Architecture: Avenue of Victory

What is imposing is the extensive and manifold hype the movie is getting. The press, TV, the Internet are full of it. I just read in the New York Times that “the voodoo doll-like stick figures . . . were based on an ancient runic figure called the Burning Man [plagiarized from a 1973 film, The Wicker Man] … [and] are drawing as much as $300 on the Internet.” That is a bit steep; but if someone could inform me where I could get them for, say, $250, I would gladly order a dozen.

■ Albert Brooks—filmmaker and actor—began as a funny guy. But that was long ago, and his later films, co-written with Monica Johnson, were progressively less funny, despite some nice bits. There are few of these in his latest, The Muse, and those mostly in the first half. The movie begins with the screenwriter Steven Phillips (Brooks) winning a humanitarian award in some smallish hotel banquet room—but are there such awards outside the Oscars? Anyway, he

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Jeffrey Hart

Jeffrey Hart is a contributor to National Review.

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What is imposing is the extensive and manifold hype the movie is getting. The press, TV, the Internet are full of it. I just read in the New York Times that “the voodoo doll-like stick figures . . . were based on an ancient runic figure called the Burning Man [plagiarized from a 1973 film, The Wicker Man] … [and] are drawing as much as $300 on the Internet.” That is a bit steep; but if someone could inform me where I could get them for, say, $250, I would gladly order a dozen.

■ Albert Brooks—filmmaker and actor—began as a funny guy. But that was long ago, and his later films, co-written with Monica Johnson, were progressively less funny, despite some nice bits. There are few of these in his latest, The Muse, and those mostly in the first half. The movie begins with the screenwriter Steven Phillips (Brooks) winning a humanitarian award in some smallish hotel banquet room—but are there such awards outside the Oscars? Anyway, he