Michael Sommers
Tondo
Great Expectations: Dashed and Redeemed
A highlight of my recent trip to Paris was tagging along with Heidi as she reviewed restaurants for Paris Update. Doing so involved adapting to the unscientific Laws of Culinary Fluctuation.
The Great Animal Orchestra
Beauty and the Beasts: Nature's Jamboree
In these days of YouTube kittens and DreamWorks penguins, contemporary representations of animals often skew cute or decorative. The eye-catching poster seen all over Paris hyping the Fondation Cartier’s new exhibition, “The Great Animal Orchestra,” seemed to be a case in … Read More
Jimmy P. (Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian)
Ethno-Therapy at the O.K. Corral
Jimmy P. (Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian), French writer-director Arnaud Desplechin’s first foray into American territory, was shot on location in the Midwest, entirely in English, with a Considerable Hollywood Star – the charismatic Benicio del Toro – in the … Read More
Louis Stettner: Here There
A Photographer’s Magical Humanism “Manhattan from the Brooklyn Promenade” (1954). © Centre Pompidou/Dist. RMN-GP. © Louis Stettner Over the years, I’ve ping-ponged between Paris and New York, taking advantage of these highly photogenic and oft-photographed cities’ remarkable museums and galleries. … Read More
Les Beaux Gosses
Opening shot: a tight close-up of two mouths engaged in a long and rather complicated looking French kiss. In any other movie the image would be charged with romanticism, even eroticism, but in Riad Sattouf’s new film Les Beaux Gosses, … Read More