‘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,…
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 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…
I trust my son Jotham’s judgments on, among other things, science fiction in print, on film or on radio. After all, he insisted I watch Battlestar Gallactica, the best…