The sudden death of Carlos Fuentes (1928 – 2012), Mexican novelist, social critic and man of letters, this week at the age of 83, has cast a shadow over the nation just weeks before voters here will go to the polls to elect new leaders, including the president, in national elections. Often overlooked is the fact that Carlos Fuentes played a key role in Mexico’s transition from a one-party state to a democratic one. Perhaps more than any other single Mexican, Fuentes worked to lay the intellectual foundation for Mexico becoming a functioning democracy.
Lee Polevoi, Highbrow Magazine’s chief book critic, is a graduate of Amherst College and the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. He has received a Bread Loaf writing scholarship and a screenwriting fellowship sponsored by Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment, Steven Spielberg’s studio. He is the author of a novel, The Moon in Deep Winter, and is currently completing a new novel, The Confessions of Gabriel Ash.
The movie director plays the creator of a miniature world, the organizer of a controlled sphere. As Ingmar Bergman once said, “To shoot a film is to organize an entire universe.” It’s a demanding task, playing master of a mini-universe. And major problems occur whenever humans decide to play God. For instance, what happens to the actors and technicians who devote themselves to a God who’s a tad insane?
During times of economic crisis, immigrants are often the scapegoats of all problems, from crime to unemployment. Far-right parties, in particular, make attacking immigrants the core of their programs. None more so than the Greek Golden Dawn, an unabashed neo-Nazi party, which even goes so far as to enforce its election slogan “Let’s rid this country from the filth” by attacking immigrants in the streets. Anti-immigrant sentiments are rampant throughout Europe, and they are not only reserved for the far right.
Peter Link is a legendary composer, dexterous lyricist, and eminent music producer and artistic director who resides in New York City. He has worked on Broadway, in television, on films, and he has also composed for the ballet. Link has been nominated for two Tony Awards and sold millions of records. He is the CEO and director of Watchfire Music. Link recently spoke with Highbrow Magazine about his career, his passion for inspirational music, and how a young Alicia Keys once helped his son to learn to play the piano.
“Albert Nobbs” didn’t set box office records during its theatrical run, but it garnered enough critical acclaim to earn three Oscar nominations, including nods for best actress and best supporting actress. Glenn Close landed in the former category for her outstanding portrayal of the title character, a 19th-century Englishwoman pretending to be a man so she can retain her job as a hotel waiter.
On Sunday, May 13, Mexican police found 49 mutilated bodies, believed by some to be migrants, on a road that connects the industrial city of Monterrey with the United States border. The corpses had their hands, heads, and feet chopped off, making them difficult to identify. Drug cartels have increasingly used the public display of corpses as warning to other cartels or criminal organizations.
How movies are made will affect the format of the home-video and video rentals. VHS had petered out by the mid-2000s with the introduction of the DVD. The DVD format had a higher resolution and better sound quality than VHS, but it was expensive to remaster films for the new format This issue has repeated itself with the existence of Blu-ray discs -- most classic films aren’t available on Blu-ray because of the digital and photochemical process it takes to change formats. But more and more companies are switching to streaming.
The sudden death of Carlos Fuentes (1928 – 2012), Mexican novelist, social critic and man of letters, this week at the age of 83, has cast a shadow over the nation just weeks before voters here will go to the polls to elect new leaders, including the president, in national elections. Often overlooked is the fact that Carlos Fuentes played a key role in Mexico’s transition from a one-party state to a democratic one. Perhaps more than any other single Mexican, Fuentes worked to lay the intellectual foundation for Mexico becoming a functioning democracy.
The movie director plays the creator of a miniature world, the organizer of a controlled sphere. As Ingmar Bergman once said, “To shoot a film is to organize an entire universe.” It’s a demanding task, playing master of a mini-universe. And major problems occur whenever humans decide to play God. For instance, what happens to the actors and technicians who devote themselves to a God who’s a tad insane?
