Published: 3/8/2000
Types: Arts, Literature
King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild Houghton Mifflin Company, $15, 367 pp. The year is 1898. You are a young shipping clerk for a Liverpool-based firm that has the e...[MORE]
Published: 2/23/2000
Dec. 31, 1999 was a heavy news day, to say the least. Boris Yeltsin resigned. Telegenic millennium celebrations were either under way or about to get under way around the globe. And terrorists released the 155 passengers they had been holding for more th...[MORE]
Published: 1/5/2000
Types: Screens, Television
"Sock it to me." Anyone who knew that Richard Nixon was the president who made a guest cameo on "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" couldn't help but hope that million-dollar winner John Carpenter would have mimicked Tricky Dick a...[MORE]
Published: 12/1/1999
There are many fine moments in Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven (1992). One in particular stands out. Sheriff Little Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman) is relaxing after a busy Fourth of July. Sitting in his jail is English Bob (Richard Harris), an aging snob and e...[MORE]
Published: 11/24/1999
Contrary to what Nike would like us to believe, far more people watch rather than actually play sports. So what exactly are we armchair superstars watching? David Shields has a pretty good idea, at least when it comes to basketball. In his new b...[MORE]
Published: 10/20/1999
Types: Screens
Ordinarily I’m pretty much immune to the dubious charms of advertising. I have a remote control and know how to use it. But ever so often, you hit upon an ad so dreadful that, as much as you want to look away, you can’t. Just like when "Ba...[MORE]
Published: 10/13/1999
Types: Screens
After decades of hand-wringing by parents’ groups and reams of studies by sociologists, the medical community has at last weighed in on television and the young. The American Academy of Pediatrics suggests that not only does media violence do harm ...[MORE]
Published: 9/22/1999
Last weekend I witnessed a miracle. Croatian pianist Ivo Pogorelich, ever the iconoclast, gave a super-lugubrious, super-emotive performance of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2. Reaction was predictably mixed: Half the audience sat on thei...[MORE]
Published: 8/11/1999
Types: Screens
The first time I saw Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, I was 15. It was a revelation of the highest order. Everything about it was stunning – the handheld camera work in the sexy streets of Gay Paree, the jazzy score, the insouciant mischief-making of Je...[MORE]
Published: 7/7/1999
Types: Screens
ABC led off its Saturday newscast during the Memorial Day weekend with a telling item. After praising how much Americans like the romance of getting away, the segment switched tone and offered a downbeat survey of how clogged the highways were and how long the lines were at...[MORE]
Published: 6/2/1999
Types: Screens
"If one could believe in God, would he fill the desert?" – Graham Greene, The End of the Affair The spirit of television moves in mysterious ways. Perhaps it’s just me, but it didn’t seem the least bit fishy that Billy Graham would m...[MORE]
Published: 5/12/1999
In the wake of the school shooting in Colorado, it seems every showbiz personality in America is being brought before the cameras to testify about violence and the mass media. Here we go again, you say. Still, interesting things are being said by some surprising sources. ...[MORE]
Published: 10/14/1998
For the better part of the decade, we have been besieged by a constant revamping, retooling and retrofitting of the film noir genre for shock value. What almost all of these films had in common was their social irrelevance. This is not surprising as: a) the intended audience was as oblivious to ...[MORE]
Published: 10/28/1998
These must be sleepless nights for Augusto Pinochet. All the old desperadoes are gone -- Mobutu, Papa Doc, Bokassa, Stroessner, Somoza. Only the wily Chilean with the stoic sag in his cheeks and virtuous gleam in his eyes was going to beat the clock and have a nice smooth ride into oblivion, all...[MORE]
Published: 11/4/1998
When your scribe comes across an interesting ditty in the popular press, he's always keen for a peek. Such was the case with Christopher Hitchens' diatribe about the irrelevance of history to Americans that appears in this month's Harper's. The same month brought us the most hyped post-Cold War ...[MORE]
Published: 11/11/1998
Types: Screens
Few things are more pleasing than watching Newt Gingrich eat crow. Alas, Washington will soon bid him goodbye and he'll be chowing down in the privacy of his bunker deep in the smug, antiseptic bosom of suburban Atlanta, from whence he came. Newt's tumble into the pit of hubris coincides wit...[MORE]
Published: 11/18/1998
Types: Screens
More than a few of you will be reading these words from the comfort of a booth at La Shish or Byblos. Nothing better than a shish tawook and lentil soup to take the edge off my heavy trip. The sabers of the Middle East are rattling, and not just in front of the shawarma rack. At any moment, t...[MORE]
Published: 11/25/1998
Types: Screens
If aliens were to arrive on Earth tomorrow, no doubt in short time they'd make their way to a shopping mall. And what would they learn there? Lesson No. 1: Americans love to eat. And as we are fast approaching the Season of the Binge, soon you'll find millions of people waddling a swath through ...[MORE]
Published: 12/9/1998
Types: Screens
Say what you will about Jack Kevorkian, but the cadaverous old bird's got moxie. No less than "60 Minutes" -- admittedly during sweeps month-- gave Black Jack a solid quarter hour to showcase his singular talent for inducing the Big Sleep. Rendered in that washed-out camcorder look we associate ...[MORE]
Published: 12/16/1998
Types: Food & Drink
It's a Friday night in the foyer of a tony restaurant somewhere in our fair metropolis. Last seating has come and gone, the kitchen can relax. Or perhaps not. A man dressed in Hawaiian shirt, jeans and scruffy loafers has appeared 15 minute...[MORE]
Published: 12/16/1998
Types: Screens
Many film critics are wondering out loud why in God's name Gus Van Sant was allowed to spend $25 million to "restage" Hitchcock's Psycho (1960). Implicit in this indignation is a knee-jerk allegiance to the sanctity of so-called masterpieces. Yet when one thinks of the legion of d...[MORE]
Published: 12/23/1998
Types: Screens
Your scribe fully intended to compose a scintillating exposé on the impeachment vote. Alas, it was not to be. Instead, we have Operation Desert Fox to appraise, not as a political or military exercise , mind you, but as a media event. What is initially striking abo...[MORE]
Published: 1/6/1999
"Man, I wish you could've seen it," the cabbie beamed as we barreled down out of Pacific Heights. "These two chicks hijacked a friend of mine's taxi. I was listening to the police radio and ran them down. It was like right outta Bullitt (1968). Shit, I love that film." No...[MORE]
Published: 4/14/1999
Types: Screens
The sharpest critic of any prophecy is time. And "the revolution will not be televised" is shaping up as a keeper. Despite its many telegenic flashpoints of violence and mayhem, history is an evolutionary, not revolutionary, force. For every dream of a new tomorro...[MORE]
Published: 4/7/1999
Types: Screens
I am not looking forward to this summer. Not one bit. We’ll see the release of the long awaited – but not by me – Star Wars prequel. The nerds will take over the multiplexes and those of us in search of air conditioning will have to contend with hordes of for...[MORE]
Published: 3/31/1999
Types: Screens
Pat Buchanan The Beltway Washington, D.C. Dear Pat, I heard all your staff left to work for that dreadful moneybags, Steve Forbes. Tough luck, killer. Please find enclosed a check for $10. I know it’s not much, but it’s the thought that counts....[MORE]
Published: 3/24/1999
Types: Screens
Why is it that when I’m trying to watch the evening news, I always feel as if I’m doing it from the comfort of a hospital gurney? After reports on Mrs. Clinton’s visit to New York, the breakdown of peace talks in Kosovo and the daily bombing of Saddam’s ...[MORE]
Published: 3/10/1999
America loves to eat. Just go to any mall food court and you’ll see troughing like nowhere else on earth. And what, pray tell, are the hungry and harried jamming down their gullets? Comfort food, the very stuff that makes the surgeon general and the American Medical As...[MORE]
Published: 3/3/1999
Types: Screens
They say good news travels fast. But the bad can be equally fleet. And it is bad news indeed when Andrew "Dice" Clay is coming to town, I assume, to deliver nursery rhythms and sundry misogynistic rubbish for which he was granted 15 minutes of fame and a few milli...[MORE]
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