Especially in his westerns, Ford loved to create bustling, busy interiors full of life and feeling, and he was equally fond of positioning human figures, alone or in small, vulnerable groups, against vast, obliterating landscapes. Shooting from the indoors out is his way of yoking together these two realms of experience — the domestic and the wild, the social and the natural — and also of acknowledging the almost metaphysical gap between them, the threshold that cannot be crossed.

Ernest Hemingway once said that all of American literature could be traced back to one book, Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn," and something similar might be said of American cinema and "The Searchers."

'The Searchers': How the Western Was Begun

How did a show with almost universal critical support, a star creator and a fan base strong enough to force HBO's hand end up on the chopping block in the first place?

Reached at home on Monday, Mr. Milch sounded tired of talking about the whole thing. But then, typically, he did, arguing that the entire idea of bringing closure to a series was egotistical, paraphrasing a William James idea: "The world does not begin or end with the expiration of any living thing. It just becomes an exercise in bitterness or self-congratulation."

'Deadwood' Gets a New Lease on Life

The book is replete with fascinating, if fearfully context-dependent, travel tips. If you are forced to lie about being a Muslim, claim you're from Indonesia, a Muslim nation few non-Indonesian Muslims know much about. Open land undefiled by sheep droppings has most likely been mined. If you're taking your donkey to high altitudes, slice open its nostrils to allow greater oxygen flow. Don't carry detailed maps, since they tend to suggest 007 affinities. If, finally, you're determined to do something as recklessly stupid as walk across a war zone, your surest bet to quash all the inevitable criticism is to write a flat-out masterpiece. Stewart did. Stewart has. "The Places in Between" is, in very nearly every sense, too good to be true.

'The Places in Between,' by Rory Stewart

For the 1,000 or so bloggers at the YearlyKos Convention here, the mission is nothing short of trying to transform the way politics are done.

Mr. Warner left little doubt of the potential he sees with bloggers, saying, "You're watching what potentially could be a major part of the future of American politics taking place right here."

A Mixed Bag of First Impressions by Democrats at Blog Rendezvous

"You are just increasing the size of the haystack," Mr. Shora said. "Are you going to monitor everyone? Do we want to become a police state?

A government report on the London bombings issued last month said, "The attacks showed very clearly that terrorism is a 'homegrown' problem."

Lessons From Canada: Snooping Works

"For those who were waging holy war for the sake of al-Zarqawi, al-Zarqawi is dead. But for those who were fighting for the sake of God, God is alive and eternal."

Fighting for the Sake of God

George Soros: "I am really concerned about America. In a way, we have the wrong leadership. But we also have the wrong followership. People don't care about the truth."

Indebted to Liberal Causes

Stanley Kauffmann could see what was wonderful about Antonioni's "L'Avventura." So could I, at the time; but later, after suffering through "Blowup" and "Zabriskie Point," I started to forget what had once thrilled me. Here is the reminder: "Obviously it is not real time or we would all have to bring along sandwiches and blankets; but a difference of 10 seconds in a scene is a tremendous step toward veristic reproduction rather than theatrical abstraction." (And, he forgot to add, it gives you 10 more seconds to look at a veristic close-up of Monica Vitti, who did to us in those days what Monica Bellucci is doing to a new generation of horny male intellectuals right now.)

'American Movie Critics' - The New York Times Book Review

I was a college student when I saw "L'Avventura" for the first of many times, and it changed my life.

Antonioni's Nothingness and Beauty

When Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation acquired the community site MySpace nearly a year ago, the site was at the height of its popularity. But now there are indications that the teenagers who made MySpace cool may be moving on to MemeStreams.

MySpace No Longer Their Space?