The Ozarks, situated mostly in Missouri, are not on most tourists’ itineraries when they visit the United States. The area is not as pretty or dramatic as the Appalachians or the Rockies, and the mining and backwoods country is considered different, remote even, by many Americans. And while it has a distinct dialect and a rich oral and musical culture from its pioneer heritage of Irish, Scots and German immigrants who settled on the vast plateau in the early 19th century, the only representation many know of Ozark people is The Beverly Hillbillies. It’s in this self-contained world that Read more ...

Amid the cinematic dog days of late summer, François Ozon's Le Refuge comes aptly named: a character-led, intimate tale in the style of the late Eric Rohmer that will infuriate those who like their films more purely driven by plot even as it offers a refuge to moviegoers for whom the curves of a pregnant belly or a handsome young man's spine contain within them their own narrative.A meditation on the subtleties of tenderness and the legacy of pain, the film possesses something of the qualities of an exceedingly smart novella. Well, at least up until a final sequence that threatens to undo Read more ...

Hunter S Thompson always had one beady, sun-bespectacled eye on posterity. At 21, living in poverty in a remote cabin in the Catskills and toiling away at an autobiographical first novel, Prince Jellyfish (still unpublished), he would immodestly compare his own progress to that of F Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, two other writers who came late to public recognition.He kept files of self-portraits, which he took by setting the timer on his camera, and was even cataloguing photographs of the many empty rooms in which he had ever lived. An ardent letter-writer, he made carbon copies of Read more ...