Springtime in a Small Town is the latest offering from one of China’s great Fifth Generation directors, those artists who mined the horrors of the Cultural Revolution to devastating cinematic effect in the mid-’90s. The screaming mobs at political purge sessions, the heaps of classical texts burning in the streets, the hollow-cheeked famine that resulted […]
Noy Thrupkaew
Noy Thrupkaew is a Prospect senior correspondent.
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Big-Mac Attack
Super Size Me smacks viewers early on with a money shot. Morgan Spurlock, the star and director of the documentary, is jawing through a Super Size meal with naughty elation. It’s his first Super Size ever! Five minutes later, and the grin is fading. Some minutes more, and the director is complaining of a McStomachache. […]
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Immigrant Song
The immigrants in the documentary The New Americans are indeed the tired and the poor to whom the Statue of Liberty extends her welcome. But faceless, huddled masses they are not, thanks to this series, which follows five immigrant stories over the course of four years. Debuting today, tomorrow, and wednesday on PBS (check local […]
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Animal Magnetism
The newspaper is fluttering in the driveway. In any other episode of The Sopranos, Mafia patriarch Tony (James Gandolfini) would come flapping out in his bathrobe to pick it up. But at the beginning of the HBO drama’s fifth season, Tony’s long gone, thrown out by his wife Carmela (Edie Falco) at the end of […]
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Last Tango
Sex and the City’s last scenes seemed to echo its very first: Both the series’ opening credits and its concluding moments feature a self-satisfied Carrie Bradshaw (played by Sarah Jessica Parker) strutting down the streets of her beloved Manhattan. There they part, however. In the opening sequence, a bus going through a puddle sprays the […]
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Director’s Cut
It’s a rare TV rerun that can both inspire nostalgia and impress with its prescience. Tanner ’88 fits the bill — a “documentary” miniseries that follows the presidential campaign of fictional candidate Jack Tanner (played by Michael Murphy) against the real-life likes of pre-Donna Hart Gary Hart and pre-Viagra Bob Dole. The series owes part […]
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Daughters of the Revolution
“I would not call myself a feminist,” says Natalie, a University of Michigan junior. “I’m experiencing a lot of the advantages that feminists worked to achieve, and I’m thankful. … But I don’t know that women are still that much uneven from men, especially in the workplace.” Told that on average a woman today makes […]
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The King and Thai
When talking history, Thais can only restrain themselves for so long before they trot out a much-cherished fact: Their homeland is the sole country in Southeast Asia never to have been colonized. And so it is no surprise that more nationalistic citizens find Hollywood incursions — upon both domestic box-office receipts and the telling of […]
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Queer Factor
They’re our latest superheroes, expertly coiffed and outfitted, ready to blaze a path of good hygiene and high fashion through the Animal Houses of America. Grooming guru Kyan Douglas, fashion maven Carson Kressley, food expert Ted Allen, interior designer Thom Filicia and “culture vulture” Jai Rodriguez are the gay miracle workers on Bravo TV’s new […]
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Cut Below
Cable channel FX has decided to give professional life — as shown on TV — a makeover. Literally. FX wasn’t about to trot out any of the old gray mares of workplace shows — the comforting cops-n-lawyers format of Law & Order, the faux drama of ER‘s doctors, the ludicrous hysterics pumped into The Practice […]
