Author: Nic Rowan (Nic Rowan)

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Conserving the Classics: John Huston’s ‘Moby Dick’
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Conserving the Classics: John Huston’s ‘Moby Dick’

Only a maniac would adapt “Moby Dick” for the screen—so it’s a good thing John Huston was crazy. The American director best known for “The African Queen” (1951), “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” (1948), and “The Maltese Falcon” (1941) almost always captained movies based on novels. But his 1956 adaptation of Herman Melville’s whale...

Pulp Michigan: Hillsdale’s lost poet laureate
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Pulp Michigan: Hillsdale’s lost poet laureate

Expendability is the byword for most of the Gilded Age’s newspaper verse, and the work of Rose Hartwick Thorpe is no exception. Although her 1867 poem “Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight” was of the most popular ballads of the 19th century, by the late 20th, it faded into obscurity. Thorpe began publishing as a 16-year-old...

Conserving the Classics: The top ten movies to watch on FilmStruck before it’s gone
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Conserving the Classics: The top ten movies to watch on FilmStruck before it’s gone

To the disappointment of cheapskate film lovers everywhere, WarnerMedia recently announced that it will discontinue FilmStruck, its streaming service for classic, foreign, and independent cinema, on Nov. 29. The stated reason: not enough subscribers. The real reason: FilmStruck was structured poorly and allowed users to blow through an infinite number of free trials. And now:...

Love and shame at Hillsdale College
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Love and shame at Hillsdale College

It’s all too, too shaming. When I was 16 years old, I stole my first kiss — in public. I was walking home from Starbucks with this girl I knew from school. We were talking about something inconsequential. I liked her. And I knew from her obsessive texting habits that she liked me. So, as...

Pulp Michigan: MSU’s comic cache
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Pulp Michigan: MSU’s comic cache

When Marvel creator Stan Lee died at 95 earlier this week, comic book fans rushed from their basements and cushy tech jobs to pay tribute. Lee was the co-creator of Spider-Man, X-Men, and Iron Man, among many other superheroes and cartoon characters. His passing marks the official end of the era when comic books were...