David Denby

A New Yorker film critic and author of American Sucker evaluates the cultural consequences of snide and sarcastic language that has become pervasive in today's political, entertainment, and other public arenas, in an assessment that cites the importance of developing true wit instead of insult-based forms of communication.

"Ben Hecht's critically acclaimed autobiographical memoir, first published in 1954, offers incomparably pungent evocations of Chicago in the 1910s and 1920s, Hollywood in the 1930s, and New York during the Second World War and after"--

"For over four decades, from his landmark Titicut Follies (1967) to his recent La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet (2009) and forthcoming Boxing Gym (2010), Frederick Wiseman (born 1930) has used a lightweight 16mm camera and portable sound equipment to study human behavior in all its unpredictable manifestations, particularly as it responds to institutional or regimented settings or to democracy at work. Combining epic narrative with intimate portraiture, Wiseman's films constitute a grand panorama of modern life, a kind of modern-day comédie humaine. While he manages to intrude only minimally on the lives of his subjects, his sensitive eye, lawyerly skepticism and storytelling impulses produce imaginative truth. Wiseman has also worked in the theater, directing acclaimed adaptations of Beckett and Pirandello. His stage and film productions La Dernière Lettre (The Last Letter), based on Vassily Grossman's epic novel Life and Fate, starred Catherine Samie, doyenne of the Comédie-Française and a contributor to this book. Frederick Wiseman, the first publication in English to provide a comprehensive overview of Wiseman's career to date, includes essays by eminent observers on both sides of the Atlantic, including writers, critics, filmmakers, actors and Wiseman himself. Illustrated with stills from his films, this volume offers a compelling portrait of Frederick Wiseman as one of the world's most innovative, fearless and influential filmmakers, as well as an accomplished theater director." -- Publisher's description.