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49 Reasons Why 2016 Wasn't as Bad as You Think
You Must Remember This
As a well-known spokesperson for medium purism, I must say I hate collage. But in my role as professional political operative I have to admit I enjoy a good juxtaposition. One of my favorite phenomena is the disconnect between whatever art I’m personally consuming and the general narrative of a political campaign. To wit: In…
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49 Reasons Why 2016 Wasn't as Bad as You Think Fleabag
I first saw this zany British BBC comedy set in London a few months ago, and was hooked from the moment the nameless anti-heroine turned to the camera and asked if she had a “massive asshole.” If brevity is the soul of wit, then “Fleabag” is its irreverent bastard child. Phoebe Waller-Bridge, the writer/director/star, is…
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49 Reasons Why 2016 Wasn't as Bad as You Think Victoria
Ang Lee might have gotten the most press this year for his 3-D technical achievements in the otherwise forgettable film “The Long Halftime Walk of Billy Lynn.” But the most amazing cinematic achievement I saw this year was Sebastian Schipper’s Berlin-based thriller “Victoria,” which unspools an entire two-hour heist drama in a single take. Alfred…
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49 Reasons Why 2016 Wasn't as Bad as You Think Arrival
Not since Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Solaris” have I been as moved by a science fiction film as I was by Denis Villeneuve’s “Arrival.” What both films understand so well is that our urge to communicate with extraterrestrial life is actually about processing the mystery of life and death, loss and love. Amy Adams is haunting as…
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49 Reasons Why 2016 Wasn't as Bad as You Think Mr. Robot
‘Mr. Robot,” in its second season, seemed to show up on the scene out of nowhere. Partly this may be because it aired on the USA Network, and so the first season didn’t make an impression until it hit the binge-watching warehouse of Amazon Prime. Or maybe, more likely, it’s because the show was a…
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49 Reasons Why 2016 Wasn't as Bad as You Think The Joneses
Coastal elites, we have been told recently, need to pay more attention to rural, white America. Fine, let them watch Moby Longinotto’s documentary, “The Joneses,” set in the trailer parks and small-town churches of very red, working-poor Mississippi and focusing on a transgender grandmother. Jehri Jones, 73 and divorced, shepherds her hard-luck family (two of…
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49 Reasons Why 2016 Wasn't as Bad as You Think In the Dark Room
Susan Faludi’s “In The Darkroom,” a decade-long nonfiction project in which Faludi tries to understand her complex and volatile father after he undergoes a sex change, resonates not for this dramatic plot line, but for Faludi’s reporting chops. She examines her father’s relationship with the Holocaust as a Jewish boy growing up in Hungary and…
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49 Reasons Why 2016 Wasn't as Bad as You Think Shipbreaking
Lines and line breaks are poetry’s structural units, in much the same way that timbered planks — and the gaps that must be filled between them — create a ship’s hull. Fittingly, the rapturous poems in Robin Beth Schaer’s “Shipbreaking” are fashioned from taut lines joined by tension. Nautical imagery of wind, waves and wreck…
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49 Reasons Why 2016 Wasn't as Bad as You Think The Divines
‘Divines,” by French-Moroccan director Houda Benyamina, is set in the suburbs of Paris. The teenage Dounia and Maimouna know the limits of what the world will offer them and still dare to want more. A story of friendship told with the gravity of a love story, a hymn to hope and to hopelessness, the film…
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49 Reasons Why 2016 Wasn't as Bad as You Think Amos Oz and ‘Judas’
Even an annus horribilis can be redeemed if it contains a new Amos Oz novel. “Judas” was a quiet piece with a small ensemble roaming familiar Jerusalem streets, yet its deceptively simple structure hid multitudes. It wrestled with enormous ideas about love and loneliness, grief and treachery, presented with Oz’s characteristic mix of beauty, compassion,…
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49 Reasons Why 2016 Wasn't as Bad as You Think Swim Through the Darkness
“Swim Through the Darkness” by Mike Stax was easily the most moving and inspiring book I read in 2016. Stax’s biography of Craig Smith — a promising musician and songwriter who took a wrong turn at the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, and fell forever through the cracks of society — is a deeply…
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