Arts and Entertainment
Dramatic Film Reviews: The Queen, Pan's Labyrinth, Last King of Scotland
The Queen: There was a time when dramatization would seek to recreate for a modern audience a series of ancient events that had passed into the intangible mists of legend. This standard is being swept aside as movie producers across the world begin to realize that more money can be made from revisiting yesterday's news than yesteryear's. Read More
Bookmarks: Adventures on the Wine Route by Kermit Lynch
In the beginning, there was wine. And about thirty seconds later came the wine trade. The marketing of this product has had a life no less complex than the product itself, from amphorae-filled slave-rowed ships on the Mediterranean, to barrels shipped down Gothic rivers to then be carried down Roman roads, to secluded monastics drinking nothing but what they could grow within the walls of their compounds. Finally the modern era has provided us with smaller, more clearly defined epochs in this whirl of capitalism: the Saintsbury era of buying by the barrel and bottling at home; the Simon era of unfortified, dry table wines; the Lichine era of the great growths of Bordeaux and Burgundy; the Broadbent era of epic wines sold off by lot in Christie's; and finally, the magazine epoch, of 100-point scales, of wines assembled in laboratories by computerized palates, of novus homo CPAs pouring ten-ounce libations of Aussie Cab as if prohibition loomed just around the corner. Read More
A double review: The Lives of Others
The Lives of Others is a narrative of politics, subversion, culture, and espionage within the confines of the German Democratic Republic, also known as East Germany. Most of the action takes place at the end of the 1980s. (In fact, it isn't until the epilogue of the film that the Berlin Wall is torn down.) The focus of the film is the conflict between those loyal to the state and those who have, as some characters say, "Western leanings." Read More