New World

Dec 3, 2018 — True Stories, David Byrne’s 1986 paean to American eccentricity and ordinariness, called to me from the shelves of a video store in Austin, Texas. Subtitled “A Film About a Bunch of People in Virgil, Texas,” True Stories is not “true”...

Nov 29, 2018 — The lights may go out at midnight, but we will still be carrying the torch.

Nov 28, 2018 — It’s not every day that you see duds like these. One of the boldest splashes of local color in David Byrne’s True Stories—a genre-defying odyssey to the weird and wonderful world of north-central Texas—comes midway through, during a fashion show...

Nov 28, 2018 — The career of one of Italy’s greatest directors was riddled with scandal and accolades.

Nov 26, 2018 — The Magnificent Ambersons In his interviews with Peter Bogdanovich published as This Is Orson Welles, Welles speaks nostalgically of the time he spent with his father in a tranquil enclave of 1920s Illinois, comparing it to “a childhood back in...

Nov 26, 2018 — The legendary filmmaker possessed the greatest speaking voice in American cinema, and The Magnificent Ambersons represents the summit of his work as a vocal actor.

Nov 26, 2018 — The Magnificent Ambersons “Plus one and minus one equal nothing. So you mean I’m nothing in particular?” —Isabel “Remember you very well indeed.” —George “George, you never saw me before in your life!” —Eugene What is this cult I signed up...

Nov 26, 2018 — Even as he chronicles the downfall of an American family, Orson Welles brings a sense of buoyancy to this grim saga through his virtuoso storytelling.

Nov 23, 2018 — The work of James Agee (1909–1955) remains one of the touchstones of American movie criticism. An extraordinarily versatile writer, he won acclaim as a novelist, a poet, and a screenwriter (his scripts for The African Queen and The Night of the...

Nov 20, 2018 — In the aftermath of the political turmoil that swept through France in 1968, Sylvina Boissonnas used her wealth to sponsor some of the most radical films of the era, including works by Philippe Garrel and Jackie Raynal.