When it comes to the Hollywood remake, far too many travesties have been foisted upon us over the years, either in the service of Mammon or in emulation of Icarus. Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes (2001) was a tedious …
The performative emptiness of the Venice Biennale
There wasn’t much architecture at this year’s Venice International Architecture Biennale. The German pavilion, for instance, contains nothing more than the leftover components from last year’s Art Biennale stacked in the centre; the floorboards ripped up. The Israelis have closed …
Kylie Minogue’s glorious artifice
George Orwell once said that, by 50, everyone has the face he deserves. These days, most 50-something female celebrities seem to have exactly the same face, which they paid for. Cheeks are stuffed like upholstery. Foreheads are stretched taut as …
Succession is a Christian psychodrama
The story of Abraham and Isaac has always been one of the more confounding parts of the Hebrew Bible. Even millennia later, one can scarcely imagine the doom of Isaac’s revelation, as Abraham brought the knife to his throat: “The …
FLASHBACK: Graeme MacQueen Reveals The Anthrax Deception (2014)
FROM 2014: In his new book “The 2001 Anthrax Deception,” Dr. Graeme MacQueen, co-editor of the Journal of 9/11 Studies, lays out the case for a domestic conspiracy in the 2001 anthrax attacks in the US. In this conversation, James …
Can TV soaps get Erdoğan re-elected?
A well-turned-out man with a pointy beard stands in the centre of a luxurious living room, looking fierce. He waves away two flunkies — one of whom is a fat man with a large moustache, wearing a pristine white shirt, …
Father Ted’s elegy for old Ireland
Fondly remembered and occasionally quoted, Father Ted has its place in the broad canon of the British sitcom. But in Ireland, even 25 years since its finale, it has always been so much more. Its status is closer to Fawlty …
Father Ted’s elegy for old Ireland
Fondly remembered and occasionally quoted, Father Ted has its place in the broad canon of the British sitcom. But in Ireland, even 25 years since its finale, it has always been so much more. Its status is closer to Fawlty …
The empty cult of The Big Lebowski
The incipient cult of The Big Lebowski was forming before I even saw the movie, and I saw it fairly early on, two or three weeks after its release. I didn’t recognise the signs at the time, but they were …
How Thatcher lost her culture war
Back in the Fifties, when he was still an Angry Young Man, novelist Kingsley Amis declared that he would always vote Labour. Come May 1979, however, and he was one of those feeling jubilant at the election victory of Margaret …
Nick Cave on Christ and the Devil
Nick Cave’s music is synonymous with emotional intensity and artistic restlessness. But in recent years, in both his blog The Red Hand Files and new book Faith, Hope and Carnage, he has become more outspoken on faith, spirituality, censorship and …
Episode 439 – I Read Richard Haass’ New Book (So You Don’t Have To!)
Have you ever thought that the Bill of Rights was a bit lacking? Did you ever wish there was a list of obligations detailing those things we owe to the government for the privilege of being born into a certain …
Britain’s food wars
In the 18th century, when William Hogarth wished to highlight Britain’s political and cultural superiority to pre-revolutionary France in immediately appreciable terms, he did so through the medium of food, distinguishing between the Roast Beef of Olde England, and the …
The books that made me
“Where do you get your ideas from?” In the days when I wrote for children, I went into schools to talk to them, and this was a stock question. In replying, I used initially to say, “well, quite a lot …
Maus and the repressive power of Jewish trauma
There was a great three-panel comic that the artist Art Spiegelman did for The Virginia Quarterly Review a while back that neatly encapsulates the dubious if nearly universal centrality of the Holocaust in American Jewish life. In the strip, the …