, I am literally offered hundreds of published books, videos, and other things to review, aside from thousands of submissions of poems and essays to look through… Read full post »

 Review Of Howard Gardner’s Extraordinary Minds (Television Series)

  In reviewing the five part television series, Extraordinary Minds, from 2010, a series of 52 minute long interviews conducted by Howard Gardner, a developmental psychologist, let me return to an earlier point in tim… Read full post »

Film Reviews Of Bill Cunningham New York; The Most Dangerous Man In America: Daniel Ellsberg And The Pentagon Papers, And The Cats Of Mirikitani

 

  I recently watched three biographical documentaries. Two of them were vanity documentaries on men of little accomplishment and artistic skil… Read full post »

Film Reviews Of Her Name Is Sabine, Exit Through The Gift Shop, And Buck

  It used to be that film documentaries were in the purview of professional film directors, editors, and producers, and that certain standards of artistic integrity and journalistic objectivity were observed.… Read full post »

Film Reviews Of Chris & Don: A Love Story; Black White + Gray: A Portrait Of Sam Wagstaff And Robert Mapplethorpe; Before Stonewall: The Making Of A Gay And Lesbian Community, And For The Bible Tells Me So

  I recently watched four documentaries on Netflix on the subject of… Read full post »

On a recent trip to San Angelo, Texas, my wife and I were introduced to the name and persona of Western writer and Texas journalist Elmer Kelton. Well, introduced is a mite too passive a term, for in San Angelo- Kelton’s adopted hometown, one simply cannot avoid the man- his image… Read full post »

   As I have often rightly been harsh on editors and critics who gladhand praise to their friends and associates in return for advancement opportunities in the fields of the arts and academia, let me state up front that I have known Jason Sanford for well over a decade, he attended…

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It is an unusual circumstance that finds me writing not the first nor second, but the third, review of a particular book of short stories: Palm-Of-The-Hand Stories, by Yasunari Kawabata, that will appear on my own website. The first two reviews of the book to appear were written by Brent Peterson,/… Read full post »

  One of my website’s fans forwarded me a link to a recent New York Times article with the tabloid title, A Suicide Leaves A Literary Journal And Its Editor In Limbo. As I have a popular website and traverse through 15-1600 emails per week, I actually get many, MANY links/… Read full post »

For about a quarter of a century I have been a subscriber to Poets & Writers magazine. In the early days, before it went glossy, and was more or less a newsletter, I found it useful as a place to send around my then callow poems, and even to find out/… Read full post »