The meaning was an attack on values as such. As Ayn Rand says in the Romantic Manifesto, art connects to one’s deepest, metaphysical values.
ARTS
Mozart, Mediocrity, and the Administrative State
Every highly productive person – we don’t even have to speak of geniuses here – often ends up surrounded by resentful and mediocre people who have too much time on their hands. They use whatever limited talents they have to plot, confound, confuse, and ultimately wreck their betters. The demand to “comply” is always the watchword: it’s a tool of destruction.
Netflix Delivers Salvo for Free Expression
With Nine Little Words to Employees: ‘Netflix May Not Be the Best Place for You.’ Netflix is no longer trying to please everyone, and that’s a win for free expression.
The Academy Awards Rewards Violence
The distinction evaded in the condemnation of Chris Rock’s joke and the apologetics for Will Smith’s act of violence is the difference between speech and physical force.
The Woke Awards: Racial Quotas Cheapen Oscar Awards
Today’s award shows aren’t about recognizing what’s best. They’re about pleasing the left.
Highly Rated Documentary ‘Uncle Tom’ Blacklisted by Hollywood
Of the last 10 Oscar winners for Best Documentary, none has a higher IMDb rating than “Uncle Tom.” None. Only one matched its 8.9 rating. See you at the Academy Awards?
Motion Picture Academy “Diversity” Guidelines are Based on The Wrong Premise
Actors should be judged on their acting, and movies should be judged on their overall quality.
A Dearth of Eagles – Chapter One: The Writer
A excerpt from Andrew Bernstein’s novel — A Dearth of Eagles — a fictional work tells the story of freedom fighters during Communism’s final years,
‘Uncle Tom,’ The Movie
The film simply asks: “Why is there no respectful disagreement in the black community? Why are great black thinkers like Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams and Shelby Steele ignored or marginalized by the black and mainstream media?”
Bombshell (2019) is a Dud
The problem with Bombshell is that it doesn’t take women — or men — in any industry seriously.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’s Flaws are Fundamental
The Star Wars inversion from 1977’s can-do Americanism to blank Nineties reboot and post-9/11 tribalism is complete. JJ Abrams directs and Kathleen Kennedy guides as Disney funds this mashup of mysticism and mainstreamed “social justice” pap.
Move Review: A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
The two-hour drama plugs Fred Rogers’ ideal that living for your own sake, “without hurting yourself or others”, is ultimately like making for yourself heaven on earth.
The Joker Movie: Making Outcasts Into Monsters
The Joker depicts with a penetrating portrayal by Joaquin Phoenix of the much-maligned, non-college-bred white male, which is why the “social justice” thugs hate this film sight unseen, the various factors that breed one of today’s most persecuted minorities, the American outcast, into monsters.
Literature and the Quest for Meaning by Lisa VanDamme
How classic literature can contribute to the vital quest for meaning.
The Last Emperor
Scott Holleran on Bertolucci’s muted, mythological, China-themed masterpiece.
Philosopher Robert Mayhew on Ayn Rand’s Novel: We the Living
We the Living is not about Soviet Russia in 1925–its a novel about any dictatorship, anywhere, and hopefully it will prevent one in the United States.
Appreciating “Gone With the Wind” (1939) as a Great Work of Art
Gone with the Wind is an expression of the ability of the individual to resist the times, the trials and ruins of the day, rise and never let one’s ego be destroyed.
Falling in Love with Poetry, Part 2
With a symphonic integration of all the resources of language, great love poets take the most elusive nuances, thrills, mysteries, and motifs of love and throw them into sharp relief.
Falling in Love with Poetry, Part 1
Experience the power of poetry to sharpen our vision, intensify our feelings, deepen our souls, and expand our capacity to love.
The Government Against Santa Claus
Feds to Crack Down on Santa Claus
‘The Incredibles 2’ Satisfies
With the same voice cast and writer and director, Brad Bird, as the 2004 original, this Pixar sequel, which is being released 14 years after its animated characters debuted, offers more of the same. By my estimate, and I enjoyed The Incredibles with qualifications,...
Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
Rogers sought to establish for the child a benevolent orientation to reality.
‘Solo’ Taps ‘Star Wars’ Ethos: Fans Can Rejoice Over Ron Howard’s Han Solo Movie
Unlike the abysmal Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Solo Emphasizes Story Telling Over Lefty Propaganda and Special Effects
Considering 2008’s ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, written by Eric Roth (Munich, which was morally repugnant) and directed by David Fincher (Zodiac, which was miserable) is breathtaking and, on purely cinematic grounds, it is a grand three hours, as the tagline says, of life...