Monthly Archives: July 2009
Let us continue the glorious march!
Although ultimate victory against the Evil Doers is as certain today as it was when we first joined battle against this merciless and implacable foe, it is my unfortunate duty to inform you that there have been certain small and … Continue reading
Potty-mouth Politics
The career of James Gandolfini takes yet another turn, this time with a role that mixes the Norman Schwarzkopf body type with a more Colin Powell political sensibility. My review of the expletive-saturated In the Loop here.
Filed under Uncategorized
Richard Rogers, in DC
Not the composer of The King and I or Oklahoma, but the British architect, the co-designer of the Centre Pompidou and mastermind of the Millennium Dome. Rogers and his firm Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners have stitched together three buildings very near … Continue reading
Filed under Architecture
Walter and Trust
Commenting on culture with a small c, that blur of ephemera constantly droning from the flat screen television in your kitchen, bedroom, living room, garage and the swivel mount in your recreational vehicle, used to be a much bigger … Continue reading
Filed under Culture
Duck, way amuck
Daffy Duck’s Quackbusters, an embarrassingly bad 1988 film that stitches together classic cartoons from the golden age of Warner Brothers cartooning with a flimsy plot line about ghost busting, is proof that corporations can’t be trusted with classic Americana. The … Continue reading
Filed under Culture, Feuilleton, film
Embassy Design, continued
The Post gave me considerable space in Sunday’s paper to look at a new report issued by the American Institute of Architects. The document is a nuts-and-bolts thing, incremental in its recommendations and it hardly glances at the real problem–crippling … Continue reading
Filed under Architecture
Music in Film
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Tokyo Sonata has a musical title and it builds—spoiler alert!!!—to a wonderful musical climax. I don’t think it’s a perfect film, and the more I watch Japanese film, the more I’m disturbed about the political direction of Japanese society. But … Continue reading
Write Your Own Damn Emmy Screed
Lisa de Moraes, my colleague at The Washington Post, writes a television column so entertaining that I read it even though I don’t watch much television. Of course she covers the Emmy Awards. Seems that there’s debate about the … Continue reading
Filed under Culture, Feuilleton
Better in silence
It’s a hard choice: Watch Carl Theodor Dreyer’s cinematic masterpiece, The Passion of Joan of Arc, in total silence, or with Richard Einhorn’s 1994 cantata Voices of Light, which was inspired by the film and is now included as … Continue reading
Pondering a “post-embassy” future
Aaron Britt, an editor at Dwell, interviewed me after a panel on embassy design he moderated last May. The conclusion? I talk too fast. But if you listen at warp speed, you’ll get a sense of what we talked about … Continue reading
Filed under Architecture
