In “Camera Man,” the critic Dana Stevens uses the biography of the great silent film clown as a lens to explore the early days of movies, the cultural forces that gave them birth and the social upheavals they in turn engendered.
Rob Weinert-Kendt
Rob Weinert-Kendt, an arts journalist and editor of American Theatre magazine, has written for The New York Times and Time Out New York.
Posted inArts & Culture, Television
HBO’s ‘Station Eleven’ follows the haunted survivors of a deadly pandemic
The journey of most of the characters in “Station Eleven” is from self-protective emotional withdrawal to vulnerability and connection.
Posted inArts & Culture, Theater
Broadway is (finally) embracing Black writers. But the work of diversifying theater is just getting started.
Can Black writers flourish in a marketplace dictated by white tastes?
Posted inArts & Culture, Film
Review: In Steven Spielberg’s ‘West Side Story,’ every element sings — and every moment counts
What this quintessential stage musical needed, apparently, was a thoroughgoing cinematic makeover.
Posted inArts & Culture, Film
Netflix’s ‘Tick, Tick…Boom!’ is a miraculous resurrection of an artist we lost too soon
“Tick, Tick … Boom!” is also a soul-deep tribute by Lin-Manuel Miranda to an artist who inspired him at a formative age.
Posted inArts & Culture, Television
You loved ‘Mare of Easttown.’ These British police dramas could be your next obsession.
These shows shine an intimate, even glaring light on humanity in its less flattering manifestations.
Posted inArts & Culture, Television
‘The White Lotus’ reveals the spiritual sickness of rich white people
The show’s true subject is nothing less than spiritual sickness, fueled by the existential dread of folks with no material wants who nevertheless don’t know what to do with their lives or how to spend them happily with each other.
Posted inArts & Culture, Theater
Shakespeare in the Park’s “Merry Wives” brings back the joy of live theater
Transcendent, communal moments like these, so long denied us by this still raging pandemic, have been worth the wait, and they are more than worth the trouble.
Posted inArts & Culture, Television
Amazon’s ‘Underground Railroad’ teaches the Black history we do not know well enough
The series executes a breathtaking high-wire act, threading speculative fiction a history most of us still do not know well enough.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Director Mike Nichols told beloved stories onscreen. His own life was a story of resilience and transcendence.
The highest tribute I can offer this biography is that it is not unlike a Nichols film itself: incisive, dense with detail yet somehow brisk.