Slate Articles

We’re Living in a Golden Age of Documentary Filmmaking

Eric Hynes — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 12:00:00 GMT

This January at the Cinema Eye Honors, an alternative to the Oscars for documentary films, director and top prizewinner Steve James said, “I feel and have felt for a long time that we are in a golden age of documentary filmmaking.” Yet outside of his fellow filmmakers and industry professionals at the Museum of the Moving image on that night, few seem to be aware of it.

"Eyes Gazing Into the Distance As If in Memory of Ages Past"

John Swansburg — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 13:55:00 GMT

During last year’s Westminster Dog Show, John Swansburg took a closer look at the American Kennel Club’s breed standards, which enumerate the ideal characteristics of each breed in competition. “Part eugenicist’s handbook, part love poem,” the standards reveal as much about their human authors as they do about the dogs they describe. Swansburg’s essay is reprinted below.

Romances for the Post-Bubble Homeowner

June Thomas — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 19:08:20 GMT

Also in Slate, read an interview with Bronson Pinchot.

Marvel Comics’ Troubling Origins Story

James Sturm — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:45:00 GMT

Growing up in the 1970s and early ’80s, I obsessively read and collected Marvel comics. I knew each hero’s origin story, rogue’s gallery, and costume details. I took pride in my knowledge of minor superheroes like Stingray, Jack of Hearts, and the Paladin, characters who didn’t have their own comics but who bounced around in the pages of more established titles. If they ever got their own comic book, I’d be able to say I knew them when.

No Está Mal

June Thomas — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 19:41:04 GMT

When CBS launched Rob, a new Rob Schneider sitcom about a clueless gringo who marries into a Mexican-American family, in January, the critical response was scathingly unfavorable. The Denver Post’s TV critic called it “genuinely offensive”; the New York Times said “the entire show is predicated on cheap ethnic humor”; and TV Guide’s Matt Roush declared Rob’s new family to be “a sprawling brood of shockingly stereotypical clichés.”

Can Asians Save Classical Music?

Michael Ahn Paarlberg — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:00:00 GMT

What do symphony orchestras and cigarette companies have in common? It’s the age problem. How do you stay in business when your customers keep dying?

The Shortz Factor

Matt Gaffney — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 19:50:28 GMT

Etta James died recently. To most people that meant the loss of a blues legend, but for crossword puzzle writers like myself, it meant something quite different. Etta James was famous in real life, but she's also “crossword-famous”—a woman whose handy, four-letter first name has gotten us out of many tough corners and spared us countless painful rewrites.

Love in Three Photos: Submit Your Photo Haiku

Heather Murphy — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 20:05:58 GMT

The challenge: Slate wants you to submit a love story in three photos. The photos must tell a story, as in beginning, middle, end or beginning, what you thought was the end before another beginning. We want stories of love, lust, heartbreak, makeups, breakups, and surprises. The three photos can span decades or just a few weeks. Captions for each photo should be one to two sentences. Shorter is better. Think of this as a photo haiku.

He Wrote the Book on Raylan Givens

Tara Ariano — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 20:41:18 GMT

How good is FX’s Justified, returning for its third season tonight? Some TV series inspire conventions, cosplay, and speculative fiction from their fans. Justified may be the first show to inspire fanfic from its creator. Elmore Leonard introduced U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens in the novel Pronto, but hadn’t revisited the character since “Fire in the Hole,” the 2001 novella which became the basis for Justified. The show reignited his interest, and Leonard’s new novel Raylan—so inextricable from Justified that the cover image is of actor Timothy Olyphant in character—is out this week.

In Praise of the Golden Globes

Tom Shone — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 23:16:16 GMT

Imagine a world in which most of the cosmic injustices perpetuated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences did not take place. I know it’s hard, with the wound of of The King’s Speech’s victory over The Social Network so fresh, but imagine a world in which Fincher’s film had been victorious—a world where Brokeback Mountain did not lose out to Crash and E.T. beat out Gandhi, where Chinatown won best film and Coppola won best director for Apocalypse Now. Oh, and while we’re at it, an armful of trophies for Some Like Hot and a little something for Alfred Hitchcock.