Early on, there are slow-moving but tense confrontations between Dodd and Freddie in which Hoffman and Phoenix appear to be competing over who can hold the camera longest before delivering a line. The two men need and necessarily hate each other. Anderson juices their struggle, but, oddly, he doesn’t resolve it. He has told interviewers … Read more
Will win: “One Battle After Another”Should win: “One Battle After Another”Should’ve been nominated: “Sirāt” Best Director Paul Thomas Anderson, “One Battle After Another”Ryan Coogler, “Sinners”Josh Safdie, “Marty Supreme”Joachim Trier, “Sentimental Value”Chloé Zhao, “Hamnet” The last time the top two races diverged was in 2022, when “CODA” won Best Picture and Jane Campion (“The Power of … Read more
Vermont has long been a haven for idealists and iconoclasts, from the Putney Perfectionists of the nineteenth century to Depression-era homesteaders like Helen and Scott Nearing to the prickly Brooklynite who became the state’s most famous senator. In a 2009 book called “The Town That Food Saved,” Ben Hewitt, a northern-Vermont native, chronicled the arrival … Read more
Floodlines, by Saleem Haddad (Europa). In this sprawling family saga, three Iraqi British sisters strain against one another while contending with political turmoil. In 2014, the three women are living distant lives in the U.K. and Dubai when they are forced to reconnect after paintings made by their late father, a prominent artist, are suddenly … Read more
What monotheism means is surprisingly hard to pin down, but there’s a reason it swept the world.
According to Buruma’s sources, life in 1939 proceeded much as before for most Berliners, albeit with less illumination (the street lights were turned off) and less food (beer, milk, and meat were rationed). Attendance at the city’s cinemas went up. Goethe’s play “Iphigenia in Tauris” was performed at the Volksbühne, and “Tosca” played at the … Read more
Virginia Oldoini helped conceptualize and starred in more than four hundred portraits so experimental and expressive that they have drawn comparisons to works by Claude Cahun and Cindy Sherman.
The “very objective” and “very well researched” taxonomy in question is the P.S.L. scale, named for three of the most infamous forums from the incel epoch: PUAHate (Pick-Up-Artist Hate), SlutHate, and Lookism. The P.S.L. scale has eight points and sorts men into three tiers: subhuman, normie (subdivided into low-tier normie, mid-tier normie, and high-tier normie), … Read more
Arrival was a shock. Inside the station, I unzipped my engorged duffel, retrieving my precious scale and cookie cutters. I filled my drawers, tacked up photos of my husband, two children, and dog, and pulled out the recipe book I’d assembled—marzipan cake, ginger-prune upside-down cake, walnut tart. My father was a chef, and I grew … Read more
Sometimes, in a “Jerry Springer Show”-like twist, a character’s true nature doesn’t emerge until later on, forcing the viewer to swap allegiances. The third episode involves a story line in Palm Bay, Florida: Johnny, a former male dancer, has been feuding with Andy, a grizzled Vietnam vet, over lawn maintenance. (It seems that there’s potential … Read more