In 2019, beating up on Sam Mendes’ multi-Oscar-winning American Beauty, released roughly 20 years ago this week, is so painfully easy that it seems unfair. The Best Picture winner has fallen largely out of fashion; it rarely appears on critics’ lists of favorite movies, and its memory seems to have faded for most moviegoers, too.
But in 1999, you were an outlier if you disliked the picture, while professing admiration for it was a way of announcing that you were hip to the modern American malaise—whatever, exactly, that was. Read More...
President Joe Biden closed out the first night of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago with a nearly hour-long speech—amid chants of “thank you, Joe” and “we love Joe” from the crowd—that had been built up as a farewell address from the longtime politician who recently withdrew from the 2024 presidential election and passed the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris to carry his legacy forward.
Read More: ‘America, I Gave My Best To You:’ The Biggest Moments From Joe Biden’s 2024 DNC Speech Read More...
In literary London, where the vogue in controversy runs to turtlenecked highbrows and Angry Young Men, the latest brouhaha is whirling around an unlikely book by an unlikelier author: a mystery shocker called Dr. No, by an uppercrust Tory named Ian Fleming. The book marks the sixth appearance of James Bond, 007 by code number, a deadpan British secret-service agent with high tastes and low instincts. With the help of an estimated 1,250,000 British readers, Bond has boosted Creator Fleming high on the bestseller lists and into the gunsights of outraged critics. Read More...