“Sleeping Beauty” Doesn’t Object to Objectification

In director Steven Soderbergh’s stilted new thriller, MMA poster gal and obvious nonactor Gina Carano stars as a double-crossed covert operative flitting between mutedly lethal international incidents.

Adapted from the 2005 novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” evokes the recent literary wave of self-conscious precocity probably begun with Dave Eggers’ “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.” Such titles, stacking up adjectives and adverbs like…

At around 16 years of age, Susan Sontag 1. offered Thomas Mann a reinterpretation of his “Magic Mountain” 2. had her first affair with a woman, 3. met the professor she would marry shortly afterwards.
“I know what I want to do with my life,” Sontag wrote in one of the journals that is…

In anticipation of this week’s first annual International Academy of Web Television Awards, we highlight five categories of web series and their exemplars.

Web entertainment is on the rise and nothing legitimates a cultural movement better than an awards show. This Thursday, January 12, the…

People often roll their eyes at the “Nutcracker”—so conventional! So twee!—but I am amazed each year by the emotional fullness of this ballet. It must be hell to dance day in and day out for an entire month, as the New York City Ballet does each year, from the day after Thanksgiving…

RECIPLAY (V.) ‘ress-i-play To cook without a recipe, adding a little bit of this, a little bit of that, sometimes producing a triumph, sometimes a mess. Usage: Ethan was proud of his freestyling way of cooking without cookbooks, recipes, or measuring spoons—even though the results were…

Writer-director Michel Hazanavicius’ exuberant throwback — a black-and-white movie, with nearly zero spoken dialogue, set in 1927 — has the clarity and grace to delight homage-mad nostalgists without alienating everyone else.