Obama’s Trust Problem

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: August 20, 2009

According to news reports, the Obama administration — which seemed, over the weekend, to be backing away from the “public option” for health insurance — is shocked and surprised at the furious reaction from progressives. More

Did I mention that I heard Paul Krugman twice at Anticipation? And stood aside leaving the last panel so he could rush off to the airport...

Passing Strange: The Movie (2008) NYT Critics' Pick

Daniel Breaker as Youth with Stew, at rear, in "Passing Strange," directed by Spike Lee.
A Young Artist’s Journey, This Time on Film
By A. O. SCOTT
Published: August 21, 2009

When I first saw “Passing Strange” on Broadway a little more than a year ago, I admired it, but with some reservations. This musical story of adolescent rebellion and artistic self-discovery, written by Stew (with music by him and Heidi Rodewald) from the raw material of Stew’s own life, simmered with energy and ideas, with sonic and verbal wit, but it also strained for a soaring, transcendent theatricality that it could not quite achieve. The show’s rootedness in the swerves and bumps of an individual biography struck me as admirable but also limiting, and its themes of creative ambition, racial identity and the search for that elusive thing called the real seemed to lie too heavily on the surface. More

A-List Stars Flailing at the Box Office

From left, Will Ferrell in "Land of the Lost," Denzel Washington in "The Taking of the Pelham 123," and Julia Roberts in "Duplicity."
By BROOKS BARNES
Published: August 20, 2009

LOS ANGELES — The spring and summer box office has murdered megawatt stars like Denzel Washington, Julia Roberts, Eddie Murphy, John Travolta, Russell Crowe, Tom Hanks, Adam Sandler and Will Ferrell. More

World's Greatest Dad (2009)

A Dead Teenage Loser Improves in Grief’s Glow
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: August 21, 2009

“World’s Greatest Dad” shoots a poisoned arrow at the grotesque sentimentality that often attaches to the death of a teenager, in this case apparently a suicide, and the toxin leaks all over the place. After watching this extreme satire, written and directed by Bobcat Goldthwait, you may never want to attend another memorial for anyone at which tearful testimonials are read, gooey ballads sung and the memory of the deceased slathered with mawkish bromides. With a merciless acuity this nihilistic comedy ridicules collective grief and the news media’s cynical marketing of inspirational uplift after a death. Ultimately it scorns the human impulse to find a deeper meaning in any tragedy. More

The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008) NYT Critics' Pick

“The Baader Meinhof Complex” depicts the West German terrorist group of the 1970s. Vinzenz Kiefer, left, and Hannes Wegener, on car, play group members.
The Journalist Who Exchanged Her Typewriter for a Gun
By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: August 21, 2009

“The Baader Meinhof Complex,” a taut, unnerving, forcefully unromantic fictional film about a West German terrorist group whose founders ran bloodily amok in the 1970s, opens with a bright, sparkling image of children playing on a beach. It’s 1967, and two of the children are the twin daughters of Ulrike Meinhof (Martina Gedeck), a respected journalist who one day jumped out of a window while helping a prisoner, Andreas Baader (Moritz Bleibtreu), escape. The moment she jumped, Meinhof left her world behind for a life of revolutionary zealotry and nihilistic violence. She traded her typewriter for a gun, her children too. More

The Headless Woman (2007) NYT Critics' Pick

María Onetto in “The Headless Woman.”
What It Hurts to Remember Becomes Convenient to Forget
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: August 19, 2009

A full appreciation of Lucrecia Martel’s elegant, rain-soaked film, “The Headless Woman,” requires the concentration and eye for detail of a forensic detective. Every frame of this brilliant, maddeningly enigmatic puzzle of a movie contains crucial information, much of it glimpsed on the periphery and sometimes passing so quickly you barely have time to blink. More

They worry about the rich so we don't have to...

Rise of the Super-Rich Hits a Sobering Wall

John McAfee is auctioning off this property in New Mexico to pay bills. His worth has fallen to about $4 million from a peak of about $100 million.
By DAVID LEONHARDT and GERALDINE FABRIKANT
Published: August 20, 2009

The rich have been getting richer for so long that the trend has come to seem almost permanent. More

A-List Stars Flailing at the Box Office More

I guess it's a hard job, but somebody's gotta do it...