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Jeremy McCarter

Jeremy McCarter

Articles by Jeremy McCarter

Entertainment

Tennessee Williams at 100

Tennessee Williams is aging beautifully, now that he’s gone. When he died in 1983, his career had all but ground to a halt. More than two decades had passed since his last Broadway success.

6 min read

Entertainment

Movies: ‘Tempest’: Brush Up on Your Shakespeare

‘The Tempest’ marks Julie Taymor’s latest effort to pour old wine into stylish new bottles. Shakespeare’s comedy has been filmed before, but never with quite the spin she gives it here.

2 min read

Entertainment

Allan Metcalf’s new book claims that the word “OK” is America’s greatest invention. This offers a pair of provocations. How can “OK” be an invention? On a certain day, a certain guy just dreamed up the expression that has become the most frequently spoken word on the planet? And even if it is an invention, can one little word really be greater than jazz, baseball, and the telephone? Is it better than The Simpsons?

4 min read

Entertainment

Facebook Movie: Even Darker Than You Thought

The dark heart of ‘The Social Network’ isn’t just Mark Zuckerberg. How the Facebook movie lays bare the hollowness haunting us all.

9 min read

Entertainment

Palin Is a Pale Imitation of This Sarah

Sarah Bernhardt was part Gaga, part Streep, even part Palin—100 years before any of them.

4 min read

Entertainment

Stanley Kauffmann: A Cultural Critic for the Ages

Movie reviewers are fading away. And then there’s Stanley Kauffmann.

6 min read

Entertainment

James Baldwin: Still Angry After All These Years

When I play reverse time travel and imagine historical figures turning up today (what would Ben Franklin say about the iPad? Or Jane Austen about Jersey Shore?, etc.), James Baldwin’s name comes to mind. The essayist and novelist spent four decades picking at the scab of American race relations.

6 min read

Entertainment

Kevin Kline: The Essential Man

After Kline’s more than three decades on stage and screen, it’s no surprise when he turns in a fine performance. He glides from heavy drama (“The Ice Storm”) to really heavy drama (“Sophie’s Choice”) to silly comedy (“The Pirates of Penzance”) to really silly comedy (“A Fish Called Wanda”), to say nothing of all that he’s done onstage. Through all these roles, a distinctive Kline-esque style has emerged.

4 min read

Entertainment

Movies: The Nuclear Option

Lucy Walker has made a horror film about the slaughter and wreckage of a nuclear attack. “Countdown to Zero” has all the essential flourishes of the genre: explosions, screaming crowds, buildings falling to ash. That the film is a documentary—an awfully persuasive one, at that—makes it all the creepier.

6 min read

Entertainment

Popcorn Movies With Brains

Every summer, the question grows more pertinent: what’s so special about special effects? The more potent that Hollywood’s CGI tools get, the less exciting and surprising they seem.

5 min read

U.S.

How Cable TV Pundits Stepped On Obama’s Oil Speech

“This is not theater,” declared President Obama on the Today show last week. He was defending his response to the BP oil spill, which he insisted was designed to get actual results, not to put on a show.

5 min read

U.S.

Why Obama’s Tough Talk About BP Won’t Help

From the no-nonsense tone to the rolled-up sleeves, Obama looked and sounded the part of the engaged chief executive, so the pundits who all but ordered him to the gulf should be satisfied. But his implied threat of punitive action is beginning to have a familiar ring—too familiar.

5 min read

U.S.

New York at War: Then and Now

Seventy years after it sweated and struggled to funnel troops to the front line, New York City has become the front line. Lower Manhattan still bears the scars of the 9/11 attacks, and if the Times Square bomber hadn’t been so feckless, midtown would have its own crater and makeshift shrine.

4 min read

Entertainment

Patriot of the Moment: Walt Whitman

If I were to count up the things I love best about America, this tableau would be high on the list: Walt Whitman, on a street in Washington, exchanging a respectful bow with Abraham Lincoln as the president’s carriage rolled by.

9 min read

Entertainment

‘American Idiot,’ Green Day’s Show–Theater Review

The acclaimed Green Day album comes to the stage, and drags rock and roll along with it.

6 min read

Entertainment

‘Clash of the Titans’: Ancient Greece and Us

Sure, the Greeks are broke. But look how much we owe them.

11 min read

U.S.

Joseph Stack Suicide Note’s ‘Capitalist’ Citation

What the Austin suicide attacker might have meant in his suicide note when he cited American greed.

4 min read

U.S.

The NEA’s New Troublemaker: Rocco Landesman

The NEA has spent years quietly nursing its culture-war wounds. Then Rocco Landesman took over.

10 min read

Entertainment

The Disappearance of Gene Hackman

Today’s Oscar contenders should be thankful Gene Hackman’s no longer acting.

7 min read

Entertainment

Orson Welles: Back From the Dead

Film opens Nov. 25: It must have seemed that black had turned white and upside had turned down when Orson Welles, a man used to being praised as the youngest this and most brilliant that, began to hear himself mocked as “an international joke” and “the youngest living has-been.” When Walter Kerr made that savage assessment in 1951, Welles was only 36.

9 min read

Entertainment

Joe Papp: The Man Behind Shakespeare in the Park

Papp made theater free, and proved it was priceless.

5 min read