- Lizzie Widdicombe: Young Professionals United for Change watch the State of the Union.
Four years ago, the Young Professionals United for Change—three thousand black banker and lawyer types under the age of forty—held a formal gala in Washington to celebrate Barack Obama’s Inauguration. By contrast, the group’s State of the Union “watch party,” . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Lizzie Widdicombe: A pedicab ride with the actor Jesse Eisenberg.
Who’s the biggest nerd in the movies? Jesse Eisenberg, who played the older brother in “The Squid and the Whale” and starred in “Adventureland,” might seem like an outside contender, but he has three films opening this month—“Solitary Man” (with . . ....
- 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: 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 . . ....
- 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 . . ....
- 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 . . ....
- 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 . . ....
- Will All These Future Electric Cars Hurt the Oil Change Industry in 2010?
The more things change, the more they seem the same, and that is especially true with business and industry. Often we believe that things are going to change very rapidly, and new innovations are going to take over and change the world or the industry subsector that we are in. However, it usually turns out, that things do not change very fast; consumer buying behavior doesn't change all...
- 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 . . ....
- 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 . . ....
- Lizzie Widdicombe: Kids get real on MTV’s “Skins.”
Six years ago, in Bristol, England, the television writer Bryan Elsley was brainstorming ideas for a new series—cop show? courtroom drama?—and he approached his nineteen-year-old son, Jamie Brittain, for advice. The response was tough but useful. “He basically told me all my ideas . . ....
- Lizzie Widdicombe: Quentin Rowan, a.k.a. Q. R. Markham, plagiarism addict.
Spy novels embrace clichés—the double agent, the bomb-rigged briefcase—and “Assassin of Secrets,” published last fall, made a virtue of this tendency, piling one trope onto another to create a story that rang with wry knowingness. The book is set in the . . ....
- David Denby: “Inception.”
Christopher Nolan, the British-born director of “Memento” and of the two most recent Batman movies, appears to believe that if he can do certain things in cinema—especially very complicated things—then he has to do them. But why? To what end? His new movie . . ....
- 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.)...
- Anthony Lane: “The Debt” and “Gainsbourg.”
The first twenty minutes of “The Debt” are a mess. We flash back and forward in time, flit from one location to the next, and soon arrive at the conclusion that the director, John Madden, must have pressed “Shuffle” rather than “Play.” Gradually, things . . ....
- 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: 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 . . ....
- When the Kids Go Back to School, And the Pets Stay
It is not uncommon to see a change in pet behavior when the seasons change. The absence of your kids for hours at a time is quite significant, and for the first few days back to school they are likely to wander the house looking for them. If your dog or cat appears a bit mopier than unusual and unable to adjust to this change in routine, there are a few things you can do to help make the...
- Anthony Lane: “Nine,” “The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus,” “The Young Victoria,” and “A Single Man.”
The beginning of “Nine” feels like an end. The first words we hear are “You kill your film,” uttered at a press conference by an Italian movie director named Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis). We then find him at the Cinecittà film studios, in Rome . . ....
- Anthony Lane: “Coco Before Chanel” and “Walt & El Grupo.”
As the title implies, “Coco Before Chanel” is one of those films, like “Young Mr. Lincoln” or “Young Winston,” which invite us to peek into the origins of the notable. These acts of preëmption are lured, by their nature, toward the “ . . ....
- Finally, Some Ways to Get Taller For All Those People Who Are Tired of Being Short!
If you're a short person, do you just have to live with that fact? After all, they tell you to accept the things you cannot change and change the things you can. But what if you could change the fact that you're shorter than the average person?...
- C. K. Williams: “Exhaust.”
My grandson wants a Ferrari. I buy one for him. Why not?
The second a Mercedes. The third a Porsche. Why not?
How things change—my grandfather wanted only the pickup
one icy Rochester night the year before I was born
he skidded through a gate in and plowed . . ....
- Leopard Gecko Feeding
Your pet leopard gecko has specific nutritional needs and feeding them properly is vital to maintaining their health. A leopard gecko's diet consists mainly of insects, whether in the wild or if kept as a pet....
- Leopard Gecko Feeding
Your pet leopard gecko has specific nutritional needs and feeding them properly is vital to maintaining their health. A leopard gecko's diet consists mainly of insects, whether in the wild or if kept as a pet....
- Stay Healthy
If you want to stay healthy, you need to control the things that cause cellular aging, DNA degeneration, disease and eventually death. Those things occur on a molecular level throughout our lives....
- Hilton Als: Young Jean Lee’s “We’re Gonna Die.”
Young Jean Lee is a thirty-six-year-old Korean-American playwright and director who makes theatre out of the ways the culture affects her imagination. Her plays address, among other things, what it means to own a self-hating body. While she shows how Asian women, blacks, and gays . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Books: “Driving Home.”
In 1990, Raban left London “on impulse, for casual and disreputable reasons.” He met someone, he tells us, and made for Seattle, the “far-western stronghold of the second chance, second family, second career.” The essays collected here describe, among other things, his attempts to get . . . (Subscription required.)...
