Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

How a Brilliant Writer Got in His Own Way

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I’m told Ben Hecht was recently inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. That could be why I was asked to write a piece about him for a special “Chicago Issue” of the Chicago Quarterly Review, but something tells me it was pure coincidence. I also have a feeling the Hall of Fame won’t […]

Sight Unseen, a Plug for Godfrey Reggio’s ‘Visitors’

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2002: “Naqoyqatsi,” meaning “life as war,” was the third in Reggio’s qatsi trilogy. 1988: “Powaqqatsi,” meaning “life in transformation,” was the second. 1982: “Koyaanisqatsi,” meaning “life out of balance,” was the first. Reggio’s latest, “Visitors,” with another score by Philip Glass, will be released in 2014. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

An Amazing Act of Filming

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I’m late on this, but I can now say that the widespread praise for this revelatory documentary is deserved. It is not — yes, NOT — an exploitation flick, but if you’re innarested in kinky you MUST see it. “The Act of Killing” is kinky to the 10th power. Not sex kinky but life-and-death kinky […]

This ‘Auteur’ Made Some of Hollywood’s Best Films

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I just caught a screening of “Dodsworth” at the New York Historical Society, where Catherine Wyler mentioned in a pre-screening interview with AMERICAN MASTERS creator Susan Lacy that there are two new Wyler books due out soon: one by Gabriel Miller, the other by Neil Sinyard. She hoped it signals renewed interest in her father’s […]

Typography Meets Country Music

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Hat’s off to the designer whoever that is. The kinetic typography put me in mind of the clever card sequence in D.A. Pennebaker’s 1967 documentary about Bob Dylan, “Don’t Look Back.” The design is more ingenious now, and of course the technology is far more sophisticated. But you get the idea. As to the stylish […]

Two Artists, Two Video Trailers: Ungerer and Mc Neill

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Here are two video trailers, totally different from each other — one for a new movie about the peerless Tomi Ungerer, “Far Out Isn’t Far Enough,” the other for a dance inspired by Observed While Falling, a spellbinding memoir by the incomparable Malcolm Mc Neil. Many years ago Burt Britton kept a self-portrait by Ungerer […]

Death of a Mensch, Roger Ebert, R.I.P.

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Rick Kogan has written a fine obituary, “A film critic with the soul of a poet,” with a beautiful lede: It was reviewing movies that made Roger Ebert as famous and wealthy as many of the stars who felt the sting or caress of his pen or were the recipients of his televised thumbs-up or […]

Who Is Heathcote Williams? Not for Sale, That’s Who

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“He is one of a few of genius who did not sell out and who peaks in (relative) old age. That’s quite something nowadays.” — Gerard Bellaart +++ “Fame is the first disgrace because God knows who you are.” — Heathcote Williams, “The Local Stigmatic” +++ The videos comprise Parts 1 and 2 of a […]

Godfrey Reggio’s Vision of ‘Life Out of Balance’

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A day in February, 1983. Godfrey Reggio is standing in front of the old Reichstag in Berlin. A tall, gaunt man with pale blue eyes and a graying beard that looks like stubble, he has just presented Koyaanisqatsi at the Berlin Film Festival. The notices have been gratifying. One critic called it “a masterpiece . […]

Paul Newman, R.I.P.

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Paul Newman, who died at 83, once told me in an interview, “There’s a part of me that has always wanted to win an Oscar when I’m 83, so I could say, ‘So there!’” The interview took place in Boston, at the Meridien Hotel. Newman was 57 then and in top form, promoting “The Verdict.” […]

BUSTER KEATON REVISITED

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Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat is not a biography. “This book is merely a fan’s notes,” Edward McPherson writes in the introduction, although his publisher ignores the disclaimer and calls it a biography on the cover. In fact, the book is a bit of both, a difficult combination to bring off unless you’re […]

Books ‘n’ Stuff

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My biography of the Hollywood director William Wyler, A Talent for Trouble, is available as an ebook at Amazon and an ebook on iTunes at the Apple store. Putnam published it in hardcover, and Da Capo Press published it in paperback. Several other books, include a collection of theater criticism, Second Nights (Vol.1) and (Vol. […]

My Checkered Career

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I’ve been a staff writer covering arts and culture at the Los Angeles Times, a reporter and movie reviewer at The Daily News in New York, a reporter and columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times, a senior editor/producer and the theater critic for MSNBC.com, and a fellow in the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University. […]

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