Vicky Osterweil

If movies can tell us anything about the internal lives of typical film industry executives, it’s that they like to feel like the most important people in any room, like they’re doing everyone else a favor by granting a meeting. So it takes truly special circumstances to ...

As far as international incidents caused by stupid movies go, the North Korean declaration that The Interview, a new film by James Franco and Seth Rogen, is “an act of war” is probably the most newsworthy since The Innocence of Muslims kicked off anti-American riots in the ...

Between the fall of Mosul to ISIS militants, the POW trade with Taliban officials and the revelation that almost every phone call made in Afghanistan since the US invasion has been recorded by the NSA, this month has seen politicians and journalists briefly (and perhaps ...

When critics talk about movies or TV shows, they mostly treat them as self-contained texts to be described, interpreted, and “read.” This way of thinking similarly dominates the way most of the audience thinks about the work. If anyone talks about the production side, it is ...

One of the valences of the NSA leaks has been opinionators wringing their hands over the lack of anger and shock. Where’s the anger? The protests? Why are the people so complacent in the face of these revelations? Well, one reason might be that they’re not all that ...