Warren Beatty
‘Lawless’ is ‘Bonnie and Clyde’-Lite
Winning The Hour
The Four Bags: Chamber Music for the Shuffle Era
“You Used to Be in Pictures!”
Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America By Peter Biskind (Simon & Schuster, 627 pp., $30) READ MORE >>
Second Biggest Mystery Of The 70s Solved
Now that we've learned the identity of Deep Throat, the one remaining thing we needed to know before we can close the books on the 1970s is, who was Carly Simon singing about in that annoying but catchy tune "You're So Vain"? Numerous romantic figures have been named, including Mick Jagger and Warren Beatty. And now... we know: the target has been revealed as gay producer DAVID GEFFEN, at the time head of Carly's Elektra record label. READ MORE >>
Short Cuts
Robert Altman: The Oral Biography By Mitchell Zuckoff (Knopf, 592 pp., $35) READ MORE >>
Execution Without Conviction
On a Wednesday night in San Francisco, opening night, in a theater no more than half full, the truth was as inescapable as rain at a picnic. Johnny Depp just wasn’t cutting it. He wasn’t even making the attempt. Once again, Michael Mann had poured his nearly liquid talent over a gangster picture without ever thinking to ask himself why. That oddly vague title Public Enemies--why isn’t it called Johnny D. or just Dillinger?--was turning into a startlingly detached and affectless movie. READ MORE >>
Pumped Up
Last fall, Arnold Schwarzenegger couldn't escape the huge crowds of union members and Democrats who protested his ballot initiatives that proposed reshaping the state's education, budget, and political systems. Protesters surrounded hotels where he spoke,gathered outside TV studios and restaurants where he appeared, and even confronted him in hallways and kitchens. The angry hordes reflected a statewide rejection of the once-popular governor--more than 55 percent of Californians disapproved of his job performance, and Democratic challengers led in early polls on the 2006 governor's race. READ MORE >>
Plottings, Real and Otherwise
Radical political figures attract film-makers. Those figures seem the available equivalents of saints or idealistic heroes; and since a good number of them ended badly they have some of the aura of tragedy. But in most cases such figures are cinematic snares--not because of the character or the heroism, but because of the politics. Warren Beatty's Reds (1981) is the best film he has made, but it never became much more complex than a biography of John Reed's love life against a revolutionary background. READ MORE >>
Hollywood and politics have been going together for a long time. Kevin Brownlow showed in Behind the Mask of Innocence that political comment in American films began much earlier than is generally thought. But Hollywood figures as political activists themselves— that phenomenon began, I'd guess, in the 1930s. READ MORE >>
