NR PLUS
Magazine August 29, 2011, Issue

Roads Not Taken

By
Brit Marling as Rhoda Williams (Fox Searchlight)
A review of Another Earth

Late summer, like midwinter, is a time of year when it’s best to shun the big studio releases. Any star-studded blockbuster or crowd-pleasing comedy that’s actually worth its budget (i.e., not Cowboys & Aliens or The Change-Up) would have elbowed its way into theaters between Memorial Day and July 4th; any drama with more than a hint of Oscar potential (i.e., not The Help) would have been saved for November or December. Moviegoers are better off seeking out the smaller releases instead, looking for the curious pieces of artistic driftwood that sometimes wash up in a season’s dying days.

Perhaps this

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In This Issue

Articles

Politics & Policy

London Aflame

By
London – Yesterday, August 8, I was watching live looting footage — some of it from districts near mine or where friends were hunkered down behind locked doors — with ...
Politics & Policy

Making Believe

By
With trumpets and drum rolls, the White House has released a new policy paper on methods to prevent terrorism, a study said to have been two years in the making. ...

Features

Politics & Policy

Gagging Us Softly

By
To be honest, I didn’t really think much about “freedom of speech” until I found myself the subject of three “hate speech” complaints in Canada in 2007. I mean I ...
Politics & Policy

Not a Race Card

By
A  number of states have recently passed voter-ID legislation — among them, Texas, Alabama, Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Rhode Island. Two others, Georgia and Indiana, implemented such laws ...

Books, Arts & Manners

Politics & Policy

Roads Not Taken

By
Late summer, like midwinter, is a time of year when it’s best to shun the big studio releases. Any star-studded blockbuster or crowd-pleasing comedy that’s actually worth its budget (i.e., ...
Politics & Policy

Something to Fear

By
  Decades ago, the historian Theodore Draper wrote about what he called the “minor academic industry” dedicated to resurrecting the reputation of the American Communist party. The industry’s ranks were composed ...

Sections

Athwart

The Empire Goes Hungry

By
We could spend our time together here detailing the ideas that separate the Right and the Left, but if Maureen Dowd has taught us anything, it’s that it’s more fun ...
Politics & Policy

Poetry

By
  SOUTHERN STORM To the east is subtropical fern Whose shadows imprint the trails to the springs, More ancient than the forests themselves. To the west of these too-deep predawn pools There are rolling fields and ...
Happy Warrior

Old Blighted

By
I had a new book out the other day. Usual doom and gloom, as the more alert reader may just about be able to discern from the subtle title: After America: ...
Politics & Policy

Letters

By
Lochner in Rehab Reading Joseph Tartakovsky’s review of David Bernstein’s Rehabilitating Lochner (“Rights Revisited,” July 4), I got the sense that both gentlemen embrace the proposition that the 1905 Lochner decision was ...
Politics & Policy

The Week

By
‐ Who would have guessed that Moammar Qaddafi would outlive America’s AAA rating? ‐ Wisconsin Democrats have gone to extraordinary lengths ever since Republicans introduced legislation to scale back the collective-bargaining ...
The Bent Pin

The Virgin Mother

By
A new version of an old song is running through my head. “‘M’ is for the million threats against you. ‘O’ is for Orlando’s mounted cops. ‘T’ is for tattoos ...

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