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Book Review: 20 April 2013
New York
Book Review: The
Annotated Brothers Grimm Bicentenntial Edition
Harvard
scholar Maria Tatar has added six new tales to this deluxe anniversary
edition of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm's popular, but often gruesome German
folk tales.
Comment: 15 April 2013
San Francisco
Open Letter to
Salvatore J. Cordileone, Archbishop of the Archdiocese of San
Francisco
California attorney Edward F. Mitchell
challenges the Roman Catholic clergyman's position on same-sex
marriage.
Book Review: 14 April 2013
New York
Stella Adler on American
Master Playwrights
Acting coach to Marlon Brando, Robert
De Niro, Warren Beatty, Annette Benning among many others, the legendary
Stella Adler dissects American theatre classics in a companion volume to
her book on the master European playwrights Ibsen, Strindberg, and
Chekhov.
News: 8 April 2013
Los Angeles
Tips On How To Avoid
Environmental Cancers
Smoking and poor nutrition together
account for two-thirds of U.S. cancer deaths each year, but the
President’s Cancer Panel reported in 2010 that environmental toxins play a
significant and under-recognized role in many cancers, causing "grievous
harm" to untold numbers of Americans.
Cinema: 28 March 2013
New York
Latin Cinema on Screens in New
York: Havana Film Festival 2013
Nineteen features compete
for the Havana Star Prize for Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay,
and Best Documentary.
Movie Review: 23 February 2013
Los Angeles
'Lincoln' at Face Value
Valiant effort aside, ultimately Spielberg's opus fails to
target below the (bewhiskered) surface.
Movie Review: 6 February 2013
New York
Caesar Must Die
The Taviani brothers present their version of Shakespeare’s
Julius Caesar in a performance by inmates of Rome’s maximum
security Rebibbia prison.
Sport: 3 February 2013
Washington, DC
Olympian Gaby Douglas
Donates Personal Effects to National Museum of African American History
and Culture
In the 2012 London Olympics, the then
16-year-old Douglas became the first U.S. gymnast to receive the
individual all-around gold and team gold medals in a single
Olympics.
Comment: 25 December 2012
New York
Rolling Stones 50 &
Counting Tour
"It's only rock and roll (But I managed to
score a ticket)," writes Alan Behr in New York.
Cinema: 13 December 2012
New York
Pasolini Retrospective Opens at
MOMA
During his lifetime Pier Paolo Pasolini's challenging
films were condemned and frequently banned for their raw sexuality, casual
violence and rejection of middle-class values.
Movie News: 10 December 2012
Los Angeles
King Kong Movie Poster
Fetches $388,375 at Auction
The King Kong movie poster
had a pre-auction estimate of $80,000.
Television: 30 November 2012
Los Angeles
A Tale of Two Englands:
Downton Abbey and The Crimson Petal and the White
Melynda
Nuss compares the ambitions of aristocrats at Downton Abbey to those of a
young prostitute and her married client in the grime and grit of Victorian
London.
News: 20 November 2012
Los Angeles
Charlie Chaplin Hat and Cane
Sell for $62,500
Auction sales resuts include pieces
connected to Charlie Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix,
Jefferson Airplane, Frank Sinatra, Charles Schulz’s ‘Peanuts,’ Bugs Bunny,
Sammy Davis Jr. and Bing Crosby.
News: 5 November 2012
New York
Is Extreme Weather Linked to
Global Warming?
A large majority of Americans believe that
global warming made several high profile extreme weather events worse
Style: 30 September 2012
New York
French Jewelry Designer
Transforms AK47s Into Luxury Collection For Fonderie 47
Are recycled AK47s the new jewelry and humanitarian chic?
Cinema: 14 August 2012
Los Angeles
Movie Review: Beasts of the
Southern Wild
In a forgotten swamp community in
Louisiana, a desperate six-year-old girl must learn to survive
unstoppable catastrophes of epic proportions.
Sport: 1 August 2012
New York
Archive: Designer
Steroids: Speeding Evolution (And Filling Stadium Seats)
First published on the opening day of the Beijing Olympic
Games, this interview with an American research chemist about the ongoing
battle against performance-enhancing drugs remains as relevant today as it
was in 2008.
Sport: 19 June 2012
Amsterdam
Eurosport: Accordion
Wrestling
Kimmo Pohjonen and his group of ten
Finnish, Olympic-style wrestlers known as Helsinki Nelson showcase a
uniquely Finnish tradition in the world of Greco-Roman wrestling.
News: 18 June 2012
New York
Winston Churchill: Online and
Off
In addition to the exhibition 'Churchill: The Power
of Words,' now on view at The Morgan Library in New York, a new rich media
website hopes to generate interest in Churchill among a younger audience
and educators.
Book Review: 29 May 2012
New York
Money Can't Buy
Happiness (But Looks Can Buy Money)
Economist
Daniel S. Hamermesh explains why people with attractive faces make more
money than those with average looks.
Sport: 1 May 2012
Las Vegas
Ring Kings: Mayweather vs.
Cotto Fight Live in Movie Theaters Nationwide
Ring Kings
brings boxing superstar Floyd "Money" Mayweather face to face with World
Champion Miguel Cotto, who will attempt to defend his WBA Super
Welterweight World title.
News: 11 April 2012
Los Angeles
Latino
Communities Hardest Hit by Air Pollution
The League of United Latin
American Citizens found that seven out of 10 Hispanic Americans face air
pollution threats 16 percent greater than the overall U.S. population,
making Latino families more vulnerable to health problems associated with
air pollutants. Poverty, lack of access to health care and language
barriers increase the danger.
Theatre Review: 1 March 2012
Paris
Octopus
Bare-breasted women in high-stepping black stiletto shoes,
legs, legs and more legs dominate Philippe Decouflé's new stage production
in Paris.
Book Review: 9 February 2012
Los Angeles
Language
Games
Melynda Nuss on two new books about how we
communicate in a multilingual and multicultural world.
News: 25 January 2012
Brussels
EU Releases Data
Protection Reform Proposal
According to European
Union Justice Minister Viviane Reding's proposed reforms there would be a
single EU-wide set of rules for personal data protection, not the country
by country hodgepodge of interpretations of the 1995 rules that exists
now.
Cinema: 17 December 2011
Los Angeles
Movie
Review: Melancholia
Tis the season to be jolly...or so we
thought: "If Lars von Trier set out to make an accurate film about
depression he has done a fantastic job.", writes culture critic Melynda
Nuss about von Trier's new film Melancholia.
Cinema: 1 December 2011
New York
Film Review: A Dangerous
Method
David Cronenburg’s new film explores how sex,
anti-semitism and the professional rivalry of Sigmund Freud and his
acolyte, Karl Jung, held sway at the dawn of pyschoanalysis.
Comment: 24 November 2011
Montreal
The Frye-Ku Folio:
44, 45, 46
Canadian humorist and illustrator Arcangelo
Frye offers up pages from his folio of Haiku for the age of Flickr,
YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. In his latest group of three, Mr. Frye
addresses the topic of romance gone wrong.
Cinema: 19 November 2011
London
Film Review:
Contagion Isn't Catching
Andrew Jack on why the
response to the star-studded Hollywood film is decidedly less than
feverish.
Cinema: 4 November 2011
London
Film Review:
The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn
While
admitting to be a fan of Hergé and no unquestioning praiser of Spielberg,
British journalist Andrew Jack considers the new Tintin movie has been
unfairly maligned by critics in the UK.
News: 11 October 2011
London
Putin: Mafia or Soviet
Throwback?
With remarks reported in a Russian newspaper
last week, that he wanted to encourage the formation of a "Eurasian Union"
of former Soviet states, birthday boy Vladimir Putin was accused by many
of wanting to go back to the Communist past.
Tech: 10 October 2011
San Francisco
How Green is Your
Data?
The environmental impact from social networking sites and web surfing
boils down to energy usage, which in turn affects the amount of greenhouse
gases we pump into our atmosphere.
News: 6 October 2011
Stockholm
Swedish
Poet Wins 2011 Nobel Prize for Literature
The Swedish
Academy praised the poet, saying, "because, through his condensed,
translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality".
Books: 20 September 2011
New York
But is Accosting the
Hotel Maid Also Wrong?
Can legal scholar Allan C.
Hutchinson's recent book Is Eating People Wrong? inform us about
the Dominique Strauss-Kahn sexual assault scandal in America? New York
attorney Alan Behr reviews the book and offers an opinion on the legal
case against the former IMF chief.
Cinema: 8 September 2011
New York
The Wave: He Was Only
Following Orders
The new German film The Wave
asks the viewer one question: if fascism were to happen again, would you
come to love it?
News: 27 August 2011
New York
What is an Ocean Dean
Zone?
Perhaps the most infamous U.S. dead zone is an 8,500
square mile swath of the Gulf of Mexico, not far from where the
nutrient-laden Mississippi River, which drains farms up and down the
Midwest, lets out
Comment: 19 July 2011
London
Murdoch's
Meltdown
From the trenches of the UK phone hacking
scandal, British journalist Colin Graham says that News International has
always been a somewhat sinister organization.
News: 17 July 2011
Los Angeles
New Dinosaur Hall Opens in Los
Angeles
Recent research suggests Tyrannosaurus
rex ate one another, but we don’t know if they killed one
another.
Style: 30 June 2011
Montreal
The Frye-Ku Folio: 41, 42,
43
Canadian humorist and illustrator Arcangelo Frye offers
his musings on the the Spring - Summer 2012 menswear shows in Milan during
Fashion Week.
News: 28 June 2011
Geneva
UN Calls for Global Study on
Violence and Discrimination Against LGBT Community
The UN
asks how can international human rights law be used to end violence and
related human rights violations based on sexual orientation and gender
identity.
Documentary: 31 May 2011
Paris
"And if God Doesn't Like
Black People"
Documentaries by a French journalist explore
Vatican racism against blacks, the sexual abuse of African nuns by priests
and the deportation of French, Spanish and German citizens of African or
Afro-European descent to Nazi concentration camps during World War II.
Books: 23 May 2011
Warsaw
Poetry: The Year of the
Ecstatic Pessimist
The enigmatic Polish poet, Czeslaw
Milosz — Nobel Laureate, diplomat, iconoclast — is remembered on the
centenary of his birth.
Comment: 15 May 2011
Montreal
The Frye-Ku Folio: 40 -
Dominique Strauss-Kahn
Canadian humorist and illustrator
Arcangelo Frye offers up pages from his folio of Haiku for the age of
Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. This latest edition features his
take on the Dominique Strauss-Kahn sexual assault controversy and its
implications for the IMF.
Television: 15 April 2011
Los Angeles
People Tell Me I'm White and I
Believe Them Auf Deutsch
While the American
television comic Stephen Colbert's satirically inverted logic provokes
young artists in Europe, the Harvard University scholar Henry Louis Gates
investigates blackness in Latin America in a new PBS series.
Tech: 6 April 2011
New York
Can Japan Survive Without
Nuclear Energy?
Japan would be hard pressed to close
all of its 54 nuclear reactors anytime soon, especially given that these
plants provide over a third of the nation’s electricity supply and 11
percent of its total energy needs.
Theatre Review: 28 March 2011
Houston,
Texas
A Weekend With Pablo
Picasso
Herbert Siguenza, the 30-year theatre veteran
who pioneered the use of sketch comedy to illuminate the complex ethnic
relationships of America’s cities, presents his vision of Pablo
Picasso.
Comment: 9 March 2011
Montreal
The Frye-ku Folio: 37,
38, 39
Canadian humorist and illustrator Arcangelo
Frye offers up pages from his folio of Haiku for the age of Flickr,
YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. This latest trio include his take on the
world of "the dance.".
Cinema: 25 February 2011
Los Angeles
Review: The King's
Speech
Has anyone noticed that both this film and its main
competitor for Hollywood’s highest distinction — The Social
Network — essentially tell the same story?
Tech: 7 February 2011
Paris
English Lord's Bugattis Fetch
Over 1.2 Million Euros at Motor Car Sale in Paris
From
the estate of Fitzroy Somerset, 5th Baron Raglan, Patron and Past Chairman
of the Bugatti Owners' Club, Trustee of the Bugatti Trust
Cinema: 1 February 2011
Los Angeles
Review: Black
Swan
Melynda Nuss on Darren Aronofsky’s "psychosexual
thriller." set in the world of New York City ballet.
News: 28 January 2011
Davos, Switzerland
France and Germany Stand Behind the
Euro
"Never will we turn our backs on the euro, never
will we drop the euro," declared President Nicolas Sarkozy of France at
the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland.
Comment: 9 December 2010
Montreal
The Frye-ku
Folio: 34, 35, 36 - Noël 2010
Humorist and illustrator
Arcangelo Frye offers up pages from his folio of Haiku for the age of
Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. This latest trio showcases some of
the unique joys of the Christmas season.
Style: 8 December 2010
New York
Albert Watson's Really Big
Book
Alan Behr in New York on the Scottish-born fashion
and style photographer's new book, UFO (Unified Fashion
Objectives).
Television: 21 November 2010
Los Angeles
The (Increasingly
Familiar) Sound of Sondheim’s Music
Great
Performances presents Sondheim! The Birthday Concert. In
this latest, star-studded celebration, Sondheim’s music is caught making
its entrance again, in its usual way. It’s all starting to seem very
familiar.
Comment: 4 November 2010
Warsaw:
Gorbachev,
Solzhenitsyn and Putin
Quick quiz: Which one will history
laud, which admire and which revile? Colin Graham posits the answer
depends largely on one’s global coordinates (and choice of media
outlets).
Seen: 31 October 2010
Paris
Matters Animal,
Vegetable and Political
The dizzying challenges facing
President Obama on the eve of the mid-term elections never seemed so
ear-catchingly tuneful.
Book Review: 30 October 2010
New York
Book Review: Fade to
Black
Paul Donnelley's collection of brief, often macabre,
obituaries of Hollywood luminaries is a perfectly ghoulish read for an
evening punctuated by Trick-or-Treaters ringing the doorbell every ten
minutes.
Cinema: 22 October 2010
Los Angeles
Hollywood Music
in Media Awards Announce Film and Television Nominnes
The
list of nominees include scores for The Social Network, Inception,
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps and Black Swan among
others..
Comment: 30 September 2010
Montreal
The
Frye-ku Folio: 31, 32, 33
Canadian humorist and
illustrator Arcangelo Frye offers up pages from his folio of Haiku for the
age of Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. This latest group of three
include his musings on the topics of Crime, Discipline and Punishment.
News: 19 September 2010
New York
Plants Risk
Worldwide Extinction
The UK-based nonprofit, Plantlife,
found that 15,000 of the 50,000 species of wild plants used in traditional
remedies are being overexploited and are potentially headed for
extinction.
Books: 5 August 2010
Los Angeles
The Imagined
Dénouement: 3
How To Survive an Atomic Bomb
In the
latest of his "Imagined Dénouement" series, O. Tyrone Shulaise proposes
what the final page of a book might be, based solely on the appearance of
its cover.
Cinema: 23 July 2010
New York
You Can't Spell
"Inception" Without
"I-N-E-P-T"
Banal, formulaic (in
the worst possible sense), ear splitting and over-wrought, 2010's
much-hyped summer blockbuster succeeds on only one front - providing
movie-goers with two and a half hours of air conditioned relief from the
sizzling heat.
Book Review: 12 July 2010
New York
Thank Heaven for
Not-so-Little Girls
Alan Behr in New York on the new Sports
Illustrated Swimsuit Book, Heaven
Comment: 9 July 2010
Montreal
The Frye-ku
Folio: 28, 29, 30
Humorist and illustrator Arcangelo
Frye offers up pages from his folio of Haiku for the age of Flickr,
YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.
DVD Review: 7 June 2010
New York
Henri
Cartier-Bresson Collector's Edition
Henri Cartier-Bresson
may be considered the father of modern photojournalism, but he was not
solely a photographer. A new 2-disc DVD of several documentaries he shot
between the 1930s and the 1970s bear witness to his affection for the
cinema. Read the review.
Comment: 4 June 2010
Montreal
The Frye-ku
Folio: 27
Humorist and illustrator Arcangelo Frye offers
up pages from his folio of Haiku for the age of Flickr, YouTube, Twitter
and Facebook. Number 27 in the series of modern-day Haiku is his love
letter to British Petroleum
News: 22 May 2010
Johannesburg
World Cup South Africa To
Kick Off With Superstar Concert Lineup
Billed as the greatest
entertainment event to date in Africa, the mega concert features musical
performances by an all-star line up as well as the presence of football
legends and other celebrities.
Comment: 17 May 2010
Montreal
The
Frye-ku Folio: 24, 25, 26
Humorist and illustrator
Arcangelo Frye offers up pages from his folio of Haiku for the age of
Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.Included in this selection is his
commentary on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Comment:10 May 2010
London
The UK Election
Results
Andrew Jack offers some observations on the
recent elections and their muddled outcome.
News: 10 May 2010
New York
Offshore Oil
Drilling and the BP Disaster
The BP oil disaster is
casting a long shadow over the public comment process now going on in
Virginia and other coastal U.S. states that are considering putting
exploratory oil wells in their offshore waters.
News: 17 April 2010
Geneva, Switzerland
WHO Warns Against
Breathing Volcanic Ash
The wind direction and other
meteorological conditions have an impact on where the ash falls to earth.
Photos and health guidelines.
Theatre Review: 2 April 2010
London
The Power of Yes
at the Lyttelton, National Theatre, London
David Hare’s latest play
attempts — and fails — to compellingly dramatize the events leading to the
near collapse of the global financial system.
News: 30 March 2010
Geneva, Switzerland
CERN Collider
Research Programme Reboots
"With these record-shattering
collision energies, the LHC experiments are propelled into a vast region
to explore, and the hunt begins for dark matter, new forces, new
dimensions and the Higgs boson," said spokesperson, Fabiola Gianotti.
Tech: 14 March 2010
Los Angeles
Electric
cars, hybrids and...coal power?
Coal-fired power will be
the predominant source of electricity used by electric and plug-in hybrid
cars unless we begin to source significant amounts of electricity from
renewables like solar and wind.
News: 2 March 2010
New York
The Suicide Tourist:
Frontline Investigates Assisted Suicide in Switzerland
Do
we have the right to end our lives if life itself becomes unbearable, or
when we enter the late-stages of painful, terminal illness? PBS news
series Frontline offers a revealing look at people facing the
most difficult decision of their lives.
News: 22 February 2010
Los Angeles
Why is
Nuclear Waste Stored on Native American Reservations?
The
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation says that the U.S. government and private
companies have been offering Native American tribes millions of dollars to
host nuclear waste storage sites.
Theatre Review: 5 February 2010
San Diego, California
Whisper House:
Murmurs of Something Great
All the ingredients are there,
but before Whisper House can find success, some serious tinkering
with the recipe is needed.
Tech: 29 January 2010
Washington, DC
How To Create Green
Jobs in America?
Bring Back the Bidet
Once reserved for
Europeans, bidets are now popular all over the world — except in North
America.
News Analysis: 24 January 2010
San Francisco
Environmental
Concerns After Haiti's Earthquake
The lack of trees because of
deforestation in Haiti causes huge soil erosion problems, threatening both
food and clean water sources in this country of 9.7 million people that is
the poorest in the Western hemisphere.
Film Reivew: 12 January 2010
London
Avatar
In
director James Cameron’s mega-marketed Hollywood hoop-de-doo, we ar e
presented with a wild blue yonder that is depressingly constrained by
Earth-bound conventions.
Tech: 25 December 2009
New York
One
Laptop Per Child Drives Breakthrough in New XO Design for Children’s
Laptop.
OLPC chairman Nicholas Negroponte and MIT Media Lab
announce new designs for children's laptop.
Books: 3 November 2009
Los Angeles
A Book by its
Cover
In the first of a series of humor essays, O. Tyrone Shulaise
imagines what the final page of a particularly torrid (and actual!) 1960s
pulp novel might be, based solely on the appearance of its cover.
Style: 31 October 2009
New York
Real Men Don't Shop
(at least not for fashion)
The average man’s attention span and
patience for clothes shopping is notoriously brief. Are retailers to
blame?
News: 6 October 2009
Paris
Life
Quality Quantified: The Brutality of Happenstance
In one moment,
two babies – one born in Norway and the other in Niger – largely have
their fates sealed, as demonstrated by the 2009 Human Development
Index.
Cinema / Style: 25 September 2009
New York
The
September Issue, or Grace Under Pressure
As seen in R.J.
Cutler’s new documentary, if Anna Wintour reigns as the seated monarch at
Vogue, it is Grace Coddington, the magazine’s Creative Director,
who might just be considered its éminence grise.
News Editorial: 19 Septembre
2009
Paris
Les
101 Gestes du Président Américain
No. 24: L'Appel Direct au Peuple:
Exercice Périlleux
Comment: 8 September 2009
New York
Time for a
"Fourth Estate" Tax?
Are the titans of "real" journalism — the
type that is expensive, exhaustive, essential to a functioning Democracy
and not terribly Internet friendly — a doomed group? Would Americans pay a
tax to keep them from dying out? Alan Behr offers his perspective.
Comment: 19 August 2009
New York
Is "Clean Coal"
Really Clean?
Coal wreaks environmental havoc, from the coal mining
that pollutes rivers and streams, to the premature deaths of coal miners
from accidents and lung diseases, to the release of greenhouse gases,
mercury and other toxins at power plants.
Book Review: 21 July 2009
New York
The Inner World of
Farm Animals
In her fascinating, good-for-all-ages book, Amy
Hatkoff not only re-introduces us to familiar farm animals, but makes
their lives and characters sweetly compelling.
Comment: 7 July 2009
New York
Hippocratic
or Hypocritical? When Medical Information is Flawed, Who is
Responsible?
In the wake of the Dalkon Shield and Vioxx,
is it any wonder that patients, in an effort to educate themselves, are
seduced by the slick marketing efforts of everyone from Big Pharma to late
night snake oil salesmen?
Book Review: 30 June 2009
New York
Hiding in Plain
Sight: The Secret World of Raymond Burr
That the film and
television actor was in a long-term, same-sex relationship is scarcely
enough to sustain the salaciously titled new biography by Michael Seth
Starr.
News Editorial: 5 June 2009
Paris
Tiananmen,
Twenty Years Hence: What France has Forgotten
For a brief moment in
history, it seemed that Paris might emerge as the capital of a Free China.
How did France’s courageous initial reactions to the Tiananmen massacre
wither and fade into amnesia and apathy?
Comment: 25 May 2009
Kuala Lampur,
Malaysia
Missing
Link: (Too) Much Ado About Ida
Despite all the media hyperbole
about "missing links," it may turn out that all the scientific claims and
ejaculations are a bit, in a word, premature. Dr. Anton Espira offers his
perspective.
Comment: 24 April 2009
San Francisco
Tortures Taint:
Waterboarding Sean Hannity for Charity
Yes, imagining that this
scenario could take place is a guilty pleasure. But only with emphasis on
the word "guilty.
Comment: 13 February 2009
Kuala Lampur,
Malaysia
The Evolution
of Charles Darwin's Reputation
Not since Copernicus were
such fiery passions stirred by scientific theory as by those of Charles
Darwin. On the 200th anniversary of his birth, world wide commemorations
of the man and his works reveal the intelligent design behind his efforts
to shape his own legacy.
Sports
New York
Designer Steroids:
Speeding Evolution
(And Filling Stadium Seats)
American research
chemist Jason S. Thomas explains cutting edge steroids and why the Olympic
Committee hasn't got a chance in its ongoing battle against
performance-enhancing drugs
Seen
Palo Alto, California
Hyperion Nuclear
Batteries: Clean Power from Underground
Otis Peterson is no Tony
Stark, but his innovative, idiot-proof nuclear battery will surely beat
Iron Man's arc reactor to market and bring (relatively) green power to
remote locations.
News
Paris
Obituary: Yves
Saint Laurent
The undisputed king of fashion during the
1960s and 70s, Saint Laurent introduced le smoking, bare breasts and
masculine glamour to the storied world of haute couture.
Style :
London
Karl Lagerfeld:
"Confidential" or Just Plain Confusing?
Shine Anthony-Dharan weighs
in on the up-close documentary and haute gossip about the life and times
of fashion designer, Karl Lagerfeld. |
