So—a few weeks ago, I saw Kenneth Branagh in “King Lear” at the Shed. Maybe you did, too? It’s been a while, but I’ve been hesitating to write: I’m still processing. Branagh is certainly meant to be the...
For the past two decades or so, cinema’s loss has been television’s gain. As the mid-budget movie, once the natural home of grown-up fare, collapsed, prestige programming ballooned on the small screen. You probably know what happened next:...
One way of being a modernist writer is to pay attention to the most saliently modern objects and experiences. So it is that Proust recounts the arresting novelty of a telephone call or an airplane sighting. For T. S....
If you’re in the bar, or in the main dining room just beyond it, you might miss the kitchen’s wood-burning oven. It’s used to cook, among other things, the “focaccia Borgo,” which is not the lofty, bubbly slab...
Like many Internet users, I love nothing more than animal content. In the decade or so since I’ve joined Instagram, I’ve probably spent dozens of hours liking and commenting on posts documenting the trials and triumphs of, let’s...
It’s harder to adapt a great book than an average one. Literary greatness often inhibits directors, who end up paying prudent homage to the source rather than engaging in the bold revisions that successful adaptations require. And even...
A year ago, I wasn’t sanguine about the state of ultra-low-budget filmmaking; this year, the D.I.Y. domain accounts for many of the best new releases. What I’m still not sanguine about is the economic prospects for such movies,...
What a year, eh? In podcasts, as everywhere else lately, volatility abounds—yet beauty and wonder abound, too. Ongoing budget cuts (and debatable decision-making) meant that we lost more terrific shows in the past year—how I’ve missed you, “Heavyweight”!—but...
There is perhaps no moment in history when being a music critic felt like a respectable, lucrative, or essential position, though there are certainly years when it maybe seemed more fun—long before the mobilization of seething fan armies,...
