Six years have passed since Hannah Gadsby, the plus-sized lesbian stand-up from Tasmania, became world famous. Her debut Netflix special, Nanette, had the critics salivating. The premise was brilliant — not comically brilliant, mind you, but politically brilliant. After serving…
Many decades ago, when I was a kid, I found the Oscars exciting. It was a time when people went to the movies more than they do now, and when the movies that got nominated for Oscars were, to a…
He never held any position outside of government, and eventually he became head of state. As his term wore on, he exhibited increasing signs of mental decline and instability and placed limits on his opponents’ right to assemble. In an…
Cocktails with George and Martha: Movies, Marriage, and the Making of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? By Philip Gefter (Bloomsbury Publishing, 368 pages, $32) If you’ve never seen the 1966 movie Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, directed by Mike Nichols…
Hollywood and the Movies of the Fifties: The Collapse of the Studio System, the Thrill of Cinerama, and the Invasion of the Ultimate Body Snatcher—Television By Foster Hirsch (Knopf, 672 pages, $40) If you listen to the Left, the 1950s…
In the last eight or nine years, it’s felt to many Americans as if the country has changed very dramatically, if not irreversibly. A century ago, our forebears had a similar feeling. In 2016, Donald Trump was elected president and…
Everywhere an Oink Oink: An Embittered, Disappointed, and Accurate Report of Forty Years in Hollywood By David Mamet (Simon & Schuster, 256 pages, $28) A couple of years ago I raved about David Mamet’s delightful, cocksure collection of essays, Recessional:…
I Will Not Eat Crickets: A Lone Satirist Declares War on the Globalist Elite By Itxu Díaz (Bombardier Books, 202 pages, $18) Want to read a whole book about globalism? No? Think again. In I Will Not Eat Crickets: A…
If there’s anything uglier and stupider than most of the songs performed at the annual Eurovision Song Contest, it’s the boneheaded politics that have, from time to time, intruded upon this gaudy, glitzy international event. This year’s big show won’t…
What do you think of when you hear the words “Nordic welfare state”? Government-run health care, with reasonable fees for regular check-ups but long waiting lists for certain life-saving treatments? Free university education, the proviso being that there may not…