From Carl Spackler, the gophercidal greenskeeper, to Wally, the man who knew too little; and from Hunter Thompson to Don Johnston, Murray has cultivated a flexible but recognizable persona that can be dangerous, funny, sad, whimsical, or befuddled. Above all, though, it is aloof, and he is usually shown at his best when he is treating people like garbage or too deluded to recognize the harm he could be bringing upon them. He has made a career out of playing Ebenezer Scrooge.

ave you ever outgrown a friend? Bollywood superstar Shahrukh Khan has a friend like that. This guy has used many names, but let’s just call him Raj. Shahrukh and Raj have been inseparable for years – ever since Raj burst onto the scene in 1995, in Aditya Chopra’s Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge – but their relationships seems strained in the new film Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi.

Time is timeless in New York, yet no other city in the United States reminds you so eloquently that by the time you see the images on screen, it is already history. There’s a sense of scale even in the drawing rooms of the well-appointed apartments in Metropolitan that dwarf the characters, making their small cadre and fleeting camaraderie even more poignant. They’re so small, and obsess over such small things, yet the size and harshness of the urban landscape give Whit Stillman permission to romanticize these foolish things — it’s a small kindness only the New York of popular consciousness could grant.

Recently, a number of pieces have appeared in various media outlets in reaction to Barack Obama’s cabinet nominations. David Sanger, writing for the New York Times, reacted to the nominees by saying that Obama is “surrounding himself with pragmatists rather than ideologues.” Robert Burns, writing for the Associated Press reports that “Obama’s choices signal a more pragmatic, less ideological approach to asserting American leadership in the world.” The Washington Post praised Obama for being “pragmatic in choosing pragmatists“, specifically praising the selection of Robert Gates, who is “a problem solver …

Transylvania Towers is an in-progress novella. Inspired by Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the story follows the journal entries of  a narrator who, after being invited to stay at Transylvania Towers with his wife, has witnessed too much and now fears he is losing his mind. This is the first of six planned parts, the following of which will be published monthly.
November 10 – 17
I didn’t think I would have any use for a journal here—this was to be a vacation from work. Some vacation! But it is vitally important that what …

If you have been paying attention to the legion of video, blog, and professional reviews, or perhaps count yourself as a fan of Stephanie Meyer’s series (or, given the media saturation, merely have eyes & ears) you have no doubt witnessed the frenzy surrounding the Twilight release. While I am usually pleased to see vampire literature take its place in the public consciousness—often despite my own mixed feelings towards the quality of the material (see: Forever Knight, the Blade trilogy, Blood Ties)—Twilight, like …

Fans of genre films – at least, the lucky ones in “select markets” – are getting an imported holiday treat this weekend with the release of Los Cronocrímenes (Timecrimes,) a nifty science-fiction film about an accidental time tourist. I say science fiction deliberately; this isn’t a whiz-bang sci-fi adventure with as many explosions as plot holes, just a modest and satisfying thriller based on a simple what-if premise: what if you went back an hour in time?

“My fingers are like spiders drifting over memories in my webbed brain. The husks of the dead gaze up at me, and my teeth sink in and I speak their ghosts. But it’s all mixed up in my head. I can’t separate lines from lines, or people from people. Everything is in this web, Esumi. Even you. Even me.”

Kiera Chapman
A Christmas theme park in England was splashed all over the tabloids here this week. Amidst terrorist massacres in India and economic meltdown, the bleeding hearts that run the red tops still found time to shower their sympathy on the grown men and women who paid £25 a ticket to visit ‘Lapland New Forest’. Appallingly, once inside the ‘winter wonderland’, these poor visitors found that they had not, in fact, been magically transported to Lapland. Instead of log cabins, the owners had put up a few …

An urban fantasy that doesn’t shy away from the dark side of fairy tales, Slumdog Millionaire is vibrant, beautifully crafted, and the feel-human movie of 2008.