When Martin Scorsese puts away his strutting cocks – his raging bulls, comedy kings and Wall Street wolves – the results can be astounding. This quieter, lesser-seen director is the one who gave us ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’ (1988), the exquisite period piece ‘The Age of Innocence’ (1993) and now ‘Silence’, a furiously alive and concentrated parable about […]
“Violence only benefits those who have nothing to lose.” – Jean Paul Sartre The great pianist virtuoso Duke Ellington once said that, “the masters, frightened by the silence of their slaves, will order them to sing, so as not to give them an opportunity to think and forge a plan of revenge and liberation”. A […]
Feelings about James Joyce’s Ulysses tend to fall roughly into one of two camps: the religiously reverent or the exasperated/bored/overwhelmed. As popular examples of the former, we have the many thousand celebrants of Bloomsday—June 16th, the date on which the novel is set in 1904. These revelries approach the level of saints’ days, with re-enactments […]