I found "Up" to be by turns liberating and vacillating, as if the storytellers at Pixar had set out to make a children's version of Wild Strawberries and found the going difficult.  The "adventure" part in the middle provoked some giggles (I could listen to those silly dogs talk all day… Read full post »

James Fallows makes some excellent points in his recent article for the Atlantic, "How America Can Rise Again."  

In particular, he points out that the narrative of decline - self-critical, confessional, socially conscious - is as American as apple pie, and has often preceded periods of co… Read full post »

Compiling my list of favorite, most affecting films of the past decade is emotionally challenging for two reasons: one, this was essentially my first decade of adulthood, the first decade in which I watched films for adults; and two, this was the decade in which movies became my life, intertwined so… Read full post »

I remember hearing an interview during last year's primary campaign with an old mentor of Barack Obama's who knew him when he was a community organizer in Chicago. He said that he knew instantly that the young Obama had unlimited potential. His command of language was astounding. He… Read full post »

As the final shape of the omnibus health care bill was being hammered out in Congress, a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showed that support for health care reform had plunged to its lowest point in years. Those two facts are probably not a coincidence – continuous media coverage of… Read full post »

Kudos to the always astute Glenn Greenwald for focusing in on the head-scratching aspects of the right-wing protest movement, i.e., the fact that the protesters appear to be motivated by a dissatisfaction with the government which goes beyond the usual left-right partisan divide.  As I stated in… Read full post »

In her most recent article for Salon, Frances Kissling makes a series of sweeping historical claims without offering any evidence to back them up.  She informs her readers that "Avoiding sex is something religion - especially Catholicism -- excels at."  This statement is a huge generalizati… Read full post »

Frank Rich offered some cogent analysis in this Sunday's NYT in making the case that for all its hysteria and pathological displacement, the protesters on the right are at least shouldering the burden of criticizing a government that richly deserves criticism, and that this is more than can be said f… Read full post »

Robert Bresson is a film maker whose immense cinematic gifts, once you have been exposed to them, are impossible to forget - no matter how hard you might try.  His style is rigorous, sustained, relentless, focused, like a teacher leading a student patiently towards the goal.  Entering his w… Read full post »

 The news announced earlier this week that Mary Travers had died at the age of 72 is not likely to stir the kind of media frenzy that followed the death of Michael Jackson, for the obvious reason that the era of hippie folk-tunes has been largely forgotten.  Some historical eras are… Read full post »

I totally agree with David Sirota that bipartisanship is one of the most over-rated and abused "principles" of the beltway establishment, everywhere and always serving as a code-word for corporate rule.  Why should I as a citizen care whether an important legislative objective is bipartisan or n… Read full post »