I applaud She & Him’s selection of Brian Wilson tunes while at the same time feeling that some are not well-suited to their loungey, languid pop stylings.
Review
Poetry Review: “Whale Fall” — The Dark at the Bottom of the Ocean
It is dark, so very dark, at the ocean’s bottom. And yet, there is also a disquieting, wonder-filled magic in the child’s moon which hovers over these poems; an incantatory moon echoing like a lullaby, drawing on a time of innocence.
WATCH CLOSELY: “The Sandman” is Deliriously Beautiful Art
Creator Neil Gaiman has said for years that he didn’t want an adaptation to be made unless the creative team could do the original justice. Well, justice has been done: this is a seismic cultural event.
Poetry Review: “Island Heart” — The Dance of Passion
These poems are of their own time and place — written in Haiti and France early in the twentieth century — yet they remain impressively fresh.
Film Review: “Resurrection” — Turning Words into Weapons
Rebecca Hall gives Resurrection the psychological grounding it needs, as the thriller stretches towards a macabre, fable-like payoff.
Book Review: “Vladimir” — Sex and Realpolitik in American Academe
This is an entertaining comedy of manners, a sophisticated satire told from the point of view of a feminist professor who is not afraid of committing transgressions in our politically correct age.
Book Review: “The Flag, The Cross, and the Station Wagon” — A New Chapter in the American Story?
What a cruel hoax: the middle class suburban lifestyle, a proud achievement of postwar America and the envy of peoples throughout the world (in no small part due to Mad Men glamorization), contains the very seeds of our demise. If demise is where this is heading.
Film Review: “A Love Song” — A Marvel of Humanity
Max Walker-Silverman’s first feature, A Love Song, is a character-driven, humanist, and deeply ecological present to someone of my generation.
Book Review: “The Quiet Before”– How Our Conversations Set the Boundaries of Our Thinking
This superb book about adventures in radical thinking is less about tracking incendiary ideas to their obscure sources than about the various media used to ferment and transmit them.
Visual Arts Review: The Supportive Imaginary — Weaves and Grids
Grids come into these woven pieces with a strange humility, disarming us with repurposed materials and precious handiwork, domestic scenes and visionary tales.