Arthur Lazere
On her very first LP, on the Bethlehem label in 1957, there was, in the singing and piano playing of Nina Simone (1933-2003) an authority, an artistic confidence unusual in a novice performer of 24. She had been trained ...
David Fear
If you’ve found yourself left breathless by the breakneck pace of Hollywood’s recent action thrillers, you probably have one man to thank: John Woo. It was Woo who almost single-handedly opened the eyes of the West to the hyper-kinetic ...
Nancy Chapple
Dispatches was praised by John le Carre as "the best book I have ever read on men and war in our time." There is a masculine mystique that revolves around wartime fear, bravery, foolhardiness. Can a war book equally ...
Nancy Chapple
One "minor character" is accorded just half a sentence in biographies of cult author Jack Kerouac: he had "an erratic love affair with Joyce Glassmann between 1957 and 1959." In 1983, Glassmann (now Johnson) published her account of that ...
Akiko Hart
Ian McEwan’s latest novel, Atonement, which was nominated for the Booker Prize in 2001, is a taut, intensely satisfying meditation on the nature of reality and the narrative structure of morality. The first part of the novel is ...
Eva Hunter
culturevulture.net reviews of Spielberg films: A.I. Artificial Intelligence Catch Me If You Can Jaws Minority Report Saving Private Ryan Orson Welles was the wunderkind of his film generation, having achieved significant success and critical acclaim at an ...
Nancy Chapple
In 1979, Jonathan Raban journeyed down the Mississippi from Minneapolis to New Orleans in a specially equipped 16-foot motorboat. Quite the loner, he makes the trip on his own, exploring a river that has fascinated him from afar since ...
Akiko Hart
Robin is nine and hangs from a tree. His neck is broken and no one knows who has killed him. Ten years later, his little sister tries to find out. The Little Friend is of that most vulnerable ...
Phil Freeman
Lou Reed’s career is a mystery on at least two levels. The first, of course, is the series of artistic tangents and blind alleys he’s caromed down at one point or another since his emergence with the Velvet Underground ...
Phil Freeman
Soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy played with pianist/composer Thelonious Monk for four months in 1960. He’s made explorations of Monk’s music a significant part of his career and discography ever since. In 1961, Lacy formed this quartet specifically to interpret ...
