The Tree of Life Produced by Cottonwood Pictures and River Road Entertainment Written and directed by Terrence Malick Distributed by Fox Searchlight Entertainment Midnight in Paris Produced by Letty Aronson Written and directed by Woody Allen Distributed by Sony Pictures Classics Evelyn Waugh once remarked that, while reading Ulysses, one could watch James Joyce...
Early in June, James Arness died. Everyone thinks of him as Matt Dillon, the brave and incorruptible town marshal of Dodge City in the television series Gunsmoke. I think of him as the father of one of my childhood friends and as one of the last actors in Hollywood to have fought in World War...
Anthony Weiner is, in the immortal words of one Oscar-winning actress, so five minutes ago. Almost a decade and a half before the instrument of Weiner’s downfall launched on July 15, 2006, that line from one of the most perceptive films of the 1990’s presciently captured the essence of modern social media. Anyone who follows...
I first met Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor in the summer of 1977, in Corfu. I was on board Gianni Agnelli’s boat, and the charismatic Fiat chairman asked me to go ashore and bring “a very smart Englishman whose Ancient Greek is much better than yours.” I knew Paddy, as everyone called him, by sight, because...
When you ask a Russian of my generation or older about conspiracy theories, Kirov is the name that wanders into his mind as readily as the name Kennedy springs to yours. Thirty years and an ocean separate these deaths, whose aim, in both cases, was not so much the elimination of a political rival as...
Don’t they wish they had listened to her! Back in 2003, when the United States was planning to lead the invasion of Iraq, my elderly Welsh aunt was appalled by the prospect of war: “I hate all the violence. I’m not an educated woman; I don’t understand politics. I just hate to think of all...
All too many speeches by major political figures are heralded as historic in advance of delivery yet prove to be irrelevant in the grand-strategic scheme of things. Churchill’s “we shall fight on the beaches” address in the wake of Dunkirk, for example, and his Iron Curtain speech at Fulton six years later were rich in...
Atlas Shrugged: Part I Produced by The Strike Productions Directed by Paul Johansson Screenplay by John Aglialoro and Brian Patrick O’Toole from Ayn Rand’s novel Distributed by Rocky Mountain Pictures Now we know: When it comes to celebrating the virtues of unbridled capitalism, it does not pay to skimp. The ten million dollars producer...
The very first day I spent at a prestigious prep school—I was ten—I was punished for breaking the rule that no new boy was allowed to walk on the grass. “Rhinies,” as we were called at Lawrenceville, had to stick to the paths, and the only time we could walk on the grass was during...
The document I am reading is public. It is an official directive of the Russian government to the ministries responsible for directing the country’s electronic industry, dated August 7, 2007, identified as “Government of the Russian Federation Order No311,” and entitled “Strategic Development of Electronics in Russia 2007-2025.” Last February, totalitarian power in the person...
Trying to spread democracy in the Middle East has always been a bad idea. The quagmire in Iraq is largely thanks to George W. Bush and his team extending the original mission from depriving Saddam of his (nonexistent) weapons of mass destruction to the establishment of a democratic Iraq as a first step to transforming...
Of Gods and Men Produced by Why Not Productions and Armada Films Directed and written by Xavier Beauvois Distributed by Sony Pictures Classics Director Xavier Beauvois’s Of Gods and Men quietly, one might say austerely, meditates on the faith and courage of nine French Trappists who faced death at the hands of Muslim fanatics...
Recently, a younger acquaintance of mine, an actor on stage and screen, mentioned with disgust the circus-like atmosphere that pervaded the trial of O.J. Simpson for the murder of his ex-wife. I noted that early on in the trial, Judge Lance Ito simply lost control of the proceedings, and the “Dream Team” of defense attorneys...
Some 20 years ago, my friend P.J. O’Rourke came to dinner at my New York house with his new bride. She was beautiful, reserved, intelligent, and after dinner called me a male chauvinist, racist antisemite and left the house in a fury. P.J. apologized and followed his bride out. To this day I haven’t figured...
The townhouse at 18 Belgrave Square consisted of 74 living rooms, salons, corridors, servants’ pantries, staircases, anterooms, and closets, and in 1866 it was deemed suitable to become the new London residence of the Austrian ambassador. The commodious townhouse had gone up early in the century as part of Thomas Cubitt’s development of Belgrave Square,...
When I tell you that I was recently shocked by the treatment of history in a children’s cartoon, you may wonder what kind of pompous buffoon I might be. (“I cannot begin to list the fundamental errors in marine biology that The Little Mermaid parades before our vulnerable children . . . ”) Yet watching...
In the aftermath of September 11, President George W. Bush launched the War on Terror. It was the first war in U.S. history—declared or undeclared—against a phenomenon, a method, or an emotion, rather than against a state (or a subgroup such as the Barbary pirates or the Viet Cong). The concept evoked Xerxes’ War on...
Unknown Produced by Studio Canal Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra Screenplay by Oliver Butcher and Stephen Cornwell Distributed by Warner Bros. Adjustment Bureau Produced and distributed by Universal Pictures Directed and written by George Nolfi, adapted from “Adjustment Team,” a story by Philip K. Dick Limitless Produced and distributed by Relativity Media Directed by Neil Burger...
“Census data: Rockford may lose spot as Illinois’ 3rd biggest city” warned the headline in the online edition of the February 16 issue of the Rockford Register Star, announcing the initial release of data from the 2010 Census. Ten years ago, when the data from the last census was released, Rockford, with a population of...
It sounds presumptuous, but I wish I had written this column in October 2002, and some eagle-eyed George W. Bush assistant would have noticed it and shown it to his moron boss. Let’s just play the What If game for a minute. Had the moron read it and taken what I’m about to write into...
On occasion I have written here about the evils of photography, while other readers of this magazine may remember my having voiced more general apprehensions with respect to the transformation undergone by the human mind in an age when, by pressing a button, a suburban housewife may proclaim herself Baudelaire or Monet. Recently, I found...
Normality is a fragile concept, and that observation is nowhere more true than in sexual matters. In making that point, I am not questioning the existence of absolute moral standards—quite the contrary. Rather, I am suggesting that, once a society loses its religious moorings, it drifts into startling novelties with a haste even more vertiginous...
The fall of Hosni Mubarak came as a complete surprise to experts and policymakers. Why did the shadowy leading figures in Egypt’s political-military establishment, men who have profited handsomely from Mubarak’s three decades in power, risk their own power and privilege by pulling the plug on him? As Cairo returned to its chaotic daily routine,...
The Eagle Produced and distributed by Focus Features Directed by Kevin Macdonald Screenplay by Jeremy Brock There’s this to be said for director Kevin Macdonald’s The Eagle, set in Roman-occupied Britain circa a.d. 140: It’s remarkably unpretentious. It was made for a mere $24 million at a time when even the most ordinary Hollywood...
Rockford, Illinois, has lived through more than its share of economic downturns. The most notable, of course, was during the Reagan Recession, when one in four Rockfordians were unemployed. The city climbed up out of that trough, only to lose a number of its oldest and largest manufacturers through the frenzied rounds of mergers and...
It is the rise of people-power all over the Muslim world, and I’ve got news for you. The people—or the street, as it’s called in places like Cairo, Manama, Sana, and Amman—are united by two things only: A loathing for the autocratic crooks who have been keeping them poor and lording it over them since...
Everybody laughed at me as usual. The state of absolute passivity outwardly resembling the comatose, but distinguishable from it by voluntary alimentation and libation, was derided by my friends as unattainable. A Sicilian mirage. Yet it had been an idée fixe for years, my vision of a holiday so impeccably philistine it would reduce me...
The events of recent months present the eurozone as a dysfunctional bourgeois family, the latter-day Buddenbrooks morphing into Karamazovs. At the plot’s core is the loveless marriage of two incompatible, increasingly embittered partners. Teutonius is a rich yet parsimonious workaholic who abhors mortgages and long holidays. His much younger spouse, Meridiana, has inherited all the...
True Grit Produced and distributed by Paramount Pictures Written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen The Green Hornet Produced and distributed by Columbia Pictures Directed by Michel Gondry Screenplay by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg The King’s Speech Produced by See-Saw Films Directed by Tom Hooper Screenplay by David Seidler Distributed by The Weinstein...
Like most kids I loved reading about Americans who rose from nothing to greatness. When I got to college and encountered my first left-wing history professor, I learned that Horatio Alger characters were pure myth—except I had already read and heard about dozens of them. One of my favorites was Jumpin’ Jim Gavin, the heroic...
For a native son of the Midwest who has sympathized with the Southern states in the War of Northern Aggression for as far back as he can remember, I can see why some Southerners might find a certain justice in the impending fiscal collapse of the state that launched Abraham Lincoln, coming as it has...
What is it with the wives of despots? Leïla Ben Ali (Baba), ex-first lady of Tunisia and a former hairdresser, makes her escape from the country her hubby and her relatives raped, but not before a brief stop at the bank where she demands and receives one-and-a-half tons of gold—worth 67 million big ones—which she...
Kierkegaard recalls somewhere that Caligula wanted to behead all of Rome. One can almost see his point. The news that comes over the transom is so uniformly bleak, so predictably monstrous, that it cannot but produce this kind of response in any number of men of good will. After all, it is mankind itself that...
Imagine it is the year 2030, and you are talking to some young adults. To your horror, you find that they have never heard the name Osama bin Laden. As you begin to rant about the ignorance of the young, you find to your still greater astonishment that none of your older friends have any...
A few hours before Richard Holbrooke’s death on December 13, Hillary Clinton told a group of top U.S. diplomats at a State Department Christmas party that he was “practically synonymous with American foreign policy.” Her assessment is correct: Holbrooke’s career embodies some of its least attractive and most deeply flawed traits. Holbrooke started as a...
The Fighter Produced by Mark Wahlberg and David Hoberman Directed by David O. Russell Screenplay by Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy, and Eric Johnson Distributed by Paramount Pictures 127 Hours Produced and directed by Danny Boyle Screenplay by Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufoy Distributed by Fox Searchlight Mark Wahlberg produced The Fighter and convincingly plays...
You can tell a lot about the direction in which a city is headed by paying attention to the types of buildings being built, and those being torn down. Here in Rockford, for some years now, the latter have disproportionately been factories, including some which once made Rockford the manufacturing powerhouse of the Upper Midwest....
Having been caught out by the demon memory gene of the sainted editor—I tried to recycle a Paris nostalgia piece—I shall nevertheless return to my brother-in-law’s funeral in Paris a few years ago, which prompted the recycle, and this time write about death. François de Caraman was a marquis whose father, the duke de Caraman,...
In April 1945, a world of avengers was closing in rapidly on Berlin. Trapped in the bunker complex, Hitler’s dwindling band of followers faced mounting despair, until the news broke that Franklin Roosevelt had died. The glorious word of relief ran through the surviving Nazi leadership: “The Empress Elizabeth is dead!” However baffling that reference...
NATO’s new “Strategic Concept” (SC), adopted at the summit in Lisbon on November 20, is neither new, nor strategic, nor much of a concept. The 11-page document avoids issues of high strategy and refrains from conceptual daring. It is worth pondering mainly for what it does not say. Its six enumerated goals are largely conventional. ...
Doug Liman has performed half a public service with his new film, Fair Game. By retelling the story of the neoconservative attack on Amb. Joseph Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame, he has once more exposed how eager these ideologues are to destroy anyone who gets in their way. Unfortunately, he stops short of reaching...
Though he beat Jack Dempsey decisively the two times they met in the ring, was undefeated as a heavyweight, and retired as heavyweight champion, Gene Tunney is often forgotten when today’s era of fight fans or others discuss the greatest heavyweights. Political correctness doesn’t allow us to forget black champions such as Jack Johnson, although...
Of all the cities of which I have some personal experience, but to which I have no personal connection, Charleston, South Carolina, is the only one in which I’ve seriously thought I could live. The attraction is not the climate (my Polish and German genes and my Upper Midwest upbringing make me long for a...
Let’s start the new year with a politically incorrect column by telling it like it is, for a change. During the last week of November, in Portland, Oregon, the FBI arrested a Somali-born U.S. resident as he was about to blow up a Christmas-tree-lighting ceremony in a public square full of mothers and children. The...
Atheism is once again the rage. These religious fads come and go like skirt lengths or medical trends. When I was a child, everyone I knew had had his tonsils out. My mother was more conservative: The tonsils were there for a reason, she said, so why remove them without a good reason? A later...
On the way to the airport we were stuck in systaltic traffic, my taciturn Charon and I, and the weather mimicked the condition, blazing with sunshine like a Neapolitan urchin’s smile one moment, dourly hawking tickets to the Museum of British Cloud the next. At times the sky was the color of Delft tile, reminding...
I met Joe Sobran in 1973 when I was working as history editor at St. Martin’s Press and had begun writing for National Review. I don’t remember how exactly, but the occasion must have been one of the open-house cocktail parties at the magazine’s offices at 150 East 35th Street, held every other Wednesday evening...
The Social Network concerns Mark Zuckerberg and his cybercreation, Facebook, the website that now boasts 500 million active users and has made its “inventor” a multi-billionaire. On his site, you’re free to divulge your most praiseworthy, intimate, and perverse behaviors to thousands. Merely register, and you instantly become a star, inviting the scrutiny of your...
The only time I saw Bill Clinton in the flesh was four years ago in the London Ritz. I was having lunch with Leopold and Debbie Bismarck and the mother of my children, as I call Princess Alexandra Schoenburg-Hartenstein, my wife. There were Krauts galore plus some English friends, and we were celebrating Alexandra’s birthday,...
When Glenn Beck took the podium at his Restoring Honor rally, he began by listing off the names of American heroes and identifying their motivation to fight for their country: “You cannot coexist with evil.” If evil has reared its ugly head, an honorable man, like Washington and Lincoln, must stand and fight. It’s a...