recent posts
- Audra McDonald and “Original Nepo Baby” Gwyneth Paltrow: Honorees at the NYWFT Muse Awards 23 March 2026
- Zach Bryan Buys the On the Road Scroll/ Happy Birthday, Jack Kerouac!
- William S. Burroughs/ Nova ’78 at MoMA/ Remembering James Grauerholz
- Jacob Elordi in Wuthering Heights: Monster Mash
- Wagner Moura in The Secret Agent: A Cool Brazilian Gets an Oscar Nod
Category: Television
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Irritating and irascible, the subject of the documentary short, Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah, the French intellectual writer and filmmaker, Claude Lanzmann, could be charming, and cunning as he got his desired interviews. His epic-length Shoah (1985) went farthest to document the Holocaust, the most cataclysmic and defining event of the twentieth century, even as…
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The woman to my left at the Paris Theater premiere of The Girlfriend Experience pulled a lipstick out of her Prada bag and applied the nude Bobbi Brown in one swift motion without a mirror. I do that with my way more risky Russian red MAC, I thought, feeling competitive, and contemplating the series sample I…
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Aretha’s no Mavis! The declaration gets a laugh in Jessica Edwards’ documentary Mavis! on HBO. Last week’s premiere screening at the Alliance Francais, was the film party of the season: inspiring at 76, Mavis Staple is a dynamo. When Edwards heard her perform at the band shell in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, she knew she had…
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When PBS announced their American Masters documentary on Mike Nichols, I was relieved. Like so many admirers of his work –as a comedian with his partner Elaine May, as a director of theater (Death of a Salesman starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, to name one) and film (The Graduate, THE film of its era, to name…
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With Downton Abbey back in its final season, Maggie Smith as the Dowager Countess of Grantham is back too, in all her vinegar wit and finery. She’s also back in the movie of Alan Bennett’s stage play, The Lady in the Van, by contrast, an eccentric living in modest accommodations, downsized to her vehicle. Penned…
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Leonardo DiCaprio had a formidable foe in Alejandro G. Inarritu’s The Revenant, and I do not mean the bear, a CGI construct, that some rumor raped him. Throughout the entertaining Golden Globes Awards Ceremony last night, there were murmurings of his real opponent, played by Tom Hardy. Jonah Hill’s cuddly bear head provided comedy that landed…
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The Bolshoi Ballet, the very symbol of Russian culture around the world, gets a backstage look in the new documentary Bolshoi Babylon, to air on HBO on December 21. The film has made the rounds of festivals including DOC NYC in November, when I had a chance to talk to the filmmakers: Nick Read and…
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It was compelling 20 years ago and even more compelling now: The O.J. Simpson story has not left the public imagination. FX has made a 10-part series called American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson based on Jeffrey Toobin’s book, to air in February. The two parts screened this week brought back the story, adding more…
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After Richard Holbrooke died on December 13, 2010, former president Bill Clinton remarked, why does he have to die? The world is falling apart, and “here’s a guy who can put things together.” That was a sentiment shared by many. Both Clintons knew Richard Holbrooke quite well, his son David did not know him so…
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Truth, a riveting movie about the famous scandal at CBS 60 Minutes that cost Dan Rather his nightly news anchorship, is based on Mary Mapes’ account. A sassy, hard working producer, Mapes was fired in this incident calling into question George W. Bush’s military record. Rather and Mapes knew they were reporting a true story,…
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“This story wasn’t going away,” said David Simon explaining his persistence in making the six-part mini series, Show Me a Hero, he co wrote with William F. Zorzi based on Lisa Belkin’s 1999 book. The story in question is about chaos in Yonkers in the late ‘80’s, over desegregation in housing. Yes, the ‘80’s are…
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Even though this is a serious matter, Elizabeth Swados makes you feel the levity of depression. And more, you can handle it. In one scene in the animated HBO documentary, My Depression (The Up and Down and Up of It) based upon her 2005 book, you visit a supermarket stocked with “Fresh Doubt,” “Malaise,” and…
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When HBO had a launch for the new documentary, Requiem for the Dead: American Spring 2014 last Monday, a gunman had not yet joined the prayer group at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina, ending in the shooting deaths of nine parishioners including Pastor Clementa Pinckney, not only a spiritual leader, but…
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Even though she loves awards, Meryl Streep did not show up to introduce Ann Roth at last night’s New York Women in Film & Television’s Designing Women evening, where the legendary costume designer was being honored for lifetime achievement. At a Roth tribute at the Hamptons Film Festival in 2013, the actress who had been…
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Now that Mad Men has reached its endpoint, with critics dissecting its meaning and import, not to mention its influence and destiny during awards season, it is time to further point out its antecedents in literature. In a penultimate episode, the viewer could contemplate Don Draper’s demise by dropping from the windows of McCann-Erickson, as…
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As the vice president, Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) was just a heartbeat away from the presidency. Call it fate: the president has stepped down to care for his ailing wife, and Selina, whose bungling White House antics we’ve gleefully enjoyed on VEEP for three HBO seasons, now gets her shot at the most powerful post in…
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In an age when a coinage such as “frenemies” has meaning, the operative word in the title of a new documentary, Best of Enemies, is the word “best.” The film, about a particular historic event of verbal jousting, is between two very well matched public intellectuals, “best” practitioners of the English language of their time,…
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Bruce Springsteen’s voice sets the tone for Alex Gibney’s riveting documentary portrait of Frank Sinatra: All or Nothing at All. “The Boss” says, I first heard him when my mom and I used to hunt down my dad in New Jersey saloons. Hear that? His mother would say. That’s Frank Sinatra. Even Stevie van Zandt,…
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This is a boom time for Albert Maysles: his iconic Grey Gardens (1975) in a restored print is screening at Film Forum, and available from Criterion. A new documentary, Iris, about style legend Iris Apfel, a hit at the 2014 New York Film Festival will be released in late April. But then again, in the…
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The irrepressible Rosie O’Donnell could not help herself. Coaxed to do stand up on the not funny subject of her heart attack by HBO’s Sheila Nevins, the television star created a routine that is more than the heartfelt in its title, “Rosie O’Donnell: A Heartfelt Standup,” it’s a PSA for women, a wake-up call to…
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