(photo from K. Silam Mohammad’s lostintheframe.blogspot.com) “The Pawnbroker” stars Rod Steiger as a Holocaust survivor who becomes a pawnbroker in Spanish Harlem in the early-60′s. This places the action 20 years out from WWII, roughly the same time that has passed since the first Desert Storm — not a long time.  It must have been [...]

A charming time-capsule starring another charismatic but forgotten actor, Dane Clark (not the execrable Dane Cook), alongside a young Sidney Poitier, “Go Man Go!” features a bebop score by Slim Galliard, who was a favorite of Jack Kerouac. I wonder what the connection with “On the Road” is — I remember the phrase “Go Man [...]

Craig Seligman begins by saying “I didn’t want to write a book with a hero and a villain, but Sontag kept making it hard for me.”, a statement which reflects my primary objection to this book: too much Craig Seligman. Perhaps because they are closely integrated with well-thought-out literary criticism, I found his personal asides [...]