Raritania

No one will ever admit it at a meeting of composition faculty, but it is no secret that students commonly find taking a composition course a...

The shooting of the last Bond film, No Time to Die , wrapped up back in 2019, and the film itself came out in late 2021. This makes it almos...

Those who read Honore de Balzac's Lost Illusions might be surprised to encounter in it the employment of the claqueur--the professional...

Two-and-a-half years ago the COVID-19 pandemic dealt the film industry a truly unprecedented blow, with the (correct) anticipation of collap...

All of us have gaps in our knowledge, and the contents of Balzac's Human Comedy were one of mine until relatively late. It has seemed to...

Looking at the schedule of Hollywood releases for 2023 I was struck by just how packed it is with sequels, reboots and the rest --perhaps ev...

Labor Day has come and gone, marking the end of summer, and making it possible to appraise the season in full. Doing so it looks like ther...

With a new school year upon us it seems natural that the talk is turning again to the matter of the schools--with that talk lent an addition...

A generation on Ray Kurzweil's The Age of Spiritual Machines still stands as perhaps the most influential single book to come out of th...

Not long ago I had occasion to discuss Jack London's classic novel Martin Eden here , and in particular its brilliant conveyance of wha...

Robin McAlpine recently penned an interesting piece on the politics of current United Kingdom Labour Party leader Keir Starmer . Not so lo...

As a new school year begins the education system is again in the headlines, with much talk of fed-up teachers leaving the profession on such...

With the second week of August already upon us it seems fair to say that Top Gun: Maverick has taken the box office crown for the season (a...

With August upon us the summer film season is fast drawing to a close--the more in as the last really big release, Thor: Love and Thunder , ...

In Indiewire Tom Brueggemann made the case that Top Gun 2 has "saved the movies." His argument goes that in a Hollywood which ha...