Marion DS Dreyfus

Marion DS Dreyfus

  • May 19, 2023

    Liam Neeson in Memory

    Like many films during the COVID era, Memory, with the durable Liam Neeson starring, was consigned to cable (Prime Video, Netflix, Apple TV, Rowe, Redbox, Roku) instead of brick 'n' mortar theatres. The versatile star...

  • May 12, 2023

    CNN, Milgram, and Trump

    As to the wisdom of appearing on a TV channel known far and wide for active news-reporting "errors" that have been loudly and repeatedly fact-checked and belatedly corrected, we have no opinion, other than to say that as a leading contender...

  • February 16, 2023

    My 85 theses to get un-canceled from Twitter

    Not to name-drop, but cancelation, suspension, and banning of tweeters from the popular mini-blogging platform hit quite a few in the rarified precincts of James Woods; Steve Bannon; and even the sitting president at the time, Donald J. Trump. ...

  • February 8, 2023

    Fedora: Think opera, not cute little hat

    Fedora?  That 1898 opera, composed by Umberto Giordano of Foggia in southern Italy, that few save aficionados can lay claim to having heard of?  What usually springs to mind, of course, is the eponymously natty topper.  ...

  • January 23, 2023

    'Remember This'

    As the 100-plus crowd exited the auditorium at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York, shuffling as crowds do when the hour is late and the temperature plunging, a voice behind me muttered “Mach schnell!”  I froze for a mo...

  • January 14, 2023

    The ins and outs of Biden's Documentgate

    As our sages in Judaism have advised, in the troubles of your opponent, do not exult, and in his downfall, do not indulge in joy. It is difficult, after two years of daily griefs and disappointments in constitutional observance, not to have endorp...

  • December 24, 2022

    Spielberg's 'The Fabelmans' is more reality than fable

    For those of us who are Jewish, the holidays can be a good time to ... go to the movies. Which is one reason why I went to see Stephen Spielberg’s latest film, "The Fabelmans," released last September but still out now, w...

  • September 3, 2022

    Unhinged at Independence Hall

    Walking hand in hand through the stage entrance of Philadelphia's Independence Hall — triply iconic for its association with the country's foundational documents, the city's historic nickname as the City of Brotherly Love, and its p...

  • May 30, 2022

    Comedy today: Unsafe at almost any speed

    Once upon an eon, when Lenny Bruce [1925-1966], born Leonard Alfred Schneider in Mineola, New York, still plied his trade, subject to frequent arrest and actual imprisonment for his norm-crashing brand, “comedy” had to be sought out, as i...

  • April 3, 2022

    War, terrorists, and our government is obsessed with transgenderism

    Identity outside of "male" and "female" is an emerging concept that currently has several identifiers and little academic agreement on which is the most pertinent.  Or most useful.  The two leading descriptors ...

  • March 19, 2022

    Immigration to the USA? Ukrainians need not apply

    It's not brain surgery.  But our clown princess, V.P. Kamala Harris, muffed the response to a reporter's obvious question: "How many refugees  from Ukraine will the United States be willing to accommodate?" ...

  • February 3, 2022

    Why Putin May Be Hesitant to Invade

    Prior to World War II, the population of Russia, still then called the Soviet Union, was approximately 170 million, plus about 24 million from territories Russia had incorporated.  The protracted war, harsh weather conditions, and the fallo...

  • December 26, 2021

    Union of Concerned Scientists 2022 calendar

    This time of year, if you have a pulse and a mailbox, you’re likely getting stuffed with end-of-year (read: Fundraising excuses) calendars. Most such glossy hang-arounds feature gorgeous landscapes, beyond adorable wild animals and their wh...

  • December 5, 2021

    Temple Emanu-El joins cancel culture against Alan Dershowitz

    To start out the Chanukah holiday of 2021, a prominent Jewish temple seems to have forgotten who its friends were, and decided to silence one of Israel's strongest and most eloquent defenders, disinviting prominent legal scholar Alan Dershow...

  • November 13, 2021

    'Transgender Awareness Week' — are you kidding?

    Sorry, calendar-makers: Transgender Awareness Week does not work. These people don't merit yet more eyes and ears of the public.  They already glory in many times their 15 minutes of publicity. This tiny army of super-in...

  • November 4, 2021

    Biden, Big Pharma, and your child

    Thank you, Big Pharma, we suppose, for the vaccine update, which we distrust, though appreciate hearing about. But the need for children to have such a vaccine is not reliably yet established.  As all of us know, children are t...

  • July 25, 2021

    R.I.P. Jackie Mason, clown prince of puncture comedy

    Granted, the man was no poster child for fidelity, maybe. We never met so many women who, when we dropped the name Jackie Mason -- as opposed to other known… female appreciators -- would confide airily, “Yeah, he asked me out, too....

  • May 8, 2021

    Tucker's Vaccine Skepticism

    Following a program devoted to a discussion of the “other side” of vaccination, Tucker Carlson came in for a slew of  slams, one of which, by Brian Stelter for CNN Business, was titled  “Tucker Carlson’s Fo...

  • April 13, 2021

    The host has terminated your participation in this forum

    Yesterday, New York councilwoman Helen Rosenthal staged a phone forum with Sen. Chuck Schumer, supposedly to elucidate his "ideas" for the registered attendees on the Zoom. Sen. Chuck Schumer was uncharacteristically jovial, in...

  • April 3, 2021

    What body language study tells us about Joe, Kamala, and Juan Williams

    We're all spending good lifetime hours watching the likes of Democrat operatives: the three, President Joe Biden; V.P. Kamala Harris, pseudo-black personage  who infuses every right-shoulder TV shot populated by Scranton Joe; and t...

  • March 27, 2021

    What You Shouldn’t Forget About China

    China, the Peoples Republic, is on the move. We all know that. We also know that due to Biden relatives’ dealings with President-for-life Xi, our new Administration, helmed by Joe Biden, is severely compromised and flatfooted with respect to pr...

  • March 26, 2021

    Cringe: Biden, Kamala put on virtual White House seder

    Most of the virtual Joe Biden White House seder was given over to staffers, almost all female.  No one, suffice to say, from President Trump's tenure.  The seder was, for at least half an hour, over-subscribed, so there was...

  • March 15, 2021

    The 63rd Annual Grammy Awards: Gasp, yikes, yawn, ahh

    Likely a fractional audience watched this, because it is so deliberately in yo' face, and covered with pustules of profanity barely bodiced.  But overall, vulgarity of a high order goes out to the participants, who, of course, don't...

  • February 26, 2021

    Celebrating Purim under COVID in New York

    Just returned from the lightning-fast reading of the Megillah.  Across the street, at Lincoln Square Synagogue.   Security checked me in.  My temperature was wanded.  I measured 96°F. ...

  • February 9, 2021

    Analyzing Kamala's handwriting: A bigger ego than Obama?

    Kamala Harris, she of the never-far cackle and the constant pantsuit affectation, is a few heartbeats away from the presidency, after all.  Her inner workings, as manifested in her day-to-day penmanship, are thus of more than interest. W...

  • January 26, 2021

    Jewish revenge in post-WWII Europe

    It was sometime in the 1990s, at a conference, when I met a film director with whom I became friendly, especially when he told me he had been a fighter in the Warsaw Ghetto. In his vigorous 70s, Moshe Mizrahi detailed for me some of the experience...

  • January 14, 2021

    A British expatriate can’t help but notice the left’s double standards

    To speak of that Wednesday, 6 January, as if it never happened before, or that the months of “protesting,” rioting and looting, burning never happened, when nary a syllable against the damaging, often lethal lowlifes for seasons recalls A...

  • December 27, 2020

    The New Yorker goes low with its final cover of the year

    Mea maxima culpa, I still subscribe to the New Yorker, as a member of the reading class who dotes on fine writing, despite horrible left-wing views expressed subliminally and liminally at every opportunity. But I had to gawk in disbelief at...

  • December 21, 2020

    60 Minutes forgot just one name in their 'backstory' on the vaccines

    Citizens across the United States, and indeed the Western world, breathed a modest sigh of relief when, mere days after the election of 2020 was over, Pfizer roused itself to announce the much needed availability of a coronavirus vaccine it...

  • November 15, 2020

    What It Was Like to Be a Republican Poll-Watcher in New York

    Call it civic duty.  Call it curiosity about the other side of the process.  Call it profound commitment in getting insight into knowing who won. Whatever you call it, I was on the other side of the election procedures I'd ...

  • October 24, 2020

    Biden in his own hand

    You can read graphological studies as you read astrology in the back pages of penny-savers: you don't really believe what they say, but you're indulgent and curious, ready to snort in derision or lay the piece down with a ...

  • October 13, 2020

    Joe Biden antagonizes Saudi Arabia for some reason

    In a recent bit of babble to perhaps a dozen in audience, presidential nom and former vice president Joe Biden introduced himself, vaguely scratching his forehead, before following his self-intro with his availability for senator.  Aside fr...

  • October 4, 2020

    Don't count President Trump out yet

    In a hasty piece slammed out at high tide of the day, John Podhoretz, the sometime-NeverTrump editor of Commentary magazine, commiserated with the president, who was checking himself into Walter Reed Hospital in the wake of his COVID d...

  • September 30, 2020

    Yom Kippur in the time of coronavirus

    Yom Kippur/Kol Nidre night was...strange, with seating in pairs.  I went with a friend, but all seats were paired, I guess because single seats would have looked too daunting.  The paired seats were 7–8 feet apart in all direc...

  • September 22, 2020

    A Democrat mourns: Not enough entertainment in the White House!

    A friend of a friend complains the White House is sorely a-lack with no art, concerts, poetry readings, or suchlike enlightened entertainments. Yep.  The president is just 24/7 trying to do his job, sacrificing his salary to charity, wor...

  • September 13, 2020

    Even Woody Allen deserves First Amendment protection

    Kate Winslet recently remonstrated with herself in a public forum that she must have been nuts to have performed in the movies of Woody Allen and Roman Polanski. About Woody Allen, we think there is more to say than ruing one's cooperation bec...

  • July 23, 2020

    Bari Weiss isn't the only one being bullied

    Bari Weiss is a sincere voice on "our side." Having been myself pilloried by the what-I-now call the pond scum leftists in my poetry group (!), I know whereof she speaks.  I know from work, where my boss said to me, afte...

  • July 10, 2020

    The SPLC and transgender

    We recently received a “survey” from the  notable hate-group, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which points tainted fingers at groups standing up for free speech, conservatism, and the current non-Democrat  government....

  • July 1, 2020

    Flowers for Teddy R

    As the wacko Evangelical guy across the street from our Defend Teddy Roosevelt rally Sunday afternoon loudspeakered: "It ain't the color of your skin, it's the color of your sin," a clever assonance-rich meme that sounds good a...

  • June 2, 2020

    We need less hand sanitizer and more street sanitizer

    The lawless radical left and Antifa have shown us there is no need for social distancing, no need for hand sanitizers, no need for masks.  Thousands of "people" with radical idiopathic scripts or hang-ups about their parents...

  • April 22, 2020

    Gordon Chang calls the coronavirus 'probably a deliberate leak' and likely an 'act of war'

    We had a Zoom meeting with China expert Gordon Chang, author of The Coming Collapse of China, last night and learned that Chang thinks the "release" of the coronavirus into the public sphere was either "accidental,"...

  • April 2, 2020

    Know about China's three 'nos'

    Just before I began my first broadcast in Wuhan, on Zhejiang Radio, I was given three nos — not unlike the infamous "Three Nos" of the Arafatian Palestinian Authority or the earlier PLO. The persons who had hired me to have a ...

  • March 22, 2020

    American Chinese protest ‘ethnicity bias’ to the Wuhan virus discussion – do the Jews have to fix it?

    A minor protest rally has become manifest where local American Chinese carry signs protesting “MY ETHNICITY IS NOT A VIRUS.” Yeah, we know. We know. This is plain ignorance. All such viri and zone-born flus have a name attached...

  • March 19, 2020

    The Democrats have stopped laughing

    Given the volatility of the  stock market, the pandemic assailing every one of us, and the subsequent closure for safety of much of what our society has forever been offering us,  are the "loyal opposition" dancing in a...

  • February 2, 2020

    Wuhan Revisited

    For a number of years in the 20-aughts, I worked in Wuhan, Hubei Province, People’s Republic of China. China being China, and Wuhan being a provincial outpost of old China, an amalgamation of three towns incorporated under the one name, obse...

  • January 29, 2020

    Warming and open debate

    While I have no Ph.D. in climatology or weather prediction, meteorology or the like, I have read widely, have attended conferences by and with scientists, and believe that the data presented to us by the anthropogenic folks — those who believe...

  • September 25, 2019

    Between Two Ferns: Not laughing at this claimed comedy

    There are a lot of ways to laugh, not all of them — or even most of them — indications of real mirth. A not exhaustive listing would  include: The nervous titter, when an audience laughs because its members think they shou...

  • September 21, 2019

    Soros Takes on Denaturalization

    The left-leaning Open Society, lavishly funded by moneybags darling of the left, octogenarian George Soros, has just published a 194-page 'report' on a process I’ll wager not more than 1% of  readers are aware of: denaturalizing...

  • September 9, 2019

    Got Google? Scarier than milk

    Mark Levin had a fascinating episode yesterday on his exceptional hour-long Fox News program, Life, Liberty & Levin, where his guest is an avowed leftist but an honest researcher — rara avis, right there — and this Dr. ...

  • May 11, 2019

    Candied Bar

    Feeling optimistic, I went to the Bar Association in New York City to observe a “case” of a noncitizen immigrant who had voted, been caught and was being processed. Whatever I’d naively expected, I was stunned at the bias ...

  • April 30, 2019

    Report from last night's rally outside the New York Times against its cartoon jihad

    Though billed as being from 5:30 to 8:30, the rally, never much larger than at most 200–225 people, was all but over at 7 P.M. on a chilly evening in late April.  People who forgot their gloves regretted their optimism. The issue o...

  • October 27, 2018

    Jawing with the NYPD as CNN HQ was evacuated

    A day after the rasher of dysfunctional failed pipe bombs decorating the mail receptacles of major Democrat personages mantled with various sobriquets by supporters of the current administration, the august Time Warner Center in New York City was the...

  • October 16, 2018

    Six Autumn Films

    Private Life, directed by Tamara Jenkins The subject of infertility has been a ticklish one for decades.  Most don't realize that the incidence is increasing for decades, a function of people getting married later, putting off h...

  • September 16, 2018

    When is Serena not, um, Serene?

    Easy answer: Most of the time. Tennis titan Serena Williams had what tennis aficionados consider a monumental meltdown (some try to dismiss it as just an "outburst") on the Tennis Open court this season, as she first broke her racquet in...

  • September 11, 2018

    That 'silent coup' in the White House?

    With reference to the much ballyhooed early September op-ed piece in the New York Times authored by "Anonymous," which set off iterative bomblets throughout the kingdom of Donald and his closest and supposedly most trusted aides, sever...

  • August 29, 2018

    Musings on McCain

    I volunteered for McCain when he went for the presidency in 2007 against BHO.  Though he was infinitely better than the massively arrogant narcissist who won and almost toppled our country into devastating penury, and demonstrated mass...

  • August 13, 2018

    Some suggested new categories for the next Oscars

    Following cues from school yearbooks, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science just announced this month a new category of award devoted to popular hits, which is to say, those films actually seen by a large chunk of the movie-going public...

  • July 20, 2018

    Voter fraud? Don't worry your pretty little head count

    Don't know what political party she calls home, but spent some time today with a professor, election analyst, and author who privately assured me, to my repeated concern, that "there is practically zero election fraud in this country." ...

  • July 11, 2018

    The Catcher Was a Spy: A review

    One of the best films of the year, The Catcher Was a Spy stars the superb Paul Rudd – more familiar to audiences as a light and lovable comic persona, or the droll Ant-Man (Ant-Man and the Wasp), in the Marvel franchise now doing...

  • June 24, 2018

    Eve Ensler Brings Fruits to Off-Broadway

      The first thing Eve Ensler said to her audience after the curtain (finally) fell on "Fruit Trilogy" ("Pomegranate."  "Avocado."  "Coconut"), after she sat on crossed legs in a super-fashiona...

  • June 12, 2018

    A Glimpse inside George Soros's Open Society Foundations

    If you wake up with a spearmint-fresh brain that hasn’t read a magazine, seen a newscast or exchanged what’s been happening, you could be excused  for being charmed and seduced by the programs offered by the Open Society Foundat...

  • April 29, 2018

    Three movie reviews to get spring started

    MOUNTAIN Directed by Jennifer Peedom I enormously enjoyed the film, and I come to it having climbed Machu Picchu and Kilimanjaro.  I climbed to the staging level of Everest, too, but went no farther owing to clothing restrictions and ...

  • April 7, 2018

    Malawi and Stalin: Two films

    In The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, viewers get to see a panorama, and study a people, if only for two hours, of a land seen usually only at 1,000 feet out the arced plastic window of a chopper, en route elsewhere. The Boy, however, for all it...

  • March 10, 2018

    Three flicks to watch (or not) in March

    BLACK PANTHER Directed by Ryan Coogler Before the recap of the story, be it known that it is an insult to 40 years of top-draw black actors to have children spout rubbish that "it's good to see people of my color on the screen."...

  • February 24, 2018

    Two films to take your mind off Donald Trump for a while

    THEY REMAIN Directed by Philip Gilatt The first three quarters of the film offers plenty of foliage, treetops, grassy glades.  Two people, a black guy who totes the gun on his patrols around the grassy clearing they seem to bivouac in a...

  • January 28, 2018

    The Other Wall and its Discontents

    Vice President Mike Pence has been visiting Israel and speaking with officials, including Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu about matters of security. While there, the Veep made a traditional visit to the Wailing Wall, a vestige of the Second Tem...

  • January 20, 2018

    So what if the President Trump did use that word?

    Who really isn't sick to death of people being ungrateful nitpicks who cannot say thank you for all the benisons bestowed by this president, no matter his alleged blue tongue?  So what if he said one word you don't like? I h...

  • January 14, 2018

    Up North: What's Doing with Illegals on the Other Fenceless Border?

    Since Donald Trump has ascended to the White house, there's been endless talk about the wall, and border security, as a follow-up to his months-long promises to quash the untenable invasion of people from dozens of countries.  There are ofte...

  • January 9, 2018

    J Street jaywalks the delicate Iran line

    That Soros-funded stealth hate-Israel group, J Street, marketing itself as a "pro-Israel, pro-peace" outfit when it is neither, has sent around another exasperating email advising us to put the kibosh on President Trump's efforts to dec...

  • January 5, 2018

    Minor birds dare to condemn without even an interview

    When gassy brainiacs opine on the dinosaur media, essaying to "diagnose" our amazingly dynamic 45th president without the elementary detail of a face-to-face, one must debunk their pathetic efforts, even were they in the galactic ballp...

  • December 31, 2017

    US longevity and illegal immigration

    See also: The one potential Census question that terrifies liberals   The always unpleasant and marginally factual Washington Post asserts the population of the US is dying on average years before our wealthy cousins abroad, nations also on ...

  • December 24, 2017

    A hot movie that is not, and one that is child-worthy

    Star Wars: The Last Jedi Nice as it is to see C-3PO and R2D2, and a decided treat to again try to decipher Chewy’s affable [or agonized] growl/bray, not to mention Frank Oz as the voice of sage Yoda, and the great Carrie Fisher -- ...

  • December 13, 2017

    December silver screen harvest

    Wonder Wheel Not everyone is enamored of "the later" Woody Allen oeuvre.  "I liked him better when he was funny," such viewers insist.  If so, they are missing the consistent contribution of an important aute...

  • November 15, 2017

    Zimbabwe's racist, socialist dictator Robert Mugabe under house arrest

    After nearly forty years of ugly mismanagement and carelessly ignoring of basic needs of a normally run sovereign state, the military has placed the crusty despot, Robert Mugabe, under house arrest.  His wife of many years, Grace, has ...

  • October 19, 2017

    Michael Moore panders to his bubble on Broadway

    Michael Moore holds sway at the Belasco Theatre with his one-man show, "The Terms of My Surrender."  But at the performance we attended, there were plenty of prime seats, four or five on each side of the mezzanine, empty.  At the ...

  • August 12, 2017

    Trans Youth: HBO Vice Peddles Child Abuse

    Trans Youth An HBO VICE Production Frankly, the name gives it away. Caveat emptor. So a self-selected audience gathered at the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center. Some of us, perhaps, came out of scientific curiosity. Truth is, I...

  • August 11, 2017

    Hollywood does white trash

    The Glass Castle Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton Though taken from the eponymous book of the same name, the hacked up saga of a writer from a dysfunctional nomadic family commands grudging respect by force of the above-average ...

  • July 29, 2017

    Two films

    AFTER LOVE Directed by Joachim Lafosse A film for devotees of dense, moody relationship dramas, After Love is a searing exploration of the post happily-ever-after time, when you share kids you both love but unfortunately – ...

  • July 21, 2017

    One to gross you out, one to put you out: Girls Trip and Baa Baa Land

    Here's a film review that will be criticized by the producers if they catch it on Twitter or Facebook.  Possibly the grossest, crudest movie so far in the decade, Girls Trip appalls with its vulgarity and over-the-top bad taste. Di...

  • July 14, 2017

    Another New York Blackout: Evading Walpurgisnacht

    This time it wasn't mischief, upstate happenstance, or terror: The system was overloaded, and the infrastructure simply…gave way. It was exactly 40 years ago that New York City experienced its Great Blackout.  People in t...

  • July 11, 2017

    Footnotes: A review of a French movie musical on shoes

    STARRING Pauline Etienne, Olivier Chantreau, François Morel, Loïc Corbery, and Julie Victor Footnotes is a genre-bending entry into the film industry, a musical dramedy from France. It has any number of winning elements at fir...

  • June 28, 2017

    The Beguiled and The Big Sick

    Happily, the audience for the delicate, moody-erotic The Beguiled is not that lowest common denominator so often seen at the Biff-Bam school of entertainment, where special effects rule.   The Sofia Coppola-directed historical drama is ric...

  • June 10, 2017

    Oslo: Diplomacy's real face

    Surprise: I liked Oslo, at the Vivian Beaumont – heartened that it was relatively balanced, researched thoroughly, and more about the Norwegians than I would have thought possible. Of course, it was penned by a Norwe...

  • June 7, 2017

    Megan Leavey: A welcome, warm-hearted movie with a woof

    Megan Leavey; Directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite; Written by Pamela Gray, Annie Mumolo Take a plain-spoken heroine who decides for a variety of family reasons to sign up for the Marines.  Add a positive take on the U.S. Marine Corps, plu...

  • May 19, 2017

    Wanna impeach President Trump? Hold that thought, Kids...

    So the Dems fetch up to the media hitching post daily and yawp "Impeach Trump!" with every whisper of gossip or "misdemeanor" – alleged, fabricated, or imagined. Strangely, the Democrats forget that impeachment is a quite...

  • April 24, 2017

    Miracle on Broadway?

    "Her Opponent," a play running on Broadway in New York, sets audiences back on their heels.  Since it deploys exact lifts from the presidential debates between Hillary and Donald Trump, we know the words already.  We are well...

  • April 23, 2017

    ‘Body of Women’ -- Earth Day event celebrates…chests

    It was billed as "Body of Women," at the lovely  church on Central Park West and  75th Street, on a night that was colder and drizzlier than recent nights have been, late April. Entry was $20. Snacks and drinks were sold and hawke...

  • April 15, 2017

    Jerrold Nadler Hosts a Town Hell

    There were no vegans or vegetarians in the audience of some 500 Upper West Siders gathered to hear Representative Jerrold (Jerry) Nadler’s state of the whatever in New York City’s Brandeis High School on West 84th Street and Amsterdam. ...

  • April 6, 2017

    The dazzle effect

    Anyone who has seen a herd of zebra running on the veldt has noticed the visual confusion common to that circumstance: the eye glazes with the effort of distinguishing one urgent megafauna from another. This, in the field, is known as "the da...

  • March 30, 2017

    Geomorphism: An erosion-weighing consideration

    Egged on by arguments raised by the recent change in Administrations, and the white-hot debates generated by the "climate change" brouhaha, a glance at the field of geomorphism, the science of how the Earth changes over time, its forces and...

  • March 7, 2017

    Billions: Lawyer versus businessman, in living color

    The Showtime weekly serial money drama Billions has a premise that diverges from the usual cable or broadcast TV fare: both sides of the cat-and-mouse equation are flawed.  And both sides are equally shrewd and game-worthy. Emmy Award-winning...

  • March 4, 2017

    The Donald's 'The Signature': A handwriting analysis

    Seven  years ago, in these pages, we analyzed the handwriting of the then president, Barack Hussein O., and a few other politicians in the public eye.  We found Barack's  cursive John Hancock to be overblown, massively egotistic, u...

  • February 27, 2017

    The Presidential Speechifying Survey

    When it comes to presidential speechifying, #44, B.H. Obama, though articulate, was a maze of brain-fogging verbiage that you had to scratch your head to even remember to understand. Other presidents had other résumés and thus expect...

  • February 20, 2017

    Defending Donald Trump: Winding Up, Winding Down

    It is by now a national if not international tropism we scarcely acknowledge, though we all do it. We nightly recharge our cell phones and our various other electronics that have run down during the day.  We rely more and more on these device...

  • February 13, 2017

    The Women’s Balcony – A review

    The 90-minute color dramedy The Women's Balcony, directed by Emil Ben Shimon, is one of 42 films screened in four days at the Barnard Athena Film Festival, organized by Kathryn Kolbert and Melissa Silverstein, and features exemplary intellig...

  • February 7, 2017

    The best Super Bowl: Yadda-yadda, and we win!

    Went to a boisterous and terrific Super Bowl party, about 150 people, lots of rooms, big East End apartment no doubt costing the sky, and lots of TVs, and much gabby fun and delish provender.  Though we did not know everyone by a long sh...

  • January 23, 2017

    Two films we can actually like: The Founder and Patriot's Day

    The Founder Not quite a documentary, because it’s a lot more fun than that spare and often dry genre would lead you to expect, The Founder, directed by John Lee Hancock, tells the true story (how true is anyone’s guess, since it seems ...

  • January 20, 2017

    A drama to celebrate a landmark leaker?

    In a new dramatic offering that has come to my attention, Chelsea Manning Goes to Washington, the gist of the play is how terrific this confused person was to drop the  hammer on his country by disclosing hundreds of thousands of ...

  • January 13, 2017

    So you wrangled yourself an invite to the inauguration

    And you plan, hell or high water, to go.  Once-in-a-lifetime, Divine Intervention miracle result, TG not to see that woman lie for four more years.  Et cetera. So: What to do.  How much will it cost?  Can you do what needs to b...

  • January 1, 2017

    Note to NYT: Get an education on the 'two-state solution'

    Though the 29 December Philip Gordon NYT article attempts objectivity, it is incorrect in its sweeping assumptions that "the world" sides with Obama on key points, even on the wisdom of the Iran deal, as well as the assumed condemnation of ...

  • December 30, 2016

    Obama is the real 'Rogue One'

    Politics is at best a sleight-of-hand affair pretending to be reasonably straight ahead.  We all know it's nothing of the sort. Rogue One, the latest prequel to sequel in the perdurable Star Wars saga, is all sound and fury, but it leaves...

  • December 28, 2016

    When the US Embassy moves to Jerusalem…

    Word has it that if soon-president Trump does indeed shift the embassy from Tel Aviv to [OMG!] Jerusalem, all heck will break loose: All Arab states would force the US to withdraw all current ambassadors; All agreements heretofore agreed...

  • December 16, 2016

    The wealthy bizman conundrum

    Much has been made, both before and after the epic 2016 U.S. elections, of the anomaly of a "billionaire blue-collar" guy going for the brass ring. That cacophonous ringing you hear is the Quasimope-o caterwauling of Democrats wring...

  • November 17, 2016

    How to Mess Up Election Day: New York Edition

    Maybe it's not what you could call sexy, but the extremely long queues on election Day, 8 November, in NYC were longer than they should have been. Yeah, it was a presidential election, and that means that lots of hiding vote trolls who don...

  • November 9, 2016

    Yes!

    Sorta sad I turned down a million-dollar bet that The Corruptocrat Witch would prevail over the better choice. Shoulda taken that bet. Smiling is such a satisfying  condition... Not a small part of the joy suffusing those...

  • October 28, 2016

    Significant Denial

    Debra Lipstadt’s scholarly analysis of the Holocaust and its ugly denial industry in her prize-winning 1993 Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory spurred a libel suit by one of the chief soi-dixit “historians...

  • October 20, 2016

    Mr. Popper’s Penguins

    For parents of kids 5-12, Mr. Popper’s Penguins at the New Victory Theatre on West 42nd Street offers a delightful time for children as well as for their parents or big-person bringers.  Even sophisticates will be charmed, especi...

  • October 8, 2016

    I’m shocked, shocked at Trump’s naughty words

    Captain Louis Renault, the reluctant toady of the Nazis occupying the French colony Morocco, brilliantly portrayed by Claude Rains in Casablanca, contributed a very useful expression to the English language when he self-righteously claimed to be...

  • October 7, 2016

    Shin Godzilla and the ghost of America’s past

    Shin Godzilla, the new movie opening today is amazing for two reasons: one good, one bad. The bad first:  It skips entirely 60 years of continually advancing plotting, script writing, special effects and subtitling from the Japanese. As if none ...

  • October 3, 2016

    PIGGY-Headed

    Hillary’s peeps are all about finding verbal chinks in the pitted Trump armor. But harping on the Alicia Machado nothingburger of Trump’s calling her “Ms. Piggy” and “Ms. Housekeeping” is a waste of breath. M...

  • September 5, 2016

    Pity the poor word fragment 'hu'

    Apparently, no one except Islamists and terrorist wreckers remembers to pronounce it. All we get is newscasters mistakenly requoting  screams of the insurgent killers from ancient blighted lands.  The newscasters always ...

  • September 1, 2016

    In Their Own Hands: Some Surprises from the Handwriting of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton

    Some years ago, I analyzed the exorbitantly ego-driven handwriting of the current President, Barack H. Obama. It did not reveal so much as it solidified what most of us already thought.  With Donald Trump and Hillary R Clinton, we have...

  • August 16, 2016

    Answering Erick Erickson's ‘A Vote For Trump Is a Vote for Hillary Clinton’

    Ye gods, Mr. Erickson: How many ways are you wrong?  Let me bullet the ways: A lot can happen in 84 days.  You give Donald too little credit for reform, resurgence, and/or holding his own while HRC self-destructs under the weight o...

  • August 4, 2016

    The Uncondemned: Examining the fallout of the Rwandan genocide

    Screened to a full audience of mostly left viewers at New York's Civic Hall, The Uncondemned is a social tract documentary that is not anathema to those on the right.  It is decidedly not a Hollywood product. Uncondemned set out ambitious...

  • July 28, 2016

    Five hundred years ago, the ghetto was born

    The Venetian ghetto was a quincentennial ago this year, when 6,000 Jews were given 48 hours to move bed and barrel to the ramshackle foundry that, in Italian, became the word “ghetto,” there to breed and evade the epit...

  • July 23, 2016

    Peggy Noonan on the Republican Convention: Swing and a miss

    Normally, I revere Peggy Noonan, as much for her liquid style as for her take on most issues.  She evinces a moral clarity, both in ink and often when on air during her Sunday morning appearances on talking-head pooh-bah sagacity venues. ...

  • July 17, 2016

    Turks Careening Backward under Erdogan’s Fist

      Dictator of Turkey Recep Tayyip ErdoДџan's solitary fiefdom by unpopular and oppressive diktat is intolerable to the descendants of Kemal Ataturk, and is turning Turkey's progress backwards by a century. I hope the truth is stron...

  • July 13, 2016

    Rejecting the counsel of surrender

    Why do the Libertarian and Republican parties take their marching orders from the corrupt desideratum of souls in the Democrat ranks of extremists? Why are those not allied with the leftist extremists who have made a forgotten memory of moder...

  • July 11, 2016

    The croupier dealt the cards, and the players all see what’s on the table

    The croupier dealt the cards out on the table.  The players all see the hands.  And now the  participants can continue the game, fold, call it quits, or move to another table. After long thought, I now think FBI director J...

  • July 7, 2016

    Film review: Captain Fantastic

    Captain Fantastic Directed by Matt Ross Exalted literary icon Mary McCarthy had a years-long feud with literary avatar and non-capitalist Lillian Hellman.  Said McCarthy of Hellman's oeuvre: "Every word she writes is a lie, includ...

  • July 5, 2016

    Two worthy documentaries

    De Palma   Directors: Noah Baumbach, Jake Paltrow A fascinating and by no means entirely hagiographic week of recording the master filmmaker – he wore the same shirt throughout shooting, for continuity’s sake ...

  • July 4, 2016

    Clinton Cash

    Clinton Cash Director: M.A.Taylor The important doc to see, talk about, bruit to neighbors and associates afield, is Peter Schweizer’s Clinton Cash – the weapon of choice to launch at the mentally softened, perhaps unthinking, ...

  • June 25, 2016

    ‘Racism' as a bugaboo sword

    The Washington Post pushes the panic button again.  So soon after Brexit. Are we surprised? At the first 'graph or so, I suspected the writer to be a grievance-monger, obviously preaching from a soapbox based on his/her own bias-t...

  • June 11, 2016

    Wolves and Ecological Balance

    For years, as the young nation was getting on its feet, fighting a civil war, establishing homesteads and state borders, wolves were considered a nuisance. They crept up on livestock, whisking away and making costly meals of farmers’ hard-won c...

  • June 6, 2016

    Self-flagellating liberals beat the tom-toms for their boxer

    He didn’t invent the drug to cure cancer.  He didn’t bequeath the theory of relativity to mankind.  He didn’t orchestrate a peace treaty between the Have people and the Have-Not crowds.  He wasn’t a king, prime ...

  • May 31, 2016

    Monkey See, Monkey Probably Not Do

    A media hullaballoo was stirred this week when, at the Cincinnati Zoo, a longtime veteran gorilla resident named Harambe (which ironically means “all pull together” in Swahili, as in communal action for social benefit) was shot and k...

  • May 30, 2016

    Himself and Nora: A Review

    The Minetta Lane Theatre is a tiny hole in the wall, a small street doglegging off another small street down in the Village.  Even with a GPS, our driver found himself unable to get there until we redirected him several times. The effort of m...

  • May 26, 2016

    Genius: A film review

    In its subtlety; its sophistication; and, surprisingly, its quiet pace, which requires more interaction and involvement from the viewer, Genius, directed by Michael Grandage, sets a new standard for melding a superior and literate...

  • May 25, 2016

    'Carlos Danger' in his own sex, lies, and social malfunction see-all

    Anthony Weiner's facial bones are very close to the skin, which is stretched like a snake's, taut over its typically grimacing expression.  It is rarely in repose, depositing a permanent snarl onsite when the camera focuses on him in the...

  • May 24, 2016

    At least Canada takes care of her citizens...

    Canadians constitute about 0.5% of the world's total population, with an estimated total population of 36,048,521 (Q1 2016).  Despite the fact that Canada's population density is considered low, many parts in the south, such as Sout...

  • May 14, 2016

    Pssst: Trump wasn't wrong on the rape thing

    Donald Trump got into a whole big vat of brouhaha early in the campaign when he noted that many of the men who enter this country illegally are rapists.  He added, "And some, I believe, are all right." The peals of outrage echo even...

  • May 13, 2016

    Where are the giants?

    Turning to a parallel fear: where are the giants of yesteryear?  The Churchills, Roosevelts, MacArthurs, Queen Mums, the Pattons, de Gaulles – or, on the other, blacker, side, the Stalins, Hitlers, Mussolinis, and Maos?   ...

  • May 6, 2016

    Obama: All Faiths are Equal

    A few weeks ago, the bloviator-in-chief moved his lips in another deathless lumbada of badda -- another nugget of Obamaesque [un]truthiness. His words: “An attack on islam is an attack on all faiths.” Outside a Baltimore mosque, h...

  • April 30, 2016

    Curt Schilling – After the Tweets

    We’re here to listen to Curt Schilling in his first interview since being cashiered from sport-TV titan ESPN. Curtis Montague Schilling, long loved as a former Major League BoSox rightie pitcher and a baseball color analyst for ESPN, universall...

  • April 22, 2016

    The new bathroom diktat

    So what's the Big Deal about letting any Thomasina, Dickilla, and Harrieta into the women’s room? A correspondent asks if the worry is that these “transitional” people might maliciously leave the door open. That’s no...

  • March 22, 2016

    Obama holds his own... Umbrella

    The NY Post had a splashy (in both senses) photo of President Obama on the tarmac greeting the foreign hoo-ha of Cuba. There were several dignitaries in evidence as well as a number of Secret Servicemen, as is usual in all such circumstances. You ...

  • March 18, 2016

    Hey, consumers, don't fret: GMO produce aren't Frankenfoods...and regular climate isn't Frankenweather

    There is as much data to support the view that Genetically Modified Organisms [GMOs] are safe as there is to support the view that climate is changing as a result of man made CO2, yet the same people who rant and rave against GMO’s are mostly t...

  • March 2, 2016

    Boom Bust Boom and Gods of Egypt

    BOOM BUST BOOM  Directed by Terry Jones, Bill Jones, Ben Timlett, and the Monty Python graphics loons Here is a suitable companion piece to the exceptional film The Big Short, which should have won Best Picture from many points o...

  • February 26, 2016

    The one – slightly unobvious – rationale to vote Trump

    There is an excellent recap of the meat of the recent debate in the Conservative Review.  We must ask why these debaters did not assail Trump earlier and win the game back months ago. And from my own cerebrum: The irregular responses over the...

  • February 12, 2016

    Review: Three films directed by brother teams

    JeruZalem Directed by the Paz Brothers After 14, most of us aren't big fans of horror films.  But as often gauche as JeruZalem is in parts, it benefits from a quirky POV as the protagonist female uses Google Glass for all the proceedin...

  • January 27, 2016

    Leaky is as Leaky does

    Hillary, as we all know, is in trouble. Recent and damning accounts of her problem private-brew email server "Top Secret" and "SAP" emails make her vulnerable to Justice Department calls for indictment and worse. In her ow...

  • January 24, 2016

    Crybaby-Chic hits Oscar

    That a growing number of non-Caucasians are protesting the current crop of Oscar nominees for the coveted acting statuette has hit the broadcast and print media. Two whole years without a black nom? Omigosh. How many Hispanic nominees are ...

  • January 11, 2016

    Big Top with Small Spin

    Every year, the spacious acreage on the side of the world-famous Lincoln Center sets up a large Big Top, usually featuring a slew of attractions that have, since the dawn of circuses in 1768 -- by Philip Astley -- been substantial drawing cards for e...

  • January 4, 2016

    A fistful of films for 2016

    Suffragette Directed by Sarah Gavron The privilege many are still lazy about actualizing – that of voting – was hard fought a bit more than 100 years ago.  The campaigns waged by both British and American suffragists were years...

  • December 26, 2015

    Sleep Positions and Politics

    Getting enough sleep is a most important thing -- along with staying awake during the day. Did you know that how you sleep can also impact your health in various ways? Here are eight common sleeping positions and what they do to your body. ...

  • December 20, 2015

    Dem Debate: Saturday Night Lites

    What I noticed on the night of 19 December’s Democrat Debate, starting late on a cold Saturday night: Hillary did her homework -- clearly her debate-practice team grilled her and drilled her -- she was spot on her talking points. Sanders is ...

  • November 21, 2015

    A Mixed Bag

    HUNGER GAMES - Mockingjay – Part II  Katniss Everdeen is back, her bow and arrows ever at the ready. Okay, so the books are beloved icons of young adult readers. And the first two/three were [just] tolerable as movie experiences, helped...

  • November 17, 2015

    Vetting? You don't got to steenking vetting...for anyone

    Most everyone who talks – still – about "vetting the refugees" is talking volumes of spacious superheated atmosphere. Hot air is all that is.  Especially coming from the White House.  But even coming fr...

  • November 15, 2015

    <em>STINK!</em>

    Try this:  Grab something under your sink you use to clean your house. Anything will do. Scan the ingredients. After all the sodium dichloro-s-triazinetrione dehydrate-9H-etcetera, look for the following: “Fragrance.” Ther...

  • November 13, 2015

    China Doll - A Review

    Although still in previews, every seat for China Doll is breathlessly occupied by eager theater-goers, fans, and acolytes.  My seat was perfect for seeing and hearing everything: third row, center.  Pacino performed wonderfully ...

  • October 15, 2015

    Terror at the circus!

    Time was, kids ran away from home when they wanted to rebel.  And where they ran to was often that most sandy, cotton-candy, popcorn pandery of sumptuous refuges: the circus. Now, when you join the circus, you're joining the most middle-c...

  • October 11, 2015

    <em>Jobs</em>

    Directed by Danny Boyle; script by Aaron Sorkin; book by Walter Isaacson Steve Jobs was the Michael J. Lindell of computers, as we all know. His genius in driving the industry changes, turbulence and geek revo is celebrated in some 6 films, includ...

  • October 11, 2015

    <em>The Martian</em>

    Directed by Ridley Scott Matt Damon entertains with his cherubic optimism at being abandoned on the red planet, four years before he knows he can possibly be rescued from the mistake made by his manned mission mates at leaving him for dead on the ...

  • October 11, 2015

    <em>Soul of the Elephant</em>

    Directed by Dereck and Beverly Joubert This likable documentary tracks the unexplained deaths of two bull elephants that died with their ivory unplundered in Botswana. The Jouberts traverse the Zambesi in skiffs, using their cameras judiciously or...

  • October 2, 2015

    Two New Movies Worth Seeing

    Sicario Directed by Denis Villeneuve An elected government task force tasked with decapitating the escalating drug cartels operating like empires over the southern border, but with the Tom Clancy-like stealth and shadowy authority enlists the ...

  • September 29, 2015

    Film Review: <em>The Walk</em>

    This strange, ancient mariner guy shuffles over to us as we stand at 8:30 pm, in the short but growing queue outside Alice Tully Hall, where the movie, The Walk, will have its world premiere during the 53rd Lincoln Center Film Festival....

  • September 24, 2015

    How about Boycotting Reykjavik?

    The mayor of Reykjavik, Dagur Eggertsson, is presiding over the decision of his municipal council to remove all Israeli products – not just those from inside the "Green Line" some countries have taken issue with. Having once been t...

  • September 12, 2015

    Washington Anti-Iranian Nuke Rally

    At the Wednesday, September 9th rally on the lawn in front of the scaffolded Capitol, Israel and her security were mentioned many, many times, and it was both surprising and comforting to have so many concerned voices lifted for us. Organized by t...

  • August 30, 2015

    Hot and cold: two movies at the extremes

    EVEREST Directed by Baltazar Kormakur Although this true story, brought to exceedingly vivid life on 3-D IMAX, stars A-listers Josh Brolin, Jake Gyllenhaal, Keira Knightly, Elizabeth Debicki, Robin Wright, Emily Watson, Sam Worthington, an...

  • August 18, 2015

    The Age of Drones Is upon Us

    A spate of articles on both the left and right on the proliferation of – and threats posed by – drones is worth examination on the broader picture. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), commonly known as a drones, are sometimes (in the milit...

  • August 16, 2015

    Digging for Fire / The Gift / Impossible Mishugas

    DIGGING FOR FIRE Directed and written by Joe Swanberg                                            This film is dedicated to Paul Mazurs...

  • August 9, 2015

    Wolf Totem: A film review

    Blown away by the power of the Mongolian film WOLF TOTEM.  The film title in French, tellingly, is DERNIER LOUP – the last wolf, which makes a great deal more immediate sense than the English title. How it differs from the usual fi...

  • August 8, 2015

    Two Documentaries, Sorta

    Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon   Directed by Douglas Triola Immediately following President Obama’s stemwinder hour-long peroration justifying his and John Kerry’s fantas...

  • August 7, 2015

    A Want of Sentiment

    An international team led by researchers at New York's Mount Sinai School of Medicine for the first time showed that one area of the brain, the anterior insular cortex, is the activity center of human empathy. This has been known for...

  • August 5, 2015

    A want of sentiment

    An international team led by researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, in New York, for the first time showed that one area of the brain, the anterior insular cortex, is the activity center of human empathy. This has been known for about thre...

  • August 2, 2015

    Some Advice on What to See This Summer

    COP CAR Directed by Jon Watts The rather time-defying Kevin Bacon (MYSTIC RIVER, THE FOLLOWING, TAKING CHANCE) – who seems to have made a pact with the devil, not having aged a speck in 40 years of solid movie-making – stars in...

  • June 13, 2015

    <em>Spy</em> -- a Film Review

    Desk-jockey CIA analyst Susan Cooper (Melissa McCarthy) is the unassuming eyes and ears behind superagent Jude Law, the svelte Bond-like asset of the CIA’s most perilous missions. When partner Brad Fine (Law) departs the scene and a second top ...

  • June 6, 2015

    <em>Boulevard</em> -- a Film Review

    Boulevard, one of Robin Williams' last films, in which he stars as a sad, crimped man, has had a helluva time finding its way to a theater near us, reports the Mirror way back last October 2014. The film, which mysteriously...

  • May 24, 2015

    Clinton the Musical

    Remember the geeky, gawky high school shows you sat through to support your pals who were in the cast, making their debut acting steps in “Grease,” “Our Town,” or “Sound of Music”? Your motivation was clear...

  • May 22, 2015

    A Persian artist at 91

    Deceptively "simple," this non-reductivist seductively conceptual art by Monir Shahroudy produces pleasure –  and discovery – where other conceptual works often merely baffle or confound. The influence of a mature perspe...

  • May 11, 2015

    Do what they say...not what they spray

    Kind of synonymous with ironic that the mouthiest Hollywood and music glitterati in the poppycocky finger-shaking-at-others mode are oblivious of the water crisis in their literal own backyards in California, judging by current flyover pics. ...

  • May 10, 2015

    Four Films: one for the wise son, one for the laughing son, etc...

    EASTERN BOYS Directed by Robin Campillo Gen X youths and older from the Eastern Bloc loiter around Paris, mostly the Gare du Nord, waiting for opportunity -- to pinch someone’s wallet, lift a suitcase, feel up a female, or get into drug m...

  • May 9, 2015

    Our Immigration System Ain't Broke?

    A couple of days ago, in the wake of the 7.8 magnitude temblor and some 100 aftershocks in Nepal affecting thousands of ancient structures, temples, and homes, senior statesman Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) dropped some happy-talk to listeners. (NB:...

  • May 2, 2015

    Obama and his Library-to-Be

    Following in the footsteps and traditions of all recent U.S. presidents, Barack Hussein Obama, our embattled #44, is busily planning his legacy archives, to be domiciled in a place of his Obama Foundation’s choosing.  Off-the-griddle sc...

  • April 16, 2015

    24 DAYS: The True Story of the Ilan Halimi Affair

    Usually, when you think of going to the movies, it’s something fun or adventurous, sci-fi dazzle or romantic razzle, something you can immerse yourself in harmlessly for a few hours while nibbling on kernels of your favorite salty air-popped co...

  • April 14, 2015

    <em>Desert Dancer</em>

    There was, in 1984, Footloose, a rousing film with a fitting title, starring Kevin Bacon as a light-hearted big city kid whose desire to dance was thwarted by the repressive policies of a small town. That could be characterized as a cultural dis...

  • April 3, 2015

    Film Review: Five Flights Up

    Perhaps inspired by a 1967 play Barefoot in the Park, starring Jane Fonda and Robert Redford as earlier incarnations of the protagonists in this comedy, the trope of climbing endless flights of stairs in a rent-controlled building without an elevator...

  • March 23, 2015

    Lonesome Traveler

    Music has the ability to lift your spirits; sure, we know that.  But research suggests that it also has the ability to lower your blood pressure.  A research study conducted at the University of Florence, Italy showed that just 30 minutes a...

  • March 22, 2015

    Insurgent

    Like Cameron’s “AVATAR” (2009) and Blomkamp’s “ELYSIUM” (2013) the veneer on “INSURGENT” is hip, high-concept, mucho-bucks Tomorrowland. Going along for the improbable sci-fi ride, the rhetoric mouthed ...

  • March 14, 2015

    The Green on Saint Paddy's Day

    With the shamrocks sprouting in the nuch-desired recession of wintry weather, St. Patrick’s Day coming up, the personal finance website WalletHub released its St. Patrick’s Day by the Numbers “sit-rep” report. The Hub takes on...

  • February 28, 2015

    Three films for March: A farm tale, a fable, and a photog

    McFarland, USA Directed by Niki Caro Although a nagging suspicion that this film was released now for a political touchdown at a time of controversy and disagreement over illegals’ “amnesty,” tax “rebates” (for peo...

  • February 16, 2015

    50 Shades of GAHH

    Following on theologian Fay Voshell’s helpful and erudite review of the political trappings and concomitant events that gave rise to the BDSM predilection in its originator, the Marquis de Sade, the film itself fails on the level of eroticism i...

  • February 14, 2015

    A World-class Flashlight

    The recent dedication of the new Synchrotron, the just-inaugurated NSLS-II [National Synchrotron Light Source II, brightest light source in the world, occurred at Brookhaven National Labs (BNL), some 70 miles northeast of Manhattan. The NSLS-II is...

  • January 30, 2015

    Black and White - a film review

    The film’s name is too big and imposing for what turns out to be a small film masked as a poignant family tale, a grandfather fighting to keep his black grandchild in the face of PC challenges by his clamoring dead daughter’s in-laws....

  • January 26, 2015

    Black Sea - a review

    American Sniper and The Hurt Locker aside, it’s relatively rare for a film today to exude l’air de macho accomplished.  John Wayne bought the farm a while back.  Van Damme and company are on hiatus.  Liam is being re-T...

  • January 21, 2015

    A tale of two SOTU parties

    After all, the two parties are leagues apart – 180 degrees, Dem from Rep, right?  So who would expect them to a couple of doors away from each other for the vaunted 2015 State of the Union speech gather-togethers? Both parties invited m...

  • January 15, 2015

    When a 'Joke' -- Isn't

    Full Disclosure: I never write to shows, as I know they probably pay scant attention. They make the big bucks. Why should they listen to a groundling occasional viewer? But I was goaded beyond tolerance by Mr. Jon Stewart's latest jibe against...

  • December 27, 2014

    Taking Stock of the Oily Plunge

    Every major paper has carried a sober to slightly disbelievingly gleeful depiction, kitted out with solemn graphs and charts, of the precipitous plummet of oil prices since June of 2014. The Wall Street Journal spoke of the concern of OPEC if the ...

  • December 14, 2014

    Emirati emesis?

    The mind accommodates itself, even to the least comfortable: after days, immersed in starched keffiyahs and shalwar kameezes and abayas to the max, I am getting used to the proliferative whites and blacks of the observant.  I find, though, ...

  • December 13, 2014

    Letter from Dubai

    The opening night gala for the local 11th annual Dubai Film Festival was the Hawking biofilm.  While I do not automatically agree with his views -- they're quite stunted, in fact (some), I liked the film itself. I respect the views of Einste...

  • December 4, 2014

    Unbroken: A Film Review

    First thing was, they gave all the attendees, several hundred of us, free big bags of popcorn and giant slurps of soda.  In the past, such freebies usually meant the movie we were about the see was stinko.  But we were told that the screeni...

  • December 2, 2014

    The Imitation Game: a Film Review

    Benedict Cumberbatch has an astringent face – high-planed cheeks, small eyes, soft small mouth – one that seems particularly English.  His ascetic, near obnoxious imperviousness fits well with the part he plays in Imitation Game....

  • November 23, 2014

    Stephen Hawking, Unbound

    The Theory of Everything Directed by James Marsh   Written by Jane Hawking (book) and Anthony McCarten (screenplay) Reviewed by Marion DS Dreyfus It is by now axiomatic that Eddie Redmayne “does” Stephen Hawking remarkabl...

  • October 2, 2014

    Two Taut Thrillers: The Equalizer and Gone Girl

    Saw both The Equalizer and Gone Girl seriatim – the latter a very tough ticket to get.  Even for reviewers.  Both are long – over two and a half hours each. I prefer The Equalizer, which stars a magni...

  • September 20, 2014

    Keep On Keeping On

    KOKO, directed, written and executive-produced by Alan Hicks, is a charming, intimate and occasionally touching documentary on the iconic jazz great, Clark Terry -- "CT" to his friends -- and his brilliant upcoming protégé, Ju...

  • September 16, 2014

    Report on the Sunday, September 14 rally against biased media

    It began at noon at CNN, then the crowd walked to 49th and 6th. We were there until it broke at 3:30 PM or so, several hours, holding the backdrop, the Mogen David in particular, behind the speakers for most of the time. The day was gorgeous, not hot...

  • September 10, 2014

    The Proverbial Loons -- A FIlm Review

    Musical comedy is genre enough. But add improv to the formula, and you have a potentially explosive brew -- if you’re lucky. This crowd is a find. The six talented and largely loopy cast of the Loons come to audience in a ROYGBIV range of un...

  • September 3, 2014

    Ice is Nice

    We’ve seen entirely too much water waste these past few weeks, especially coming from the epidemic of the Ice-Bucket Challenge: Whereby upright citizens are ‘treated’ to the chilling likes of a gallon bucket of the cold cubic stuff ...

  • August 31, 2014

    Review: <em>Robot and Frank</em>

    Robot & Frank Directed by Jake Shreier I belatedly ran across this quirky, gently humorous, wonderfully directed indie, Robot and Frank, from 2012. Produced in part by Galt Niederhoffer, this film offers any viewer from the neonatal to the ...

  • August 28, 2014

    Those 'Dead Americans' in the Cali-Fate of Feckless Funk

    With a modicum of sociological parsing, can anyone doubt that the gangsta rappers and career losers bouncing to Syria and IS "to fight" for these beasts of intransigent death are really after: 1. a baad-daddy figure they lack back in Man...

  • August 19, 2014

    Union Square Rally for Israel a success but not loud enough to snag media coverage

    The New York Union Square rally for Israel and oppressed minorities under Islam was a rousing success, save for the stunning absence of a single major network or radio or newspaper (all the news apparently did not fit the definition of this huge rall...

  • August 17, 2014

    The Giver -- a Film Review

    The “haunting” story of The Giver hails from what librarians classify as the young readers section, a celebrated 1994 book by Lois Lowry, and feels like it.  A bland inversion of The Truman Show where pretty much everyone -- save Mer...

  • August 12, 2014

    The Immoral Left Protests Israel

    A rally is planned today against Israel. This is the provocation, a craven call to arms by the dimmest, most refractory, dumbest recipients of democracy’s beneficence and accommodations  URGENT CALL TO ACTION:



*PLEASE JOIN U...

  • August 10, 2014

    Two Movie Reviews: 'Lucy' and 'Into the Storm'

    LUCY Written/directed by Luc Besson From Bradley Cooper in an earlier incarnation of bumped-up brainpower, in 2011’s LIMITLESS, to Scar-Jo in LUCY, we are tantalized by the notion that we are only partially utilizing our remarka...

  • July 30, 2014

    Film Review: My Old Lady

    An American – no, a New Yorker, with all the barely veiled snark and crankiness-if-denied that the term implies – inherits an apartment in Paris that comes with an unexpected resident. One of the best films of 2014, with compelling and...

  • July 22, 2014

    Times Square backs Israel

    Two police told us the crowd numbered “…Between four and five thousand.” Another pair approached, and one of those officers hiked a skeptical eyebrow and guessed, “What, maybe 8,000? Dunno, hard to guess.” Another chime...

  • July 20, 2014

    Bitter Harvest

    If one gets leftist materials and articles from the Palestinian Arab perspective, one has to realize, which many avid leftists do not, that Islam has an essential element of cult-sanctioned lying: It is Taqqiyyah, and means for Western purposes of jo...

  • July 13, 2014

    Movies: One a Kiss, One a Miss

    A Five Star Life A Film by Maria Sole Tognazzi A film that seems like a travelogue, but helmed by a lovely European actress, Margherita Buy, with an airy story, is well named for the subject matter. We all travel, to some greater or lesser ext...

  • July 9, 2014

    Congresswoman Carolyn May Be Full of [M]aloney

    We think she thought we, like all the rest of the press attending her quintessential Upper East Side 92nd-Street brownstone, were a blue-stater.  It was a press invitation, and we are what we are, despite expectations.  Probably most report...

  • July 6, 2014

    One Hot, One Cool: Two Flicks

    Land ho! Directed/Written by Aaron Katz & Martha Stephens Starring: Paul Eenhoorn, Earl Lynn Nelson, Karrie Crouse, Elizabeth McKee, Alice Olivia Clarke, Emmsje Gauti A refreshing buddy movie, this time doubly so because A, it takes plac...

  • June 30, 2014

    The Belly of the Beast

    The following is what circulated on email blasts around town and country to whet appetites for the late-June screening at hundreds of lib/progressive fever swamps in Manhattan and elsewhere:          ...

  • June 28, 2014

    Quickies: Summertime Films

    First the Good... JERSEY BOYS, Clint Eastwood’s hymn to the rise of Frankie Valli (“with an ‘I’”) and the enduring Four Seasons, is entertaining, tuneful, and notable for the “Mad Men”-like calendar of hai...

  • June 19, 2014

    AMERICA: Imagine the world without her

    I highly recommend the new Dinesh D'Souza salvo at truth, optimism and the melioration of the endless lies proffered by the leftatariat who preach in the nation's wholly-owned radicalized college campii (my version of the plural form -- don...

  • June 17, 2014

    Me & You

    Bertolucci is a past master.  One need not worry about camera setups or poorly scripted narratives with this maestro.  But it has been some time since Bernardo set about making a film.  His last major film-film, before Me & You, wa...

  • June 13, 2014

    Just Jim Dale

    “Just Jim Dale” at the intimate Roundabout theatre ("The Road to Mecca," "The Threepenny Opera") near Bryant Park offers a garland of goodies from delight-meister Jim Dale, a thesp wit’ de best. Just Jim Dal...

  • June 3, 2014

    Cruz Is da Man: And He's Gonna Be...45

    Stamina’s an important thing.  Going for the golden ring takes stamina.  Lots of it.  That’s why the sentient and  patriotic are betting that Hillary Clinton won’t be up for the marathon a presidential election t...

  • June 1, 2014

    Dr. Zeke Explains it all to You

    The Carnegie Council on the East Side’s posh E. 64th Street, off Third Avenue, boasts modestly to attendees that it is the "18th most important think tank". In the city? Country? Universe? On ne sais pas. The Carnegie handout descr...

  • May 31, 2014

    A Million Ways to Die in the West -- a Film Review

    What begins auspiciously as a clear homage-parody to a bajillion Westerns -- from the credit typeface to the panning shots of the Badlands to the saturated russets and burnished  golds of the Arizona desert, to the honky tonk wooden outpost town...

  • May 24, 2014

    Now Use it in a Sentence

    Some “wordy” history? Noah Webster published his first dictionary, A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, back in 1806. From then, dissatisfied with the breadth of what he had conceived, he embarked on decades of intensive work...

  • May 17, 2014

    Film Trio: 2 Bad, 1 Good

    Three recent films, only one of which is of interest to people seeking a superior viewing experience. The Love Punch offers okay performers, but a “madcap comedy” caper that is well beyond its sell-by date. Pierce Brosnan and...

  • May 13, 2014

    The Fromage-Frescoed MoMath

    Wonderfully curated and stimulating exhibit, Composite, at MoMath – E. 26th and 5th.  Marvelous curvilinear artwork and provocative line-drawings, ink, paint, and jolly sculptures of cunning pipe-cleaner imagination.  By "the Twi...

  • May 7, 2014

    Bachmann Reprises, Feiglin Surprises at Israeli Independence Day Gala

    Speaking to a packed crowd at a gala Yom Ha’Atzmaut (Independence Day) dinner under the Manhegut Yehudit -- “Jewish Leadership” -- banner at the still-elegant Terrace on the Park, Queens, up and coming Knesset member Moshe Feiglin, ...

  • May 3, 2014

    <em>The German Doctor</em> and <em>The Railway Man</em> -- Film Reviews

    Both these films are are true stories. Both deal with lesser-known aspects of the Second World War. Both feature epic sadism against innocents. In The German Doctor -- called Wakolda in Europe -- an unwitting Argentinian family of hoteliers t...

  • April 26, 2014

    Beyond Therapy: a Review

    At the Beckett on Theatre Row in Manhattan, performed by the Actors Company Theatre, there is a revival of the 1982 "farcical" play, Christopher Durang's Beyond Therapy. Tedious and overdrawn, it has not been refreshed or updated in ...

  • April 19, 2014

    Cold in July -- a Film Review

    Directed by Jim Mickle, written by Jim Mickle and Nick Damici Starring Michael C. Hall, Sam Shepard, Don Johnson,  Nick Damici.  Based on the cult novel Cold in July by Joe R. Lansdale American crime drama Cold in July begins with an ...

  • April 5, 2014

    13 Sins -- A Film Review

    Following on the successful Thai forerunner of this film, this new iteration provides a somewhat relaxed intro to a basic horror genre manifestation. A man, Eliot (Mark Webber), gets telephoned tasks that begin deceptively mildly, though not witho...

  • March 30, 2014

    <em>Fading Gigolo</em>: A 'Not Exactly Woody Allen' Movie

    FADING GIGOLO, John Turturro's  (very Woody Allen) seamy rom-com, seems like an emerging misstep.  It manages to miss the recent TV sensation, Hung, about a regular guy (a HS sports coach) who happens to be hunky and quite fit...

  • March 27, 2014

    CHEF: Myriad loving close-ups of gorgeous edibles

    When you go to a themed film, like No Reservations (2007) or, here, Chef, expect to race out of the film famished for lots of delicious dining.  Or Mexican.  If it’s not quite fair to call myriad loving close-ups of gorgeous and sapid...

  • March 22, 2014

    The Grand Budapest Hotel

    The trailer is, well, weird. It is episodic bits and pieces of the full film, but you never get a coherent notion of what the film is about. It’s Sacha Baron Cohen without the crudeness or the array of self-conscious cleverest boy in the room. ...

  • March 15, 2014

    In Thirty Years, Flynt Hasn't Moved -- the Public Has

    After interviews with the infamous trial babies Casey Anthony and OJ Simpson, the provocative Forum on Law, Culture & Society series, Trials & Error, has offered up for the public’s titillation and guilty delight Larry Flynt, infamous f...

  • March 1, 2014

    The Marchers -- A Review

    Based on real events that transpired in 1983, the March Against Racism (La Marche) that took place across 930 miles of the map of France by Arab immigrants and their born-in-France progeny from various points of the globe, The Marchers is a...

  • February 16, 2014

    RoboCop -- A Review

    The first RoboCop, made for somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 million back in 1987, with Peter Weller and Nancy Allen in the critical roles and directed by the capable Paul Verhoeven, was a hit. A sequel was quickly made in 1990, with Irvin Kershn...

  • February 12, 2014

    Barack, Shmarack: What's in a Name?

    Over the years, Josh has gone from Jo-Jo or Joshy to Joshua.  Sam and Sammy to Samuel.  Hy to Hyman, and Toby to Tobetha.  And locker-room nicknames judged offensive back to given names.  We know dozens more of...

  • February 8, 2014

    Two Comedies, One Doc: Film Reviews

    TOWHEADSDirector & Writer: Shannon Plumb There was Charlie Chaplin. Harold Lloyd. Lucille Ball and her super-stuffed-mouth. Fanny Brice is in there. And now there is a new and surprisingly irresistible Shannon Plumb, whose expression is a mix of...

  • February 8, 2014

    BEATLEMANIA for Sale

    For fans of the Fab Four, John, George, Ringo and Paul, Lennon elder son Julian Lennon has curated a round-up of many affecting or amusing, B/W photos (mostly), album-cover fodder, at their 50th anniversary. The venue is the somewhat grungy, atypic...

  • January 25, 2014

    Regina -- a Review

    Across the United States, and spanning the countries, wherever Jews live today, there are now thousands of female rabbis. Most are serving under Reform or Conservative rubrics. But until relatively recently, the concept of a female rabbi was anathema...

  • January 18, 2014

    At the Manhattan Inauguration

    At the new Manhattan Beep's inauguration this week, the mostly radical attendees made sure to razz Christie and his road scandal, and celebrate their successful election after years of non-Democrat management. The new mayor, not conten...

  • January 5, 2014

    The Wolf of Wall Street

    I went to see Wolf with a friend who has zero investments. As we watched the film, which for all its 3-hour length flew by in a compulsively sickening but sustained high-wire act of what's next?, he commented that he owns no securities. Now, watching...

  • December 23, 2013

    Congressman Nadler Comes Clean

    A 2-hour 'listen' and Q & A with Congressman Jerold Nadler, Dem., NY, Upper Left Side regular, occurred on the first day of winter 2013. The talk, one of two on the Iran nuclear issue, took place at the West 95th Street Ohav Tzedek synagogue, fon...

  • December 14, 2013

    Clicking Off

    We hardly admit it, but we're drowning. Everyone reading is pretty much unable to stay above the tide. Like fish, only more sentient, we're dead center of the slurry, oceans of information swarming our eyes, crashing our senses. We feel guilty when ...

  • December 10, 2013

    Writing Jews Out of the Future Historical record 'Way too Soon

    In response to the Times of Israel article, "American Jewish demography and the Challenge of supporting Israel," by Alexander H. Joffe, one would say that Mr. Joffe is too quick to condemn the emerging moiety of more-Observant Jews and their prolific...

  • August 17, 2013

    Soul Doctor -- a Review

    Directed, and Book/Libretto by Daniel S. Wise, Music/Original lyrics by Shlomo Carlebach, Lyrics by David Schechter, Choreography by Benoit-Swan Pouffer One place you would probably put on the bottom of your list for a 2½-hour song-and-dance filled ...

  • August 8, 2013

    Drinking Buddies -- a Film Review

    Far more amusing than the perfect name implies, the title Drinking Buddies could have been topped only by some variant of Barfly (1987). Beer-fly, maybe? DB could be the PG version of the scorching relationship takedown film, 2004's Closer. Buddies t...

  • August 4, 2013

    Elysium: Fuss without Fuzz

    Post-apocalyptic sci-fi ELYSIUM features a shrill Jodie Foster and a Matt Damon tricked out like the Eiffel Tower (minus the expensive auberge, starry sky or Chablis). You know going in that it is an action-adventure sci-fi, but even those genre fi...

  • August 1, 2013

    Three Movies: A Buddy Flick, a Doc, and a Comedy

    2 GUNS Directed by Baltasar Kormakur Reviewed by marion ds dreyfus Two guys you wouldn't ordinarily think of teaming.  Two guys known more for serious drama than for comic relief.  But you'd be stunningly wrong. A funky DEA agent and an o...

  • July 27, 2013

    Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine

    After a few films that do serious funny, such as the delirious Midnight In Paris and the slightly less gloriously fizzy To Rome with Love, as well as his tetralogy in London, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, along with Match Point, Scoop, and Cass...

  • July 23, 2013

    Let it Be -- a Review

    Your toes are tapping. Your fingers are snapping. Your hands are clapping. By the end of the first "act," the whole audience, mezzanine and all, is swaying and rocking such that my companion and I fled downstairs, despite great seats, afraid the balc...

  • July 20, 2013

    Drug War -- a Film Review

    Making even 50 gr. of meth in China will earn you a death sentence. The meth maker, handsome Timmy Choi (Louis Koo), is a kingpin producing tonnes in various labs strategically placed throughout the country. An unexpected 'work accident' explodes one...

  • July 13, 2013

    Two Americans -- a Film Review

    This film attempts to reduce the unfortunate inrush of millions of undocumented persons into our country to a bumpy and not invisible theatre of manufactured experiences. The plight of the new self-created polity of illegals is all we are e...

  • July 9, 2013

    White House Down

    A current news item by the responsible pro-Israel news aggregator HONEST REPORTING caught my attention: An Investigative reporter smuggles a gun into Knesset and points it at the Prime Minister. Was this gutsy or reckless journalism? And what does ...

  • June 16, 2013

    Man of Steel

    Superman was created in 1938 by Jerome Siegel and Joe Shuster, designed as an adolescent anodyne and savior, in large part, from the hitlerian juggernaut that had sent so many surviving graphic artists and novelists over the oceans for succor. For f...

  • June 15, 2013

    Unfinished Song (aka Song For Marion) -- a Film Review

    Directed by Paul Andrew WilliamsStarring Gemma Arterton, Vanessa Redgrave, Christopher Eccleston, Terence Stamp, Anne Reid, Calita RainfordThis being a London-based film about adjusting to infirmity, ageing and the rough edge of personality mismatchi...

  • June 12, 2013

    Twenty Feet From Stardom -- a Film Review

    Directed by Morgan Neville Featuring Darlene Love, Merry Clayton, Lisa Fischer, Judith Hill, Tata Vega; Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Bette Midler, Mick Jagger, Chris Botti Fans of the knockout lineup above can't help but relive their sla...

  • June 8, 2013

    The Guillotines -- a Film Review

    Andrew Lau's (Infernal Affairs, Legend of the Fist, The Return of the Chen Zhen) The Guillotines is a visual feast, with beautifully reconstructed Qing-era costumery, important hairstyles, court pageantry, authentic architectural icons, eye-pleasing ...

  • June 2, 2013

    St. John and the 'Divine' Art of Jane Alexander

    Time was, I was one of two dozen principal actors in Michael Moriarty's far Off-Broadway Shakespearian in-your-face company, Potter's Field.  We hewed to an intensely personal and engaged Shakespeare: we stared directly at our audiences when we ...

  • May 23, 2013

    3D Printers and the Transformation of Manufacturing

    "Anybody who is new to 3D printing will walk away and remember their first introduction as similar to their first experience with Windows on their PC in 1988, or low-cost digital cellphones in 1996, or Google search on the internet in 1999. Truly tr...

  • May 18, 2013

    Frances Ha: a Review

    Went to a screening of Frances Ha after a muy chi-chi crowd Friday night at MoMA was too populous; 20 of us could not be seated. But at the (dull average, no glimmer) screening a few days later, was surprised at the disarming underpresumption of the ...

  • May 11, 2013

    What Maisie Knew -- A Review

    Here is a contemporary adaptation of Henry James' respected eponymous 1897 novel directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel. Maisie is the kindergartner offspring of a self-involved rock singer, Susanna (a blistering Julianne Moore), and an equa...

  • April 27, 2013

    Oh Boy!

    Oh Boy!, a compelling tragicomedy in Black & White, is an ironic portrait of a young man (Tom Schilling, in a believable, unforced performance)  who drops out of university and ends up experiencing the streets of the city he lives: Berlin. T...

  • April 14, 2013

    In the Shadow of Lady Liberty

    It was a gorgeous day, with a shiny sun, clear cerulean sky and no wind and temperatures in the comfortable mid-50s. A dozen of us came from various boroughs to represent the millions who feel strongly that myriads of unvetted, undocumented, below-th...

  • March 29, 2013

    The Company You Keep: a Film Review

    The Company You Keep is flawed by major lacunae in time and space; the characters are (sorry) too old to be portraying their younger selves of the mid-70s, and that makes the entire fabric of the narrative rickety, as one kept assessing them tod...

  • March 23, 2013

    CPAC Reflections 1: Getting Back to Core Principles

    Over three days, Thursday through Saturday evening, March 14 to 16, dozens of current issues of concern to Conservatives, Libertarians and Republicans were addressed at the 40th CPAC annual get-together. On show were 200 speakers on panels and sympos...

  • March 15, 2013

    New World -- A Film Review

    The head of the Goldmoon crime syndicate is dead, after a late-night engagement with a blue lozenge and a fair mistress, leaving his two closest lieutenants to duke it out for top dog. Seizing the opportunity, if somewhat outgunned and outmanned by t...

  • March 14, 2013

    Quick Takes on Current Films

    If you were in the south of France for the past few months, these are some of the movies that came, and went, before you had a chance to catch them at the cinema. MY BROTHER THE DEVIL-- A Muslim-made, Muslim-starring gangsta pic from Hackney (London)...

  • March 8, 2013

    Phantom: A Film Review

    There have always been testosterone-drenched films that took place in the depths of the high seas, men-only airtight boxes with tension and emotions running higher than maximum up-bubble. All are hard-wired guy films, claustrophobia inducing, and hav...

  • March 5, 2013

    Hating Breitbart

    You may know a man by his enemies. So goes the adage, which is the guiding principle behind Hating Breitbart. It fits. A summary of this intense documentary would be a man with a website who forever changed the narrative journalistic paradigm, upendi...

  • February 6, 2013

    Top Ten Problems with that Skeet Shooting Picture

    It was a picture dredged up to prove the assertion the President had made in January to the breezy effect that the President is indeed acquainted with firearms, since, as he stated (roughly paraphrased), We've often shot skeet when we're at Camp Davi...

  • February 3, 2013

    Girls Just Wanna Have Guns

    By virtue of being lithe and of lower body mass, and having much smaller feet, in the main, women have always been terrific at mountain climbing. Women with 'scopes were first among perseverant astronomers, though their achievements were largely igno...

  • December 30, 2012

    End of year: Amplifying the Anthem of One

    Throughout the year, you can run your maze of responsibilities, your jobs, your organic woes, your ironic little side-turns to absorb time we used to call hobbies. And you do it, you accomplish these daily To-Dos with as much dispatch as everyone els...

  • December 25, 2012

    Hunting Bin Laden: Zero Dark Thirty

    Ultimately, though it is an inevitable Academy Award nominee, I found ZD30 suspenseful, well-complected -- but unsatisfying in parts, and as a whole. Others will probably disagree with my assessment.Even in midweek, at a midnight showing, the queue s...

  • December 22, 2012

    Jack Reacher

    Key to enjoying this competent and enjoyable flick is the fact that: one, Tom Cruise produced it, and his mother didn't spawn no laid-back fluke -- he's not in the business of selling dogs; and two, we are in the presence of a tightly crafted enterta...

  • December 11, 2012

    Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained

    DJANGO UNCHAINEDDirected by Quentin Tarantino       Reviewed by Marion DS Dreyfus Stars: Jamie Foxx, Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L. Jackson, Christoph Waltz, Kerry Washington, Don Johnson, Jonah Hill, Amber Tamblyn, Zoe Be...

  • October 7, 2012

    The Sessions -- A Review

    Attendant Driss: Where can you find a tetraplegic? Quadriplegic Philippe: Where can you... I don't know. Driss: Exactly where you left him. from "The Intouchables" Over the approximate century since the birth of film, many have gone beyond the cotton...

  • September 29, 2012

    The Dictator

    The Dictator, Directed by Larry Charles                                   ...

  • September 22, 2012

    The Master

    The Master, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson Joaquin Phoenix as the skanky ex-WWII sailor, Freddie, who falls under the sway of The Master played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, has a broken-backed posture that is ape-like, consistent throughout the film...

  • August 21, 2012

    Voter Fraud: Coming to a Booth Near You?

    In ongoing correspondence with former NYC Mayor Edward Koch, a significant Jewish supporter of the Obama administration, Mr. Koch calls my comments on voter fraud "ridiculous" -- this in a bid to discredit my contention that the Democrats are engaged...

  • June 24, 2012

    Really, Mr. Gaffemeister? Love, with Sinus Snuffles

    It has been a  slack week, without a laugh from our white-plugged veep, Mr. "Don't Mess with Joe" Biden. But the last laugh we got was his solemn assertion that, y'know, American cities are less spiffy 'n' spanny than...China's.  Now some t...

  • June 9, 2012

    Robert Mugabe...What Happened?

    Two films that address human rights both hail from Africa -- the first from Mugabe's strife-torn Zimbabwe and the other from Uganda, which is a venue rarely productive of film. The more historical of the two, ROBERT MUGABE ...WHAT HAPPENED?, a longit...

  • June 5, 2012

    The Big Blow-Up Elephant Marches Amid the New Amsterdam Donkeys

    It may be a harbinger of the election ahead: last night outside the Obama-Bill Clinton fundraiser in New York City, young Republicans mocked the gathering, and Democrats revealed how different 2012 is from 2008 for them. Monday evening was a perfect ...

  • April 28, 2012

    Sexing the Dead

    Latest (and possibly the one most likely to raise eyebrows of a permanently cynicized public) outrage to hit the news world is that Egyptian authorities are reportedly giving the nod to their...upright...citizenry to have sex with their dead wives "f...

  • April 21, 2012

    Deconstructing the 99%ers

    There were several hundred "training sessions" around NYC, as they tell it, over the past weeks, presumably to prepare the raucous and ready to protest the terrible, evil 1% who so bedevil America that average people become unhinged at the thought th...

  • April 8, 2012

    Free Men

    (Free Men, A film directed by Ismael Ferroukhi) The plot of this French film diverges from the bolus of most American film we are force-fed in that it deals powerfully with subject matter that counts.  It treats an almost unrecognized aspect of ...

  • March 3, 2012

    Not a Tree

    I think that I would love to see a still-in-college subsidy An underwriting grant for drugs absent the usual campus thugs A fast-deposit monthly fee from clown-prince Obama straight to me I think a massage ~ hot-stones sounds nice A guy to give it ~ ...

  • February 28, 2012

    Barack Obama, in His Own Hand

    Handwriting analysis may not be everyone's favorite analytical tool, but millennia of such exterior methods have yielded largely intriguing and historically valid conclusions or observations. With reference to the 44th president: if you did not alrea...

  • July 24, 2011

    Trying to Move On MoveOn.Org

    In the spirit of ecumenism, and convinced that there is too much one-sidedness in the political discussion now riving the country, I attended my first (and probably only) meeting of MoveOn.org, the radical progressive organization that, backed by the...

  • July 10, 2011

    Sholem Aleichem: Laughing In The Darkness

    This is a remarkable but somewhat painful film, Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness.  Notwithstanding the film title, one does not remember a single instance of laughter anywhere in this faithful picture of the past century of tsarist...

  • February 15, 2011

    Sitting in at CPAC

    First time at the Conservative Political Action Committee. It is the right year to make that particular debut. There were 12,000-plus people there, and one felt intense delight in feeling so in synch with the gathering -- they were all on t...

  • January 28, 2011

    Snow Men

    The scene:  Near midnight, January. Wednesday.  Times Square, NYC. One of the world's busiest crossways. A fresh blanket of heavy, wet, billowing snow across the most populous city in the U.S., the city's sixth major snowstorm in the still-...

  • January 19, 2011

    Tunisia Meltdown

    In the wake of the president fleeing his country to escape the widespread "student' riots," Tunisia is not what it, until very recently, seemed.  Who knew the Tunisians were so repressed?  Wherever one went in the country, those B...