At ‘The Village Voice,’ there were all these fevers inside the offices, that would break out into full-scale rumbles between writers. James Wolcott Read Quote
With ‘Black Swan,’ the ballerina saga flips its tiara and goes on a hallucinatory bender, a scary acid trip where transfiguration and disfiguration meet. James Wolcott Read Quote
Slashing its way to the finish line, ‘Black Swan’ is the first ballet movie for highbrow horror fans for whom ballet itself signifies little to nothing. Those of us who know and love ballet can only look on it with a different kind of horror. James Wolcott Read Quote
What’s happening to movie critics is no different from what has been meted out to book, dance, theater, and fine-arts reviewers and reporters in the cultural deforestation that has driven refugees into the diffuse clatter of the Internet and Twitter, where some adapt and thrive – such as Roger Ebert – while others disappear without a twinkle. James Wolcott Read Quote
Many questions torment America in its dark night of the soul, questions more urgently pressing, and yet it must be asked: How did we get stuck with Piers Morgan? Who is he, why is he here, is he returnable? James Wolcott Read Quote
A new political-entertainment class has moved into the noisy void once occupied by the sage pontiffs of yore, a class just as polarized as our partisan divide: one side holding up a fun-house mirror to folly, the other side reveling in its own warped reflection. James Wolcott Read Quote
On August 28, 2010, Fox News messiah Glenn Beck hosted a ‘Restoring Honor’ revival meeting featuring sexy guest star Sarah Palin, much as Bob Hope would roll out Raquel Welch in white go-go boots on his U.S.O. tours to give our fighting men a morale lift in their khakis. James Wolcott Read Quote
Truman Capote was a pop figure, but it wasn’t until he went on David Susskind’s show and had that extraordinary voice and manner that everyone could imitate, that he really took off as a figure. James Wolcott Read Quote
It’s one thing to fight for what you believe in, another thing to fight for what others believe in. James Wolcott Read Quote
