Gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Republican and Democratic national conventions was still being offered by CBS and NBC in 1968, but ABC, lacking their resources, limited their coverage to a few hours in the evening and highlighted it with a ten-night debate between conservative author and commentator William F. Buckley Jr. and flamboyant liberal novelist and…
Those days that see no sunset are bound to become myths. Amy Winehouse was once like one of those twilightless days that just faded away from view. She did, however, fade in front of our eyes. We saw her dissipating, slowly disappearing — we saw her vanishing only to never watch her die. Asif Kapadia’s…
How hard it is to look at pure evil right in the eye? It is hard, very hard, mainly because, as Hannah Arendt very lucidly said, it is extremely banal. No apocalyptic Lucifer-like layouts, no tall teleologies or immense intentions; the people who do evil are brutally banal, practically plain — and they are of…
Is it any wonder that our current democratic systems have turned into popularity contests? Is it any wonder that most Western politicians primarily rely on intricate advertising schemes to continuously validate themselves? For those whose eyes still blink in bewilderment at what the political landscape looks like today, Gabe Polsky’s Red Army gives us an…
“Are we clear? Are we clear?” . . . “Crystal.” — Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson in “A Few Good Men” Based on the book by Lawrence Wright, director Alex Gibney (“The Armstrong Lie”) has delivered another hard-hitting documentary in Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, an exposé of the abuses of the…
“Suffering is what was born. Ignorance made me forlorn. Tearful truths I cannot scorn” — Allan Ginsberg Co-directed with Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, Wim Wenders’ (“Pina”) The Salt of the Earth chronicles Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado’s essays shot over a period of thirty years in one hundred different countries. Winner of the Special Jury Prize at…
If life is up and down with a few bumps along the way, what better representation is there than a cable car’s ride up and down a mountain? This particular cable car ride takes place in the riveting documentary Manakamana, a ride that brings passengers, both foreign and local, to the Manakamana Temple in the…
