Part of the problem is that Szpilman, as played by Adrien Brody, isn’t a hero or a villain. He’s a survivor. Eluding capture by the Germans because of the courage of friends and strangers and several near-miraculous escapes, he witnesses the trauma of Warsaw under occupation, from the debasement and deportations of Jews (including his entire family), to the Warsaw ghetto uprising of 1943 and the general Warsaw uprising of 1944....
The Odyssey by Homer. The mother of all stories, with the most human themes: fear of aging and death. " Don Quixote " by Miguel de Cervantes. A book that dignifies our small attempts to behave with honor. " Tristram Shandy " by Laurence Sterne. It opens wide the gates of fiction and invites everyone in. " Moby-Dick " by Herman Melville. A masterpiece about our need to conquer nature even as we worship it....
The new implant, to be marketed as Clairvoyeur, is a far cry from the crude “high-density microelectric array” devices that researchers started testing in the early part of the century. People using those contraptions had to attach a large pair of goggles to a wire that extended through the skull. And because the implants contained just 100 needlelike electrodes, which communicated sporadically with 200 to 300 neurons, users saw only a faint keyhole image....
There is no doubt that Frank J. Biondi Jr., the CEO of Universal Studios until last November, needed to watch a lot of movies at home to really excel at his job. And a fancy TV and VCR clearly wouldn’t suffice. In its most recent proxy, Universal’s parent, Seagram, says it spent more than $1.7 million to build a screening room at Biondi’s L.A. home. The company owns it, mind you, and therefore has paid the costs associated with it, including property taxes, insurance and regular dusting of the screen....
This is a new role for Depp: grown-up. And he has a good reason to play it. He has a grown-up movie opening Friday, ““Donnie Brasco,’’ the story of an FBI agent who goes undercover in the mob, befriends an aging toughie (Al Pacino) and unexpectedly finds himself torn between the home and family he’s left behind and the semiglamorous world of violence he’s joined. ““Donnie Brasco’’ is a departure for Depp, a step away from the gentle misfits, camp rebels, deranged paramours and cross-dressing B-movie legends he’s played in films like ““Edward Scissorhands,’’ ““Cry-Baby,’’ ““Don Juan De Marco’’ and ““Ed Wood....
After her performance during the ABC’s Disney Family Singalong earlier this month, many Twitter users have pegged Ariana Grande to play the female lead, Megara. Danny DeVito’s name popped up frequently as well, since fans want him to reprise his role as Phil. (If the casting got Phil right the first time, why change it now?) Jon Favreau (who recently directed the live-action Lion King and Jungle Book), and Gore Verbinski (of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise) are among those who are rumored to direct....
He didn’t need to. At the dawn of 1993, more than a decade into the battle against a disease for which no cure has been found, the code was easily broken. It had been rumored for years that the great dancer was struggling with AIDS. Indeed, the rumors may have started even before his sickness struck: in some quarters, where obituary pages are scanned before the weather report, and funeral services are as much a part of social life as parties, a kind of holocaust mentality has set in....
The crash, which tore up the back end of the luxury car, didn’t seem to be the driver’s fault. Apparently, the car pulled over to the outside lane of the road due to a mechanical failure, the BBC reported. After the Lamborghini stopped, a van rammed into the new car. Even the police said they were devastated for the new car owner. Though they didn’t reveal too much about the situation, the police’s tweet used the hashtag “#icouldhavecried....
Well, they don’t have “easy access” anymore. And neither do the other 13,000 investors, since the BFA declared bankruptcy in November, four months after state regulators forced the nonprofit to freeze its assets. The fund is $590 million in debt, far outstripping the $158 million Jim and Tammy Bakker bankruptcy scandal–and regulators believe it is among the nation’s largest cases of “affinity fraud,” preying on a group of people with a common background....
Shamir and Arafat converged on the same answer to their different quandaries: East Jerusalem. Shamir maintains that a conference including Palestinian representatives from East Jerusalem would violate Israel’s claim to all of the city. He was thinking of objecting to the conference on that ground when, NEWSWEEK has learned, Israeli intelligence intercepts of Arab telephone and fax transmissions came in: Arafat had ordered West Bank and Gaza Strip Palestinian leaders to insist on the right of East Jerusalemites to be at the conference....
The miracle of director Gerald Gutierrez’s new production, which originated at the Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut and has just opened on Broadway, is that it blows all the conventional wisdom away. Two simple but radical alterations have transformed “The Most Happy Fella” into a show that now has a soul as stirring as its sound. The first, and most daring, is that Gutierrez has thrown out the splendid orchestral arrangement of the score, and replaced it with a minimal two-piano accompaniment (which Loesser himself authorized in the early ’60s)....
The Navy announced Friday that a sailor aboard the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Kidd “tested positive for COVID-19 after being medically evacuated to the United States from operations at sea, April 23.” The senior Pentagon official told Newsweek that this service member was “evacuated from the ship through the assistance of coordination with a partner nation in Central America.” A Navy official confirmed the foreign assistance to Newsweek and placed the official count of confirmed COVID-19 cases on the USS Kidd at 18....
Patients with sickle cell disease have a mutation in their beta-hemoglobin gene, which leads to the production of red blood cells that rupture and form a sickle shape, causing them to have trouble passing through small blood vessels in the body. This in turn blocks the flow of blood and can lead to severe pain and serious complications. Currently, the only cure involves a stem cell transplant from a donor, but in this new clinical trial, CRISPR gene editing will replace the mutated genes with healthy versions using the patient’s own stem cells....
The urbane Calley, 66, is a blast from Hollywood’s past. He spent 10 years as president of Warner Brothers, only to announce at the age of 50 that he was retiring to Fishers Island, the billionaires’ haven on Long Island Sound. Living there in the winter and sailing his boat to Europe in the summer, Calley was perfectly happy never reading a newspaper, watching television or going to the movies, he told friends....
