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Film: The Problem With 'Breathless'

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Published June 4, 2010 at 8:58 p.m.

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Every cinephile knows to at least pretend to like ... Jean-Luc Godard's first feature—a witty mashup of American noir and French chic—is as much an art-house staple today as it was in 1960, which is precisely why it's getting the 50th-anniversary reissue treatment this month. Think of Belmondo aping Bogart with his cigarette, Seberg flacking the , or the director's game-changing jump-cuts, and you realize that various elements of the film have never gone out of style. This may get me booted

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Facebook: The Novel

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Published June 4, 2010 at 8:58 p.m.

The internet makes periodic, seemingly in-nocuous appearances throughout Jennifer Egan's new novel, ... In the first chapter, a character considers Googling her psychiatrist. Later, members of an African safari reconnect on Facebook, and a character's 9-year-old daughter spends much of her time "in a pink beanbag chair, doing homework on her laptop and IMing her friends." But it is not until the final chapter, titled "Pure Language," that it becomes apparent that Egan is using online

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In Praise of Monopoly

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Published May 14, 2010 at 7:56 a.m.

In which the author lauds one old-school product that's managed to survive the transition from paper to digital ...

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The Curse of the Great American Novel

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Published Feb. 5, 2010 at 1:26 p.m.

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Ellison died trying to finish his last book. That shouldn't stop you from reading it ...

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'A Prophet' Heralds a New Wave of French Auteurs

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Published Jan. 22, 2010 at 3:09 p.m.

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Now Jacques Audiard is poised to become the next native director to move into the global spotlight. His latest film, —a heart-pounding gangster movie set in a French prison—has already raked in $10 million at the French box office, won last year's Jury Prize at Cannes, and took best film at the recent British Film Festival. It will be France's nominee for best foreign film at this year's Oscars. And as it opens across Europe and America this month, Audiard is bound to win comparisons to the

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Why 'Lost' Is a Show About Faith

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Published Jan. 22, 2010 at 12:28 p.m.

In the beginning, Oceanic Flight 815 started shaking somewhere over the Indian Ocean. "My husband keeps reminding me that planes want to be in the air," Rose nervously tells the passenger sitting next to her, a levelheaded neurosurgeon named Jack Shephard. "Well, he sounds like a very smart man," Jack replies. Moments later, 815 is ripped into three pieces, emptying its contents onto a Chinese box of an island. Twenty minutes into the still-stunning pilot episode of , the message was clear:

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With the Rise of Art Prizes, Everyone's a Winner

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Published Jan. 9, 2010 at 1:15 p.m.

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A decade ago, just a handful of awards conferred prestige on artists: the Turner Prize (for British art), the MacArthur (for creative genius in the U.S.), and the Archibald (for portraiture in Australia). But in recent years the number of contemporary-art prizes available has multiplied faster than new film festivals; in the last quarter of 2009 alone, at least a dozen new awards were launched in the U.S. and U.K. They are bankrolled by unfamiliar names like Abraaj, Sovereign, Pictet, and

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Movies: Denzel Rescues the Bible

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Published Jan. 8, 2010 at 9:37 a.m.

In the post-apocalyptic world of the most precious things on earth are a trial-size bottle of shampoo; a cache of hand wipes, individually wrapped; and the last existing copy of the King James Bible. Denzel Washington, cast as the cowboy-monk Eli, is on a mission from God. He has to carry that Bible through a landscape populated by murderous, illiterate, cannibalistic roughnecks to a safe place he saw in a dream. Eli may not be Jesus, exactly—the Christian Lord would never have been so deft

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Movie Review: 'Crazy Heart'

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Published Nov. 25, 2009 at 3:56 p.m.

First-time director Scott Cooper, who wrote the screenplay from a Thomas Cobb novel, gives his cast (which includes Duvall, in a small but tasty role) lots of breathing room. What he prizes in this character study is not originality, but authenticity. From the songs Blake sings (written by Stephen Bruton and T. Bone Burnett) to the light in the eyes of his aging groupies, the details feel right ... gets to you like a good country song—not because it tells you something new, but because it

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Jason Reitman: The Grown-Up's Director

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Published Nov. 25, 2009 at 3:46 p.m.

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There hasn't been a studio movie as unapologetically adult, sophisticated, and nuanced as in some time. Reitman wrote the lead with George Clooney in mind, and there are echoes of the unmarried Clooney's life here. He's playing another urbane charmer, but there's a panic, a vulnerability, under the slick surface that Clooney has rarely shown. The rootless, no-strings life Bingham has constructed is imperiled when a young efficiency expert (Anna Kendrick) hired by Bingham's boss (Jason Bateman)

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