‘What a pretentious title’, I thought as I started the BBC 4 documentary, ‘Johnny Cash: The Last Great American’ (2004). By the end of this thoughtful, fast-paced hour,…
Jonathan Winters, the quintessential Ohioan, has died at 87. Comedian, actor and voice artist Jonathan Winters was versatile, emotional, complicated and Midwestern. Out of ill-fit, off-the-bargain-rack clothes…
I was going to observe John Cheever’s centenary with a brief post. Then, I saw in The Writer’s Almanac that Rachel Carson, too, was born on May 27, but in…
Once in a very long while – four times in my life – an actor leaps from the screen and into my deepest fears. I can never look at them…
In ‘The Social Network’, the Winklevoss twins appeal to then Harvard President Larry Summers to force Mark Zuckerberg to honor his commitments to them. The scene is hysterically funny: …
In ‘The Wire’, Idris Elba shone as ‘Stringer’ Bell, a drug ring’s #2 who looked like a young executive, took business classes but who’d ordered the wrong man’s killing. Elba’s…
Winston Churchill died on January 24, 1965. His state funeral, an extraordinary honor, took place six days later. After reading the bulletin on his death, radio station WABeatleC in New…
One of the many advantages to living in Cambridge is the Boston Globe’s regular coverage of Errol Morris, the documentary film maker. (The Globe’s parent paper, the New York Times…