eleven critical columns — on art, architecture, film, television, and literature — that inspire me.
a.o. scott, on comic-con, and lines
“In other eras and societies — the Great Depression, the Soviet Union — long lines signify scarcity or oppression. In the Bizarro World that is 21st-century America, it’s the opposite: Long lines are signs of abundance and hedonism.” That’s from 2015, and while Scott was writing about Comi-Con, he could’ve been talking about cronuts!
roxana hadadi on dune’s “desert problem”
Hadadi publishes a nuanced take on the Middle Eastern and North African influences that inform Frank Herbert’s original text and subsequent films, including the latest effort by Denis Villeneuve. As the author wrote in 2021: “In subtle but significant ways, Part One denies the cultures that are so integral to its source material. House Atreides characters speak Mandarin and sign language, which are translated via subtitles; however, the Fremen language, some of which is taken directly from Arabic (like “Shai-Hulud”), gets no such treatment.”
on toni morrison and reading, by wesley morris
“They admired the stew of a Morrison novel, the elegant density of its language — the tapestry of a hundred-word sentence, the finger snap of a lone word followed by a period, the staggering depictions of lust, death, hair care, lost limbs, baking and ghosts. Morrison made her audiences conversant in her — the metaphors of trauma, the melodramas of psychology. She made them hungry for more stew: ornate, disobedient, eerie literary inventions about black women, often with nary a white person of any significance in sight.” Published 2019.
on “cave of forgotten dreams,” by roger ebert
One of my favorite arguments in favor of 3-D, from a critic who famously disliked the format: “Apart from a one-shot joke at the very end, he never allows his images to violate the theater space; he uses 3-D as a way for us to enter the film's space, instead of a way for it to enter ours. He was correct to realize how useful it would be in photographing these walls. To the degree that it's possible for us to walk behind Herzog into that cave, we do so.” Published 2011.
on “harry potter” and the peril of faithful adaptations
If you’ve spent any time thinking about so-called “fan service” in the superhero multiverse — or authenticity debates in the culinary world — you’ll appreciate how Kathyrn VanArendonk dismantles the concept of faithful adaptations.
critic is a four-letter word, by roger ebert
“I believe a good critic is a teacher. He doesn't have the answers, but he can be an example of the process of finding your own answers. He can notice things, explain them, place them in any number of contexts, ponder why some "work" and others never could. He can urge you toward older movies to expand your context for newer ones. He can examine how movies touch upon individual lives, and can be healing, or damaging. He can defend them, and regard them as important in the face of those who are ‘just looking for a good time.’” Published 2008.
on the “hamilton” film, by lauren michele jackson
Anyone who finds themself wrestling with the paradoxes of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s lyrically-dense musical — especially as our country increasingly reexamines its early history — will find that Lauren Michele Jackson’s 2020 missive provides some smart, even-handed thinking. P.S. You should also read Jackson’s “White Lies of Craft Culture” on Eater if you haven’t!
the impressionist art of being seen, by jason farago
In the “Close Read” interactive series, Times critic Jason Farago acts as a super smart (and witty!) tour guide talking through works of art. Farago’s exposition on a seaside Morisot painting — with notes on how the world perceives women — feels particularly relevant in an age where smart phones inadvertently (or purposefully) capture everything the camera sees.
a wickedly brutal review of “the polar express”
Manohla Dargis puts into words what so many viewers likely felt while watching this troublesome Robert Zemeckis adaptation. That is to say, she explains why computer generated images and motion capture can look so — off. Also, the second paragraph of this review is just….wild to the power of 1000. Published 2004.
contemplating nyc’s new class of supertall skyscrapers
As the city fills up with skyscrapers for billionaires, Justin Davidson finds a way to make us care about —and maybe even fall in love with — buildings whose very existences we simultaneously despise.
how student debt killed the plot, by jennifer wilson
“What makes student loan borrowers in recent fiction unique, and uniquely literary, is that they often complain of having been betrayed by narrative itself. The notion that a college degree powers upward mobility is so foundational to the American dream (and other national versions of the bootstraps tale) that it has taken on the stature of myth.” Do read the full essay by Wilson, whom I count as a colleague at CUNY’s Newmark School of Journalism.