“Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World,” which opened Friday, was way overrated by the critics. (Admittedly, some were underwhelmed, like Stephen Hunter.) Not being a devotee of Patrick O’Brian’s seafaring novels, the basis for the movie, I’m in no position to judge whether they’ve been faithfully translated to the screen — and couldn’t care less — though […]

The independent 9/11 commission, which had me worried me, just lost so much of its independence you have to wonder whether American democracy has become a charade. The commission’s job — to find out what the Bush administration knew about the 9/11 Al Qaeda attacks and whether they could have been prevented — has turned […]

The consensus of a recent panel on Cuba (that Bush would likely veto legislation ending the U.S. ban on travel to Cuba) has been rendered moot. The legislation had been attached to the transportation bill the maximum leader needs to approve, so as to make a veto more difficult for him. But as reported Thursday, “President […]

David Lynch is the world’s “most important filmmaker of the current era.” So say experts for London’s Guardian newspaper, who rated the world’s 40 best directors on the basis of five categories: substance, look, craft, originality and intelligence. Martin Scorsese followed so closely at No. 2 in the ranking — he scored 88 points to […]

I’ve just seen a video that chills the spine: “Ask for Death.” Assuming the edited film clips are sponsored by the Palestinian Authority, as claimed, and that the translations from the Arabic are accurate, it shows what jihadist brain-washing looks like in children: calm belief that masks a terrifying, homicidal rationale for religious suicide attacks. […]

Time for a change of subject. How about whale-spotting? Leon Freilich, bidding fair to be his generation’s Ogden Nash, noticed a news story, “A Whale Stops By, but Doesn’t Stay Long,” that related a bodacious game of hide-and-seek earlier this week off the coast of Far Rockaway. “Reporters raced to the scene,” where a whale […]

It turns out I’m not the only person to have noticed Polanski’s unforgivable omission in “The Pianist.” Many readers messaged that they also noticed it. First, here’s the reply from my friend Alan M. Edelson, whose admiration for “The Pianist” got me started: I found your take on the film very interesting. Still, it does not […]

By Jan Herman The author Thane Rosenbaum wrote an article a few days ago outlining “the dilemma facing the builders of a Holocaust memorial in Berlin,” as it was described this morning by one of its readers. Read his complete article, “The Price of Forgiveness,” and then this morning’s reactions, “The Long Shadow of the Holocaust.” […]

Winter seems finally to have arrived this weekend, and the trees have pretty much gone bare. But I was buoyed the other evening by a panel discussion: “Cuba on the Verge” (the name taken from a recent book with that title, edited by Terry McCoy, who organized the event in midtown Manhattan). What Cuba is […]

Adam Cohen reminds us today that Wilfred Owen, the great British poet, died in battle 85 years ago this week. You can disagree with his claim that Owen is wrongly portrayed as antiwar — “[H]e was not,” Cohen writes. “What he stood for was seeing war clearly” — but Cohen’s larger point that George W. Bush […]

There’s hope yet for a brighter weekend. I got a small grin out of Bush’s call for democracy in the Middle East. It made me think of what put-upon Col. Wainwright Purdy III said in the 1956 movie “The Teahouse of the August Moon”: “My job is to teach these natives the meaning of democracy. […]

Looking for an upbeat way to begin the weekend ain’t easy … Not when another helicopter has gone down in Iraq, this time killing six American soldiers … Not when the death toll has risen from 15 to 16 in Sunday’s helicopter shoot-down … Not when Shrub’s rush to war in Iraq looks increasingly like […]

Maybe my ears failed me. It’s possible. Too many rock concerts? Too much time in the New York subway? A hearing test the other day revealed slight, high-frequency hearing loss due to nerve damage. The doc wasn’t sure why. But I heard what I heard, and the only reason I wonder about it now is […]

In his presidential memoir, “A World Transformed,” written with his national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, and published five years ago, George Bush the Elder explained why U.S. forces didn’t go after Saddam Hussein at the end of Gulf War I: Trying to eliminate Saddam … would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him […]

The last time I looked, way back in May in another life, the question about Wal-Mart was: Small-town savior or company gulag? At least that’s the way I put it. Even the increasingly irritating David Brooks got off a funny satire about Wal-Mart’s lad-magazine ban, “No Sex Magazines, Please, We’re Wal-Mart Shoppers,” although it was, […]

Did I say the other day that David Brooks is still trying to find his rhythm as a New York Times op-ed columnist? I was too kind. Judging by his effort this morning, “A Burden Too Heavy to Put Down” (wisely positioned by the editors below the fold), the guy’s melody has become all too […]

A friend messages: “Aren’t you bothered by the fact that at a time when too many children in this country go to bed hungry, when senior citizens cannot afford medical care, when soldiers are being sent home from Iraq in boxes, the U.S. Senate held public hearings on college football’s Bowl Championship Series? And you […]