Scary Movies at the New Yorker Festival
I love The New Yorker; it is an elegant riposte to European snootiness about the US. If anyone ever speaks slightingly about Americans I refer them to this erudite and amusing magazine - it tends to stem the casual racism. Over on the Points of View message board I've been asking for suggestions about The Culture Show - what we cover and how we do so; the responses have been very interesting. Some people would like us to be doing more traditional high art; some want coverage of more cutting edge, eclectic things; while others dread a solemn, stuffy approach. The New Yorker feels like a publication which has to cover a similar range of tone and subject matter. In the you can read about John Stuart Mill, illegal logging or music producer Timbaland: some may object to some of the sillier or (at the other end of the scale) more lengthy articles but the variety seems to be the point.
The cover of The New Yorker from October 2008
Next month sees the start of the New Yorker Festival and although I will not be in attendance, it has in previous years been possible to watch many of the events on the website. You can with Sigur Ros, Errol Morris, Orhan Pamuk, Judd Apatow and others. This year's line-up includes Haruki Murakami, Guillermo del Toro, Art Spiegelman and Hideo Nakata. The last of these events (a panel discussion about horror) has prompted a blog entry by Ben Greenman about the . His choices are good - I think that Texas Chainsaw Masacre and Night of the Hunter are brilliant, and very frightening, films while Mulholland Drive is an interesting choice. My top five would include Don't Look Now and The Shining (obvious, I know) but - despite the fact that I think David Lynch is one of the directors most adept at the horror genre - I'm not sure that I would put a single film by him into this category. Although I only saw Inland Empire once I did find it very scary (and funny), so perhaps I would add it to the list. Unfortunately, I'm unable to say this via the New Yorker's blog as it doesn't seem to accept comments - a quite baffling approach. A blog without comments is far stranger than a magazine without a letters page, and I would say that a publication such as the New Yorker could be doing more online with its readership. Am I wrong? Do you find it a refreshing novelty that you can't comment?
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