War, Community, and the Cinema: Front Lines of Community: Hollywood Between War and Democracy by Hermann Kappelhof and Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War by Mark Harris Joshua Sperling October 2020 Book Reviews War is a limit-experience for human communities. In the modern era this has often meant nation states, which during periods of total conflict become communities of bounded fate. In these circumstances, human re...
The Critic as Creator: Better Living through Criticism, by A.O. Scott Joshua Sperling June 2017 Book Reviews A.O. Scott is one of the few film critics working today whose fuller personality comes through in their prose. From his weekly reviews for the New York Times – always animated, hyper-readable, and often subtly ...
The Essentials of Narrative: The 51st New York Film Festival Joshua Sperling December 2013 Festival Reports After twenty-five years under the stewardship of Richard Peña, the New York Film Festival presented its 51st event with a new director, Kent Jones. The selection committee largely honoured NYFF’s model of showi...
