Art that endures is art that evolves, that speaks to us across time and experience, that fully reveals itself only when we mature into its sensibilities. As Anthony Lane wrote in 2012, “The Portrait of a Lady that I read in my late teens bears the scantest relation to The Portrait of a Lady that I read today.” A book […]
Author: Dante Ciampaglia
Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch is fun but could use a good edit, by Dante A. Ciampaglia
There’s a small group of filmmakers whose latest work gets me into a theater no questions asked. Wes Anderson is near the top of that list. Beginning with Rushmore (1998) straight through to Isle of Dogs (2018), even as the films went further and further into a meticulously curated twee formalism (parts of The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), for instance, […]
Storm Lake: A Call to Arms for the Future of American Journalism, by Dante A. Ciampaglia
American journalism is on the ropes. The nation has lost one in four newspapers — 2,100 publications — since 2019. (That number has surely grown during the pandemic.) Half of what’s left is owned by vulture capitalists, private equity firms and hedge funds that have perverted local media ownership into cynical resource extraction. Newsrooms are gutted, and what’s left is […]
Hollywood’s Forever War on Terrorism, by Dante A. Ciampaglia
All of it was inconceivable — the scale, the carnage, the optics. To watch the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in real time, especially on television, was to thrash desperately for order as everything fell away. For many of us, that tenuous toehold was Hollywood. “This is like something out of a movie” was a natural first reaction. With more […]
Tough and Urgent Documentary “Homeroom” Earns Top Marks, by Dante A. Ciampaglia
Peter Nicks’ exceptional documentary Homeroom, which debuts on Hulu August 12, is the third film in a trilogy focused on the residents of Oakland, California, and their fraught relationship with public institutions. The first, The Waiting Room (2012), centered on health care, specifically Highland Hospital; The Force (2017) was concerned with policing. Homeroom tackles education — Nicks admits to being […]
“The Amusement Park,” a Lost Film from George A. Romero, Rises from the Dead
Carnivals and amusement parks have always held the allure of the illicit. Slightly malevolent barkers beckon you into sideshows promising thrills, chills, and horrors beyond your imaginations. Scantily clad acrobats, trapeze artists, and magician’s assistants infuse the atmosphere with sex and desire. Ragtag clowns wear lurid makeup that can never quite hide their I’ve-seen-way-too-much eyes. Creaky rides, seemingly always on […]
The Long Overdue Return of Melvin Van Peeble’s Essential Debut Feature “The Story of a Three Day Pass” By Dante A. Ciampaglia
When Melvin Van Peebles moved from San Francisco to Hollywood to make movies in the late 1950s, Tinseltown power brokers took one look at the young Black Air Force veteran (and director of a few short films) and offered him a job — running an elevator. When he pushed for something more, let’s say, creative, they said he could be […]
Chasing Childhood Opens a Necessary Conversation About the State of Growing Up by Dante A. Ciampaglia
The New York Margaret Munzer Loeb and Eden Wurmfeld grew up in was very different from the one their kids know: more crime and less technology, greater danger and fewer options for parental surveillance. Yet they had a freedom — to move around the city, to hang out with friends, to play — that their children, like so many in […]
New Documentary Koshien is a Beautiful Film About Baseball — and Japan, by Dante A. Ciampaglia
Baseball seems determined to drive away as many people as possible. After seeing the mantle of the national pastime snatched away by football, the MBAs and lawyers who run the game decided the best way to get back into fans’ good graces was through interminable games built around clown-car bullpens (one pitcher on the roster to face one batter before […]
New Documentary “America’s Last Little Italy” Speaks to All Italian Americans, by Dante A. Ciampaglia
It’s nervy to call something the last of anything, especially when it comes to neighborhoods. But as residents of The Hill in St. Louis see it, their community isn’t just the city’s Little Italy—it’s the last one in all of America. Scusi? What was that? You can almost hear the recriminations and curses coming from North Beach in San Francisco […]