Roochak

Season of the Sexy Witch, 30 April 2013

Ismael Ferrer sure can draw a cute nymphet. His pen and brush work is a lively celebration of bishoujo, and Katy, the star of this hentai takeoff on SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH, is always a pleasure to look at. She's cast in the big eyes, small mouth mold of anime heroines, and her depiction can vary from panel to panel -- realism, wild takes, or chibi cuteness as Ferrer's zany plots require.

The artist comes across as saner and less obsessed than many hentai cartoonists, and that's what makes this book work better as a sex comedy than as a stroke book. The sex scenes, though hardcore, are too brief; they almost feel like diversions from Katy's erotic misadventures as she hunts… Read more

First, Stop Calling It "Classical" Music..., 30 April 2013

You have to admire the glass-half-full perspective that D. Kern Holoman, a music professor and conductor of a California student orchestra, brings to this book about the history and continuing relevance, such as it is, of the professional symphony orchestra. It couldn't have been an easy perspective to maintain, this view of the orchestra as a functional civic enterprise, a locus of musical diversity with universal access via the internet, and a cultural ambassador and agent of peace.

If this sounds a little too good to be true, Holoman is also, by necessity, a realist. He writes about the fundamental problems of keeping a 90- to 100-piece American orchestra gainfully employed:… Read more

Brevity as the Soul of Crit, 18 April 2013

For those who might think that Pauline Kael couldn't write anything of value without a 1,500 word running start, here, in its entirety, is her opinion of the 1936 Hollywood costume drama, THE GORGEOUS HUSSY:

"The title is deceptive. The film is about Andrew Jackson (Lionel Barrymore) and his Presidential problems. Specifically, it deals with his dissolving his Cabinet because the wives of the members had cut a certain Mrs. Eaton (Joan Crawford). Something like this actually happened, though the picture will never convince anyone of it. Beulah Bondi smokes a corncob with the assurance befitting a First Lady, Melvyn Douglas plays a dreary, gentlemanly John Randolph, and Robert… Read more