Now largely owned by private equity firms, the big talent agencies have turned to producing films and shows—both representing and employing writers. That, say the writers, doesn’t work.
Movies
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
‘The Brink’: Inside Steve Bannon’s Plan to Ruin the World
After Breitbart, Brexit, and Trump, next up: smashing the European Union.
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
Will Oscars Go to Britain’s Fake History Films?
TAP Goes to the Oscars: Sidestepping history, Dunkirk and Darkest Hour are custom-made for Brexit-era Britain.
Posted inHealth and Social Policy
The Poverty on Disney’s Doorstep
TAP Goes to the Oscars: The Florida Project is a film about life as a poor kid. It doesn’t erase the innocence of childhood—or the harshness of poverty.
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
Ex Libris: A Conversation with Frederick Wiseman
In his latest film, the legendary documentarian journeys through the splendors of the New York Public Library and deconstructs the meaning of books, reading, and learning in the age of Trump.
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
The Vietnam War: A Conversation with Ken Burns
America’s foremost documentary filmmakers lift the curtain on the country’s psychic wounds in this stunning new history of our most divisive conflict since the Civil War.
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
‘Detroit’ and Charlottesville
Fifty years may separate the riots in the two cities, but the root causes and the remedies remain the same.
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
Jammed Reception
Everyone looked at Hedy Lamarr; no one saw a tech genius. After all, she was beautiful. A new film tells her story.
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
New Documentary Challenges the Rhetoric of the So-Called War on Coal
Exactly one week after Trump’s announcement that the United States would withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change, a new film from director Michael Bonfiglio premiered at National Geographic’s Washington, D.C.’s headquarters. From the Ashes closely examines the repercussions-environmental, health, economic-of something the Trump administration has not only denied, but has gone to great […]
Posted inCivil Rights in America
The Black Condition and the American Condition
Raoul Peck’s masterful film about James Baldwin, I Am Not Your Negro, reminds us that we are not free to choose the condition of our existence—a useful reminder at a time when the president insists that fear of the alien is the defining characteristic of the American condition.