Copyright 2008 The New York Sun Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:37:42 -0400 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss James Bowman :: Stories from The New York Sun http://www.nysun.com/authors/James+Bowman istoll@nysun.com (Ira Stoll) webmaster@nysun.com en-us JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/new-kind-of-right/73550/ Tue, 25 Mar 2008 00:00:00 EST Jazz is the only indigenous American art form, or so we are often told. I would add the animated cartoon, though calling it "art" may create certain problems. But the country has produced another thing at least as remarkable and as unmistakably American and, with "Upstream: The Ascendance of American Conservatism" (Threshold Editions, 448 pages, $26), Alfred Regnery has written a history of its genesis that ought to be on the reading list of every student of American history. What we have... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/making-love-and-war-together/68493/ Fri, 21 Dec 2007 00:00:00 EST It may at first seem surprising that "Charlie Wilson's War," the new film written by Aaron Sorkin ("The West Wing") and directed by Mike Nichols, is being slotted into the media's narrative about the box-office failure of a number of recent movies about the Iraq war. After all, this film is set decades ago and concerns itself with a completely different war: the one occasioned by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. No matter. According to Richard L. Berke in the New York Times, "a mere... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/chivalry-really-is-dead/68498/ Fri, 21 Dec 2007 00:00:00 EST Traditional romances approach love by focusing on the other: that is, the uniqueness, the perfection, the irreplaceableness of the Loved One. "You are my one and only. Without you I shall die. There is no one else for me but you. Fate has destined us for each other from all eternity." You get the idea. But Hollywood doesn't make traditional romances anymore. They have been replaced by what we might call the therapeutic romance. Here, the focus shifts from the other to the self. The mantra for... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/fortifying-a-tragic-page-of-history/67912/ Wed, 12 Dec 2007 00:00:00 EST The most memorable moment of "Nanking," the new documentary by Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman, comes in an interview with a very old man who, in 1937, was a young Japanese soldier — and a confessed rapist. Now he says he regrets his rapes, which were carried out at bayonet point on helpless Chinese girls. "It's better when you're both into it." I don't know whether in Japanese his words have the translation's wildly inappropriate echoes of today's hook-up culture, but even if not, he is pretty... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/hearts-break-when-guilt-becomes-art/67704/ Fri, 7 Dec 2007 00:00:00 EST Those who have read Ian McEwan's novel "Atonement" will know that there is a kind of trick, or catch, in the ending that some people find infuriating and some, well, don't. The same is true of the film version by Christopher Hampton (writer) and Joe Wright (director). Those who were infuriated by the novel will probably be even more infuriated by the movie. I am one such person. Though I thought the book interesting and well written, the ending spoiled it for me. Obviously, I can't exactly... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/saying-i-do-never-sounded-so-crude/67253/ Fri, 30 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST Probably, you've got to be a second- or third-generation Italian-American from Queens to properly appreciate "Tony 'n' Tina's Wedding," the long-running off-Broadway show now brought to the silver screen by Roger Paradiso. At any rate I could not and, apart from a few chuckles, found it woefully unfunny. Though the film was made more than three years ago, it is only now finding a commercial release, thanks to the IFC Center. The theatrical original was an improvisational work in which the... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/taking-an-extreme-view-of-extremism/67295/ Fri, 30 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST Jessica Yu's documentary, "Protagonist," attempts to enlist the ancient Greek playwright Euripides in support of a very modern case against extremism, which Ms. Yu identifies with "certainty." If you ask her, people who do things they shouldn't do very often do them because they are too confident of their own possession of what they regard as "the truth." I don't think Euripides would have bought it, yet the showman in him might have enjoyed the acting out of the intertwining stories the film... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/singing-the-blues-at-the-orphanage/66849/ Wed, 21 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST There's just one problem with "August Rush," Kirsten Sheridan's determinedly inspirational and occasionally charming fable of an orphan boy who finds his parents through music. It's totally unreal. But then who minds that anymore? The boy is played by Freddie Highmore ("Finding Neverland," "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory"), who may just be the cutest kid ever to appear on film. He tells us in voice-over: "I believe in music the way some people believe in fairy tales." Huh? Music is real and... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/sermon-for-all-britneys/65330/ Fri, 26 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST "I can't even take care of myself; how am I going to take care of a kid?" the beautiful Nina (Tammy Blanchard) says to the Jesus-like — or perhaps more Joseph-like — José (Eduardo Verástegui) in "Bella," by the Mexican-American director Alejandro Gomez Monteverde. It's a story as familiar as the continuing saga of Britney Spears, except that Britney never thought to use her own incompetence as an excuse for aborting her children. Nina, who does think of it, has none of Britney's craziness... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/humanity-of-evil-in-the-barrel-of-a-gun/64918/ Fri, 19 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST "From the last place on earth comes a true story of courage and survival." Though the tagline for Robert Sarkies's "Out of the Blue" focuses on the positive, it's also a story of madness, cowardice, and death. But it turns out that the salient detail is the one about "the last place on earth." It's not a bad way to describe the southeastern part of the South Island of New Zealand, where wild and beautiful landscapes, shared by the sparse human population with penguins and seals, remind you that... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/when-two-alfies-attack/64447/ Fri, 12 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST Too often these days, ambitious directors treat the art of the past as the survivors of the barbarian invasions treated the great monuments of imperial Rome — that is, as a quarry for materials with which to construct their own miserable hovels. For some reason, Chris Rock decided to use an Eric Rohmer movie as the platform for a cinematic version of his stand-up routine in "I Think I Love My Wife." James Mangold took a perfectly decent moralistic Western from 1957, "3:10 to Yuma," and turned... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/splendid-battle-in-the-war-of-the-sexes/63595/ Fri, 28 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST There's a wonderful poem about adultery called "Story of a Hotel Room," by the mysterious English poet Rosemary Tonks, which ends like this: "…someone should have warned us / That without permanent intentions / You have absolutely no protection / If the act is clean, authentic, sumptuous / The concurring deep love of the heart / Follows the naked work / profoundly moved by it." "Lust, Caution," the superb new movie by Ang Lee, is of the same opinion. Based on a story by Eileen Chang and set in... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/gunslinger-as-rock-star/63143/ Fri, 21 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST The long title of "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," adapted by director Andrew Dominik ("Chopper") from the novel by Ron Hansen, is meant to call to our minds the Victorian melodrama and ballad that the April 1882 murder turned into. But it is misleading. The movie is not really inspired by the sensibility of the 19th century, but by the celebrity culture of the 21st century. In fact, it would be more accurately titled "The Ballad of Bob Ford." Young Casey Affleck... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/boys-will-be-boys-if-you-let-them/62657/ Fri, 14 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST Although I enjoyed Rod Hardy's "December Boys," which was adapted for the screen by Marc Rosenberg from a novel by Michael Noonan, it reminded me of the bright, multicolored houses that many Australians favor. For a foreigner, there's just too much going on for it to be entirely satisfying artistically. Strip away the inessential, subsidiary dramas, and the movie is a paean to Aussie-style mateship. Four boys from St. Greg's orphanage — Maps (Daniel Radcliffe), Spit (James Fraser), Spark... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/six-degrees-of-indoctrination/62096/ Fri, 7 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST The central conceit of Griffin Dunne's "Fierce People," adapted from Dirk Wittenborn's novel, is derived from that favorite liberal and multicultural principle — that underneath our superficial differences from even the most exotic of peoples, we are really all just the same. And, in the case of particularly warlike savages, it's rich people who are just the same. Do you think you can see where Messrs. Dunne and Wittenborn are going with this? Finn (Anton Yelchin) is a boy of about 17 who has... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/celebrating-real-heroism/62139/ Fri, 7 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST Astronauts stand at the meeting point of heroism and celebrity. As do other explorers, they have to their credit genuine, real-world accomplishments that take guts as well as know-how and talent. But although they go into space as representatives of a country, and although it takes a quasi-military organization such as NASA to get them there, they are regarded as individuals. One of the astronaut subjects of David Sington's "In the Shadow of the Moon" tells of how after he had gone to the moon... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/lots-of-robbers-no-cops/61672/ Fri, 31 Aug 2007 00:00:00 EST The makers of "Ladrón que roba a ladrón," director Joe Menendez and writer JoJo Henrickson (or at least their publicists), seem not to want to offer us an English translation of its title, which is literally: "The Thief Who Steals From a Thief." It is the first part of a Spanish proverb that ends, "… will receive 100 years of pardon." I might have suggested as an accompanying translation the English proverb, "Set a thief to catch a thief," but the cumbersomeness of the Spanish for an... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/lost-between-heaven-and-hell/61224/ Fri, 24 Aug 2007 00:00:00 EST "The Bothersome Man," by the Norwegian director Jens Lien, resembles an episode of "The Twilight Zone," but with better production values. In fact, I seem to remember a "Twilight Zone" episode that told a very similar story. Also as in "The Twilight Zone," the film seems to have been designed to get people talking around the office water cooler. Is it heaven, this antiseptic, blue-gray world in which our hero, Andreas (Trond Fausa Aurvåg), suddenly finds himself welcomed with a job, a home, a... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/everything-but-the-holiday/61211/ Fri, 24 Aug 2007 00:00:00 EST Anyone who, like me, is a fan of Mr. Bean — the inspired, not quite mute fussbudget with the rubber face created by Rowan Atkinson back in the 1980s — should love "Mr. Bean's Holiday." Directed by Steve Bendelack, whose career to date has been in British television, the film offers a realistic context for Mr. Atkinson's visual comedy by sending Mr. Bean from cold, rainy London to the south of France. As his knowledge of French consists of oui, non, and gracias, the language barrier offers many... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/not-enough-pride-too-much-prejudice/59793/ Fri, 3 Aug 2007 00:00:00 EST Anyone likely to be watching "Becoming Jane," Julian Jarrold's attempt to imagine a historical love affair between a young Jane Austen and an impecunious Irish lawyer in 1795, is likely to know in advance how it comes out. Though he's got a lot of nerve, Mr. Jarrold hasn't got quite enough to make one of the world's most famous spinsters into a happily married lady. The suspense lies in our waiting to see not if, but how the lovers will be parted. In this respect, if in no other, all honor to... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/dish-of-tasty-leftovers/59290/ Fri, 27 Jul 2007 00:00:00 EST Scott Hicks, the director of "No Reservations," deserves hearty congratulations for coming as close as anyone can to defying the first rule of remakes — which is that remakes are always worse, and usually much worse than the originals on which they're based. Well, you can see why. Not only can Hollywood not help Hollywoodizing everything it touches, but remakes start out well behind in the race because, by definition, they haven't got what made the movies they copy worth copying to start with... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/friend-in-need-is-no-friend-at-all/58418/ Fri, 13 Jul 2007 00:00:00 EST Daniel Auteuil has one of the best faces an actor has ever been blessed with. It can express the careless arrogance and insensitivity of wealth and power while at the same time expressing an innocence and vulnerability that are almost childlike. That makes the part of François Coste in Patrice Leconte's new film, "My Best Friend," the role he was born to play. François is a gallery owner in Paris who has no friends. Actually, it's worse than that. Someone once said about former senator Phil... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/mama-was-a-rolling-stone/57956/ Fri, 6 Jul 2007 00:00:00 EST In its native Australia, Cherie Nowlan's "Introducing the Dwights" was called "Clubland," and you can see how that title could have been confusing to an American — or British — audience. The clubs of Sydney, where the film is set, feature magicians, ventriloquists, even a guy who imitates bird-songs. In short, they are leftovers from 1950s-vintage British music hall — or, as we would say, vaudeville — magically preserved in present-day Australia. Jeanie Dwight (Brenda Blethlyn) is an aging... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/fine-line-between-loyalty-and-betrayal/57615/ Fri, 29 Jun 2007 00:00:00 EST "There's honor among thieves, they say." So says Police Inspector Clain (Jean Desailly) to the impossibly glamorous antihero Silien (Jean-Paul Belmondo) in Jean-Pierre Melville's "Le Doulos." This classic of 1962, which begins a two-week revival at Film Forum today, bears him out, though it also shows us that betrayal is the way of the world. The title is usually translated as "The Finger Man," though "The Snitch" would be more idiomatic. But the difference between loyalty and betrayal is never... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/reclaiming-the-life-that-was-taken-from-her/57134/ Fri, 22 Jun 2007 00:00:00 EST Of course, no one should have anything but the deepest sympathy for the family of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was kidnapped and gruesomely murdered in Pakistan five years ago and who is now the subject of Michael Winterbottom's fine new film, "A Mighty Heart." Yet I hope they and others will forgive me for asking the perhaps indelicate question of why it is that, of all the Americans who have been killed by Islamist terrorism, Pearl is the only individual (so far) about... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/joining-americas-most-heated-debate/56626/ Fri, 15 Jun 2007 00:00:00 EST Perhaps the most revealing and dramatic moment of "Unborn in the USA" comes near the end, when an anonymous young woman confronts the Reverend Matt Trewhella. The director of an organization called "Missionaries to the Preborn," Rev. Trewhella travels the country with a group of supporters, many of them children, who hold up giant posters of aborted fetuses by the sides of busy highways. The young woman, who claims to be opposed to legalized abortion and a churchgoer, doesn't like being forced... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/theres-no-pleasure-like-playing-the-victim/56454/ Wed, 13 Jun 2007 00:00:00 EST Albert Camus's 1942 novel "L'étranger" ("The Stranger") introduced the world to one of the first and most memorable in a long line of alienated heroes. The French-Algerian Meursault insisted on defining himself by the action — the killing of an Arab — that led to his execution. In accepting the responsibility, he asserted his own freedom. That self-assertion was also a refusal to be a victim. But alienation has changed a bit in the last 65 years. "Lights in the Dusk," the third installment in... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/self-pity-does-not-a-hero-make/55688/ Fri, 1 Jun 2007 00:00:00 EST Boy! I thought movies like Dylan McCormick's "Four Lane Highway" went out with the 1960s. And a good thing, too. A sensitive young man named Sean (Fred Weller), who aspires to a literary career, denies his vocation because his now-deceased daddy, a famous author, was mean to him years before and told him he had no talent — even though he had published a story in the New Yorker! Daddy said they only accepted it because he was Sean's father. Sean's long-suffering girlfriend, Molly (Greer... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/angel-in-a-black-dress/55253/ Fri, 25 May 2007 00:00:00 EST You might think that a movie in which "It's a Wonderful Life" engages in a whirlwind romance with "La Femme Nikita" would be impossibly weird. But it turns out that the problem with Luc Besson's "Angel-A" is that it's not weird enough. The look of the thing could still be what Mr. Besson's fans have been waiting for. "Angel-A," his first directorial outing since "The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc" (1999), and only his sixth since "Nikita" (1990), is shot in black-and-white against the... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/fleeing-the-old-world-finding-the-real-world/55266/ Fri, 25 May 2007 00:00:00 EST There is an almost magical scene in Emanuele Crialese's "Golden Door" when, on a ship filled mainly with Italian immigrants on their way to America in the early 20th century, a mysterious English lady named Lucy (Charlotte Gainsbourg) asks an illiterate Sicilian peasant named Salvatore (Vincenzo Amato) to marry her. We know nothing of her origins except that they must be (at least) middle class. She is educated, comparatively well-dressed, and speaks fluent Italian. Yet she has no passport and... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/three-jeers-for-senseless-violence/54737/ Fri, 18 May 2007 00:00:00 EST The hard part about making movies these days is all to do with special effects. The makers of "Severance" have made an entire second film, an eight-minute documentary called "Crashing a Coach," especially for the DVD edition of Christopher Smith's new movie to show how they filmed the coolest moment in "Severance," when a bus flips rather spectacularly and slides a long way on its side. I haven't seen the documentary, but I'm prepared to believe that filming a bus crash is an immensely... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/cruelty-of-life-slowed-to-a-crawl/54095/ Wed, 9 May 2007 00:00:00 EST Back in the go-go 1960s, it was thought that the bobbing, handheld camera made movies look real, that it put the verité in cinéma verité. But now that the moving camera is a familiar feature even of TV shows like "The Office" and "Lost," it's grown so familiar that it doesn't look real anymore. Now you signify reality by planting a stationary camera with a wide-angle but deep focus shot and having your actors wander in and out of the unmoving frame in enormously long takes while ambient, mostly... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/if-you-cant-take-the-heat-stay-in-the-kitchen/53670/ Wed, 2 May 2007 00:00:00 EST Let's stipulate at the outset that there probably are husbands as loathsome as Earl (Jeremy Sisto) who are married to wives as sweet as Jenna (Keri Russell), the central characters in Adrienne Shelly's "Waitress." There may be even more loathsome husbands married to even sweeter wives — though Jenna is said to be "the queen of kindness and goodness." But portraying such a lopsided relationship in a movie can have only one purpose, which is to manipulate the emotions of the audience. And those... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/life-lessons-in-the-strangest-places/53339/ Fri, 27 Apr 2007 00:00:00 EST As a general rule, didacticism is never becoming in a movie. This is even more true when the moral lessons in question are as banal as the ones in "Snow Cake," by the veteran Welsh director Marc Evans. Screenwriter Angela Pell has an autistic son, so she decided to write a script that would teach us about autism — and about how autism teaches us about life. Unfortunately, the lessons tend to boil down to the following: Live for today and be tolerant of others' foibles. Under the circumstances... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/point-that-gun-somewhere-else/52445/ Fri, 13 Apr 2007 00:00:00 EST The most gruesome moment of Todd Robinson's gruesome film "Lonely Hearts" doesn't make it onto the screen. This is a bit of a surprise. From its opening credits — which roll over stills of murder victims in 1940s-style clothes and Police Gazette-style photos, lying where they fell, in pools of their own blood — to its final, graphic depiction of execution by electrocution, the movie is not otherwise characterized by reticence. Most memorable, perhaps, is what may turn out to be a classic... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/better-judgment-attacks/51994/ Fri, 6 Apr 2007 00:00:00 EST Michael Novak, the scholar and theologian, points to a particular medieval story (best known to English speakers as Chaucer's Tale of Melibee from "The Canterbury Tales") as the cornerstone of modern liberal society. In the story, a man seeking revenge for terrible wrongs finally has his enemies in his power, but he is prevailed upon by his wife to resist taking vengeance. If Professor Novak is right, we should take "Daratt," by the Chadian director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, as being among the more... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/german-summer-of-discontent/51522/ Fri, 30 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST Andreas Dresen's "Summer in Berlin" attempts to give us some insight into the state of German sexual culture but is really a female buddy picture before anything else, in which the friendship between Nike (Nadja Uhl) and Katrin (Inka Friedrich) is threatened when they compete for the attentions of Ronald (Andreas Schmidt). The overwhelming sense of this movie is of hopelessness and limited options. Katrin is nearing 40, the divorced mother of 12-year-old Max (Vincent Redetzki), and she can't... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/one-corpse-one-hero-bad-memories/51020/ Fri, 23 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST "Memory" belongs to what we might call the shake-and-bake school of movie-making. That is, you take the ingredients of a successful movie of a certain kind — or even, as in this case, more than one kind — put them together in a bag, and shake them up. The director, Bennett Davlin, is also the co-producer and is adapting his own novel (with the help of Anthony Badalucco). As the creative control is so closely held, we must suppose that the random assortment of themes, images, and plot fragments... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/little-lost-in-translation/50612/ Fri, 16 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST As a general rule, remakes are a bad idea — and that goes double for Hollywood versions of French classics. Yet Chris Rock has translated Eric Rohmer's "L'amour l'après midi" (released in America as "Chloé in the Afternoon") of 1972 into "I Think I Love My Wife" with an American idiom so different from the original that it takes on an independent existence. It never feels as if he is trying and failing to make a French film. Moreover, the Rohmer mise-enscène — which consists of a young married... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/living-on-borrowed-time/50126/ Fri, 9 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST "Maxed Out," James Scurlock's documentary about the American way of debt, suffers from the usual problem with political documentaries these days: a surfeit of targets. The explosion of consumer credit would have been a subject well worth looking at on its own, but Mr. Scurlock piles on political corruption, corporate greed, bad accounting practices, the bankruptcy laws, credit reporting bureaus, the religious right, campaign finance, deficit spending, and income inequality. Even the Iraq war... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/all-quiet-in-the-french-alps/49441/ Wed, 28 Feb 2007 00:00:00 EST "Into Great Silence," a documentary by the German filmmaker Philip Gröning, had to wait 16 years to be made. In 1984, Mr. Gröning wrote to the Carthusian monks at the monastery known as la Grande Chartreuse in the French Alps and asked to film their daily lives. It was no ordinary request: The Grande Chartreuse monastery had not opened its doors to the public since its foundation by St. Bruno in 1084. But it wasn't until the turn of the millennium that the monks decided they were ready for such... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/opting-out-of-the-good-fight/48820/ Fri, 16 Feb 2007 00:00:00 EST Those who believe that the Israeli Defense Forces offer a model of how to deploy women in the armed services should take a look at "Close to Home," by the directors Dalia Hager and Vidi Bilu. Like everyone in Israel, male and female, the co-directors had to perform a period of military service at age 18. When the two women met some time later, they thought it odd that no one had ever made a movie about the lives of women in the army and decided to remedy the deficiency. Their story concerns two... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/one-fine-messiah/48316/ Fri, 9 Feb 2007 00:00:00 EST "The Last Sin Eater" comes to us from FoxFaith, a label from Fox Faithless (as perhaps we should now call it) designed to market a new product line to Christian moviegoers who have been underserved (when not actually insulted) by Hollywood's mainstream studios. I'm afraid this demographic may not feel that it is much better off if "The Last Sin Eater" is the kind of movie they can expect from Fox-Faith. Had I been advising Michael Landon Jr., who directed, or Brian Bird, who joined him in... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/old-war-stories-for-a-new-war/48333/ Fri, 9 Feb 2007 00:00:00 EST "Operation Homecoming," directed by former ABC newsman Richard Robbins, comes to us as a product of the National Endowment for the Arts, which, under chairman Dana Gioia, must have thought it would be both patriotic and artistic to have soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan try their hand at creative writing to express what they saw and felt there. Whatever the wisdom of the original idea, there are some problems with converting the product of these labors into a movie that is... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/public-citizen-just-cant-win/47710/ Wed, 31 Jan 2007 00:00:00 EST Near the end of "An Unreasonable Man," a sympathetic but not uncritical documentary portrait of Ralph Nader by the directors Henriette Mantel — a former protégé — and Steve Skrovan, the film's subject allows himself the bitter pleasure of joining his fellow left-wingers in what has now become the cliché of wondering whether George W. Bush is "the worst president ever." Until then, Mr. Nader's stubborn refusal to take responsibility for Mr. Bush's election victory in 2000, when he split the... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/oh-that-meddlesome-priest/47454/ Fri, 26 Jan 2007 00:00:00 EST Film Forum's revival of the film version of Jean Anouilh's "Becket" is to be welcomed not just for its own sake but as a window into an interesting period in the history of popular culture: the transition from the earnest — usually over-earnest — "problem" films that dominated the more serious sorts of popular movie-making between World War II and the mid-1960s to the countercultural-oriented pictures that came after that. "Becket" is very much a movie of its time — that is, 1964. Edward... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/time-to-yawn-save-the-planet/47416/ Fri, 26 Jan 2007 00:00:00 EST What would happen if the alien encounters that befall so many comedic characters actually happened in real life? Answer: It wouldn't be a comedy anymore. The comic potential of the UFO contact subculture depends on its nuttiness. If there were a real experience of aliens, the nuts would have in some degree to cease being nuts — and, therefore, to cease being funny. Barry Strugatz, the director of "From Other Worlds," has cited influences like "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," "Cat People,"... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/bringing-beatrix-back-to-life/46139/ Fri, 5 Jan 2007 00:00:00 EST "Life is just one damned thing after another," Elbert Hubbard, the early-20th-century belletrist and author of the once famous essay "A Message to Garcia," once said. He must have reflected ruefully on his own wisdom as he went down on that notoriously damned thing, the ocean liner Lusitania, sunk by a German U-Boat while he was on his way to lecture and write in the midst of World War I. Hubbard was also right in the sense that this relentless eventfulness is the primary way in which life... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/scandal-as-related-by-one-who-stands-to-gain/45736/ Wed, 27 Dec 2006 00:00:00 EST Normally, I don't have much interest in the ways movies differ from the novels, plays, or memoirs on which they are based. A movie should be judged on its own terms and is not obligated to be faithful to its source. It's got to change things no matter what, so it seems pointless to count the number of things it has changed. Richard Eyre's "Notes on a Scandal"is one of few movies that demand some comparison with their literary counterparts, in this case the novel "What Was She Thinking?: Notes... JAMES BOWMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/winning-isnt-the-only-thing-but-its-everything/45623/ Fri, 22 Dec 2006 00:00:00 EST It may sound odd, but the thing that bothered me most about "We Are Marshall" is the name of the director. Billed only as McG, the name given him at birth by his parents was Joseph McGinty Nichol, McGinty being his mother's maiden name. That's the name of an honest worker who, glad to be known as a member of his own family, is likely to take pride in his workmanship as well. McG, by contrast, is the name of someone desperate to stake his claim to celebrity — and who, in doing so, sees himself...