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Antichrist

You only have to hear the plot summary of Lars von Trier's to hate it. It begins with scenes of a couple (Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe) enjoying carnal relations in pornographic detail as the haunting Handel aria, "Lascia ch'io pianga" ...

From JAMES BOWMAN, American Spectator,  11 Nov 2009

Related Topics: Lars von Trier,  Willem Dafoe

An American Tragedy

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 museum, so we also have to define comedy as whatever is said on a late night comedy show. But my surprise at hearing the ...

From JAMES BOWMAN, American Spectator,  5 Nov 2009

Related Topics: Helen Mirren,  David Letterman,  Jean Racine,  James Mason,  Stephen Frears

Two Unserious Men

The Coen brothers' new movie, , would have been better named for the brothers themselves: Two Unserious Men. They continue to infuriate as they have infuriated in every movie they have made since Fargo (at least), both the better and the worse: ...

From JAMES BOWMAN, American Spectator,  27 Oct 2009

Related Topics: Thomas Hardy

The Damned United

Not long ago, a player for the British rugby team, Harlequins, "one of the game's most venerable clubs," according to the London Daily Telegraph, was caught attempting to cheat by biting on a blood capsule in order to feign injury so that a ...

From JAMES BOWMAN, American Spectator,  21 Oct 2009

Related Topics: Don Revie,  Brian Clough,  Leeds United,  Harlequins,  Peter Morgan

An Education

On the same day that opened in the U.S., the Daily Mail of London reported on court testimony in the case of a missing schoolgirl, Tulay Goren, a 15-year-old Turkish-Kurdish refugee who disappeared in 1999. After ten years during which she kept ...

From JAMES BOWMAN, American Spectator,  20 Oct 2009

Related Topics: Lone Scherfig,  Nick Hornby,  Carey Mulligan,  Alfred Molina,  GREIF

Look at Me

In our time, freedom of speech is almost a non-issue. True, we encounter some problems with multicultural sensitivities and especially Islamic ones. The craven decision by Yale University Press not to reprint the Danish cartoons of the Prophet ...

From JAMES BOWMAN, American Spectator,  19 Oct 2009

Related Topics: Adolf Hitler,  Dan Rather,  Quentin Tarantino,  Yale University,  Barack Obama

'The Invention of Lying'

Ricky Gervais may be the funniest man alive, and he got that way by looking more deeply into the mind and soul of the man we so cruelly call the "loser" than anyone in movies or television has done to date. His character, David Brent, in the ...

From JAMES BOWMAN, American Spectator,  12 Oct 2009

Related Topics: Ricky Gervais,  Steve Carell,  Christopher Guest,  Jennifer Garner,  Rob Lowe

Capitalism: A Love Story

There is one scene in Michael Moore's where its writer, director, hero and sole credited actor is examining the copy of the Constitution that is on display in the National Archives. He asks a guard -- this is the kind of thing Mr. Moore routinely ...

From JAMES BOWMAN, American Spectator,  6 Oct 2009

Related Topics: Michael Moore,  Franklin D. Roosevelt,  General Motors

The Baader Meinhof Complex

The title of Uli Edel's () suggests a psychological rather than political origin of terrorist violence, and this is borne out by the portrayal of Andreas Baader (Moritz Bleibtreu), leader of the 1970s German terrorists who called themselves the ...

From JAMES BOWMAN, American Spectator,  2 Oct 2009

Related Topics: Ho Chi Minh

Rotten Apples

IN AN ARTICLE IN A RECENT EDITION OF THE London Daily Telegraph titled "More Sex Please, We're Grownups," Josa Young, a novelist, writes that "in order to create fully rounded human beings, and describe their relationships with each other" it was ...

From JAMES BOWMAN, American Spectator,  29 Sep 2009

Related Topics: Richard Dawkins,  Quentin Tarantino,  John Wayne,  Gary Cooper,  Arthur Penn

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