- Goings on About Town: Readings and Talks
goatTitle-->THE CENTER FOR FICTION
In celebration of New York Review Books’ new translation of Gregor von Rezzori’s “An Ermine in Czernopol,” the writer Deborah Eisenberg and the playwright and actor Wallace Shawn read from the novel. (17 E. 47th St. For reservations, which . . ....
- Goings on About Town: Movies
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OPENING
BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT
Peter Hyams directed this remake of Fritz Lang’s 1956 film noir, about a journalist who attempts to expose a district attorney’s corruption. Starring Michael Douglas, Jesse Metcalfe, and Amber Tamblyn. Opening Sept. 11. (In wide release.)
CRUDE
A documentary, directed . . ....
- Lizzie Widdicombe: Colin Firth on being English.
Alert your mother: Colin Firth was in town last week. The British actor best known for playing variations on the repressed-but-sexy English gentleman, such as the aloof Mr. Darcy in the BBC’s “Pride and Prejudice,” and the uptight, but still eligible, Mark Darcy, foil . . ....
- Lizzie Widdicombe: Scousers
Clive Owen fans fall into a few categories. There are those (largely female) who like Owen for his looks. Then there are others (mostly male) who like his grizzled demeanor as an action hero in movies like “The International” and “Children of Men.” He seems rough . . ....
- Goings on About Town: Movies Fall Preview
goatTitle-->MOVIES ABOUT MOVIES
Michelle Williams stars in “My Week with Marilyn” (Nov. 4), Simon Curtis’s drama about Marilyn Monroe’s work with Laurence Olivier (played here by Kenneth Branagh) in the 1957 film “The Prince and the Showgirl.” Eddie Redmayne co . . ....
- Lizzie Widdicombe: France’s First Lady takes a tour of N.Y.U.
The other day, students in New York University’s visual-arts program received an e-mail advising them to be in their studios the following Monday afternoon. “They said that somebody famous was coming,” Robert Leonardi, a senior, recalled, “and that anything could happen.” A . . ....
- Lizzie Widdicombe: Van Cleef & Arpels diamonds on display.
Paris, France, sometime in the nineteen-fifties. A woman walks into Van Cleef & Arpels and falls in love with a diamond necklace. It’s expensive—say, four hundred thousand francs. “Listen,” she tells the jeweller, “tomorrow I’m going to come with my . . ....
- Nick Liptak: Peter Elliott, the world’s go-to ape actor.
When the credits rolled, at Sundance last week, on “Project Nim,” a documentary about the research chimpanzee Nim Chimpsky by the director James Marsh (“Man on Wire”), audience members could be forgiven for not recognizing one of its stars. Peter Elliott, a British actor who played . . ....
- Lizzie Widdicombe: Bohemian, in NoHo.
paragraph class="noindent">New York does exclusivity well, but Tokyo does it better. There is a Japanese phrase, “Ichigensama okotowari,” that’s used by owners of certain discriminating restaurants and shops, and means, roughly, “We respectfully decline first-time visitors.” In other words: walk-ins . . ....
- Lizzie Widdicombe: Bohemian, in NoHo.
paragraph class="noindent">New York does exclusivity well, but Tokyo does it better. There is a Japanese phrase, “Ichigensama okotowari,” that’s used by owners of certain discriminating restaurants and shops, and means, roughly, “We respectfully decline first-time visitors.” In other words: walk-ins . . ....
- Junot Díaz: “Miss Lora.”
Years later, you would wonder if it hadn’t been for your brother would you have done it? You’d remember how all the other guys had hated on her—how skinny she was, no culo, no titties, como un palito, but your brother didn’t . . ....
- Lizzie Widdicombe: Matador tailor Justo Algaba and the Metropolitan Opera’s “Carmen.”
Justo Algaba, one of the world’s most respected matador tailors, was in town the other day from Madrid, where he has a two-story shop devoted to the production of matador outfits, called trajes de luce (“suits of light”), because of their shimmery, multicolored adornments. Algaba . . ....
- Books: “The Changeling.”
Oe’s latest novel to be translated into English is an essayistic, and often frankly autobiographical, examination of the narrator’s relationship with his brother-in-law Goro, a filmmaker, and the emotional aftermath of Goro’s suicide. (Oe’s brother-in-law, the famous Japanese . . ....
- Lizzie Widdicombe: How top chefs fly with their knives.
Here’s a travel story that will send you back: Some years ago, Eric Ripert, the executive chef and co-owner of Le Bernardin, was returning to New York from Washington, D.C., where he’d cooked for a charity event. He put his carry-on bag through the . . ....
- Alexandra Jacobs: How Sara Blakely rehabilitated the girdle.
One sticky morning last summer, Sara Blakely, the inventor of Spanx, which over the past decade has become to women’s foundation garments what Scotch is to cellophane tape, was sitting in the Park Avenue offices of her husband, Jesse Itzler, confronting a new challenge: the male anatomy. Red . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Lizzie Widdicombe: You’ve Got Mail
Moral-reasoning pop quiz: There’s a film coming out—a thinly disguised portrayal of a media mogul—and word is that if it’s released it will hurt the mogul’s reputation. Powerful people intervene: they call a meeting and offer the movie studio . . ....
- Meghan O’Rourke: Anne Carson’s “Nox.”
In 2000, Anne Carson’s older brother Michael died unexpectedly in Copenhagen. It took two weeks for the news to reach Carson, a Canadian-born classicist and poet, because Michael’s widow couldn’t find her number in her husband’s papers. Michael had run away . . ....
- Richard Brody: “My Man Godfrey,” “Sullivan’s Travels,” “Rock-a-Bye Baby,” on DVD.
paragraph class="noindent">The blithering rich at the center of many Depression-era white-tie-and-tails movies are depicted mainly as callous villains in Gregory La Cava’s comedy “My Man Godfrey” (new on DVD from Universal), from 1936. The title character, played by William Powell . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Ben McGrath: Protests against copyright infringement bills.
8220;Look at him, the nerd using his gadget,” a man said last Wednesday, and for a moment it was unclear whether he meant it sincerely or was saying it with a wink. The man—as opposed to the putative nerd, thumbing an iPhone—was dressed in . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Goings on About Town: Classical Music
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OPERA
UNDERWORLD PRODUCTIONS OPERA
The company is bringing considerable talent to bear on an unlikely double bill: “Apollo & Dafne + Clarence & Anita,” operas on male-female conflict by Handel and Ben Yarmolinsky. The first features the singers Amelia Watkins and Jesse Cromer . . ....
- David Denby: Peter Sellers in Blake Edwards’s “The Party.”
Blake Edwards’s “The Party,” from 1968 (at Film Society of Lincoln Center on May 28), is the most maddeningly inconsistent of Hollywood comedies. Its hero is one Hrundi V. Bakshi, an incompetent Indian actor played with exquisite politeness and a touch of preening self-satisfaction— . . ....
- Lizzie Widdicombe: Roberta’s, in Brooklyn.
paragraph class="noindent">This gourmet pizza place, located amid a desolate-looking stretch of warehouses in Bushwick, is often described as a D.I.Y. enterprise. The label is slightly ambiguous—aren’t a lot of other restaurant entrepreneurs doing it themselves, too? Carlo Mirarchi, the chef at Roberta’ . . ....
- Lizzie Widdicombe: Defending the accused after a giant Mob bust.
It’s a common refrain, among the city’s armchair criminologists, that the Mob is dead in New York. So last Thursday’s giant federal Mob bust—a hundred and twenty-seven people, encompassing seven crime families—elicited a special fascination. It seemed almost nostalgic . . ....
- Lizzie Widdicombe: Defending the accused after a giant Mob bust.
It’s a common refrain, among the city’s armchair criminologists, that the Mob is dead in New York. So last Thursday’s giant federal Mob bust—a hundred and twenty-seven people, encompassing seven crime families—elicited a special fascination. It seemed almost nostalgic . . ....
- Goings on About Town: Above and Beyond
goatTitle-->PEN WORLD VOICES FESTIVAL OF INTERNATIONAL LITERATURE
More than a hundred and fifty writers gather for a week of discussions, readings, and other events. The festival gets under way on April 25 at 7:30, with Salman Rushdie, Malcolm Gladwell, Wallace Shawn, Deborah Eisenberg, Gioconda Belli, Hanif Kureishi, Am . . ....
- Lizzie Widdicombe: Forbidden Fruit
The three-week citywide performance-art festival Performa begins next week, opening not with a dinner but with a “food event”: “a series of food installations and happenings,” according to the invitation, “that will lead guests”—Cindy Sherman, Mario Batali—“on . . ....
- Lizzie Widdicombe: Ben Walker plays Andrew Jackson in eyeliner.
The high-camp American-history rock musical “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson” has been extended through June at the Public Theatre—good news for the packs of teen-age girls who can be seen hovering outside the lobby. They’re not all students of nineteenth-century populism . . ....
- Lizzie Widdicombe: What would Shakespeare say about WikiLeaks?
8220;A sincere diplomat,” Stalin once said, “is like dry water or wooden iron.” As any diplomat knows, the role requires a doubleness not just of message but of manner—an extra slathering of the flatteries and false civilities that grease the wheels of all human . . ....
