The Hurt Locker (2008)

Jeremy Renner in a scene from “The Hurt Locker,” directed by Kathryn Bigelow.
Soldiers on a Live Wire Between Peril and Protocol
By A. O. SCOTT
Published: June 26, 2009

“The Hurt Locker,” directed by Kathryn Bigelow from a script by Mark Boal, is the best nondocumentary American feature made yet about the war in Iraq. This may sound like faint praise and also like a commercial death sentence, since movies about that war have not exactly galvanized audiences or risen to the level of art. The squad of well-meaning topical dramas that trudged across the screens in the fall of 2007 were at once hysterical and noncommittal, registering an anxious, high-minded ambivalence that was neither illuminating nor especially entertaining. And the public, perhaps sufficiently enervated and confused by reality, was not eager to see it recreated on screen. More

In Venice, Peter Greenaway Takes Veronese’s Figures Out to Play

In the abbey on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, a digital replica of Veronese’s “Wedding at Cana” has been given cinematic treatment.
By ROBERTA SMITH
Published: June 21, 2009

VENICE — You can love it or hate it. You can dismiss it as mediocre art, Disneyfied kitsch or a flamboyant denigration of site-specific video installation. More

Cheri (2009)

Michelle Pfeiffer, left, and Rupert Friend in a scene from “Chéri,” based on a novel by Colette.
May-December Love Can Lead to Discontent
By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: June 26, 2009

“One who is abnormal must never feel abnormal,” the French novelist Colette once wrote to a friend. Instead, he or she thinks, “What is this world full of monstrous pigs who are different from me?” What words to live — or rather to write — by! Born in an age of corsets and legalized prejudice (1873-1954), Colette scandalized society with her colorful life, lovers of both sexes and demimonde characters. Her inspirations were artists not of the pen but of the bedroom, women whose idea of the bottom line, to quote the critic Judith Thurman, “was 50 thousand a year and a villa of one’s own — with a big garden, a great chef, and a pretty boy.” More

Stonewall

Op-Ed Contributor
The Real Mob at Stonewall
By LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV
Published: June 25, 2009
Franklin, Tenn.

I WAS perhaps the unlikeliest person in the world to cover the Stonewall riots for The Village Voice. It was June 27, 1969. I had graduated from West Point only three weeks earlier and was spending my summer leave in New York before reporting for duty at Fort Benning, in Georgia. After a late dinner in Chinatown, I was about to enter the Lion’s Head, a writers’ hangout on Christopher Street near the Voice’s offices, when I blundered straight into the first moments of the police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar a couple of doors down the street. Even a newly minted second lieutenant of infantry could see that it was a story. More

Krugman

Op-Ed Columnist
Not Enough Audacity
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: June 25, 2009

When it comes to domestic policy, there are two Barack Obamas.

On one side there’s Barack the Policy Wonk, whose command of the issues — and ability to explain those issues in plain English — is a joy to behold.

But on the other side there’s Barack the Post-Partisan, who searches for common ground where none exists, and whose negotiations with himself lead to policies that are far too weak. More

Via Centro

Booth for Pride

Via Centro

Dress rehearsal