Claude Lanzmann is a great raconteur who’s honed his narrative skills as a veteran journalist. His memoir is exuberant and provocative at its best; bombastic and superficial at its worst.
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Poetry Review: Yves Bonnefoy — A Provocative “Second Simplicity”
This handsome edition of Yves Bonnefoy’s recent poetry and prose in English translation is a stunning presentation of a major poet.
Book Review: A Memoir That Gives Solace to Us All
A best-seller in France, Emmanuel Carrère’s quirky, but ultimately compelling memoir examines the effects of two disasters on very separate groups of people to whom the writer is connected, at the beginning, quite peripherally.
Movie Review: Daytime in Paris — A Far Better Movie
The Hedghog’s steady, slow pacing—so rare in any film today—captures the rhythms of haut bourgeois life in Paris and draws out the nuances of how people change and are changed by relationships everywhere. The Hedgehog (Le herisson). Directed by Mona Achache. At the Kendall Square Cinema, West Newton Cinema, and other screens throughout New England. […]
Fuse Theater Review: “Doctor Knock” — Medicine as Flim-Flam Farce
Anyone who has sat through a commercial for one pill or another will recognize and acknowledge the satiric thrust of this enjoyable 1920’s French farce.
Poetry Review: Poet Philippe Jaccottet — Teasing the Secret Out of Things
Philppe Jaccottet is one of Europe’s most prolific and distinguished poets. This tome comprises selections from his later works, the bulk of which are prose poems whose urgency reflect a heightened awareness of death.
Film Review: A Game Well Worth Playing
QUEEN TO PLAY is an offbeat feminist fable, set in a gorgeous but dirt-poor and provincial part of Corsica.
Book Review: The Préversities of Jacques Prévert — Enthusiastically Translated
Norman Shapiro’s enthusiasm as a translator is felt not only in the versions themselves but also in his introduction and notes. He relishes finding equivalents for Jacques Prévert’s rhyming, which induces him to take some justifiable liberties in regard to the original. The volume is a true labor of love. Préversities: A Jacques Prévert Sampler […]
Coming Attractions in Film: April 2010
By Justin Marble April 4–5, Kurosawa at the Brattle: Every theater in town is screening Kurosawa at some point this month, but my recommendation is for the Brattle on the 4th and 5th for one reason: “Red Beard.” Most everybody has at least heard of Kurosawa films like “Yojimbo,” “Throne of Blood,” “Kagemusha,” and “Ran,” […]