106 stories by "Harvey Blume"
Israel has genuine enemies without, to be sure. But "The Gatekeepers" leaves the impression that it has no less mortal an enemy within.
The once proudly and authentically counter-cultural paper The Boston Phoenix went out ugly, fawning on mobster Whitey Bulger.
But there's something else going on in "Mad Men," all the more because it's latent, unannounced, episode by episode. It's this thing about art and advertising, and the difference, circa that…
It's not a simple story. It's a story about dreadful ideas, hideous politics and their interaction with art and aesthetic judgment.
Thomas Nagel: Has he penned a rallying cry for those who have no taste for much science in the first place?
Robert Ingersoll is all but unknown in our time. Susan Jacoby sets out to answer why. One answer she proposes is that it was generally assumed that the reactionary expressions of religion In…
Obsession is the thing in us that makes us not everybody else. -- Joss Whedon
There is so much of a certain kind of violence here " the kind you've seen in Tarantino movies before " that it in a sense takes the violence out of violence.
"The Friends of Eddie Coyle" was simply too good a movie, perfect, in its way, and the director of "Killing Them Softly" wants to avoid comparison.
But sometimes, though it may defy certain sorts of expectations, Jews excel not because they have higher sports IQs but just because they are better.
"Hanoi's War" deserves far more attention than it has thus far received. It enriches our understanding of the War in Vietnam and by implication, subsequent American commitments, including th…
Is the director of "The Master," Paul Thomas Anderson, running from Scientology and its top guns (Tom Cruise did visit the set) as fast as he can?
If you try to take Camille Paglia seriously, despite the occasional insight you might find along the way, in the end it's impossible to avoid the suspicion that you've made a category error.
The truth is that protests against the mosque did not mention parking. Protestors fumed about the threat of shariah law. Parking is a real issue in Sheepshead Bay, the threat of shariah law …
What percentage art? What percentage terrorist attack?
Unlike the rock star supporters of Pussy Riot, Garry Kasparov lives in Moscow, which means, given how the Putin regime has dealt with critics, he has a lot more to fear than, say, Madonna, w…
Dissident artist Ai Weiwei speaks for an alternate China, another possibility for it. In a sense, he is the anti-Mao. Alison Klayman's "Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry" is an essential introduction t…
Art and science rebuffed each other in this show. Visitors are unlikely to leave with either a greater understanding of cosmology or of Josiah McElheny's art.
As monster fiction, "Vlad" has hints, now and then, of what "Talulla Rising" doesn't aspire to. In the former, Carlos Fuentes peels back the familiar to provide glimpses of the genuinely hor…
Here you have it: Werewolves are horny, vamps merely thirsty. This, to be sure, is material to work with, as novelist Glen Duncan does. But I can't help thinking about great nineteenth-centu…
There have been over twenty movie adaptations of H. P. Lovecraft stories, all nearly forgotten. And yet Lovecraft's sensibility serves as a guide to much of today's cinema.
The stories of Israeli writer Etgar Keret are diverse, one-of-a-kind safety nets, spun out of humor, tenderness and wild imaginings.
What struck me about "Hunger Games" is that the rules change in Katniss Everdeen's battle to survive against others like her, including others she likes, might even love.
In his exploration of history, Jack Beatty suggests that World War I, as we know it, was an improbable event.
eremy lin & i played a few games. let me say, so far as xiangqi went, he wasn't an all star. then again, neither was i.
