Stephanie's Graf

I don't read Salon very often any more, but for several years, I considered it prime reading. After the dot com bust, however, the liberal web magazine looked untenable, and over a short period dropped from more than 70 writers to a pale skeleton of under 30. One of the things I always appreciated most about Salon was its film coverage, but with the departure of Charles Taylor and the general downsizing of the arts and entertainment coverage in favor of ever more shrill political scaremongering, I quit reading regularly.

Since the redesign a few months ago, the site has improved significantly, with a renewed focus on the politically slanted arts and culture coverage they do best. One of the notable things about the publication is that it really uses its web format well, giving its critics room to write fairly long, involved essays that would never appear on the expensive dead tree pages of most print periodicals. Reading Stephanie Zacharek’s review of Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (also reviewed quite wonderfully by the Cinetrix here), especially, I was reminded by how delightfully comprehensive and slightly scattered her essays could be. Look at this thesis:

"Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story" is, among other things, a movie-within-a-movie, a sly meditation on the haphazard, unpredictable nature of creativity, and an affectionate cuff on the nose for actors everywhere, exposing, in good fun, their vanity, insecurities and tendency toward jealousy. The movie's delights unfold like an intricate, exotic puzzle: Winterbottom has built a detailed, miniature universe inside a sugar egg.

Edelstein may be once again reigned in by the strictures of print, but at least Zacharek continues to thrive in the wild jungles of the net.