For Steven Spielberg, the cinema is a rebuilding, again and again, of the childhood bedroom. There is some portion of prelapsarian bliss involved: a desperate,…
The castles of Ludwig II seem to resound with that Wagnerian mystery: here time becomes space. They seem to distend from some turreted past; a…
“They say that long ago, on hilly Crete, the Labyrinth contained a weaving course among blind walls and countless twisting paths, impossible to trace or…
Before you lies a choice, a selection of fates. In one possibility, you are Tsarina of all the Russias, you are caparisoned in gemstones, wrapped…
In 2021, the Tolkien barrel was finally empty — it was less than empty. Christopher Tolkien, hitherto guardian of his father’s legacy, had died the…
“His parents were already in bed and asleep, the clock on the wall struck its uniform beat, the wind whistled by the rattling windows; the…
It is not a steady wind that brings Nietzsche to the criticism of Magnificent Obsession, a film whose slavish self-sacrifice would doubtless atomize the long-dead…
Looking with a cynical eye, one might accuse Ildikó Eyendi — and not just in Silent Friend — of banality. The film’s three stories, taken…
An old army colleague of mine, Colonel Cosgrove, wept today. He wept at a world so crude and bleak. “Could it be,” his red eyes…
In those chilly days of the Romantic poet, Samuel Coleridge sought to distinguish two synonyms. What is imagination, and what is fancy? He had this…
There’s a school of thought that would read Pillion’s ending as a positive sentiment, in which a man who blunders his way into the BDSM…
There comes a tale from an antique land. A King ruled over a thin Isthmus, above and below which were two unfathomably large continents. A…
This evening, like every evening, you settle in to listen to a song from Cole Porter’s songbook. There is nothing like the sharp lash of…
Entering Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie, one is immediately faced with a decision. It’s a decision of considerable importance. Standing in the rotunda, one may either go forward,…
“He that diggeth a pit, shall fall into it.” — Ecclesiastes 10:8 They called him Von, the man in whom lived so many. Von Schnieditz, von…
Socrates: The main question I want to ask is whether a lifetime spent scratching, itching and scratching, no end of scratching, is also a life…
“Knights are now rooks! All bishops must leave the board! Pawns can now fly!” — not a surrealist pamphlet upon obvious improvements to the game…
Among the most serene of thought experiments is the suggestion that a monkey, given a typewriter and unlimited time, will write a perfect copy of…
Despite many noble dead on the field, the battle to prohibit video games from the hall of art has long since failed. The temple is…
William Tell is at once large and small. It is an ambitious adaptation of 19th-century theatre, and it is a bloodthirsty action movie; it is a…
Put ecclesiastical matters aside, just for the moment, and ask the question: what is a cathedral? What distinguishes a cathedral from a parish church? Having…