In the Tradition of Liberty.
In the Tradition of Liberty.
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Titus Techera
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Yesterday marked William F. Buckley, Jr.’s centennial. We should celebrate the anniversary because many owe him a debt of gratitude—Buckley was far the most politically influential conservative from the mid-century onward. Such anniversaries offer us a much-needed opportunity to recur to origins. We should look back to Buckley for two reasons. First, he founded National Review,…
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The American right is in a period of intellectual tumult. Part of that reckoning includes wondering what novels are and what they are for. It is impressive that we should are even talking about it. Our commercial and technological mores imply that we wouldn’t even bother to burn books—they would simply be rendered obsolete by…
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The Fourth of July is all about the fireworks, and that’s true of the Star-Spangled Banner as well as of Jaws, a movie about the holiday that is credited with launching the era of the blockbuster when it was released in 1975. Following the example of Jaws, many blockbusters have been released around the Fourth.…
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The papacy has been remarkably often in the news in our rather anti-clerical and increasingly secular age, making history in ways noticed and unnoticed. In 2013, Pope Benedict XVI retired, which is pretty much unheard of. Two weeks later, the papal conclave gave the world the first South American pope, Francis, who spent his 12-year…
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There are at least two ways that women can dominate the Academy Awards, which are being bestowed this weekend for the 97th time. Titanic (1997) represents one possibility. It was a pastiche of grand melodrama by a macho, technology-obsessed writer-producer-director James Cameron that nevertheless appealed to young women across America and across the world. Titanic…
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David Lynch has died at the age of 78. With his death, we have lost the most eccentric of the directors who made their name in the 1980s and 1990s, at the apex of American confidence. The present moment of confusion makes that situation almost unimaginable. But perhaps even more surprising is the post-modern and…
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There’s more eccentricity among our celebrated artists than we can easily deal with, but this holiday season I’m giving it a go. After a piece on Tim Burton for Halloween, bringing out his combination of comedy and horror, and another on Woody Allen for Thanksgiving, about his mix of sophistication and longing for family life,…
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After a Halloween consideration of Tim Burton’s vision of all-American freaks, I’d like to offer you a similarly strange tribute to Woody Allen’s Thanksgiving. The juxtaposition may seem strange, yet Burton and Allen are outsiders who became famous artists. They succeeded largely because they understand that it is funny, and not a little flattering, for…
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Tim Burton’s Batman and Batman Returns might be the perfect Halloween movies. They were big successes back in 1989 and 1992, grossing together more than a billion dollars (adjusted for inflation). They are fun popcorn movies, but also weird artistic experimentsthat embrace the juvenile character of American pop culture while revisiting cinema history. Batman and…
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Sometime recently we came to the end of the era of 9/11 movies. Our politics have changed, as have the generations and the preferred technologies for entertainment. We are also ready, perhaps, even to forget that there was an attempt to destroy the World Trade Center, along with other iconic locations. So this is the…