Category: Art

  • Culture Corner: Summer Film Roundup

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    By Bernie Langs By way of introducing the highlights of my experiences with selected movies I watched in the summer of 2014, I am oddly reminded of the Roman Emperor Nero and the infamous popular image of him as the ruler who “fiddled while Rome burned.” The notion of Nero playing the lyre at a…

  • Culture Corner

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    An Interview with Richard Torregrossa, Author of Terminal Life: A Suited Hero Novel and Cary Grant: A Celebration of Style By Bernie Langs  Several years ago, I was checking the blurbs of recommended articles and reviews indexed by the Arts & Letters Daily web site as I do every day. The site recommended a review…

  • For your consideration – Cannes Shakedown Edition

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    By Jim Keller It’s become a regular thing for me to take a bit of a hiatus after May’s Cannes Film Festival. This is largely because there simply isn’t much to write about in the Oscar world, but if I’m one hundred percent honest, it’s nice to have a bit of downtime as the summer months…

  • An Extraordinary Early American in Europe

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    By Susan Russo Ira Aldridge was born in New York in 1807 to free black parents: Daniel, a clerk and preacher, and Luranah Aldridge. Ira was schooled at home until 1820, when at the age of 13, he was enrolled in the African Free School Number Two. In the 1820s in New York City William…

  • Culture Corner – The “Exotic Foreign” of Wes Anderson and Haruki Murakami

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    By Bernie Langs There is much made in some classical and modern philosophies of the concept and ambiguity of what is termed “the other.” In addition, one can find obscure musings on the idea of “the stranger” from the pens of philosophers as far afield in time and thinking as Plato and Camus. I’ve been…

  • Life on a Roll

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          Photos contributed by Elodie Pauwels (http://elodiepphoto.wordpress.com)

  • Culture Corner: book review “Seiobo There Below” by László Krasznahorkai

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    By Bernie Langs I would bet that it is safe to say that anyone reading these pages is more than busy in this life and that many of you who continue to read for pleasure are overwhelmed by the truth that there are “so many books and so little time.” You may also feel, as…

  • For Your Consideration – Cannes Preview Edition

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    By Jim Keller Now in its third year, this instalment of For Your Consideration takes a look at those films set to cross the Croisette this month. While the Cannes Film Festival is not primarily known as an Oscar launching vehicle, in recent years it has revealed a glimmer of Oscar’s gold. Last year’s fest…

  • Mistaken for Strangers – A Rock Star’s Brother Peeks Out of His Shadow

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    By Jason Rothauser In the film’s opening sequence, Matt Berninger, nattily dressed in a three-piece suit, fusses with a beach umbrella before finally settling down for an interview in the park. Berninger is the lead singer of The National, an indie rock band who toiled for years in obscurity before making it into the spotlight…

  • For Your Consideration – Crystal ball edition!

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    By Jim Keller Last year’s Crystal Ball edition yielded four of nine eventual Best Picture nominees. Gravity, American Hustle, The Wolf of Wall Street, and Nebraska as well as Best Picture winner, 12 Years a Slave, were all discussed as hopefuls long before they bowed. So if you think spring is too early to talk…