Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Sunday 11 January 2015


Sunday reading on nybooks.com: On Charlie Hebdo and the tradition of outrageous French satire, four current films (SelmaThe Imitation GameInherent ViceLeviathan), and President Obama’s disappointing record on rights.
THIS ISSUE SPONSORED BY ZED BOOKS
 
Robert Darnton
Paris has been drained of laughter this week. Next week, the kiosks will be full of a resurrected Charlie Hebdo, but it is difficult to see when the human comedy will once again look funny.
 
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Elizabeth Drew
By distorting an essential truth about the relationship between Lyndon Johnson and Dr. Martin Luther King, Selma has opened an overdue debate over how much truth the movie industry owes to the public.
 
Christian Caryl
The Imitation Game seems determined to suggest maximum tension between Alan Turning and a blinkered society. But this completely destroys any coherent telling of what Turing and his colleagues were trying to do.
 
Geoffrey O’Brien
To say that Paul Thomas Anderson has faithfully and successfully adapted Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice to the screen is another way of saying that he has changed it into something entirely different.
 
Masha Gessen
Andrey Zvyagintsev’s riveting Leviathan is precise about Russia: the corruption, inequality, and ultimate hopelessness that drive its plot are becoming only more evident and pronounced in the current meltdown of the economy.
 
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Stephen Greenblatt on At Berkeley
Dan Chiasson on Boyhood
Francine Prose on Burning Bush
David Bromwich on Citizenfour
Zoë Heller on Gone Girl
J. Hoberman on Manakamana
Jenny Uglow on Mr. Turner
 
Kenneth Roth
Whether the issue is torture, Guantánamo, military commissions, drone attacks, or electronic surveillance, Barack Obama’s tenure has been one of disappointment for those who had hoped for a more consistently rights-respecting approach to combating terrorism.