Email Author Michael Fox

2010 Stories by Michael Fox

• Very Bad Santa

  published December 1, 2010

  Christmas is over, but this irreverent little package is worth opening year-round. In Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, Finnish... More >>

• Calm Between the Storms

  published December 29, 2010

  Hearty congrats on weathering the most stressful two weeks of the year. Between gift shopping, packed-to-the-gills airports, and family reunions,... More >>

• Kurosawa's Lower Depths

  published December 15, 2010

  The name Akira Kurosawa means one thing to most people: samurai films. So it's no surprise that the various local celebrations of the director's... More >>

• Winged Migration

  published December 8, 2010

  The 2005 headlines announcing a sighting of the long-extinct ivory-billed woodpecker in an Arkansas swamp filled our own dimwit species with... More >>

• Very Bad Santa

  published December 8, 2010

  If a virginal, wound-way-too-tight ballerina discovering her dark side isn’t savage (or hysterical) enough to offset the season’s sugary... More >>

• Craggy Crimes of Passion

  published December 1, 2010

  In colder climes, nature is a force to be reckoned with. Mountain goats are well acquainted with this fundamental truth, especially lead Mountain... More >>

• Black Christmas

  published December 1, 2010

  ‘Tis the season, we’re reminded ad nauseam, for peace and good will toward all men (and, we assume, all others as well). Fine. But... More >>

• Stoned in Estonia

  published November 24, 2010

  In a godless world, the tenuous morality of men is all that stands between us and the blood-and-spittle-soaked end of civilization. A nondescript,... More >>

• Serious Writer

  published November 24, 2010

  Yukio Mishima’s bizarre, committed death — by seppuku, as the capstone of his misjudged Nov. 25, 1970, coup attempt — still... More >>

• Free Bird!

  published November 10, 2010

  Carlos, along with the recent Che and The Baader Meinhof Complex, reminds us in varying shades of crimson that one man’s... More >>

• Living, Breathing – and Still Working

  published November 3, 2010

  What becomes a legend most? Sure, movies last forever (well, depending on the storage medium), but the promise of immortality is cold comfort. A... More >>

• Flickering Shadows

  published October 27, 2010

  The director's chair in Hollywood has long been the province of men, with scant few exceptions. So women have gravitated toward more personal... More >>

• Worlds Within Worlds

  published October 13, 2010

  In a tone that manages to be simultaneously self-aware, streetwise, and incredulous, an anonymous rent boy recounts being raped by a trick in a... More >>

• Design for Living

  published September 29, 2010

  Best remembered for their path-breaking architectural and furniture work — the Eames chair, anyone? — the brilliant 20th-century... More >>

• Organ Donor

  published September 22, 2010

  The Mellotron, like punk rock, was adopted with such enthusiasm by the Brits that they managed to forget it was an American invention. The... More >>

• Maria Full of Grace Notes

  published September 22, 2010

  Divas of the world, unite! At long last, you can see -- though not kiss -- the hem of Maria Callas’ gown. The great soprano, whose voice,... More >>

• Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em

  published September 22, 2010

  Cigarettes. Books. Acerbic aphorisms. (The kind Jean-Paul Sartre and BFF Holden Caulfield would have folded into fortune cookies.) Those are the... More >>

• Tuesday's Pick: 'The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector'

  published Sep 14, 2010

  The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil SpectorRoxie Theater$6-$10With the Ronettes, the Righteous Brothers, and the Ramones, producer Phil Spector swathed dozens of hit singles in a layered sheen. His sign... More >>

• High School Confidential

  published September 15, 2010

  When James Dean and Elvis exploded on the scene more than half a century ago, Hollywood realized en masse that teenagers were a gold mine —... More >>

• Rocket Woman

  published September 15, 2010

  Do you remember where you were four years ago today? Anousheh Ansari was blogging from the International Space Station. The Iranian-born... More >>

• The First Cut Is the Deepest

  published September 1, 2010

  Hollywood has honed test screenings to a noxious art, granting yea-or-nay power to moviegoers in locations such as Reseda and Sacramento who... More >>

• The Last Picture Shows

  published September 8, 2010

  The shaky status of the Clay Theatre has recharged the debate over the role and necessity of single-screen movie houses in the era of Netflix and... More >>

• Wall of Sound, Bars of Steel

  published September 8, 2010

  With the Ronettes, the Righteous Brothers, and the Ramones, producer Phil Spector swathed dozens of hit singles in a layered sheen. His signature... More >>

• Lunar Eclipse

  published September 1, 2010

  As naive as it might sound, the Internet allows bands and fans to form musical connections without the money-grubbing middlemen. Globe-hopping... More >>

• Window Shopping

  published August 25, 2010

  In Rear Window, Jimmy Stewart plays a free bird, an adventurous action photographer named L.B. Jeffries who’s scared to death... More >>