Teenage Terminatrix

Gianna plays a vampire-human hybrid posing as a 16-year-old student in Chris Nahon’s film “Blood: The Last Vampire.”
By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS
Published: July 10, 2009

Upholding the Japanese media mandate that every teenage terminatrix resemble a murderous Catholic schoolgirl, “Blood: The Last Vampire” introduces Saya (Gianna, otherwise known as the South Korean actress Jeon Ji-hyun), an ancient vampire-human hybrid posing as a 16-year-old student. Ever since her father was killed by the über-demon Onigen (an excruciating performance by the Japanese model and actress Koyuki), Saya, assisted by a shadowy organization known as the Council, has pledged to rid the world of demonkind. In her down time she sips blood from bottles tucked inside brown paper bags, like a strangely sexy wino. More

Lake Tahoe (2008) NYT Critics' Pick

Diego Cataño in Fernando Eimbcke’s “Lake Tahoe,” set in a Yucatán harbor town.
July 10, 2009
Flickers of Trauma
By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS
Published: July 10, 2009

So different from the usual fare that it might have arrived from another galaxy, “Lake Tahoe” is a painstaking collage of small incidents and expansive images clustered around a fragile narrative. At the center is Juan (Diego Cataño), a phlegmatic teenager whose bright red Nissan has collided with a pole; around him are a variety of characters — a grumpy dog lover, a friendly kung fu fanatic — who may or may not be able to help him get moving again. To reach his destination, however, he will require more than a mechanic and a replacement part. More

The Vanished Empire

Lidia Milyuzina and Alexander Lyapin in "The Vanished Empire."
Rites of Passage Through the Rolling Stones and Fallen Civilizations
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: July 10, 2009

Like teenagers everywhere, Sergey Narbekov (Alexander Lyapin), a headstrong 18-year-old student in 1973 Moscow, whose growing pains are chronicled in Karen Shakhnazarov’s beautiful film “The Vanished Empire,” is drawn by the lure of the forbidden. For Soviet youth in those days, the hottest contraband items, furtively traded in an open-air black market periodically raided by the police, are rock albums from the West. More

Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg (2009) NYT Critics' Pick

Gertrude Berg in a scene from "Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg."
July 10, 2009
So Listen, America, to Your Bighearted Jewish Mother
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: July 10, 2009

“The Oprah of her day” is one talking head’s description of the broadcasting pioneer Gertrude Berg in “Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg,” Aviva Kempner’s engrossing documentary portrait of a once-beloved radio and television star who died in 1966 and today is barely remembered. The film could be described as Exhibit A in a study of media celebrity and collective forgetfulness in the age of information overload. More

Humpday (2009) NYT Critics' Pick

Mark Duplass, left, and Joshua Leonard in "Humpday."
Putting a Bromance to an Erotic Test
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: July 10, 2009

To guys everywhere: “Humpday” has your number. With X-ray vision, this serious indie comedy, written and directed by Lynn Shelton, sees through its male characters’ macho pretensions to contemplate the underlying forces hard-wired into men’s psyches in a homophobic culture. Think of it as a Judd Apatow or Kevin Smith buddy film turned inside out. More

The Rude Pundit on CIA, Lying, and Nancy Pelosi

Easy Predictions: No One Will Apologize to Nancy Pelosi: More

Shamelessly Stolen from supergee

Paul Krugman!

The question is what the president and his economic team should do now.

It’s perfectly O.K. for the administration to defend what it’s done so far. It’s fine to have Vice President Joseph Biden touring the country, highlighting the many good things the stimulus money is doing.

It’s also reasonable for administration economists to call for patience, and point out, correctly, that the stimulus was never expected to have its full impact this summer, or even this year.

But there’s a difference between defending what you’ve done so far and being defensive. It was disturbing when President Obama walked back Mr. Biden’s admission that the administration “misread” the economy, declaring that “there’s nothing we would have done differently.” There was a whiff of the Bush infallibility complex in that remark, a hint that the current administration might share some of its predecessor’s inability to admit mistakes. And that’s an attitude neither Mr. Obama nor the country can afford.

What Mr. Obama needs to do is level with the American people. He needs to admit that he may not have done enough on the first try. He needs to remind the country that he’s trying to steer the country through a severe economic storm, and that some course adjustments — including, quite possibly, another round of stimulus — may be necessary.

What he needs, in short, is to do for economic policy what he’s already done for race relations and foreign policy — talk to Americans like adults. More