Hellman Wyler Festival, where they’re celebrating Lillian Hellman’s plays and William Wyler’s Hollywood film versions. South means Birmingham, Alabama, and the town of Demopolis in Marengo County not far from there. Why there? If you ever saw The festival will be staging “The Little Foxes” and screening the film, along with three other Wyler-Hellman pairings: […]

Don’t have time this ayem to read Seymour Hersh’s short analysis by Ian Black in The Guardian. No time to read that, either? Here’s the lede of The Guardian’s President With His Head Up His Ass] has charged the Pentagon with devising an expanded bombing plan for Iran that can be carried out at 24 […]

Five little words of wisdom. Robert Altman’s words. Words cited earlier this week in a tribute to the late director at the Majestic Theatre in New York. Smarter words than the old Hollywood cliché cut to the chase, which of course is what he meant. Fitting, too, given the paradox of a filmmaker who loved […]

Shuttling among art and “Chomsky on Iran, Iraq, and the Rest of the World,” the latest commentary at

Are you ready for three nights of NO!-artist Boris Lurie? I am. Screenings begin this evening in Manhattan. The first one, at Hunter College, is free (followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers). The second screening, on Thursday, is at Makor ($15); the third, on Friday, is at Anthology Film Archives ($8). “Most of the […]

Norwegian master photographer Tom Sandberg’s first That’s my groundling’s take on what one expert, Yngve Kvistad, describes as the “ambiguous surfaces that do not quite reveal themselves” in Sandberg’s large-format, often painterly, black & white photographs. It’s not just in the “titanic, almost monochrome skyscapes” that there’s “an invigorating presence of visual paradoxes” or a […]

Chris Hedges was way ahead of the curve. Back in October Prez Huha‘s] administration. It could begin in as little as three weeks. Probable? Was he nuts? Three weeks? Really nuts? Well, his timing may have been off, but the clock is still running. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

Another old friend is gone. We spent many a winter night together in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, keeping ourselves entertained over a bottle or two. He died in Berlin. He was 81. interview worth reading that fills in lots of details about him. And here’s an excerpt from “THE VOY AGE,” which “started out,” he once […]

Been gone. Now back. Why gone? Flew out west to see an old friend and collaborator, “Century,” a massive volume of photos from London’s Sunday Times Magazine chronicling the years 1899 to 1999. The main point of interest, however, is the partial view of Mustill’s large collage from the mid-1960s on the wall behind me. […]

Molly Ivins, who “Stand Up Against the Surge,” it was a sober, even solemn commentary without so much as a hint of the satirical wit for which she was famous. She called it part of an “old-fashioned newspaper crusade to stop the war.” President With His Head Up His Ass as often as possible. For […]

Pat Lang, who offered background. “We invaded the Iraq of our dreams,” he said. In other words, “the country was not, in fact, what we thought it to be.” Furthermore, Lang said, differences in values between Americans and Iraqis are so great and so misunderstood, on both sides, that there is no basis for believing […]

The state of the union is wrong. Make that 1/27/07 EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

The National Conference for Media Reform and gave one of his typical brain-addled speeches. It’s guaranteed to make you laugh. Then Helen Thomas asked him a few questions: As Huha said in closing, “If there’s questions that has not been answered that’s not my fault.” Now stop laughing and watch or listen to video excerpts […]

That’s the title of a new documentary about “Lurie would like to have painted comfortable, comforting things,” says Matthias Reichelt, a curator and art historian who collaborated on the film with the director Reinhild Dettmer-Finke. “But something kept him from doing so. And that something is what this film explores.” Anthology Film Archives in New […]

Today’s national holiday marks the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. He would have been 78. That’s younger by five years than two living ex-presidents, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush, and yet he seems a figure from a far more distant past. BnnRpbiblustering moral pipsqueaks? Click these links: 1) to read or watch King’s […]