John Powers

Peeling Away The Layers In A 'Portrait Of Jason'

John Powers — Thu, 02 May 2013 19:20:00 +0000

If reality TV has a redeeming value, it's that it teaches you to be suspicious of claims that you're seeing real people doing real things. This is especially so in an age when memoirs bristle with made-up events, and everyone from the Kardashians to the Obamas orchestrate their media coverage.

A Measured Look At Roth As The Writer Turns 80

John Powers — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 15:27:00 +0000

In Chinua Achebe's novel The Anthills of the Savannah, one of the characters says, "Poets don't give prescriptions. They give headaches."

The same is true of novelists, and none more so than Philip Roth. If any writer has ever enjoyed rattling people's skulls, it's this son of Newark, N.J., who's currently enjoying something of a victory lap in the media on the occasion of his 80th birthday.

Voting Pinochet Out Was More Than Just A Yes Or 'No'

John Powers — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 18:40:00 +0000

These days politics and advertising go hand in hand. Mayors stage photo ops. The Bush administration compared the Iraq war to rolling out a new product. And just last year, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney spent nearly a billion dollars running for president. If you're an American, such wall-to-wall marketing has come to seem a natural phenomenon, like Hurricane Sandy or LeBron James.

Of course, it's not natural. It's as man-made as any building. I've never seen this shown any more clearly than in No, the Oscar-nominated film by the Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larrain.

A Mystery That Explores 'The Rage' Of New Ireland

John Powers — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 16:58:00 +0000

The Irish novelist John McGahern once remarked that his country stayed a 19th-century society for so long that it nearly missed the 20th century. But in the mid-1990s, Ireland's economy took off, turning the country from a poor backwater into a so-called Celtic Tiger with fancy restaurants, chrome-clad shops and soaring real estate values. The country was transformed — until things came tumbling down during the 2008 financial crisis.

This rapid rise and even rapider fall may have taken its toll on ordinary people, but it was a godsend for a mystery writer.

Revisiting, Reappraising Cimino's 'Heaven's Gate'

John Powers — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 20:44:00 +0000

The director Francois Truffaut once remarked that it takes as much time and energy to make a bad movie as to make a good one. He was right, but I would add one thing: It takes extraordinary effort to make a truly memorable flop.

The best example is Heaven's Gate, the hugely expensive 1980 movie by Michael Cimino that is the most famous cinematic disaster of my lifetime.