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Philip Martin

Philip Martin

Arkansas Online

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When technology starts losing the human touch

When technology starts losing the human touch

St. Patrick's Day is a triumph of stubborn traditions.

previous day 9

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

ON BOOKS | OPINION: Mieko Kawakami’s “Sisters in Yellow” explores friendship, crime and survival in Tokyo

ON BOOKS | OPINION: Mieko Kawakami’s “Sisters in Yellow” explores friendship, crime and survival in Tokyo

In "Sisters in Yellow," Kawakami plunges into murkier depths -- a brand of social realism tinged with noir, shifting focus from individual suffering...

monday 2

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

LONG LOOK | OPINION: Anna Stiritz’s “I Know One Good Story” explores memory and abstraction at Boswell Mourot Fine Art in Little Rock

LONG LOOK | OPINION: Anna Stiritz’s “I Know One Good Story” explores memory and abstraction at Boswell Mourot Fine Art in Little Rock

Works by Anna Stiritz, Brent Rowley and Carrie Olsen are on view through March 27 at Boswell Mourot Fine Art. Gallery hours are 10 a.m.–5 p.m....

15.03.2026 6

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

A credit card mistake and the decline of customer service

A credit card mistake and the decline of customer service

I was at the hardware store one recent Saturday morning, scanning replacement drainpipe in the self-service checkout. I tapped my credit card to pay...

15.03.2026 9

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

CRITICAL MASS | OPINION: Why the Oscars still matter

CRITICAL MASS | OPINION: Why the Oscars still matter

For critics and serious moviegoers, the Academy Awards are less a verdict on greatness than a rare moment when the culture pauses to argue about what...

14.03.2026 3

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

How Oliver Stone’s “Platoon” started my 40-year career as a movie critic

How Oliver Stone’s “Platoon” started my 40-year career as a movie critic

Democrat-Gazette online

14.03.2026 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

POPNOTES | OPINION: “It Was Just an Accident” — Jafar Panahi and the tradition of Iranian cinema

POPNOTES | OPINION: “It Was Just an Accident” — Jafar Panahi and the tradition of Iranian cinema

When a film from far beyond Hollywood’s pull upends your sense of what movies can do, you begin to wonder how you ever thought you understood the...

12.03.2026 3

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

RECORDINGS | OPINION: Bill Callahan’s ‘My Days of 58’ review — a late-career masterpiece of reflection and restraint

Bill Callahan never needed to shout to be heard. From the tape-hiss and four-track fog of the early Smog cassettes to the more oxygenated air of his...

12.03.2026 3

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

Finding the whole

Finding the whole

Whether by temperament or acquired habits, journalists spend their days taking the world apart piece by piece, poking at the gears and levers of daily...

10.03.2026 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

ON BOOKS | OPINION: 30 years later, David Foster Wallace’s ‘Infinite Jest’ still shapes how we think about entertainment and attention

ON BOOKS | OPINION: 30 years later, David Foster Wallace’s ‘Infinite Jest’ still shapes how we think about entertainment and attention

Thirty years after publication, "Infinite Jest" has settled into the background noise of American culture, faint but unmistakable. You notice it...

09.03.2026 5

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

Izzy Greenbaum, Thoreau and the Power of Civil Disobedience in a Fragile Democracy

Izzy Greenbaum, Thoreau and the Power of Civil Disobedience in a Fragile Democracy

"Do not obey in advance."

08.03.2026 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

CRITICAL MASS | OPINION: Redefining the American roadside stop

CRITICAL MASS | OPINION: Redefining the American roadside stop

From full-service stations to convenience stores, the American pit stop has evolved from a quick refuel into a place to pause, eat and be briefly...

07.03.2026 6

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

ONBOOKS | OPINION: Anne Fadiman’s art of attention in ‘Frog and Other Essays’

ONBOOKS | OPINION: Anne Fadiman’s art of attention in ‘Frog and Other Essays’

Anne Fadiman's "Frog and Other Essays" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) is a modest book -- 192 pages, seven essays, a slim spine you could lose between...

07.03.2026 5

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

A self-inflicted mistake put middle-class family at risk of losing everything

A self-inflicted mistake put middle-class family at risk of losing everything

Democrat-Gazette online

07.03.2026 20

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

POPNOTES | OPINION: Why ‘Shoresy’ is more than a hockey comedy — loyalty, masculinity and community in Sudbury

“Shoresy,” a Hulu/Crave original comedy, is a series so particular to northern Ontario hockey culture that it opens outward, becoming a meditation...

05.03.2026 5

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: From Trump’s “They let you do it” to Iran: Why power determines enforcement

In autumn 2005, Donald Trump waited on a bus outside NBC Studios in Burbank for a cameo on "Days of Our Lives." A live microphone captured his...

04.03.2026 8

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

POPNOTES | OPINION: Valentine’s Day movies for adults — films that redefine modern love

13.02.2026 90

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

REVIEW | OPINION: ‘Pretty in Pink’ — an artifact of insight and influence

13.02.2026 20

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

How ‘professional neutrality’ lets journalism evade responsibility

10.02.2026 2

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

ON BOOKS | OPINION: What Morrison and Klosterman see when familiar institutions stop looking neutral

10.02.2026 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

Why Doing Nothing Is How Democracies Erode

08.02.2026 6

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

CRITICAL MASS | OPINION: The misjudging of Sam Darnold — and how he outlasted his reputation, reaching the Super Bowl

08.02.2026 5

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

ONBOOKS | OPINION: Two new books reward readers willing to slow down and pay attention

08.02.2026 4

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

The Washington Post layoffs and the dismantling of a great newspaper

07.02.2026 6

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

GREAT MOVIES | OPINION: Why ‘Triumph of the Will’ remains the most dangerous film ever made

06.02.2026 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

SPIRITS | OPINION: What is orange wine? Why skin-contact whites appeal to red-wine and whiskey drinkers

06.02.2026 7

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

RECORDINGS | OPINION: 3 albums celebrate patience

06.02.2026 8

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

Why militarizing police—and ICE in particular—undermines public trust

03.02.2026 9

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

ON BOOKS | OPINION: “Dandelion Is Dead” and “Departure(s)” — on truth and consequence

03.02.2026 4

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

What Thoreau’s “Walden” Teaches Us About Winter and Living Deliberately

01.02.2026 40

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

ONBOOKS | OPINION: Eve Babitz was never lost, she was just misfiled — why publishing ‘Sex and Rage’ matters in 2026

01.02.2026 50

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

CRITICAL MASS | OPINION: Ranking 2026 Best Picture nominees

01.02.2026 8

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

From Fred Hampton to Alex Pretti: How the state normalizes violence

31.01.2026 7

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

GREAT MOVIES | OPINION: Why Akira Kurosawa’s “Ikiru” still matters: Bureaucracy, postwar Japan and the real cost of decency

30.01.2026 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

FIVE QUESTIONS: Author Jim Kreuz discusses “The Cobra Man,” engineering, and the life of Dick Cohen

30.01.2026 4

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

RECORDINGS | OPINION: Albums that resist speed and demand attention — Lucinda Williams, Jeff Tweedy and Steven Stubblefield

30.01.2026 7

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

What the liberation of Auschwitz still warns as about

27.01.2026 20

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

Was King George III Actually Mad—and What His Reign Reveals About Donald Trump

25.01.2026 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

CRITICAL MASS | OPINION: How ‘Frampton Comes Alive!’ defined rock music in 1976 — and why it couldn’t happen again

25.01.2026 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

ON BOOKS | OPINION: Two books show what happens after spectacle is gone

25.01.2026 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

Philip Martin: Why AI challenges what it means to write for one another

24.01.2026 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

FIVE QUESTIONS: Arkansas Musician Jed Clampit on a life built song by song

23.01.2026 9

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

RECORDINGS | OPINION: Local voices, recovered jazz in new, reissued albums

23.01.2026 8

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

POP NOTES | FILM REVIEW: ‘The Voice of Hind Rajab’ and the sound of a system failing a 6-year-old

23.01.2026 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Arkansas’ prison book ban trades security for control

20.01.2026 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

ON BOOKS | OPINION: 'Everybody Loses' and John Updike’s letters examine how habits become normal

20.01.2026 20

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

‘The world isn’t fair’

18.01.2026 50

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

ONBOOKS | OPINION: Books by Alan Allport and Val McDermid find meaning in wartime, Britain and winter’s stillness

18.01.2026 9

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

CRITICAL MASS | OPINION: How music helps us stay oriented after the news

18.01.2026 30

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

Renee Good’s death: When emotional fragility meets lethal authority

17.01.2026 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin