Leave it to an artist to get to the very essence of her art in one deft turn of phrase. It happened last night, at the Jacob Burns Film Center, in Pleasantville, New York (just fifty minutes from the ...

When is a big-budget cinematic comedy also a punchline itself? When that comedy is Ishtar, the notorious box-office bomb that became the literal poster child for expensive Hollywood flops. Released in ...

Louise Pryke does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their ...

For the three-hundredth installment of Movie of the Week, something special: Elaine May’s “Ishtar.” It’s one of my favorite films, and it’s the victim of enduring misunderstandings—which are ...

“As somebody once said, there’s a difference between a failure and a fiasco. A failure is simply the non-present of success. Any fool can accomplish failure. But a fiasco, a fiasco is a disaster of ...

The 1987 film “Ishtar” has long held a cultural status much larger than that of just a single movie, as shorthand for the utter worst, an epochal flop with audiences and critics alike and a huge ...

Elaine May’s 1987 flop, “Ishtar,” might well be the most accomplished punching bag in cinematic history. The reasons aren’t hard to figure out, but are almost too numerous to name. Well before the ...

Thirty-three years later, it's easy to see that Hollywood applied a double standard to the brilliant Elaine May. “If all of the people who hate ‘Ishtar‘ had seen it,” Elaine May famously said, “I ...

The Great Gate of Ishtar which stood at the entrance to Babylon has inspired awe since the 6th Century BC. Amanda Ruggeri finds out why. When Antipater of Sidon, the Greek poet of the 2nd Century BC, ...