The Los Angeles Times delivers the news, and the post-modernist goods. First, Zero Dark Thirty We’re in the final weeks of Oscar voting, which means that the Los Angeles Times—home paper for most members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences—is able to fatten its bottom line by running ads touting the various... Read More

…The Battle of Algiers As the moving finger of chaos hovered over Mali and Algeria last week, I took another look at Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1966 masterpiece, The Battle of Algiers. I am somewhat puzzled that this movie is not at the heart of the Zero Dark Thirty debate. Because in many ways, perhaps intentionally, ZDT... Read More

I saw Zero Dark Thirty last night. Most of it, anyway. In a bizarre incident, the theater fire alarm went off just as the Seal Team Six helicopter was about to touch down in Abbottabad. The Arclight made the interesting decision to keep the movie running (or non-decision, to be more accurate: in the brave... Read More

Everybody breaks under torture. From Winston Smith to Jason Bourne. Torture would work on me, for example. If somebody starts crushing my fingertips with a pair of pliers, I’m going to tell them my ATM PIN, Batman’s secret identity, whatever. But if you asked me where Bin Laden was, then I'm not the only person... Read More