- David Denby: “Black Swan” and “Love and Other Drugs.”
Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan” is a luridly beautiful farrago—a violent fantasia that mixes the tensions of preparing a new production of “Swan Lake” with sex, blood, and horror-film flourishes. Natalie Portman is Nina, a soloist in a New York ballet company . . ....
- David Denby: Remembering Eric Rohmer’s “Claire’s Knee.”
On a very cold day in New York, in February, 1971, when the streets were black with ice, and my mood was black, too—a love affair had just ended—I went to see Eric Rohmer’s “Claire’s Knee,” which is set alongside . . ....
- Alex Ross: Philip Glass’s 75th birthday celebrations.
Philip Glass’s place in musical history is secure. His sprawling, churning, monumentally obsessive works of the nineteen-seventies—“Music with Changing Parts,” “Music in Twelve Parts,” “Einstein on the Beach,” “Satyagraha”—have fascinated several generations of listeners, demonstrating . . ....
- Ben Greenman: Black Francis, the former Pixies frontman, at Joe’s Pub.
The former Pixies front man Frank Black—who is, these days, recording once again under his Pixies name, Black Francis—is the Michelle Duggar of alternative rock. During the past seventeen years, he has released more than a dozen studio albums, not to mention numerous singles and EPs . . ....
- Books: “Verdi’s Shakespeare” review.
In the essays collected here, Wills examines how Verdi—who, though he did not read English, “adored Shakespeare”—composed and staged “Macbeth,” “Otello,” and “Falstaff,” all “solid masterpieces,” and the latter two “arguably the greatest things he . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Race @ Ethel Barrymore Theatre
Ruthlessness of a rhetorical kind is part of the fun of David Mamet’s new play (directed by the author), his latest exercise in contrarian provocation. “Do you know what you can say? To a black man. On the subject of race?” Henry Brown (David Alan Grier), a black lawyer, says to Charles Strickland (Richard Thomas), a rich, white potential client who is accused of raping...
- Hilton Als: Jay Pharoah on “Saturday Night Live.”
In its thirty-five years as a network staple, “Saturday Night Live” has had, for the most part, an uneasy relationship to its black male cast members. Generally, if you’re black and male, you eventually get to play some variation on an urban myth—a . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Richard Brody: “Nothing but a Man,” at the Museum of the Moving Image.
8220;Nothing but a Man”—Michael Roemer’s bold 1964 independent film, about the awakening of a Southern black man’s righteous anger in response to social and legal racism—was co-produced by its cinematographer, Robert Young, and its sound recordist, Robert Rubin, whose . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Books: “Curfewed Night.”
Peer’s memoir of Kashmir chronicles a “fairy-tale childhood of the eighties”—samovars of kahwa tea drunk in paddy fields beneath the Himalayas—that gives way to “the horror of the nineties”: India’s rigging of the 1987 state elections and . . ....
- Goings on About Town: Dance
goatTitle-->NEW YORK CITY BALLET
The industrious Benjamin Millepied—who created the dance sequences for Darren Aronofsky’s ballet-noir film “Black Swan”—premières his latest ballet, “Plainspoken,” set to a commissioned score by David Lang, at the Oct. 7 . . ....
- Stephen Dunn: “Reconstruction.”
The volcanoes, once so active,
are mostly quiet now, my friend says,
no way of telling us what they know.
And the dinosaurs, bone by bone,
may have been reconstructed,
but their stories, too, largely remain
untold, their skulls most likely full,
he says—like prehistoric black boxes— . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Nina Zivancevic: “Letter to Tsvetaeva”
Ah, now our time has come, Marina.
You visit me at night while I sit alone
with a glass of wine in hand
—you who do not need a key—
for you the most secret door of my room
is always open:
abandoned by our mothers,
we both . . ....
- Tad Friend: Gary Vaynerchuk’s wine and social-media empire.
In the future, everyone will be in touch with Gary Vaynerchuk. You’re probably already buds with him on Facebook (44,900 acolytes) or Twitter (852,000 followers). No? Really? You haven’t seen him on the Internet explaining wine, as the excitable host of the “Wine Library TV . . ....
- 4 Undeniable Facts of How Drinking Wine Everyday Can Do Wonders to Your Body
When it comes to wine drinking, a lot of people have the wrong perception that it is absolutely detrimental to health and thus must be avoided at all costs. While it is generally true that an excessive intake of alcohol is disastrous to your body, moderate drinking of wine everyday is however absolutely beneficial to your health. If you are wondering, moderation here means one to two glasses...
- Campbell McGrath: “Shopping for Pomegranates at Wal-Mart on New Year’s Day.”
Beneath a ten-foot-tall apparition of Frosty the Snowman
with his corncob pipe and jovial, over-eager, button-black eyes,
holding, in my palm, the leathery, wine-colored purse
of a pomegranate, I realize, yet again, that America is a country
about which I understand everything and nothing at . . ....
- Red Wine and Resveratrol – A Toast to Good Health
A decade's worth of scientific studies have pointed to red wine as a contributor to good health. Red wine in moderate amounts can help the heart stay healthy over the long-term. The paradoxical situation of the French having a high-fat diet yet having a low instance of heart disease has also been theorized to be caused by their high-consumption of red wine....
- Books: “The Imperfectionists.”
This acute début portrays the world of neurotic journalists—“as touchy as cabaret performers and as stubborn as factory machinists”—at an English-language paper in Rome. Vignettes introduce us to various characters: a naïve Cairo stringer; an obituary writer unable to . . ....
- Dan Chiasson: C. D. Wright’s “One with Others.”
In August, 1969, a Memphis man known as Sweet Willie Wine led a group of black men on a four-day March Against Fear, from West Memphis to Little Rock, passing through the small towns of the Arkansas delta. It was a tense time all over Arkansas. Martin Luther King . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Effectively Remove Wine Spills From Your Cars Interior
Wine spills can leave a cars interior smelling strongly and red wine stains can look very unsightly on upholstery. Wine spills and stains can successfully be cleaned up and removed but it's important that the correct products and techniques are used in order for it to be completely removed and to prevent any undesirable odours from persisting. ...
- ‘Red Wine’ Chemical May One Day Treat Diabetes
The much touted red wine compound resveratrol shows some promise as a future treatment for type 2 diabetes, but drinking wine or taking resveratrol supplements isn't likely to do diabetic people much good, researchers say....
- How Red Wine Helps the Heart
How does drinking red wine manage to keep the cardiologist at bay? Two studies suggest different approaches as to how merlots and cabernet sauvignons and other types of red wine offer heart-healthy benefits....
- Do Grapes or Alcohol Make Red Wine Good for the Heart?
Studies have long suggested that drinking red wine in moderation might be good for the heart. What’s been less clear is whether it’s the alcohol in wine or its antioxidants -- mainly from grape skins and seeds -- that may be responsible for those heart and stroke risk reductions. Now a new study has arrived at a surprising answer: It may be both....
- Goings on About Town: Classical Music
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OPERA
METROPOLITAN OPERA
Edo de Waart, replacing James Levine, conducts the January performances of “Der Rosenkavalier.” The cast—which includes Renée Fleming, Susan Graham, Christine Schäfer, and Kristinn Sigmundsson—could hardly be bettered. (Jan. 6 at 7:30 and Jan. 9 . . ....
- Advice For a Black Eye
It is common for an individual to develop a black eye if they have received a head or face injury. The "black" eye results from fluid and blood collecting around the eye. The area begins to swell and a black eye is the result. Most black eye bruises are not serious injuries and within a few days they resolve on their own. However, occasionally black eye bruises can signify something more...
- Books: “The Invisible Line.”
This popular history makes vivid use of primary documents to reconstruct the sagas of three families who crossed the color line from black to white. They negotiated this transition by means of legal challenges and such racial categories as “Melungeons” and “Black Dutch,” or simply by . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Pet Friendly Vacations – California Wine Country and Napa Valley
Looking for a great place to vacation with your pet? Like rolling hills, exquisite food and wine? Pet friendly California wine country is a wonderful place to experience with a pet. Lodging from quaint bed and breakfasts to luxury hotels and everything in between are available for pet travelers....
- Goings on About Town: Dance
goatTitle-->NEW YORK CITY BALLET
The company goes back to basics, with seven days of Balanchine’s “black-and-white” dances, modernist masterpieces that have come to define the style and look of twentieth-century American ballet. In “Apollo” (1928)—set, like many . . ....
- Colin Jost: “Explaining Your Time Warner Bill.”
36;17.23 — Basic service
$37.35 — Standard service
$40.81 — Actual service
$12.50 — Federal taxes
$11.75 — Federal taxes, part two
$6.85 — New York City taxes
$5.35 — Fort Wayne, Indiana, city taxes
$3.45 — Singapore Nuclear Defense Fund
$ . . ....
