World
“Waiting to Exhale,” Thirty Years On
Forest Whitaker’s “Waiting to Exhale” is perhaps the quintessential “chick flick”—and an ideal case study for all that the cinematic subgenre can do. The “chick flick” often concerns heroines...
“Father Mother Sister Brother” Explores the Mysteries of Family Life
This is what happens when “The Dead Don’t Die” dies. That scintillating Jim Jarmusch movie, from 2019, a mashup of comedy, science fiction, horror, and apocalyptic rage amid brazen...
Is the Dictionary Done For?
He also introduces us to terms likely to be new to many readers: “sportocrat,” “on fleek,” “vajazzle,” and the German word Backpfeifengesicht, which is defined as “a face that...
Lorenzo Mattotti’s “Goodbye to All That”
For the cover of the December 29, 2025 & January 5, 2026, issue, the artist Lorenzo Mattotti depicted a time-honored way to shake off the old and welcome the...
The Organists Improvising Soundtracks to Silent Films
A hundred and three years on, F. W. Murnau’s “Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror” still haunts the moviegoing unconscious. Newcomers feel shudders of recognition on seeing Murnau’s indelible evocations...
The Psychology of Fashion
Virginia Woolf had portrayed a similar tension between unity and fragmentation a decade earlier, with Mrs. Dalloway gazing at herself in the mirror:That was her self—pointed; dartlike; definite. That...
It Takes Only Five Paintings to See Helen Frankenthaler’s Genius
In a small show at MOMA, Frankenthaler seems to make paint its own living force, untouched by an artist. Source link
The Wild, Sad Life of John Cage’s First Lover
Why not New York? Personal factors may have been at work: in L.A., Cage’s parents could provide support. But L.A. was also coming into its own as a cultural...