Email Author Alan Scherstuhl

2013 Stories by Alan Scherstuhl

• Aliyah's Diasporic Ennui Achieves an Impressive Universality

  published June 12, 2013

  A tense and subtle drama of petty crime, emigration, and escaping the demands of family with a full-bore dive into heritage, writer-director... More >>

• Evocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie Explores A Rightwing Blowhard of Another Era

  published June 5, 2013

  Used to be to get famous in the rightwing blowhard racket you had to have an act. Not today. Has anyone ever once thought, "Oh, I can't... More >>

• The Purge Is Good For at Least a Trilogy of Scholastic Originals

  published June 5, 2013

  Here's a category idea for bar trivia: Collect one-sentence plot summaries of young-adult novel series and R-rated horror films, and see who... More >>

• Professional Killers and Teen Drama Clash in Violet and Daisy

  published June 5, 2013

  A somewhat tastier concoction than its list of ingredients might suggest, Geoffrey Fletcher's Violet & Daisy mashes a... More >>

• The Basilica Is a Holy Grind

  published June 5, 2013

  As Mando Alvarado’s The Basilica (from the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater) grinds on past one tragic, hard-to-accept plot... More >>

• If George R. R. Martin Wrote Every TV Show Ever

  published June 5, 2013

  George R. R. Martin took a break from killing Starks on Game of Thrones today to send us this list of the notes he would send to... More >>

• Andrei Tarkovsky's Nostalghia Screens at BAM

  published May 29, 2013

  A few years ago, a lit-mag editor treated me and other dinner guests to the story—almost certainly apocryphal—of another... More >>

• 

  The Wall Seems Like It Would Rather Be Reading a Book

  published May 29, 2013

  Your end-times fantasy most likely says a lot about you. Adherents to the Left Behind eschatology must at some level relish the notion... More >>

• 

  After Earth: Smith Family Robinson

  published May 29, 2013

  The surprise twist in the new M. Night Shyamalan film is that the film is directed by M. Night Shyamalan, a fact that the movie—like the... More >>

• Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himself

  published May 22, 2013

  Perhaps it was disingenuous for George Plimpton to insist for so long that he was above all else an "am-uh-ter." Yes, this tweedy beanpole... More >>

• Honing in on Jean-Francois Sivadier and His Star Natalie Dessay in Becoming Traviata

  published May 15, 2013

  "A great singer, chandeliers, champagne, and costumes—we see this at a distance," Jean-François Sivadier says deep into... More >>

• Jerry Schatzberg's Road Pictures Scarecrow Hits Film Forum

  published May 15, 2013

  Elusive, loose-limbed, as messy and sun-touched as the American '70s, Jerry Schatzberg's 1973 Scarecrow is a road picture, a buddy... More >>

• Evil Vets of Black Rock Fall to the Same Old Escalating Skirmishes and Brutal Climax

  published May 15, 2013

  Seemingly crafted to validate the fears of those conservatives who rage that the white man can't get respect on the big screen these days,... More >>

• 

  Fast & Furious 6: Oh, This Is Why We Have Car Chases

  published May 15, 2013

  There’s one key truth that separates the tank-topped gearheads of the Fast and Furious movies from the rest of us. Every problem... More >>

• Amy Poehler's New Comedy Partner Is David Simon

  published May 15, 2013

  Officially, the crowd crammed into the basement of the Paley Center on Thursday night had come for edification. Here was a panel discussion on... More >>

• 

  Hate-Watching Hating Breitbart

  published May 15, 2013

  Let’s say that you and your friends get accused of being racist. And let’s say there’s nothing in your heart that fits that... More >>

• The Horrors of India's Beauty Pageants in The World Before Her

  published May 8, 2013

  After watching the young beauties competing for the title of Miss India suffer Botox injections, skin-whitening cleanses, and the shouts of a... More >>

• Uwe Boll, Legendarily Bad Director, Fantasizes About Murdering Finance Bros in Assault on Wall Street

  published May 8, 2013

  Uwe Boll's rep is on the upswing, but, really, what other direction could it go? The consensus choice for the world's worst professional... More >>

• Philip Seymour Hoffman's Unhappy Triumph, A Family for All Occasions

  published May 8, 2013

  Here's one of the toughest of all form vs. content dilemmas: How do you craft narrative art out of the slog of unhappy family life, making... More >>

• What Maisie Knew Endures the Pains of Being a Kid, with Fancy Linens

  published May 1, 2013

  There are times during the affecting tumult of What Maisie Knew when you may think, "At last, a first-rate American movie about what... More >>

• Often-inspiring Buck-up-a-movement Doc Occupy Love Will Amp Up the Protest Set

  published May 1, 2013

  "Today I can't help feeling that the entire planet is on the verge of becoming ground zero," Velcrow Ripper declares in the opening minutes of... More >>

• !Vivan Las Antipodas! Soars, Flips, Dives, and Seems to Turn the Globe Itself

  published May 1, 2013

  If you plant your feet on the ground and imagine burrowing straight down through crust and magma and then right through the Earth’s... More >>

• Midnight's Children, For Those Who Wants the Gist of the Novel (And No More)

  published April 24, 2013

  One of the most beguiling of the many stories all knotted up in Salman Rushdie's brilliant, baggy, exhausting 1981 novel Midnight's... More >>

• (Hot) Soul Mounts (Hot) Body in Mortem

  published April 24, 2013

  If you and your quite good-looking soul got locked in a hotel room together, would you be able to resist making out? That imponderable is one... More >>

• Matthew McConaughey Shapes Mud Into Man

  published April 24, 2013

  Has anyone ever been so perfectly cast as Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused? Sculpted entirely of charisma and... More >>