By Myles Ludwig ’Tis the season of anxiety. Freakouts are in full bloom. The Christmas craze has descended upon the land and the shadow of New Year’s Eve neurosis is coming back again along with feigned resolutions and February’s bills. The other night, the Costco parking lot in Lantana was ablaze with the blinding colors of taillights and I couldn’t find my car for about … [Read more...]
The View From Home 52: A feminist masterpiece, a submarine noir and a bloated epic
The title of Satyajit Ray’s outstanding 1963 drama The Big City (Criterion, $34.99 Blu-ray, $23.48 DVD) is almost a misnomer. It contains few shots of metropolitan expanse but, rather, is comprised almost entirely of close-ups and medium shots of a single family in everyday peril — which in turn could be a microcosm for any number of families, in India or anywhere else, in the … [Read more...]
Festival makes case for enduring power of poetry
By Tom Tracy Miles Coon is aware that some people’s attitude toward poetry is less than welcoming. Perhaps they have indelible memories of having to recite a bit of rhyme in front of their eighth-grade class, something about “gate” and “fate” that they could never quite memorize. Maybe they were confused and baffled by a first encounter with Walt Whitman, singing endlessly … [Read more...]