The Vargas Blog

In David O. Russell 's American Hustle , a recreation of the Abscam scandal: an F.B.I. sting operation that led to the arrest of sever...

In "Show Biz Bugs ," a 1957 Warner Brothers cartoon directed by Friz Freleng , Daffy Duck is furious that Bugs Bunny has gotten ...

No Man's Land is Harold Pinter 's 1975 play, first produced at the National Theatre of Great Britain, with a stellar cast featuri...

A 1960s Greenwich Village folk singer: a modern-day Ulysses on a circular odyssey that goes nowhere is the premise of Joel and Ethan Coen ...

Nebraska is Alexander Payne 's new film: a rumination on old age, the heartbrake of unfulfilled dreams, the eternal struggle between ...

Walter Mitty started life as the "hero" of a short story by James Thurber that first appeared in the pages of The New Yorker maga...

The New York Film Festival opened on Friday with Captain Phillips , the new film from director Paul Greengrass , which recounts the true-...

Opening Night of the MET almost turned into a circus last night as a group of protesters entered the house, and started shouting "Pu...

It seems rare, and even out of place, for the New York Film Festival to present a romantic comedy like Richard Curtis 's About Time ....

Hayao Miyazaki' s latest animated film, The Wind Rises ( Kaze Tachinu ) tells the story of the formative years of fictional character...

The charming and imaginative new Stefan Herheim production of Richard Wagner 's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg , conducted by Daniele...

It is good news to see Woody Allen at the top of his game once again with his latest film Blue Jasmine . This weekend, it was very reward...

Here are only mere seconds of the 10 minute Bayreuth "standing boovation" that greeted Frank Castorf and his production team a...

With all the controversy going on in Bayreuth over Frank Castorf 's bicentennial staging of The Ring of the Nibelung , the Salzburg F...

As part of the Richard Wagner year that is being celebrated all over the world, Bayreuth has commissioned 500 statues of the composer, e...

It's opening night at the Bayreuth Festival , and Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin, and Mao Zedong will not be in attendance. T...

The maximalism of Baz Luhrmann can easily put you off. He doesn't so much adapt F. Scott Fitzgerald 's The Great Gatsby as he hi...

Today, May 22, we celebrate the birth of Richard Wagner .  The composer was born in Leipzig, Germany in 1813, 200 years ago today.  But ho...

In the twilight of his years Maurizio Pollini continues to amaze with the aristocratic virtuosity and technical dexterity that has garner...

The Metropolitan Opera is in the middle of presenting three Ring Cycles this spring, and this afternoon was the premiere of Siegfried , t...