“Love, Actually”: The worst Christmas movie ever

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 16:44:00 +0000

It's got an Anglophile's dream cast, a rousing version of "All I Want for Christmas" and an overstuffed romantic plot that takes place in the loveliest, coziest, most well-to-do version of London you've ever seen. Perhaps then it's no wonder "Love, Actually" has, in the nine years since its release, become something of a holiday classic. At this time of year it regularly crops up on cable and in Netflix queues. Slant calls it "the greatest modern Christmas movie," and Empire puts it in its top 10 "Best Christmas Movies Ever." Screw all that.

Writing class from hell

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 01:00:00 +0000

"Seminar," a play starring Alan Rickman as a preening, acid-tongued teacher running roughshod over a group of tender aspiring writers, opened a few weeks ago on Broadway. Reviews have prompted all the usual observations about the difficulty of dramatizing both writing and reading, activities so internally momentous yet so physically inert. Why, then, do people keep doing it? And do the depictions of writing classes in stage, film and television -- from "Wonder Boys" to "Bored to Death" -- bear any relationship to real life?

To hash this out, I invited Ben Marcus -- a novelist and an associate professor at Columbia University's School of the Arts, where he teaches fiction writing -- to see "Seminar" with me and talk afterward about the ways writing workshops are depicted in the performing arts. His first novel was acquired by the writer, editor and teacher Gordon Lish, considered to be the inspiration for the character played by Rickman, and Marcus also attended one of Lish's legendary seminars, conducted in private homes, like the class in the play. (Marcus' fourth book, the novel "The Flame Alphabet," will be published in January.)

Salon.com > Alan Rickman

“Love, Actually”: The worst Christmas movie ever

Writing class from hell