3-D effects detract from cinema’s artistry


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Cinematic spectacle is on life support. In some ways, the death knell of grand, eye-popping feats of onscreen ingenuity and artistry was finally sounded this year by the hack trio of Michael Bay, Stephen Sommers and Roland Emmerich. With Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen, GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra and the upcoming 2012, […]

Voyeurism, narcissism and vanity thrive in ‘Public’


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Before you could tag yourself in Facebook pictures, organize your Top 8 friends on MySpace or send @MileyCyrus a love tweet, there was a web pioneer in the ’80s and ’90s named Josh Harris, whose aggressive business tactics and eccentricities have been captured by director Ondi Timoner in the searing documentary We Live in Public. […]

Standardized testing takes a toll on students


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For a lot of people, sanity resurfaced at about 3:00 p.m. Saturday afternoon. The LSAT, a monster of an exam, came and went — and left thousands behind exhausted yet soothed and suddenly unsure of what to do with the open pockets of time they now saw in their schedule. It is ironic, then — […]