Sunday links

23rd April 2017

Although I am posting more links on weekdays, Sunday is the day for a miscellany, which is what I offer here with thanks to those who alerted me to many.

• The real madman: Masha Gessen on Putin and Tr*mp for New York Review of Books:

Where Putin’s unpredictable persona is a carefully cultivated one, Trump has given no evidence that his madman act is an act.

• Fairytale prisoner by choice – the photographic eye of Melania Trump: a fascinating, brilliant and ultimately haunting analysis by Kate Imbach of the 470 photographs apparently taken by Melania that she posted to Twitter between June 2012 and June 2015.

• ‘Tear down the fences’ – watching Capra in the age of Trump: Joe Sommerlad on the unfashionable but highly pertinent films of Frank Capra, including Mr Smith Goes to Washington, 1939 (above).

• When did French comedies become so reactionary?: Caspar Salmon writes for Sight & Sound on a disturbing trend in recent popular French films.

• Digital divide: Tony Pipolo for Artforum on two recent films by Ernie Gehr.

• Bright impossibilities – appearances of art in cinema: for Mubi.com, Patrick Holzapfel wrestles with questions of how film engages with the other arts, with examples from movies by Bertrand Bonello and Antoine Barraud.

• Adaptation, Shakespeare and world cinema: Mark Thornton Burnett in the new (open access) edition of Literature/Film Quarterly, specifically on Haider, 2014, an Indian and Hindi-language adaptation of Hamlet directed by Vishal Bhardwaj.

• Watch it while it lasts – our golden age of television: why this is a great moment for the small screen, and why it may not last, by Ian Leslie at the FT.

• Incoming – the collateral damage of conceptual documentary: a strongly argued article by Lewis Bush responding to Richard Mosse’s work (Incoming finishes today at Barbican) and raising concerns about ‘conceptual documentary’.

• Entertainment, news or real life? Live streaming is complicated: Kathryn Nave for Wired on some of the problems raised by Periscope, Facebook Live and similar.

• A buffet of French history: Robert Darnton for New York Review of Books on ‘a new attempt to change how French history is understood’, edited by Patrick Boucheron, that despite being 800 pages long has become a surprise best-seller.

• How Marine Le Pen played the French media: fascinating analysis from Scott Sayare as a Guardian Long Read about the far right Front Nationale.

• Coming home – modernism and the Shchukin collection: for Los Angeles Review of Books, Matthew Jeffery Abrams writes on the recent Paris exhibition of French modernist masterpieces in Russian museums.

• What broke the Met?: Boris Kachka for New York magazine with a well-informed article on recent troubles at the greatest museum in the world.

• My Country Matters (or whatever) – HOME, Manchester: a gloriously entertaining (and serious) full-on polemic from Andrew Haydon at Postcards from the Gods responding to the National Theatre’s Do You Think I Meant Country Matters?

• Diary: Julian Barnes’ eloquent, angry thoughts on Brexit for London Review of Books.