A depiction of the murder of St. Thomas Becket by knights of his friend King Henry II of England. From the Carrow Psalter, 1250, ink, gold and parchment. Courtesy Walters Art Museum.
OK, so who had Pope Leo XIV versus President Donald J. Trump on their fight card, let alone bingo card?
Today, many shocked posters on the internet are saying they didn’t. But I did.
Read MoreFrom left, Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon in the 1939 adaptation of Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights,” still my favorite of the many adaptations, never more so than in this scene of the wild, rough-hewn characters on their beloved Yorkshire moors. I keep a framed copy of this movie still in my library.
As a collector of “Wuthering Heights” interpretations —Emily Brontë’s novel being the inspiration for my revenge family drama “Seamless Sky” — I was intrigued then disappointed by the announcement of a new film adaptation. I haven’t seen it, but what I have seen of it makes me think Margot Robbie is all wrong for the part of Cathy, not the least of which being that she’s a blonde.
The fair Ralph Fiennes and the French Juliette Binoche would’ve seemed all wrong for the 1992 film “Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.” But they have such talent and chemistry that they are among my favorite Cathys and Healthcliffs, never more so than in their scenes on the Yorkshire moors where their perverse, almost Luciferian defiance of everything and everyone but themselves and the natural world sows the seeds for their haunting, destructive story arc.
Read MoreBette Davis’ murderous adulteress, seen here with costar Herbert Marshall as her duped husband, finds she cannot outrun her past, in the form of an incriminating missive, in “The Letter” (1940). Courtesy Warner Bros.
“The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” – Corinthians 3:6
In W. Somerset Maugham’s much-adapted 1927 play “The Letter,” a spurned woman kills her rejecting lover, then passes the crime off as an attempted rape and self-defense. Her story seems plausible but for one thing – an incriminating letter inviting her lover to her home while her husband is away, a letter that’s in the hands of the lover’s mistress.
No one writes letters anymore, we’re told, but they do write lots and lots of emails, which they apparently never delete. Will the thousands of emails released from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate ultimately prove to be politically lethal?
Read MoreJohn Everett Millais’ “Ophelia” (circa 1851, oil on canvas), for which the artist and poet Elizabeth Siddall posed, helped inspire Taylor Swift’s “The Fate of Ophelia. Courtesy the Tate Britain.
Why does a billionaire feminist continue to write songs about being rescued from towers by men who “were just honing their powers”?
Read MoreBob Dylan performing in Rotterdam on June 22, 1978. Photograph by Chris Hakkens.
Last night, I saw “A Complete Unknown,” based on Elijah Wald’s book “Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan and the Night That Split the Sixties,” and I found myself haunted not just by the music and the excellent evocation of Bob Dylan —from his 1961 arrival in Greenwich Village as a gifted but vulnerable folk music newbie to his imposition of rock’n’roll on the 1965 Newport Folk Festival as its legendary, disruptive closing act. — but by an idea.
And that idea, beautifully embodied in the film by Timothée Chalamet, is this: Why Dylan? Why not somebody else, or, for that matter, anybody else?
Read MoreGala opening of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Sept. 8, 1971 with members of the Kennedy family in the presidential box. From left, Rose Kennedy and Sen. Edward M.Kennedy standing. Seated far right is his first wife, Joan Kennedy. Courtesy the U.S.News & World Report Collection of the Library of Congress.
Fresh from his blitzkrieg of directives, President Donald J. Trump took a break to attend Super Bowl LIX, leaving the rest of us to consider what the past three weeks have meant.
Read MoreAt the Democratic Convention Thursday, Aug. 22, Vice President Kamala Harris made her case for why she should be president. Courtesy the White House.
Well, the Democratic Convention has me feeling a lot better about the Democrats’ chances in the November election and Kamala Harris’ chances to be the first woman — and woman of color — to become president of the United States. To says she has surprised me with her sheer focused magnificence is the understatement of the year.
Did the first couple of nights run long? Sure, but then it’s always prime time somewhere in the world. Do some politicians love the sounds of their own voices? Always.
At the convention, though, we got not only joy — in short supply in the “American carnage” years — but the sorrow of officers assaulted in the Jan. 6 insurrection, parents waiting for the American hostages of Hamas to be released and women whose health was risked by abortions denied. And we got the sobriety of what we’re up against — the autocracy of the Republicans’ Project 2025 and the lunacy of former President Donald J. Trump’s tariffs. As former President Bill Clinton — still as shrewd a pol as they come — said, we underestimate the opposition at our own peril.
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