Sidney Lumet, one of my favourite directors, has died. His greatest film was his first - 12 Angry Men - but unlike Welles, who also faced that challenge, he went on to direct more than 39 other feature films, many of them classics. I think my favourites are his great 70s gritty cop films with a young Pacino - Dog Day Afternoon and Serpico. Fanously, he directed his last film at age 83, and it wasn't half-bad. Other classics include The Pawnbroker, Network, and The Verdict. So far, that's by my count six of the greatest American films. Throw in Murder on the Orient Express, Fail-Safe, Long Day's Journey Into Night, and Deathtrap, and you have a very impressive list. He will be missed.
THAT HANDSOME MAN A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought. Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that
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