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“Le Corbusier: The Complete Buildings” Shines New Light On 20th Century Classics
A title like Le Corbusier: The Complete Buildings suggests an encyclopedic guide, and the heft of the new book only furthers that impression. Inside, though, Cemal Emden’s photographs constitute a more subjective tour through virtually all of the extant structures designed by the seminal Swiss-French architect. Emden’s relationship with Corbusier’s buildings is like Man Ray’s relationship with…
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“The Disaster Artist” Tells the Story of “The Room”
Is it possible to make a good movie about a bad one? How about if you’re James Franco? The answer to both questions, it seems, is yes. With The Disaster Artist, Franco succeeds in telling a consistently entertaining — and, perhaps, illuminating — story about the making of The Room (2003), the best worst movie of the 21st…
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Thanksgiving Audiobook Review: Anne Tyler’s “The Accidental Tourist”
About the book: Anne Tyler’s tenth novel, published in 1985, was largely praised, particularly for the characters of Macon Leary and Muriel Pritchett. As the book begins, Leary is left by his longtime wife as the two remain racked with mourning for a recently deceased young son. Leary makes his way with the help of his…
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Thanksgiving Audiobook Review: Rick Moody’s “The Ice Storm”
About the book: Rick Moody’s sophomore novel, following Garden State (1992), was published in 1994 and quickly became a modern classic. It stands alongside Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides as a chronicle of teenage eros in the ’70s, and also became perhaps the definitive fictional story about suburban sexual liberation among the adults of that era. Surprise, surprise: key…
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Kenneth Branagh’s “Murder on the Orient Express” Is Everything You’d Hope, and Fear, It Would Be
After a preview screening of Kenneth Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express, the studio asked me to write a concise reaction on a card. I wrote something along the lines of, “A grandly old-fashioned mystery, with a heart.” As my girlfriend and I walked to the car, though, she said she thought the movie was awful….
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Thanksgiving Audiobook Review: Jay McInerney’s “Model Behavior”
About the book: Jay McInerney’s sixth novel was published in 1998, to unenthusiastic reviews. He still hadn’t fulfilled the promise of his acclaimed debut Bright Lights, Big City (1984), and the unmistakable similarities of the new novel to that book were seen as an attempt — perhaps a cynical one — to put a ’90s spin on…