From What Is Before

Nov 20, 2020 — Standing before his friend Basil Hallward’s portrait of him, the paint barely dry, Dorian Gray implores to some unseen force: “If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old . ....

Nov 13, 2020 — We’re keeping busy with online festivals, awards nominations, remembrances, and plenty of weekend reading.

Oct 15, 2020 — Songbook According to Kraftwerk member Wolfgang Flür, it was toward the end of the group’s first U.S. tour when his bandmates Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider grew fascinated by the phenomenon of American radio. Their time in the States had...

Oct 9, 2020 — In the summer of 2020, I spoke with Philippe Garnier about his book Scoundrels & Spitballers: Writers and Hollywood in the 1930s, available for the first time in English from Eddie Muller’s Black Pool Productions. The book introduces a rogues’...

Sep 15, 2020 — For some, this nineteenth-century love story “never catches fire,” but for others, it’s “one of the finest films of the year.”

Sep 4, 2020 — Tilda Swinton stars in a free adaptation of Jean Cocteau’s 1930 play.

Aug 17, 2020 — Deep Dives Baseball’s back in America—as of this writing, anyway—though for much of spring and early summer the Major League season hung in the balance as negotiations between the owners and the players’ union approached a peak of acrimony. Being...

May 29, 2020 — This week we’re learning about one of the world’s first tracking shots and catching up with Guy Maddin, Lewis Klahr, Sarah Cooper, and Steve Buscemi.

Apr 30, 2020 — Festivals scheduled through August are taking their editions online, while studios and theater chains face off over digital releases. Here’s the latest on the impact of the virus.

Apr 29, 2020 — The actor best known for his work with Danny Boyle, Ang Lee, Asif Kapadia, and Ritesh Batra was only fifty-three.