LetterA
LetterB
RangeB - Bc
RangeBd - Bg
RangeBh - Bk
RangeBl - Bo
AuthorBLACK, CONRAD
AuthorBlack, Earl Black and Merle
AuthorBlack, Jonathan
AuthorBlackand, Theodore M.
AuthorBlackburn, Rep. Marsha
AuthorBlackman, Josh
AuthorBlackman, Paul H.
AuthorBlackwell, Ken
AuthorBlair, Clay
AuthorBlake, Robert
AuthorBlatehford, Frank W. III
AuthorBleiberg, Robert M.
AuthorBleser, Carol
AuthorBlood, Amos
AuthorBlood, John Amos
AuthorBloom, Harold
AuthorBloom, J. Arthur
AuthorBlount, Roy Jr.
AuthorBlumberg, Stanley A.
AuthorBlumenthal, Sidney
AuthorBly, Robert
AuthorBlyth, Myrna
AuthorBoaz, David
AuthorBob
AuthorBobb, David J.
AuthorBode, Carl
AuthorBodner, Allen
AuthorBogie, John C.
AuthorBoiler, Paul F. Jr.
AuthorBolger, Frank
AuthorBolton, John
AuthorBond, Brian
AuthorBonner, Raymond
AuthorBooker, Christopher
AuthorBoorstin, Daniel J.
AuthorBoot, William
AuthorBopp, James Jr.
AuthorBorchgrave, Arnaud de
AuthorBorders, Rebecca
AuthorBordewich, Fergus
AuthorBORK, ROBERT
AuthorBork, Robert H.
AuthorBorneman, Walter R.
AuthorBornet, Vaughn Davis
AuthorBoteach, Rabbi Shmuley
AuthorBottom, Joseph
AuthorBottum, Joseph
AuthorBoudreaux, Donald J.
AuthorBoutillier, John Le
AuthorBovard, James
AuthorBovard, Jaynes
AuthorBowden, G.T.
AuthorBowden, Mark
AuthorBowker, Gordon
AuthorBOWMAN, DANIEL ALLOT AND MATT
AuthorBowman, James
Paid articleConservative Tastes (September 2015)
conservative TASTES by JAMES BOWMAN There’s No Breaking Away This year for the eighth summer in succession I presented—along with free pizza—a collection of old movies on a theme. The theme of...
Paid articleConservative Tastes (July 2014)
conservative TASTES by JAMES BOWMAN Removing the Magic From Mozart Recently, my wife and I attended a performance of Mozart’s Magic Flute— which is what German speakers call a Singspiel opera,...
Paid articleRequiem for the Chatterley Classes (June 2014)
CONSERVATIVE TASTES by JAMES BOWMAN Requiem for the Chatterley Classes y obituary s written," a tearful but paradoxical Eliot Spitzer told Vanity Fair a year or two after his forced resignation...
Paid articleAmong the Supremely PC (May 2014)
CONSERVATIVE TASTES by JAMES BOWMAN Among the Supremely PC An Oscar night to forget. Ellen degeneres opened this year's Oscar broadcast with a joke about the two possible outcomes of the nearly...
Paid articleMonumental Disasters (April 2014)
Conservative Tastes by JAMES BOWMAN Monumental Disasters Continuing to patronize the past. In explaining why he wants to save, as he sees it, the cultural heritage of Europe, stolen and spirited...
Paid articleThe Naked and the Dead (March 2014)
Conservative Tastes by JAMES BOWMAN The Naked and the Dead What was that stereo typ e again? Something about women being fickle and unable to make up their minds? Oh, and being illogical. You...
Paid articleConservative Tastes: Frozen in Ideological Time (January 2014)
Conservative Tastes By James Bowman Frozen in Ideological Time Over the Thanksgiving weekend, members of the self-designated 501st Legion of Star Wars "re-enactors" came to Washington, D.C. to...
Paid articleTruth Wimps Out (December 2013)
conservative TASTES by JAMES BOWMAN Truth Wimps Out In the many obituaries of and accompanying tributes to Lou Reed, in the course of which he was often referred to as a poet of genius, I was...
Paid articleHistorectomies (November 2013)
Conservative Tastes By James Bowman Historectomies An item headlined "Wimping of America" in the Daily Caller a few weeks ago informed us that the intramural football program at the Lawrenceville...
Paid articleWho's the Hippest of Them All? (November 2013)
Who's the Hippest of Them All? What Jefferson Read, Ike Watched, and Obama Tweeted: 200 Years of Popular Culture in the White House By Tevi Troy (Regnery, 416 pages, $18.95) Reviewed by James...
Paid articleThe Heartlessness of the Matter (October 2013)
Conservative Tastes By James Bowman The Heartlessness of the Matter Over the Summer, the Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences issued the...
Paid articleConservative Tastes: Why They Fight (September 2013)
Conservative Tastes By James Bowman Why They Fight Four years ago in this space (see "Rotten Apples," TAS, September 2009), I wrote that movie violence, like movie sex, is inherently fantastical....
Paid articleReminders of America's Decline (July 2013)
Conservative Tastes By James Bowman Reminders of America’s Decline This spring brought us two movies, both set in 1947 and both intended to remind us of a time when it was easy for people...
Paid articleConservative Tastes (June 2013)
Conservative Tastes By James Bowman The Mole in Don Draper Although I enjoyed the first season of Mad, Men, which aired in 2007, I got a bit bored with it thereafter. It seemed to me to have...
Paid articleWincing at Cumberbatch (May 2013)
CONSERVATIVE TASTES by JAMES BOWMAN Wincing at Cumberbatch As a long-time admirer—even an enthusiast—of Ford Madox Ford’s tetralogy of novels (Some Do Not, No More Parades, A Man Could Stand Up,...
Paid articleConservative Tastes (April 2013)
Conservative Tastes by JAMES BOWMAN As She Likes It We hear that the state of Massachusetts has passed a law— “An Act Relative to Gender Identity.” It requires (among other things) that...
Paid articleSelective Moralism (March 2013)
CONSERVATIVE TASTES by JAMES BOWMAN Selective Moralism The 200th Anniversary of the publication of Pride and Prejudice in January seems a good opportunity to celebrate not only the fiction of...
Paid articleAll That Trash (February 2013)
CONSERVATIVE TASTES by JAMES BOWMAN All That Trash Writing on The American Spectators website in December, Mark Tooley expressed his disgust with Roger Michell and Richard...
Paid articleUnreal Realities (December 2012)
CONSERVATIVE TASTES Unreal Realities by James Bowman The new film SEAL Team Six: The Raid on Osama bin Laden appeared on the National Geographic Channel on November 4 and on Netflix the following...
Paid articleEnter Alternative Reality (November 2012)
CONSERVATIVE TASTES Enter Alternative Reality by James Bowman Writing well ahead of time, I won't hazard any guesses as to how Election Day turns out, but I will predict that one expression which...
Paid articleThe State of Our Nature (October 2012)
CONSERVATIVE TASTES The State of Our Nature by James Bowman Writing in the New York Times Book Review on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of A Clockwork Orange, Martin Amis notes that Anthony...
Paid articleAll is Fakery (September 2012)
CONSERVATIVE TASTES All Is Fakery by James Bowman Supposedly, with The Dark Knight Rises, Christopher Nolan has finally arrived at the end of his "Batman Trilogy," which began with Batman Begins...
Paid articleUp From the Ruling Class (July 2012)
CONSERVATIVE TASTES Up From the Ruling Class by James Bowman The death of hilton kramer in march, two days after his 84th birthday, may seem to put a period to that vital, confident era of...
Paid articleLaughing on the Wrong Side (June 2012)
CONSERVATIVE TASTES Laughing on the Wrong Side by James Bowman One of the worst things about being a progressive and so being, as progressives like President Obama and Senator Harry Reid have...
Paid articleLook Back in Hunger (May 2012)
CONSERVATIVE TASTES Look Back in Hunger by James Bowman The words "dystopia" and "dystopian" may be hard to get along without nowadays, but they are linguistic monstrosities, formed on the...
Paid articleConservative Tastes: Honor Bound (April 2012)
Conservative Tastes Honor Bound by James Bowman Well, of course. No sooner do I make mention (see last month’s “Pseuds and Artists”) of what I think is the indisputable fact that “all...
Paid articlePSEUDS AND ARTISTS (March 2012)
Pseuds and Artists by James Bowman Eight of the nine nominees for this year’s Academy Award for Best Picture were partly or wholly set in the past: one in the ’teens of the last...
Paid articleConservative Tastes (February 2012)
CONSERVATIVE TASTES Progressive Derangements by James Bowman They’ve taken it down now, but if, shortly before Christmas, you had checked under Frequently Asked Questions on the Internet Movie...
Paid articleBEHIND THE HEADLINES (December 2011)
Behind the Headlines by James Bowman Here in washington, it is hard to go anywhere where tourists also go, such as the Metro, without seeing advertising for one of our capital city’s most...
Paid articleWe're all Leninists Now (November 2011)
Conservative Tastes We're All Leninists Now by James Bowman Once it could have been said that, like Willie Nel-son's, Hollywood's heroes have always been cow-boys, though they obviously aren't...
Paid articleMonuments to Lost Meaning (October 2011)
Conservative Tastes Monuments to Lost Meaning by James Bowman All culture begins with commemoration of the past and honor rendered to the dead. The oldest literary monuments in the Western...
Paid articleConservative Tastes: Heaven Help Us (September 2011)
CONSERVATIVE TASTES Heaven Help Us by James Bowman Why does the cultural and political traffic between the U.S. and Europe so often involve our borrowing the worst features of each other's...
Paid articleConservative Tastes: Can You Wiig It? (July 2011)
CONSERVATIVE TASTES Can You Wiig It? by James Bowman Producer-director judd apatow (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Superbad) may seem an unlikely feminist hero, but his latest hit movie,...
Paid articleConservative Tastes (June 2011)
CONSERVATIVE TASTES In Our Bitter World by James Bowman As our esteemed editor, R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., has recently pointed out, in the course of announcing the death of liberalism, "the...
Paid articleTrash Collection (May 2011)
conservative tastes Trash Collection by James Bowman When I was a boy, my mother wouldn't let me read comic books for an unusual reason. At least it's not one that I have ever heard of another...
Paid articlePreening To The Converted (April 2011)
CONSERVATIVE TASTES Preening to the Converted by James Bowman Not long ago I went to a recital at the Kennedy Center in Washington by the mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, a lovely woman with a...
Paid articleThe Art Of Discrimination (March 2011)
CONSERVATIVE TASTES The Art of Discrimination by James Bowman anthony tommasini, music critic of the New York Times, greeted the New Year by ranking, in order, the top 10 dead classical music...
Paid article"Taking Offense" (February 2011)
CONSERVATIVE TASTES Taking "Offense" by James Bowman another month, another media hurricane of "controversy" in "the arts." Forgive my use of quotation marks in the previous sentence, but in our...
Paid articleCONSERVATIVE TASTES: Happy Days With Blondie (December 2010)
CONSERVATIVE TASTES Happy Days With Blondie by James Bowman The death in october of Tom Bosley, ranked ninth on a 2004 list of the "50 Greatest TV Dads of All Time" according to his obituaries,...
Paid articleCONSERVATIVE TASTES: Legislating the Art World (November 2010)
CONSERVATIVE TASTES Legislating the Art World by James Bowman In art news this month, a Brazilian artist named Gil Vicente has rocketed to international fame by exhibiting, as part of the Sao...
Paid articleCONSERVATIVE TASTES: Our Norman Rockwell and Theirs (October 2010)
CONSERVATIVE TASTES Our Norman Rockwell and Theirs by James Bowman In an episode of The Simpsons titled "Home Away from Homer," Homer Simpson's goodie-goodie neighbor Ned Flanders decides to...
Paid articleCONSERVATIVE TASTES THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS (September 2010)
CONSERVATIVE TASTES The Pursuit of Happiness by James Bowman My annual summer film series for the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. was this year presented jointly with and on...
Paid articleCONSERVATIVE TASTES (July 2010)
CONSERVATIVE TASTES IT \J Ii-----1 — • Shockless by James Bowman "In recent years, the Turner Prize for British artists under 50 has been awarded to (among others) Damien Hirst for...
Paid articleCONSERVATIVE TASTES: Getting to Know Miley Cyrus (May 2010)
CONSERVATIVE TASTES Getting to Know Miley Cyrus by James Bowman New yorkers walking down the streets of midtown Manhattan in March were suddenly alarmed to notice the figure of a naked...
Paid articleCONSERVATIVE TASTES: The Laughs Keep Coming (April 2010)
CONSERVATIVE TASTES The Laughs Keep Coming by James Bowman Sad as the sudden death by drowning of Dawn Brancheau at SeaWorld in Orlando undoubtedly was, it could also be seen as a terrible...
Paid articleReality Without Rohmer (March 2010)
CONSERVATIVE TASTES Reality Without Rohmer by James Bowman Eric rohmer, to my mind one of the three or four greatest geniuses of the cinema there has ever been, died in the same week that...
Paid articleThe End of History (February 2010)
CONSERVATIVE TASTES The End of History by James Bowman Ondi timoner’s We Live in Public is a movie about Josh Harris, a man who made $80 million in the first dot-com boom of the 1990s and...
Paid articleBrace Yourself (December 2009)
CONSERVATIVE TASTES Brace Yourself by James Bowman Beckett’s despair is as bracing as ever.” So, at least, says the Sunday Times c ritic p roudly q uoted o n the marquee of the new...
Paid articleAn American Tragedy (November 2009)
CONSERVATIVE TASTES An American Tragedy by James Bowman Just as we have now arrived at the cultural moment where we have to define art as whatever is displayed in an art gallery or...
Paid articleCONSERVATIVE TASTES: Look at Me (October 2009)
CONSERVATIVE TASTES Look at Me by James Bowman In our time, freedom of speech is almost a non-issue. True, we encounter some problems with multicultural sensitivities and especially...
Paid articleCONSERVATIVE TASTES: Rotten Apples (September 2009)
CONSERVATIVE TASTES Rotten Apples by James Bowman In an article in a recent edition of the London Daily Telegraph titled “More Sex Please, We’re Grownups,” Josa Young, a novelist, writes...
Paid articleCONSERVATIVE TASTES: The Triumph of Fantasy (July 2009)
CONSERVATIVE TASTES The Triumph of Fantasy by James Bowman As i was sitting in my local cineplex and waiting, not very hopefully, for the new Star Trek movie to begin, I watched in the...
Paid articleCONSERVATIVE TASTES: Irony Without Irony (June 2009)
CONSERVATIVE TASTES Irony Without Irony by James Bowman When my oldest son was a Boy Scout in England 20 years ago, I once watched his troop play a game in which the boys formed a circle...
Paid articleCONSERVATIVE TASTES (May 2009)
All art is to some extent propaganda," claimed George Orwell, a view that was the corollary of his socialist belief that all human relationships had a political dimension. Though he himself was...
Paid articleCONSERVATIVE TASTES: Two Cultures in One (April 2009)
WRITING IN VANITY FAIR'S MARCH ISSUE, Peter Bart, the editor of Variety, pronounces with all the authority of that august eminence that "the movie business is splitting into two...
Paid articleCONSERVATIVE TASTES: Elite Escapism (March 2009)
Crappy days are here again The skies above are drear again So let’s sing a song of fear again Crappy days are here again. INCE THERE'S NO ELECTION ON FOR A WHILE-and, when there is, the...
Paid articleCONSERVATIVE TASTES: The Mind of the Past (February 2009)
OBAMA MAKES HISTORY," blared the headline in the Washington Post last November 5. A few days later in the same newspaper, Robert Kaiser acknowledged this as “a statement of the obvious,” but...
Paid articleCONSERVATIVE TASTES : Enemies of the Good (January 2009)
conServaTIve TaSTeS Enemies of the Good by James Bowman F rank langella is a fine actor—for a movie star. But that he is primarily the latter rather than the former you can tell by the...
Paid articleConservative Tastes (November 2008)
coNservaTIve TasTes Culture Benders by James Bowman A new book by professor marjorie garber of Harvard, Shakespeare and Modern Culture, is coming out next month to show us,...
Paid articleShawn Macomber (November 2008)
booKs IN revIeW Perlstein claims that Nixon “exploited” the angers, anxieties, and resentments that arose out of the Johnsonian chaos. What Perlstein means is that Nixon sided with those...
Paid articleCONSERVATIVE TASTES: Saying Something Stupid (October 2008)
conseRvaTIve TasTes Saying Something Stupid by James bowman E very august, as regularly as the geese fly south for 18-year-olds, called A-levels. Nothing seems to be able to stop...
Paid articleConservative Tastes: Trash Triumphant (September 2008)
conseRvaTIve TasTes Trash Triumphant by James Bowman W W alking past my neighborhood bookstore the other day, I noticed a display of books in the window under the following...
Paid articleCONSERVATIVE TASTES: In Defense of Snobbery (July 2008)
c o n s e R v a t I v e t a s t e s In Defense of Snobbery by James Bowman Odd to think that it still rates a headline (“Amy Winehouse Gets Into Cambridge”) in the national press—at least...
Paid articleCONSERVATIVE TASTES: Grand Larceny (June 2008)
c o n s e R v a T I v e T a s T e s Grand Larceny by James Bowman called it “a violent, intelligent, profane, endearing, obnoxious, sly, richly textured and thor- Released at the end of...
Paid articleCONSERVATIVE TASTES: The Shock Is Over (May 2008)
c o n s e R V a T I V e T a s T e s The Shock Is Over by James Bowman He Was one of those PeoPle the news of whose death makes you say to yourself, “I thought he was dead.” Well, now, aged...
Paid articleCONSEVATIVE TASTES : Remember to Laugh (April 2008)
conseRvATIve TAsTes Remember to Laugh by James Bowman L ast month in this space, we had occasion to notice that heroism is now treated as a matter for com-edy (see “No Room for the...
Paid articleCONSERVATIVE TASTES: No Room for the Gentleman Amateur (March 2008)
c o n s e R V a T I V e T a s T e s No Room for the Gentleman Amateur by James Bowman InterestinG that a new musiCal version of Mel Brooks’s Young Frankenstein and a comic stage...
Paid articleCONSERVATIVE TASTES: Nerd-Do-Wells (February 2008)
c o n s e R v a T I v e T a s T e s Nerd-Do-Wells by James Bowman On this new year’s day, spare a thought for the hapless nerd,” wrote Rachel Hartigan Shea in the Washington Post on the...
Paid articleCONSERVATIVE TASTES: Among the Mad Simpletons (January 2008)
HENEWYORKTIMESOBITUARYof Robert Goulet reminded us that “in 1961, The New York Daily News Magazine called him ‘just the man to help stamp out rock ’n’ roll.’” Alas, as the obituarist for the...
Paid articleCONSERVATIVE TASTES: Losing Sight of History (November 2007)
OT THAT ANYONE COULD BE SURPRISED atthefeminist production of The Taming of the Shrew at the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington this fall,...
Paid articleCONSERVATIVES TASTES: Right-Wing Fantasy (October 2007)
Tall, and tan, and young, and lovely The girl from Ipanema goes walking And when she passes, I smile--but she doesn't see... ELL, DUH! But Antonio Carlos Jobim wasn't really as dumb as he...
Paid articleCONSERVATIVE TASTES: The Hero Vanishes (September 2007)
CONSERVATIVE TASTES The Hero Vanishes by James Bowman T WO GIANTS OF THE ART HOUSE CINEMA, Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni, died on the same day this summer, and the tributes to...
Paid articleCONSERVATIVE TASTES:Making It Official (July 2007)
C O N S E R V A T I V E T A S T E S Making It Official by James Bowman WO RECENT ANNIVERSARIES—the 40th of the Beatles’ album, “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” and the 30th of...
Paid articleCONSERVATIVE TASTES: The Liberationist Myth (June 2007)
CONSERVATIVE TASTES The Liberationist Myth by James Bowman T OO BAD JACK VALENTI WAS TAKEN FROM US so soon after the massacre at Virginia Tech on April 16th had rekindled the debate over...
Paid articleCONSERVATIVE TASTES: End of Story (May 2007)
CONSERVATIVE TASTES End of Story by James Bowman A FEW MONTHS AGO in this space (see “What’s the Story?” November 2006), I animadverted on Hollywood’s recent preference for...
Paid articleCONSERVATIVE TASTES: He Wore a Yellow Stripe (April 2007)
ENERALLY SPEAKING,theMotionPictureAcademy's voting for Best Foreign Language Film is as subject to the same considerations of political...
Paid articleCONSERVATIVE TASTES: Slaves to Moral Self-Congratulation (March 2007)
S SOON AS I SAW THE HEADLINE in the Sunday WashingtonPost,"NoI-told-you-sos"(subhead:"OpponentsoftheIraqWarVoicePain,NotVindication, At Predictions They Could Only Hope Would Be Wrong"--the...
Paid articleCONSERVATIVE TASTES:Eastwoodian Aftermaths (February 2007)
C O N S E R V A T I V E T A S T E S Eastwoodian Aftermaths by James Bowman Here beginneth a new—well, at least somewhat new— column called Conservative Tastes. It seemed both to me and to...
Paid articleTHE TALKIES: What's the Story? (November 2006)
THE TALKIES James O NCE I HAD A FRIEND who was such an extreme antihistoricist that he affected to believe-I still can't quite imagine that he really did believe it--that there was no reason...
Paid articleTHE TALKIES: Crockumentaries (October 2006)
THE TALKIES James Bowman Crockurnentaries W HICH CAME FIRST, t h e impoverishment of America's political discourse or Hollywood's inability to think politically in anything more complicated...
Paid articleTHE TALKIES: Passion Without Reason (September 2006)
THE TALKIES James Bowman Passion Without Reason p mUBLIC SUFFERING IS THE PREROGATIVE of the celebrity. In fact, you could almost say that public suffering is what makes him a celebrity. I...
Paid articleX-Ray Vision (September 2006)
BOOKS IN REVIEW the progress of George III's insanity. Despite his heavy losses he was safe from his creditors as long as he remained friends with the Prince, but his self-destructive streak...
Paid articleTHE TALKIES: Blockbuster Banality (July 2006)
THE TALKIES Blockbuster Banality ~ U HAVE AN EXTRAORDINARY GIFT, JIMMY," says big, lue, bushy"Beast" (Kelsey Grammer), also known as Dr. Hank McCoy, Secretary of Mutant Affairs in an American...
Paid articleTHE TALKIES: Forever Young (June 2006)
THE TALKIES Forever Young WAS WAITING FOR SOMEONE TO COME ALONG, some young singer 18 to 22 years old, to write these songs" says Neil ung of "Living With War.' his la~est ,album of protest'...
Paid articleTHE TALKIES: Finding It in a Movie (May 2006)
THE TALKIES BOWMAN Finding It in a Movie N | ............. ~ .................. HE MOVIES HAVE ALWAYS HAD A SPECIAL APPEAL t o adolescents. This is partly because their images of adult life...
Paid articleTHE TALKIES: Humanized Without Honor (April 2006)
THE TALKIES JAMES B O W M A N Humanized Without Honor p What OLITICS ASIDE," wrote the New York Times critic, Stephen Holden, of HanyAbu-Assad's Paradise Now, "the movie is a superior...
Paid articleTHE TALKIES: If It's Not Brokeback, Fix It (March 2006)
THE TALKIES JAMES B O W M A N IfItg Not Brokeback, Fix It S MALLER FILMS SWEEP OSCAR NOMINATIONS" headlined the Wall Street Journal. "Small films with potent themes..." agreed the New York...
Paid articleTHE TALKIES: Spielberg Stress Disorder (February 2006)
! THE TALKIES JAMES BOWMAN Spielberg Stress Disorder V HEN I LAST WROTE IN THIS SPACE I hadn't yet seen Stephen Spielberg's Munich, but when I did I found that I had alreadywritten the...
Paid articleTHE TALKIES: On Sex and Violence (December 2005)
THE TALKIES JAMES BOWMAN On Sex and Violence IT HAS NEVER QUITE STRUCK ME BEFORE, but the extent to which we link "sex and violence" in our discussion of the cultural impact of television and...
Paid articleTHE TALKIES: Feeling Nothing (October 2005)
THE TALKIES JAMES BOWMAN Feeling Nothing WHEN I WAS IN LONDON RECENTLY, I noticed that one of the city's chief tourist attractions, Madame Tussaud's waxworks museum, has got a new...
Paid articleTHE TALKIES: Talking Dirty (September 2005)
THE TALKIES JAMES BOWMAN Talking Dirty LADIES AND CHILDREN NOT ADMITTED." Readers of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn will remember that that was the final line, in the biggest type, on the...
Paid articleTHE TALKIES: Star Turns (July 2005)
THE TALKIES JAMES BOWMAN Star Turns SUMMER BLOCKBUSTER SEASON is a good time for reflection upon the essential ephemerality of the movies, or at least of most movies. I didn't see the latest...
Paid articleTHE TALKIES: Bottled Whines (May 2005)
THE TALKIES JAMES BOWMAN Bottled Whines HOSE WHO OBSERVED, even from a distance, the spate of political films during the election year of 2004 may have thought that they had been...
Paid articleTHE TALKIES: American Propaganda (April 2005)
THE TALKIES JAMES BOWMAN American Propaganda CUSTOMED AS I AM TO WRITING about the polit ical cinema-and since Fahrenheit 9/11 it seems there is less and less of it that is...
Paid articleTHE TALKIES: Midsize Man (March 2005)
THE TALKIES JAMES BOWMAN Midsize Man I r I 0 ME, THE MOST INTERESTING THING about the election just past was the debut upon the political stage of a new and powerful electoral interest...
Paid articleMOVIE TAKES: Suffering Kerry (October 2004)
OVIE TAKES JAMES BOWMAN Suffering Kerry i N THE MEDIA KERFUFFLE of the end of summer over John Kerry's war record, there was frequent mention on both sides of the fact that passions were running...
Paid articleTHE TALKIES: The Summer of Their Discontent (September 2004)
TH TALKIES JAMES BOWMAN The Summer of Their Discontent A H FOR THE DAYS when the "summer blockbuster" season only meant one after another of specialeffects-laden slabs of generic...
Paid articleTHE TALKIES: Wives and Husbands (July 2004)
THE TALKIES JAMES BOWMAN Wives and Husbands S CHANCE AND THE UNPREDICTABLE SCHEDULING Of critics' screenings would have it, I sat down to watch Rosenstrasse by Margarethe von...
Paid articleTHE TALKIES: Virgin Flight (May 2004)
THE TALKIES JAMES BOWMAN Virgin Flight HE PRESS MATERIALS for The Girl Next Door, which opened in April, tell us that when its 18-year-old hero falls for the girl of the title only to...
Paid articleTHE TALKIES: Why Not Be Anti-Semiotic? (April 2004)
T HE LATE PROFESSOR GEOFFREY SHEPHERD of the University of Birmingham in England, at whose feet I sat for a time back in the 1970s, once observed that for medieval Christians the central event in...
Paid articleTHE TALKIES: Post-Cold War Propaganda (March 2004)
THE TAI 7,IES JAMES BOWMAN Post-Cold War Propaganda r HE HISTORY OF ANY WAR IS DIFFICULT to disentangle from its propaganda—and not only the official propaganda. In away the official...
Paid articleTHE TALKIES: Unisex at the Multiplex (February 2004)
THE TALKIES JAMES BOWMAN Unisex at the Multiplex A T THE END OF LAST YEAR, Elvis Mitchell, writing in the New York Times, found it "dismaying" that only two women had ever been nominated for an...
Paid articleTHE TALKIES: Pulp Garbage (November 2003)
THE TALKIES JAMES BOWMAN Pulp Garbage O BE A MOVIE CRITIC IS TO LIVE with disappointment. Every now and then we have the pleasure of a Showgirls—a movie universally damned by critics,...
Paid articleTHE TALKIES: Adult Movies (October 2003)
THE TALKIES JAMES BOWMAN Adult Movies RITING IN the New York Times, Elvis Mitchell takes the death of John Schlesinger, legendary director of Midnight Cowboy, as "a reminder that the adult-rated...
Paid articleThe Talkies (August 2003)
ietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran D pastor and theologian murdered by the Nazis less than a month before the end of the Second World War, was a great lover of America and Americans. He studied at...
Paid articleThe Talkies (June 2003)
THE TALKIES By James Bowman BREAKING THE CODE Not long ago there appeared on the Turner Classic Movies channel a show called "Complicated Women" which, as Tom Shales of the Washington Post...
Paid articleThe Talkies (March 2003)
After three and a half hours, you will stagger out of Gods and Generals, Ronald F. Maxwell's prequel to Gettysburg, stupefied with pathos. From the start, it offers the full Ken Burns treatment of...
Paid articleThe Talkies (January 2003)
Unlike drama, unlike fiction, the movies don't do failure very well. They are essentially a heroic medium, like tragedy or epic poetry, in which even defeat must be made to seem an achievement....
Paid articleThe Talkies: Immune From Criticism (November 2002)
"The Talkies: Immune From Criticism" a review earlier this year of Austin Powers: Goldmember, the third of Mike Myers's ventures into 1960s Bond-nostalgia, I inadvertently neglected to be critical. This caused some...
Paid articleThe Talkies (September 2002)
"The Talkies" The entirely predictable success this summer of the third of Mike Myers' Austin Powers films, Austin Powers in Goldmember, is a confirmation, if any were needed, that in the popular culture...
Paid articleTeaching the Gorillas (July 2002)
"Teaching the Gorillas" By James Bowman Teaching the Gorillas points out, the labels are stuck in the rut of issuing a 101't recording of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. There are already some signs of new life, much...
Paid articleTHE TALKIES (July 2001)
Sneak Attack: Hollywood vs. History BY JAMES BOWMAN hen I was a boy, my parents wouldn't let me read comic books. Of course I sneaked them into the house and read them at every...
Paid articleTHE TALKIES: Feminist Fatales (June 2001)
what happened to me after I left here last night," and end with state troopers. Feminist Fatales angry girlfriends, or trucks stuck in cow pastures. Hunting stories are also a favorite: Hapless...
Paid articleMOB HIT (May 2001)
Mob Hit BY JAMES BOWMAN tit l{1iO 1.1,1 1110:lth R,1' it' t113 3-,1 110 11 ri:111 :1111 1:1 (,1 i i .1 .1111 of l+ h. l: .. A]LLe] ti.;11 .31't [t1]' i liit.:hn1",3:1i cCIIIL]]'i" 11C.l,IiiI...
Paid articleTHE TALKIES: You Know What I Like (May 2001)
and sometimes I still get that impression of it. But it's never been anything as obvious as a gay hangout; one just notices it as one of the warps and weaves of the place. Lovely women are to be...
Paid articleTHE TALKIES (April 2001)
Time passed. Joe and Steve came to my Bar Mitzvah, to my wedding, and I visited them on rare occasions. Then Monticello declined dramatically as the resort business changed when people got air...
Paid articleThe Talkies: Why Was This Movie Made? (March 2001)
Why Was This Movie Made? BY JAMES BOWMAN Besides the money, I mean. In the absence of any obvious candidates for Movie of the Month, I thought it might be an idea to run through a selection of the...
Paid articleThe Talkies (February 2001)
THE TALKIES by James Bowman Halfway Measures Lacking convictions, Hollywood can't display courage. John Leland, a writer for the New York Times, claims to believe that the new Bush presidency...
Paid articleThe Talkies: Exorcising Good and Evil (December 2000)
by James Bowman has fulfilled all the requirements for the post by being the child of an incestuous priest and a non-believer, one Peter Kel- son (Ben Chaplin). But here the church is...
Paid articleThe Talkies: What Do Women Want? (November 2000)
| | | i Ir,_.g I [ I i | ~ by James Bowman What Do Women Want? Since there's no answer, better not ask. W omen are different from men. Or so we may surmise from the "gender gap" which has been...
Paid articleThe Talkies: Abbie Roads (October 2000)
r i l E TALK by James Bowmar~ Abbie Roads We're all yippies now, living lives of empty theatrics. T his political campaigning season is the ideal time for the release of a new movie about the...
Paid articleThe Talkies: Patriot Games (September 2000)
I J l - ' l l JlW• mll',ql nJ'~_ by James Bowman Patriot Games Whether ours or theirs, propaganda is still just that. N ot too surprisingly, my review of Roland Emmerich's The Patriot,...
Paid articleThe Talkies: All That Jazz (July 2000)
i i dl | n i i f ; l l I [ | I I 4 i r by James Bowman All That Jazz Kenneth Branagh's in heaven and floating on dirty air. W r hat? Will the line stretch out to th' crack of doom? For the...
Paid articleThe Talkies: Suffering Poses (June 2000)
by James Bowman Suffering Poses They're nothing like the pain Ethan Hawke can inflict. I n The Virgin Suicides, written and directed by Sofia Coppola from the novel by Jeffrey Eugenides, one...
Paid articleThe Talkies: They Went Thataway (May 2000)
by James Bowman They Went Thataway Hollywood villains are no longer even two-dimensional. W r hat's happened to the movie bad guy? How can we have any heroes when all they have to cut their...
Paid articleThe Talkies: Life After Real Life (April 2000)
THE TALKIES by James Bowman Life After Real Life R eal life ain't what it used to be. What, after all, does most of life consist of but movies or the generic "entertainment" equivalent? Nearly...
Paid articleThe Talkies: Presidentolotry (March 2000)
by James Bowman Presidentolotry Nuking Iraq is Hollywood's idea of patriotism. H ollywood cynicism isn't what it used to be. At least not quite what it used to be. True, we can see in Reindeer...
Paid articleThe Talkies: Stolen Time (February 2000)
by James Bowman Stolen Time The more predictable the message, the longer the movie. T his year's Christmas movies were all mediocre at best and nearly all way too long. Movie after movie,...
Paid articleThe Talkies: The New Vulgarity (December 1999)
THE TALKIES by James Bowman The New Vulgarity R ecently, when Mayor Rudolph Giuliani of New York threatened to withdraw the city's subsidy from the Brooklyn Museum of Art over a gratuitous insult...
Paid articleThe Talkies: The Tender Trap (November 1999)
This is the background image for an unknown creator of an OCR page with image plus hidden text. Brave words! But it is a kind of bravery which was once expected of even the most ordinary...
Paid articleThe Talkies: Cliché Corners (October 1999)
THE TALKIES by James Bowman Cliché Corners M ovies, like politics, journalism, and epic poetry, are made from clichés. In poetry, of course, they don't call them cliches but formulae. Just as...
Paid articleThe Talkies: A Future That Can't Work (September 1999)
'THE TALKIES by James Bowman A Future That Can't Work S ummer, as anyone who has ever sampled a blockbuster (or even a mere block-cracker) can testify, has become the season for post-modernist...
Paid articleThe Talkies: Reality Bites (August 1999)
THE TALKIES by James Bowman Reality Bites 0 ne way to look at the dominant intellectual paradigm of our century is in terms of the opposition it sets up between the ideal and the real. Or, to be...
Paid articleThe Talkies: Twice-Told Tales (July 1999)
THE TALKIES by James Bowman Twice-Told Tales T he old stories, they tell us, are the best, and that is true. But there is no story so good in itself that the telling of it can't wreck it. That is...
Paid articleThe Talkies: Moody Blues (June 1999)
THE TALKIES by James Bowman Moody Blues Adult culture today is forever reveling in punk fantasies. A negative review of The Matrix that I wrote for The American Spectator website elicited more...
Paid articleThe Talkies: Teen Beat (May 1999)
THE TA KIES by James Bowman Teen Beat T he funniest moment in this year's seemingly endless and mostly unfunny Oscar ceremonies came when Norman Jewison gave his speech of acceptance for the...
Paid articleThe Talkies: Therapeutic Nonsense (April 1999)
by James Bowman Therapeutic Nonsense S ome of my patient correspondents—at least they will have to be patient as I am now about five months behind in answering my e-mail — have taken me to task...
Paid articleThe Talkies: Loyalty Tests (March 1999)
THE TALKIES by James Bowman Loyalty Tests A t the risk of sounding ungracious, I wish to raise a hesitantly dissenting voice here about the anti-Communist hero, Elia Kazan. I don't begrudge him...
Paid articleThe Talkies: Our Blissful Ignorance (February 1999)
by James Bowman Our Blissful Ignorance I n the animated Prince of Egypt, a movie that was otherwise not nearly so bad as might have been expected, Moses (voice of Val Kilmer) explains to the...
Paid articleThe Talkies (January 1999)
REINEEMEM by James Bowman Take Physic, Pomp it oor naked wretches," cries King Lear when he finds himself stripped of everything and reduced from the power of kingship to the level of Poor Tom,...
Paid articleThe Talkies: Unpleasantries (December 1998)
This is the background image for an unknown creator of an OCR page with image plus hidden text. Joan Allen as his submissive wife "Betty." But "Bud" and "Mary Sue," their two perfect sitcom...
Paid articleThe Talkies: Self-Ignorance (November 1998)
THE TALKIES by James Bowman Self-Ignorance R eluctant movie-goers will be glad to hear that they can stay home and read almost every evening this month. The only must-see movie is the re-release,...
Paid articleThe Talkies: Be a Man (October 1998)
THE TALKIES by James Bowman Be a Man T he e-mail that I received last month about my review of Saving Private Ryan, together with the scolding in the national press received by some of those who,...
Paid articleThe Talkies: Saving Private Lolita (September 1998)
THE TALKIES by James Bowman Saving Private Lolita S ummer is —not that the rest of the year isn't—the season of formula movies. When you have invested close to $100 million in a hopeful...
Paid articleWho's the Enemy (August 1998)
THE TALKIES by James Bowman Who's the Enemy? M any readers of The American Spectator may be among those conservatives who are given to loud insistence that America is in the grip of a "culture...
Paid articleThe Talkies: Hats Off, Gentlemen (July 1998)
THE TALKIES by James Bowman Hats Off, Gentlemen I t's a lucky thing for me that Whit Stillman, who is an old friend of The American Spectator, makes such good movies. If he made bad ones, I...
Paid articleThe Talkies (June 1998)
THE TALKIES by James Bowman Angel Eyes T he movies have always glorified crime, but not in the way they do now. The lovable, madcap criminal who was first introduced to us in the 1960's now seems...
Paid articleThe Talkies: Travolta of the Masses (May 1998)
THE TALKIES by James Bowman Travolta of the Masses T he key line in Mike Nichols's adaptation of Joe Klein's Primary Colors comes as Governor Jack Stanton (John Travolta), hot on the trail of the...
Paid articleThe Talkies: Pop Goes the Philosopher (April 1998)
THE TALKIES by James Bowman Pop Goes the Philosopher M ovie-making, as I am not the first to notice, is myth-making, and the wise movie-goer will bring with him along with his popcorn and...
Paid articleThe Talkies: The End of Argument (March 1998)
THE TALKIES by James Bowman The End of Argument 0 n Super Bowl Sunday, when everyone in the country was talking about the Boy President's recently revealed amorous cavortings with a Miss Monica...
Paid articleThe Talkies: There's No Growing Up (February 1998)
THE TALKIES by James Bowman There's No Growing Up T here's no doubt that Hollywood films are, as they say, state of the art. Even the worst that Tinseltown produces will make money by worldwide...
Paid articleThe Talkies (January 1998)
THE TALKIES by James Bowman Lovey Dovey M y more devoted readers may remember the praise I heaped upon Trevor Nunn's film version of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night in this space just over a year...
Paid articleThe Talkies (December 1997)
THE TALK IES by James Bowman Selling Our Souls Retellings, in one form or another, of the Faust legend may constitute a trend in Hollywood this autumn. We had an oblique treatment of it in...
Paid articleThe Talkies: The Past Is Another Movie (November 1997)
by James Bowman The Past Is Another Movie T he late British novelist, L.P. Hartley, survives in the latest edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations as the author of a single sentence deemed...
Paid articleThe Talkies: The Magnificent Seven (October 1997)
THE TALKIES by James Bowman The Magnificent Seven M ost months, since I have been writing this column, I have had to scrounge around to find just one recommendation as Movie of the Month....
Paid articleThe Talkies: Loonie Tunes (September 1997)
THE TALKIES by James Bowman Loonie Tunes N ear the beginning of Operation Condor, Jackie Chan is recruited by the American ambassador to Spain, acting on behalf of "the United Nations," to find a...
Paid articleThe Talkies: Waco: The Documentary (August 1997)
THE TALKIES by James Bowman Waco: The Documentary Confronted with the unresisting imbecility of summer "blockbuster" fare, film critics ought to take the opportunity to turn their attention to...
Paid articleThe Talkies: The Powers That Be (July 1997)
THE TALKIES by James Bowman The Powers That Be I f you were, like the hero of Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery, a British secret agent suddenly transplanted from "swinging" London in...
Paid articleThe Talkies: Those Awesome Aussies (June 1997)
THE TALKIES by James Bowman Those Awesome Aussies R ussia supplies us with caviar, France with foie gras; Germany and Japan make our luxury cars and Sandia Arabia supplies our oil; we get...
Paid articleThe Talkies: Porn Again (May 1997)
THE TALKIES by James Bowman Porn Again M ovies and pornography were made for each other. The impulse to look at the things which shame would keep hidden can be a very costly thing to indulge, but...
Paid articleThe Talkies: Polyester Slackers (April 1997)
TH E TALKIES by James Bowman Polyester Slackers On their second time around, it looks as if the Star Wars movies may be even more successful than they were the first time, although their...
Paid articleThe Talkies: Ken and Kolya (March 1997)
by James Bowman Ken and Kolya Branagh's histrionics lack Jan Sverak's velvet touch. N ow we know who put the "Ham" in Hamlet. Who else but Kenneth Branagh? His new, four-hour movie of the play is...
Paid articleThe Talkies: Sexual Performances (February 1997)
THE TALKIES by James Bowman Sexual Performances he old year ended and the new T year began with a sudden spate of films about wildly, cringe-makingly inappropriate sexual relationships....
Paid articleThe Talkies: Come Rain or Come Shine (January 1997)
THE TALKIES by James Bowman Come Rain or Come Shine E ven the title of The Mirror Has Two Faces by Barbra Streisand is a lie. The mirror only has one face. It is she who is supposed to have...
Paid articleThe Talkies: Britwits (December 1996)
"The Talkies: Britwits" by James Bowman Britwits Recently, a black Briton, writing in the Washington Post, said that the only advantage he could see in being British was that his black American cousins...
Paid articleThe Talkies: On the Q.T. (November 1996)
"The Talkies: On the Q.T." Why are filmmakers aping the awful Tarantino?...
Paid articleThe Talkies: Love Isn't the Way (October 1996)
"The Talkies: Love Isn't the Way" Love Isn't the Way Hollywood always looks for it in all the wrong places. Is love primarily a feeling or an action? The pretty nearly unanimous opinion of cheap entertainment throughout...
Paid articleThe Talkies: Let Me Entertain You (September 1996)
"The Talkies: Let Me Entertain You" by James Bowman Let Me Entertain You Why explosions and aliens are not enough....
Paid articleThe Talkies: Up On the Roof (August 1996)
"The Talkies: Up On the Roof" A good word for sweatshops, Jim Carrey, and cholera....
Paid articleThe Talkies: Twister Act, Part Duh (July 1996)
"The Talkies: Twister Act, Part Duh" by James Bowman Twister Act, Part Duh It's that time of the year again, a season loathed and detested by all true movie lovers— summer blockbuster time. I crave the patience of...
Paid articleThe Talkies: The Look of Love (June 1996)
"The Talkies: The Look of Love" by James Bowman The Look of Love In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of phone sex, as Tennyson might say if, poor chap, he were alive today. Spike Lee's Girl 6...
Paid articleThe Talkies: Hollywood Squares (May 1996)
"The Talkies: Hollywood Squares" by James Bowman Ho11ywood Squares No sooner are we told of the advent of something called "Conservative Cool" than the Nation magazine informs us, in three-inch high letters on its...
Paid articleThe Talkies: Too Much of a Good Thing (April 1996)
"The Talkies: Too Much of a Good Thing" by James Bowman Too Much of a Good Thing 0 ne measure of America's greatness is the extent to which we are insulated from the sorts of life and death concerns that have preoccupied...
Paid articleThe Talkies: Bard to Death (March 1996)
"The Talkies: Bard to Death" by James Bowman Bard to Death In the past three months I have been astonished to see not one, not two, but three adaptations of Jane Austen that more or less allow Jane to be Jane;...
Paid articleThe Talkies: Nonsense and Insensibility (February 1996)
"The Talkies: Nonsense and Insensibility" by James Bowman Nonsense and Insensibility Hollywood propaganda had a big month in December. Much hailed by critics, Oliver Stone's Nixon turned out to be a terrible movie not so much...
Paid articleThe Talkies: Bad Verse Conditions (January 1996)
"The Talkies: Bad Verse Conditions" by James Bowman BadVerse Conditions 0 n the release of The Crossing Guard, Sean Penn, who wrote, directed, and co-produced the film, was profiled in the Sunday New York Times as the...
Paid articleThe Talkies/Friendly Persuasion (December 1995)
Friendly Persuasion by James Bowman / t hardly seems worth the while of the movie critic of The American Spectator to bother trashing Roland Joffe's version of The Scarlet Letter—which may just be...
Paid articleThe Talkies / Showtime (November 1995)
Showtime by James Bowman A lthough there are an infinite number of ways for movies to be good or bad, an almost infallible predictor of quality is the liveliness or lack of it of the characters. If...
Paid articleThe Talkies /Rotters (October 1995)
Rotters by James Bowman T he things I do for American Spectator readers! This month, having sat through Kevin Costner's dreadful Watenvorld, the tale of a tough but sensitive homme-poisson living...
Paid articleThe Talkies / Clueless Kids at the Apollo (September 1995)
Clueless Kids at the Apollo by James Bowman / t is perhaps unseemly for me to speak ill of my fellow critics, but I sometimes think that the fraternity to which I belong comprises the most gullible...
Paid articleThe Talkies / Crumb and Crummier (August 1995)
Crumb and Crummier by James Bowman V al Kilmer has taken the place of Michael Keaton as the Caped Crusader, and we have for the first time in the cinematic redaction of the Batman story a version...
Paid articleThe,Talkies /Binge and Purge (July 1995)
Binge and Purge by James Bowman / n a generally critical review in the New York Times of David Salle's Search and Destroy, Janet Maslin praises Salle's "clean, minimalist compositions" (he is an...
Paid articleThe Talkies/It's a Man's World (June 1995)
It's a Man's World by James Bowman W hen Charles Keating (yes, that Charles Keating) of the Citizens for Decent Literature said back in the 1960s that "more than anyone of his time, Russ Meyer is...
Paid articleThe Talkies/Message Parlor (May 1995)
Message Parlor by James Bowman 0 for the days when Sam Goldwyn could tell his precious "creative" folk that if they wanted to send a message, they should call Western Union! Message movies started...
Paid articleThe Talkies / Family Rhapsody (April 1995)
Family Rhapsody by James Bowman L ike the recent Houseguest, Herbert Ross's Boys on the Side makes use of the welt-worn Hollywood motif of the funky, uninhibited black person who teaches the bland,...
Paid articleThe Talkies / Pitt Bull (March 1995)
Pitt Bull E ven in its great days, Hollywood rarely did history very well. There is something about the fashion-consciousness and the selfabsorption, which are hallmarks of Tinseltown, that makes...
Paid articleThe Talkies / Godlike Reason (February 1995)
Godlike Reason by James Bowman What is a man If his chief good and market of his time Be but to sleep and feed? A beast no more. Sure He that made us with such large discourse, Looking before...
Paid articleThe Talkies / Monstrosities (January 1995)
Monstrosities by James Bowman F filmmakers in the 1990s suffer from what eighteenth-century poets and critics called "belatedness." Just as it was thought that the great poets of the past had...
Paid articleThe Talkies / Same Old, Same Old (April 1994)
Same Old, Same Old by James Bowman D on't they ever get tired, I asked myself halfway through John Duigan's Sirens, of telling this story? One definition of the word "myth" is a story that people...
Paid articleThe Talkies /Sweat Dreams (December 1994)
Sweat Dreams by James Bowman F rom those who disagree with me about the merits of the popular movies I so regularly disparage, the question I hear most often is this: What's so bad about...
Paid articleThe Talkies / Presumed Innocence (November 1994)
Presumed Innocence by James Bowman 0 ver the reviews of Robert Redford's new film, Quiz Show, headlines in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Newsweek all made reference to the "age...
Paid articleThe Talkies / A Tale of Two Movies (October 1994)
A Tale of Two Movies by James Bowman L ook here upon this picture, and on this. The first is a typical "blockbuster" thriller, A Clear and Present Danger, and representative of the Hollywood...
Paid articleThe Talkies / Fantasies for All Ages (September 1994)
Fantasies for All Ages by James Bowman A re we becoming a nation of wimps? According to the ultra-caring "Parent and Child" column of the New York Times, two-thirds of parents in an informal survey...
Paid articleThe Talkies/Not Up to Speed (August 1994)
THE TALKIES Not Up to Speed by James Bowman F or those who still profess bafflement about the meaning of "postmodernism" here is a simple definition: it is the process by which The Wolf Man has...
Paid articleTalkies / Don't Know Much About History (July 1994)
Don't Know Much About History by James Bowman n Mick Jackson's Clean Slate, Dana / Carvey finds every morning when he wakes up that he has completely forgotten what happened the day before...
Paid articleThe Talkies /Proxysms (June 1994)
Proxysms by James Bowman M ore and more it is beginning to seem as if the armies of postmodernism—dressed, I fancy, with comic opera panache and led by Leslie Nielsen as Lt. Frank Drebin in apron...
Paid articleThe Talkies / Dreadful Martyrdom (March 1994)
Dreadful Martyrdom by James Bowman p eople who want a critic to tell them if a movie is any good are usually asking for nothing more than an indication as to whether or not it presents an...
Paid articleThe Talkies / Lost and Profound (February 1994)
Lost and Profound by James Bowman T reatments of history, politics, and res publicae are undertaken by the movies often to give themselves a kind of imprimatur of serious-mindedness. Unfortunately,...
Paid articleThe Talkies / Clueless (January 1994)
Clueless by James Bowman B ack in the sixties there was a pic- ture book that appealed to college students who were, like me, of a sensitive disposition It was called The Family of Man and...
Paid articleThe Talkies/ What It Takes (December 1993)
What It Takes by James Bowman S ome three hours into Gettysburg, the new four-hour-plus Civil War epic from Ted Turner Productions, J.E.B. Stuart, hitherto AWOL, turns up with his cavalry after two...
Paid articleThe Talkies / The Fall of the Family (November 1993)
The Fail of the Family by James Bowman T wo films out this month begin with discussions between fathers and sons about loyalty. In Striking Distance, a policeman (Bruce Willis) laments the fact...
Paid articleThe Talkies /Running Time (October 1993)
When I was a child, "The Fugitive" was my favorite grown-up television show. There was something particularly attractive and flattering to my boyish worldly wisdom about the idea not of the innocent...
Paid articleThe Talkies / The World of Carpi James (September 1993)
M y favorite politically correct critic and commentator on film, Caryn James of The New York Times, had a bad moment recently. In writing about a film she otherwise loved, Sally Potter's Orlando—the...
Paid articleThe Talkies/ The Summer of Our Discontent (August 1993)
/ t is a particularly grouchy way to greet the season of children's movies, I agree, but I can't help noticing how the American entertainment industry so rarely produces anything but children's...
Paid articleThe Talkies / All Shook Up (July 1993)
T his month's movies are about mix-ups in love. In Dave, a wife (a fictional first lady) realizes a persistent wifely fantasy and finds in her husband a new man—because he really is a new man. In...
Paid articleThe Talkies / Innocents and Broads (June 1993)
W hen he was, for a week or so in March, the owner of the New York Post, Abraham Hirschfeld was represented by his enemies (i.e., the entire staff of the Post) as unfit to own a newspaper partly on...
Paid articleThe Talkies/Friends of Bill (May 1993)
W ell, I said I wanted movies to eschew fantasy and present us with characters and situations of immediate relevance to our own lives. And then along came Falling Down by Joel Schumacher, a...
Paid articleThe Talkies/Dogs and Groundhogs (April 1993)
N ear the end of Joe Dante's new film, Matinee, a couple of beatnik types coming out of a 1962 vintage horror flick about a man who turns into a giant ant are heard saying in exasperated tones:...
Paid articleThe Talkies/Alive and Dead (March 1993)
0 ne of the simplest ways to judge a film is on the basis of its truth to life. Last month I wrote of Hollywood's neglect, as I see it, of the elementary requirements of verisimilitude in some...
Paid articleThe Talkies /Can You Believe It? (February 1993)
/ s it just me, or is the stuff coming out of Hollywood getting more and more far-fetched and unbelievable? If art (and that means movies, too) has a conscience, its guiding principle is not...
Paid articleThe Talkies/Hit List (January 1993)
"The Talkies/Hit List" It may not seem a significant coincidence to you, but the new Dracula's coming along at the same time as The American Spectator's Twenty-Fifth Anniversary got me to thinking. To amuse myself, I made...
Paid articleThe Talkies/Heroes of Our Time (December 1992)
Heroes of Our Time by James Bowman p robably the only people in the world who loved it when Sinead O'Connor tore up a photograph of the Pope on "Saturday Night Live" were a few florid-faced,...
Paid articleThe Talkies/Family Value (November 1992)
Family Value by James Bowman ollywood always looks its worst H Like so many others of its genre, at election time. This year we South Central suffers from being too have to endure not only...
Paid articleThe Talldes/Unforgivable (October 1992)
Unforgivable by James Bowman S omewhere in the devotional Writings of Dorothy L. Sayers there is an essay in which she says that a Christian must forgive even those who do not seek his forgiveness....
Paid articleThe Talkies / Batting Around (September 1992)
Batting Around by James Bowman Let's start, this time, with the inevitable Movie of the Month. Tim Burton's Batman Returns is less impressive visually than the Batman of 1989, but it has...
Paid articleThe Talkies/Lies We Live (August 1992)
Lies We Live by James Bowman As I was coming out of Housesitter, directed by Frank Oz, I overheard someone say: "Well, that's nice, isn't it? Glorifying a pathological liar!" I have since read...
Paid articleThe Talkies/Fashion Plays (July 1992)
Fashion Plays by James Bowman 4 4 om vies are art, now more than ever," says Tim Robbins as a studio executive addressing a crowd of beautiful people at a charity benefit in Robert Altman's The...
Paid articleThe Talkies/To Die in Bed (June 1992)
To Die in Bed by James Bowman Oh, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, Alone and palely loitering? The sedge has withered from the lake, And no birds sing! / n case you've forgotten the answer to...
Paid articleThe Talkies/The Multicultural Multiplex (May 1992)
The Multicultural Multiplex by James Bowman Election year reminds us how terrifying it is when the political beast is not driven snarling back into its cage with whip and gun but allowed to roam...
Paid articleThe Talkies/Going Down in History (April 1992)
Going Down in History by James Bowman When I was a boy, I used to read lots of history books and scorned fiction almost entirely. Why should I waste my time reading stuff that wasn't even true? It...
Paid articleThe Talkies/Feel So Bad (March 1992)
Feel So Bad by James Bowman Like most readers of this journal, I believe in free markets. And that goes for the movies too. In return for your six dollars, they will give you all the escapist...
Paid articleThe Talkies/Everything Old Is New Again (February 1992)
Everything Old Is New Again by James Bowman This Christmas, according to the New York Times, nostalgia was'in. Erector sets and Lincoln Logs, reproduction Western Flyer bicycles and Fleet Arrow...
Paid articleThe Talkies/Post No Billings (January 1992)
Post No Billings by James Bowman 6 6 I/ n lapidary inscriptions," said Dr. Johnson, "a man is not upon oath." He might have said the same about movie advertising. The poster for Robert Benton's...
Paid articleThe Talkies/Uranians (December 1991)
THE TALKIES URANIANS Afew years ago in England there was something called a "Martian school" of poetry. It took its name from Craig Raine's poem, "A Martian Sends a Postcard Home," whose idea was...
Paid articleThe Talkies/Who Am I? (November 1991)
THE TALKIES WHO AM I? by James Bowman D uring my freshman year in college fully sympathetic character in the movie. of us who have grown out of that sort and worshipper of various assassins and I...
Paid articleThe Talkies/Dead Meat (October 1991)
THE TALKIES DEAD MEAT by James Bowman AA round the time that the first ,It„Rocky film came out, Sylvester Stallone bragged in an interview about how easy it had been for him to write the...
Paid articleThe Talkies/'The Child Is Father to the Man (September 1991)
THE TALKIES THE CHILD IS FATHER TO THE MAN amilies and sentimentality go toil. gether like Corn Flakes and milk. One of the easiest tricks in the cinematic trade is to put children in loco...
Paid articleThe Talkies/The Banality of '90s Evil (August 1991)
with the caption reading, "This is the essence. This is the source of our strength and the token of the inevitable, full victory of Communism." And this is sponsored by the same MossovietMoscow City...
Paid articleThe Talkies/Pardon Me, Myth (July 1991)
THE TALKIES PARDON ME, MYTH by James Bowman eing a man in anything other than IMO a splatter flick these days ain't nowhere, man; it's the girls who have all the fun. At least they do in The...
Paid articleThe Talkies/Looking for a Good Time? (June 1991)
Some might say the Shawn-examined life is not worth listening to. He tells of visiting a "revolutionary country," probably Nicaragua. There are many soldiers but they look like "shepherds in...
Paid articleThe Talkies/Swinging No More (May 1991)
THE TALKIES SWINGING NO MORE Several new movies suggest that the sixties revival in pop culture is gathering steam. For the most part, however, it is not the real sixties that are being revived...
Paid articleThe Talkies/Someday Her Prints Will Come (April 1991)
THE TALKIES SOMEDAY HER PRINTS WILL COME by James Bowman H ollywood routinely elevates cliche ment? Ah, yes, because it is inherently lywood ideology without Hollywood tected from the very...
Paid articleThe Talkies/This Great Dane's a Dog (March 1991)
THE TALKIES THIS GREAT DANE'S A DOG or me, the first principle of criticism is to assess a work of art for what it is, never for what it isn't—still less for not being what I think it should...
Paid articleThe Talkies/Homes Rearranged (February 1991)
THE TALKIES HOMES REARRANGED America's rediscovery of her Romantic roots in each new generation is a spectacle of endless fascination. Just now the Noble Savage is having one of his periodic...
Paid articleThe Talkies/Empty Dreams (January 1991)
THE TALKIES EMPTY DREAMS by James Bowman W hen I taught English to small boys and compelled them to offer up creative prose compositions for my approval, I used to tell them that all essays ending...
Paid articleThe Talkies/Reeling in the Years (December 1990)
THE TALKIES REELING IN THE YEARS by James Bowman T ime was when we looked back 1 with wistful nostalgia upon the world of our fathers and grandfathers. Now it is our own lives of only a few years...
Paid articleThe Talkies/Wild Metropolitan Fools (November 1990)
on the council, representing a no-longer-existing voting district. Thanks to "Protocol No. 3 of the February 27, 1924 emergency session of the Moscow City Council," it was explained, "1) V. I. Lenin...
Paid articleThe Talkies/Ms. Polhemus, She Dead (October 1990)
THE TALKIES MS. POLHEMUS, SHE DEAD After nearly a century of it, do we still thrill to that Heart of Darkness stuff—how thin the veneer of civilization over the savage substance of our hearts,...
Paid articleThe Talkies/Tricky Dick (September 1990)
THE TALKIES TRICKY DICK by James Bowman when William Randolph Hearst introduced America to color comics in the New York Journal he described them as "eight pages of polychromatic effulgence that...
Paid articleFrancois Truffaut (August 1990)
I n a tactful letter of advice to a screenwriter, written when he was only twenty-eight, Francois Truffaut wrote that "films resemble the people who make them." Those who know Truffaut as the...
Paid articleWarts and All, by Matt Ridley (July 1990)
gip r. Tocqueville," as some cretin of a proofreader has dignified him in this book, has a lot to answer for. Since his time (a century and a half ago, for those who may be in danger of...
AuthorBowman:, Bill
AuthorBownam, James
AuthorBoyle, Nicholas
AuthorBoyles, Denis
AuthorBozell, L. Brent III
RangeBp - Bs
RangeBt - Bz
LetterC
LetterD
LetterE
LetterF
LetterG
LetterH
LetterI
LetterJ
LetterK
LetterL
LetterM
LetterN
LetterO
LetterP
LetterQ
LetterR
LetterS
LetterT
LetterU
LetterV
LetterW
LetterX
LetterY
LetterZ
Kanda Software, Inc.