Tag: art criticism

2,074 words

Where I come from, although it was good, hard-working people trying to raise a family respectably, there was a lot of organized crime, and I saw a lot of violence where I grew up.
-Martin Scorsese

With the recent death of film director David Lynch, there has been much commentary on his place in the pantheon of American film directors. Lynch was a one-off, with a directorial CV including movies which bordered on horror without ever actually being in that genre. But, wherever Lynch comes in any league table of great American directors, there is one name which would be close to the top, if not in first place, in any avid film buff’s list: Martin Scorsese. (more…)

3,632 words

Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 classic The Godfather is one of the most commercially successful, critically lionized, and culturally influential films of all time. It is also filled with important political insights that are useful to the Right.

Based on Mario Puzo’s 1969 novel of the same name, The Godfather was filmed on location in New York City and Sicily. It stars Marlon Brando as the godfather Vito Corleone, Al Pacino as Vito’s youngest son Michael, James Caan as his oldest son Santino (“Sonny”), (more…)

1,979 words

In early June of 1990, the Navidsons flew to Seattle for a wedding. When they returned, something in the house had changed. Though they had only been away for four days, the change was enormous. It was not, however, obvious—like for instance a fire, a robbery, or an act of vandalism. Quite the contrary, the horror was atypical.
-Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

I would rather not go
Back to the old house.
There’s too many bad memories.
-The Smiths, “Back to the Old House” (more…)

3,880 words

I will be mercilessly “spoiling” in the following “vampirological” film review, otherwise it would bore me a bit to write it. I have long been looking forward to Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu, the second remake of the classic German silent film by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau. I wasn’t disappointed (I don’t expect much from movies these days), but I wasn’t exactly happy with it either. (more…)

2,771 words

I’ve often said that to most Americans history begins with Elvis Presley. TV especially is the land of the magic kingdom; not of Disney, but ephemera. It’s noteworthy that in 2022 HBO presented The Gilded Age, a series set in 1880 when America, having been massively industrialized during the Civil War, now projected that technological and economic power in both politics and culture. (more…)

565 words

Robert Eggers is an American filmmaker who has released four films. The Witch (2015), set in colonial New England, is wonderfully atmospheric and deeply disturbing. The Lighthouse (2019), set in nineteenth-century New England, is the least of his films. It is highly atmospheric, but I found the story unintelligible as well as deeply distasteful. The Northman (2022), an adaptation of the original Hamlet story, is Eggers’ best film. Nosferatu (2024), Eggers’ latest film, is a remake of F. W. Murnau’s silent classic Nosferatu (1922), based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), which is one of my favorite stories, in all its variations. (more…)

1,205 words

While their films couldn’t possibly be more different, David Lynch and Robert Eggers seem to have one thing in common: making movies by, for, and about whites without being explicit white advocates themselves. From Eraserhead (1977) to Inland Empire (2006), Lynch’s movies abound with whiteness, from the casting choices to the detailed examination of life in the suburbs to not even having the occasional nod towards black “culture” or worship like you will see with many mainstream directors today. When blacks do show up in Lynch’s movies, they tend to be either irrelevant to the plot or downright antagonistic. (more…)

3,144 words

You can preorder Spencer J. Quinn’s Critical Daze here.

Spencer J. Quinn
Critical Daze: The No College Club – Book 2
San Francisco: Counter-Currents 2024

Critical Daze follows on Spencer J. Quinn’s No College Club, reviewed at TOO by F. Roger Devlin. As Devlin notes, there is probably no area in greater need of pro-White messaging than fiction aimed at young adults (aged 12–18). And, although it is aimed at this age group, I found it to be a riveting page-turner in which I became immersed in the characters both good and bad. Throughout I was curious how it would all play out, and was quite satisfied by the ending. (more…)

3,635 words

I’ve been involved in theater off and on for over forty years, acting, writing, and not succeeding at it in any worldly terms. I’m an okay character actor, I’ve written good plays that are considered well-written, literate, humorous, and that no one wants to put on.  (more…)

2,547 words

Tom Wolfe
The Painted Word
New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1975 (many editions since)

Long before he died, Tom Wolfe deeded his archives to the New York Public Library (NYPL). When he passed on in 2018, the NYPL put up a little “pop-up” exhibition in commemoration. It would have been bigger, but the Library had just done a slap-up interview and celebration with Wolfe a year and a half earlier, and had mounted another small display of Wolfeiana a year before that. (more…)

The Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (EKKM), Tallin, Estonia

1,615 words

When You Say
We Belong to the Light
We Belong to the Thunder

July–October 2019

First of all, the actual building and location of the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia has a great, youthful, Do-It-Yourself aesthetic. It’s informally known as the EKKM (cool). Its entrance is a dirt trail (keeps the art snobs away). It’s located in a small cluster of falling down Communist-era factory buildings (awesome). (more…)

Sky Hopinka

764 words

I went with some friends to see a Native American art show called: What Was Always Yours and Never Lost. The group show (seven video installations) was curated by Sky Hopinka who is a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation and a descendant of the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians.

My friends and I were sorry to learn we’d missed the big powwow held on opening night (more…)

2,046 words

Francis Bacon, 1909–1992

Francis Bacon was an extraordinary and extreme artist and one of the greatest painters of the twentieth century. He was also a Right-wing elitist and individualist who approached the problem of creating art in the twentieth century with an honesty and intensity that have not really been matched. Generally speaking, it is probably true to say that most of the Right dismiss Bacon along with other contemporary artists mainly because of his unique treatment of the human form. But in my view his art enunciates a violent assault on the complacency of conventional thinking and perception that should be seen as deeply consonant with the project of the Alt Right. (more…)