Category: Film

  • New Documentary on J.D. Salinger

    Like many people I first read J.D. Salinger‘s novel The Catcher in the Rye as an adolescent and was immediately smitten with Holden Caufield and the spirit of the book. Yet it wasn’t until I was older, and a much more experienced reader, that I read Franny and Zooey and his collection of short stories…

  • Trailer for New ‘Anna Karenina’ Film

    Fans of both Russian literature and actress Keira Knightley are rejoicing that the two will be joined together on the big screen in an upcoming film version of Leo Tolstoy’s classic novel Anna Karenina. I recently blogged about the famed translation of Tolstoy’s novel War And Peace by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky who also translated Anna Karenina.

  • Send Up of Literary Hipsters

    Here is a funny promo clip for the IFC series Portlandia titled “Did You Read?” that pokes fun at literary hipsters trying to outdo each with references to articles in Mcsweeney’s, The New Yorker, Mother Jones, etc.

  • What is a Real Work of Art?

    “The creation of beauty is art,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1836 in a slim volume called Nature. The Emerson quote provides the perfect introduction to the subject of Roger Scruton’s BBC documentary “Why Beauty Matters.” Scruton is a well-known British philosopher and author most recently of Beauty: A Very Short Introduction. In the film Scruton tells us, “there is all…

  • Where Soldiers Come From

    When I was a young boy I saw the movie The Deer Hunter on television for the first time. Although I didn’t have the emotional maturity or the historical knowledge to put it all in perspective, I was deeply moved by the film and the actors (Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep, Christopher Walken). It spawned…