David Edelstein on Vice, Mary Poppins Returns, and On the Basis of Sex … Sara Holdren on To Kill a Mockingbird.
MOVIES / DAVID EDELSTEIN
Cheney Unchained Vice paints an ugly picture of American history’s most powerful VP.
WITH VICE, THE WRITER-DIRECTOR Adam McKay has devised a rollicking comic style for what amounts to an anti-hagiography, a scabrous portrait of Dick Cheney the Unholy One, cursed be He. The film tracks Cheney (Christian Bale under heavy but seamless makeup) from a young Wyoming screw up scolded after a second drunk driving arrest by his brittle, ambitious wife, Lynne (Amy Adams), to a scarily proficient legislative powermonger, to a global terrorist post-9/11, bombing and torturing willy-nilly. The movie’s fulcrum—which is also its prologue—is that day when TVmonitors teemed with images of burning towers as Vice-President Cheney coolly wrested power from the stumble bum president, George W. Bush—airborne, out of the loop—to the unease of Cabinet officials. “He [wields that power] like a ghost,” read the opening titles, “with most people having no idea who he is or where he came from.” Acknowledging the intense secrecy that continues to surround Cheney, those titles close with the assurance that the filmmakers have done their “fucking best.”
This story is from the December 24, 2018 edition of New York magazine.
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This story is from the December 24, 2018 edition of New York magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Early and Often: David Freedlander - Momentum vs. Machine The Trump and Harris campaigns battle it out for every last vote.
WIth two weeks left to go, the contours of the 2024 presidential election are clear: Both campaigns need voters who usually don’t vote, and Kamala Harris needs to bring the Democratic coalition, including its Trump-curious members, back home.While the Republican side plans to spend the remaining days of the contest trying to lure low-propensity voters to the polls, the Harris team will attempt to persuade voters of color to return to its side and will try to increase numbers among white voters in previously red suburbs.
Drowning in Slop - A thriving underground economy is clogging the internet with AI garbage-and it's only going to get worse.
SLOP started seeping into Neil Clarke's life in late 2022. Something strange was happening at Clarkesworld, the magazine. Clarke had founded in 2006 and built into a pillar of the world of speculative fiction. Submissions were increasing rapidly, but “there was something off about them,” he told me recently. He summarized a typical example: “Usually, it begins with the phrase ‘In the year 2250-something’ and then it goes on to say the Earth’s environment is in collapse and there are only three scientists who can save us. Then it describes them in great detail, each one with its own paragraph. And then—they’ve solved it! You know, it skips a major plot element, and the final scene is a celebration out of the ending of Star Wars.” Clarke said he had received “dozens of this story in various incarnations.”
The City Politic- The Other Eric Adams Scandal The NYPD shot a fare evader, a cop, and two bystanders. He defends it.
On Sunday, September 15, Derell Mickles hopped a turnstile, got asked to leave by cops, then entered the subway again ten minutes later through an emergency exit. This was at the Sutter Avenue L station, out by his mother's house, five stops from the end of the line. Police said they noticed he was holding a folded knife. They followed him up the stairs to the elevated train, asking him 38 times to drop the weapon.
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