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JIM JARMUSCH’S ‘ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE’“How could you have lived for so long...
© 2016 by James Clark When is a vampire movie not a vampire movie? When it’s a Jim Jarmusch vampire movie! You want to take the blood-drinking as part of an unearthly frenzy, and you’re dead on...
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Caldecott Medal Contender: Be A Friend
by Sam Juliano The advent of the mime artist dates all the way back to ancient Greece. The name was derived from a masked dancer known as Pantomimus, and a play by the great tragedian, Aeschylus,...
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Caldecott Medal Contender: Come Home Angus
by Sam Juliano There is a sense of pictorial contentment on the dedication page of Patrick Downes’s Come Home Angus, as our soon to be bi-polar youthful protagonist holds on to his dachshund via a...
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Merry Christmas on Monday Morning Diary (December 19)
by Sam Juliano By the time the next Monday Morning Diary is posted Christmas will be a day old. Hence I want to wish all our readers and staff and friends here and overseas a Merry Christmas. On a...
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Caldecott Medal Contender: A Friend for Mole
by Sam Juliano Only the hardest of hearts would fail to fall for mole. In the end he turned out to be not only a good skate and a purveyor of effervescence, but he proved himself that rare bird – ah...
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J.D. Lafrance on Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho
by J.D. Lafrance They say that the best stories are right in front of our eyes. No one is more aware of this idea than filmmaker Gus Van Sant. In his first two motion pictures, Mala Noche (1986) and...
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Caldecott Medal Contender: Maple & Willow’s Christmas Tree
by Sam Juliano A family car ride to a tree farm in early December is for many holiday aficionados the purest expression of the Christmas spirit. A real tree, cut and wrapped in mesh and mounted on...
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Caldecott Medal Contender: Miracle Man: The Story of Jesus
by Sam Juliano Miracle Man: The Story of Jesus is electrifying in theme, design and font scale. Though the subject is perhaps the most visited of any in world history, the approach here is...
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Caldecott Medal Contender: Rudas Nino’s Horrendous Hermanitas
by Sam Juliano During the closing act of Nino Wrestles the World, readers learn against all reasonable odds that the only way to handle Las Hermanitas is to join ranks with them. After death defying...
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CHRISTMAS 1943 – NEAR AND DEAR
© 2016 James Clark Long before there was Cyber Monday there was the more direct World War II, presenting, among other things, a weighty Christmas shopping dilemma. Wrapped up in the glorious...
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Caldecott Medal Contender: The Lost Gift
by Sam Juliano The Lost Gift: A Christmas Story is predicated on that rarest of occurrences in this age of climate change, late-launching winters and the annual transients who prefer a yuletide...
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Fences and Lion on Monday Morning Diary (December 26)
by Sam Juliano And so another Christmas has passed into the annals of history. We in the northeast had a moderate day temperature-wise, and as always got together with family in a fabulous location....
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Caldecott Medal Contender: Before I Leave
by Sam Juliano Parting is such sweet sorrow. Aside from a tragic passing there can be no more traumatic event in a young person’s life than the heartbreak caused by relocation. While the emotional...
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Picture Book Review: Might-E!
by Sam Juliano Might-E is a story about an introverted Indian-American girl since birth who needs no more than some symbolic prodding to break through her shell and develop some much needed social...
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J.D. Lafrance on the Coen Brothers’ The Hudsucker Proxy
by J.D. Lafrance It had to happen. After an impressive run of critically acclaimed independent films, culminating with Barton Fink (1991), which won the top three awards at the Cannes Film Festival,...
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TOM FORD’S NOCTURNAL ANIMALS “Is she alright?”/ “She’s dead.”
© 2016 by James Clark One of the defining features of contemporary history consists in design elbowing art out of the exclusive spotlight it has enjoyed since the days of living in caves. A...
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Caldecott Medal Contender: The Night Gardener
by Sam Juliano Some may be inclined to label it a cross between Frances Hodgson Burnett’s 1911 novel The Secret Garden and Tim Burton’s exquisite 1990 dark fantasy film Edward Scissorhands, but in...
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Caldecott Medal Contender: Willa
by Sam Juliano Question: What female writer, one of America’s greatest literary figures, was born shortly after the end of the Civil War, is most famously known for writing novels about growing up on...
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Caldecott Medal Contender: Shy
by Sam Juliano Deborah Freedman’s Shy is the most metaphysical picture book of 2016. It is also unique in that the prime allure of its captivating art are alternating hues that are attuned to the...
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