Author Archive: Peter Jakobsen
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
(dir. M Nicholls) (1966) Fortify yourself before attending a party at George and Mildreds’. More Albee-inspired drink and depravity with great overheated performances (a big tick in particular for Sandy Dennis).
Continue Reading →Sabbath’s Theater
(by Philip Roth) An extremely funny bucket of filth, King Lear and Fool combined as a depraved and exiled puppeteer, keeping us in suspension, bearing and grinning it and beating a dead whore, alive and cooking….
Continue Reading →Laughter in the Dark
(by Vladimir Nabokov) Also known as Kamera obskura, “meant as an elaborate parody” but “one of my worst novels” is in fact a pitilessly cruel, slamming-door joke on a cuckold who is morally, aesthetically and physically blind.
Continue Reading →A Likely Story
(by Donald E. Westlake) (1984) Very funny tale of hack writer (of “The Pink Garage Gang”, “Coral Sea”, “Golf Courses of America”, etc.) trying to get up a Christmas Book with contributions from various real celebrities that respond with a mixture of indifference, misunderstanding or hideous enthusiasm, while contending with a mother-obsessed editor (‘I’m fine…I’m peachy. Destroyed at f****** lunch with a writer. Home a basket case.’)
Continue Reading →Atlantic City
Image by Bordercolliez
(directed by Louis Malle) (1981) Atlantic City, a style-free Las Vegas with saltwater, is the perfect place for Malle to probe America’s dark corners, with Burt Lancaster (a small time chiseller and errand-boy, seeking an emotional resurgence) and Susan Sarandon (a cocktail waitress down on her luck) playing a great pair of losers. How something so seedy can bloom so sweetly is a tribute to the entire cast and crew.
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