Pitchfork, the Early Years

Robert de Forest Whitman Jr. was born on May 23, 1935, in Manhattan to a family that traced its roots to the earliest Huguenot settlers of New York. Among his forebears were the painter and designer Lockwood de Forest (1850-1932) and Robert W. de Forest (1848-1931), a president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in…

When Kaveh Akbar was drinking, he would regularly wake up to find new bruises or gashes on his body, or to find that he’d lost his glasses, his wallet or his car. When he opened his eyes, he might find himself in an alley instead of in his apartment. Once, he got out of bed…

Martin Freeman and Jenna Ortega fight pheromones and cliché in this eye-rolling duel between a teacher and his student.

Some comedy aficionados make the case that Andrew Dice Clay was always as much performance art as stand-up, akin to the character comedy of Pee-wee Herman and Andy Kaufman. When I interviewed Clay years ago, my impression was that if that were so, years of doing the persona had infiltrated his real self so thoroughly…

Scott Stuber, who brought Oscar-winning filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, Jane Campion and Alfonso Cuarón to Netflix and in doing so helped to usher the entertainment industry into the streaming era, is leaving as the service’s film chairman, the company said on Monday. News of Mr. Stuber’s departure came on the eve of the…

Now that a grand jury has indicted Alec Baldwin on a charge of involuntary manslaughter for the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the set of the film “Rust” in New Mexico in 2021, the contours of the looming legal battle are coming into focus. If the case reaches trial, the challenge prosecutors face will…