Word: criticize
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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None of this would bother me in the least, I suspect, if a few years ago, my phone, like Marley's ghost, hadn't given me a glimpse of the nightmares to come. On Thanksgiving weekend in 1995, someone (presumably a critic of a book my wife and I had just written about computer hackers) forwarded my home telephone number to an out-of-state answering machine, where unsuspecting callers trying to reach me heard a male voice identify himself as me and say some extremely rude things. Then, with typical hacker aplomb, the prankster asked people to leave their...
Both, as it turned out, and the Washington Post book critic and columnist Jonathan Yardley engagingly examines this double identity in Misfit: The Strange Life of Frederick Exley (Random House; 255 pages; $23). Yardley makes no inflated claims on behalf of his subject: "Fred was a professional writer, although only one of his three books [A Fan's Notes] will long remain in print." But Exley (1929-1992) intensely interested and exasperated his readers, relatives, friends, casual acquaintances and the victims of his odd-hours telephone monologues, among whom Yardley and this reviewer number themselves. "What a piece of work...
...debut as screen auteur, the flush of anger is a careermaking dream. "I'm more than happy that people are polarized," he says. "I'd much rather have somebody hate my movie than be indifferent about it." He would get his wish if he listened to TIME film critic Richard Schickel: "Other pictures that have broken out on the basis of sociological buzz, like Thelma & Louise, had appealing characters confronting interesting issues in suspenseful or comic fashion. But here all we are dealing with is sociopathic behavior that has no real-world resonance. The movie's sheer grimness militates against...
Fortunately, even its conventionality doesn't keep this "Shrew" from being an amusing play overall. With a great cast, good direction and lots of energy, this production is guaranteed to make even the most cynical critic laugh. It may not have any lasting artistic merit other than that of sheer entertainment. But every so often, that's all you really need...
...first solo album, No Way Out. It's an uneven work--the piano-driven Do You Know? flashes with brilliance, the dour Young G's slogs in gangsterism--but it has already generated two No. 1 singles. In his music studios in New York City, Combs talked with music critic Christopher John Farley...