Those who are reviving the serial form are embracing the value of the one thing the digital world doesn’t provide on its own: limits.

Those who are reviving the serial form are embracing the value of the one thing the digital world doesn’t provide on its own: limits.
The acclaimed novelist shares the passage from The Long Goodbye that turned him from a 16-year-old consumer of the printed word into a creator: “He was looking at me and neither his eyes nor his gun moved. He was as calm as an adobe wall in the moonlight.”
“If there is a magic in story writing,” admonished Henry Miller, “and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another.” And yet, famous advice on writing abounds.
Holmes is often portrayed as a mechanical logician, but his approach depends more on outside-the-box thinking that really does help solve problems.
Movies like “Deadfall” and “Fargo” show that the white of ice can be as powerful a filmmaking tool as shadow.
Govindini Murty gives a cultural guide to some of the themes, personalities, and cinematic references in “Hitchcock”, the new film about the creation of Hitchcock’s “Psycho”.
Chandler’s style reminds of Biggie Smalls circa ”Life After Death”, with all the attendant merits and demerits. I read Marlowe and think of Biggie’s Frank White from “Niggas Bleed.”
Ta-Nehisi Coates watched “To Catch A Thief” and “Rear Window”. His conclusion: something runs through all of these movies and the work of Raymond Chandler that is amazing to behold–a really coarse, and unconcealed misogyny.
The 23rd James Bond film, commemorated the film franchise’s 50th anniversary with a record $87.8 million debut this past weekend. But the film didn’t just score monster cash.
For fans of the Bond canon, the stakes for the newest installment, “Skyfall”, are sky high. The film is the third starring Daniel Craig — by any reasonable assessment a better Bond than any since Sean Connery.
While many horror filmmakers have plastered the phony “true story” label on their movies in hopes of filling theater seats, some scary movies have been inspired by real-life events.
“The Walking Dead” has been a Holocaust allegory from the beginning, and Rick’s desire to preserve the codes and behaviors of civilization has often reminded Jeffrey Goldberg of stories of hunted and haunted Jews going to sometimes-unworldly lengths to stay human.
The books by Gillian Flynn are expertly constructed, totally spell-binding depictions of angry women trapped in twisted fantasy worlds of presumed male authority. More important, they subvert the battered heroine’s typically exploitative position.
Over at the Los Angeles Review of Books they’re having an argument about Stephen King. Dwight Allenleads for the prosecution; Sarah Langan replies for the defense. Though like Langan she is absolute for acquittal, she wants to defend King on other grounds than hers.
Amanda Knox & Mimi Alford. The lives of two young women were forever altered by sexual affairs. Now they’re cashing in.
From »Dirty« Harry Callahan to the Bad Lieutenant, a look at the most brutal and corrupt lawmen walking the streets of cinema.
The sickening parallels between today’s interrogation tactics and those used by the Inquisition reveal the dangers of yoking moral certainty to the machinery of torture.
Richard Berk likes to think he knows what criminals will do — even before they know. The statistics professor was recently willing to show off his skills.
Not all appearances of name-brand items in movies result from product placement. But can audiences tell the difference between what’s a paid ad and what isn’t?
The hallmarks of »Fight Club«, »The Social Network«, and other Fincher successes are in his fantastic new adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s novel.