Luchino Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers: Poverty and Possibility, Heroism and Decadence in Italy

How one family supports and exploits its members is shown—their connection to each other is strained, it breaks: the family is revealed as a primitive tribe, a complex but primitive tribe, part of a society that replicates (and inspires) the family’s impulses. Visconti, an aristocrat, treats these peasants and workers with a respect that is hard to imagine their equals in American film, especially those who are African-American or Latino, receiving even at this time: Rocco and his brothers are allowed moments of transcendence.

New Stereotypes: Carroll & Graf’s Freedom in this Village

The book assumes that race and homosexuality (blackness and gayness) are real categories, and draws part of its authority from the social and historical importance these subjects have been given by many people through the years, but the idea of race is as suspect as the idea of strict sexual orientations. Skin is not a significant emblem of existential being (despite hundreds of years of western racialism, and the 1930s Negritude movement in Africa, France, Haiti, and Martinique, and the 1960s/70s black arts movement in the United States).

A review of King of Cats by Blake Fraina

The book’s merit is in the presentation of a recognizable character, a popular cultural type—a seductive, reclusive, possibly bisexual musician—and the explanation for his character and contradictions and how these things relate to—are made possible by, and influence—the surrounding world.…

A review of Accused directed by Jacob Thuesen

The film’s early photography is clear, full of blues and greens, and is attractive without being glamorous. Henrik’s eyes are blue and, primarily, he seems to wear blue, gray, and black clothes. Henrik and Nina, with her shoulder-length light brown hair and trim figure, look like ordinary people—in early middle age, and they are attractive but not distractingly so.

Interview with Markus Zusak

The author of The Book Thief talks about some major themes in his book, genre distinctions, the importance of darkness, on being a literary superstar in America, Death the character, his mise en abyme, The Standover Man, his next project and lots more.