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New Music: Paul McCartney’s ‘Kisses on the Bottom,’ Featuring Standards
“Kisses on the Bottom,” an album of standards by Paul McCartney, is a jaunty tip of the hat to the pop music of his parents’ generation.


International Herald Tribune | 06-Feb-2012 23:04

ArtsBeat: 'Book of Mormon' Tops Broadway Box Office For First Time
"The Book of Mormon" topped the Broadway box office last week, thanks to premium ticket pricing and the fact that it remains in a relatively small theater.


International Herald Tribune | 06-Feb-2012 22:48

North Korean accordion players are a YouTube hit

A group of North Korean accordion players is proving to be an unlikely hit on YouTube, attracting nearly 320,000 viewings in five days with their spirited version of a 1980s pop song.

Five students of Pyongyang's Kum Song School of Music are seen performing the mid-80s hit "Take on Me" by Norwegian group a-ha, a rare performance of popular Western music in the reclusive communist state.

The performance last December was filmed by visiting Norwegian artist Morten Traavik, who posted the clip on the video-sharing website on February 1.

france24.com | 06-Feb-2012 22:45

Verizon, Redbox team up to take on Netflix

US telecom giant Verizon is teaming up with Coinstar, which operates Redbox movie rental kiosks, to launch a video service to take on market leader Netflix.

Verizon and Coinstar said Monday they had formed a joint venture that will add an online streaming option to the 34,500 Redbox self-service vending machines located in grocery stores, McDonald's restaurants and other sites.

Verizon and Coinstar subsidiary Redbox said the subscription service will launch in the second half of this year.

france24.com | 06-Feb-2012 22:25

ArtsBeat: Rendez-Vous with French Cinema Will Open With Hit Film 'The Intouchables'
"The Intouchables," the comedy-drama by Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano, stars Francois Cluzet as a paralyzed millionaire who forges an unlikely friendship with the Senegalese parolee (Omar Sy) he hired to take care of him. It has gone on to become one of the most successful films of all time at the French box office.


International Herald Tribune | 06-Feb-2012 22:23

ArtsBeat: With No Place at Grammys, Latin Jazz Artists Plan Their Own Concert
A group of Latin jazz musicians are planning to hold a concert in Los Angeles on the same night as the Grammy Awards to protest the decision that eliminated 31 categories from this year's awards, protest organizers announced Monday.


International Herald Tribune | 06-Feb-2012 22:16

Missing ancient objects returned to Berlin

Dozens of mostly Egyptian objects from the 4th to 7th centuries AD which had been missing since the end of World War II have been unearthed and returned to a Berlin museum, officials said Monday.

The 44 pieces were identified as being part of the Bode Museum's collection of Byzantine art after being stored for decades in two boxes at Leipzig University's Egyptian Museum in eastern Germany.

They had been transported to the Soviet Union after World War II and were brought back to Germany in 1958 but got mixed up with objects from Leipzig and ended up there instead.

france24.com | 06-Feb-2012 20:25

The Carpetbagger: May the Best Actor Get the Most Attention
The contenders in the best-actor Oscar race aren't campaigning, unless you count all those television and press appearances this week.


International Herald Tribune | 06-Feb-2012 19:55

Strong opening for Thatcher movie in Argentina

"The Iron Lady," the Hollywood biopic of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, had a strong opening in Buenos Aires as the country approaches the 30th anniversary of the war with Britain over the Falkland Islands.

The movie stars Meryl Streep as an aged Thatcher looking back at her career. It includes a segment on her decision in 1982 to militarily defend the windswept Falklands -- known here as the Malvinas -- after Argentine troops landed on the islands.

france24.com | 06-Feb-2012 19:25

The Carpetbagger: Animators and Art Directors Pick Their Winners
"Rango," "Hugo," "Harry Potter" and "Dragon Tattoo" took home specialty awards over the weekend.


International Herald Tribune | 06-Feb-2012 19:24

Google Doodle celebrates Francois Truffaut

Google Doodle, which highlights anniversaries on the Google search engine, Monday showcased Francois Truffaut, the late French "new wave" film-maker who would have turned 80 on Monday.

Truffaut, who died of cancer at age 52, notably directed the films "the 400 blows" (1959), "Jules and Jim" (1962), and "The last metro" (1980) which Google Doodle illustrators chose to remember on the search engine's homepage.

france24.com | 06-Feb-2012 19:05

The Carpetbagger: My Oscar Picks: Terry Moran
"Nightline" anchor Terry Moran shares his Oscar ballot.


International Herald Tribune | 06-Feb-2012 17:53

CULTURE: US actor Ben Gazzara dies of pancreatic cancer aged 81
American actor Ben Gazzara died of pancreatic cancer Friday at the age of 81 in a Manhattan hospital, his attorney said.
france24.com | 06-Feb-2012 16:57

Music Review: Super Bowl — No Longer an Upset: Madonna Acts Her Age
Madonna, 53, danced her way back toward worldwide visibility Sunday as the halftime attraction for the Super Bowl, with a giant supporting cast and a downright benign stance.


International Herald Tribune | 06-Feb-2012 09:46

John H. Davis, Chronicler of Kennedys and Others, Dies at 82
Mr. Davis’s eight books included tomes on the Kennedys, the Guggenheims, the Gambinos and the Bouviers, to whom he was related.


International Herald Tribune | 06-Feb-2012 06:17

Goings on About Town: Art
PageBreak -->MUSEUMS AND LIBRARIES METROPOLITAN MUSEUM Fifth Ave. at 82nd St. (212-535-7710)—“The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini.” Through March 18. | “Chinese Art in an Age of Revolution: Fu Baoshi (1904-1965).” Through April 15. | “Photographic Treasures from the Collection . . .
newyorker.com | 06-Feb-2012 06:00

Goings on About Town: Classical Music
PageBreak -->OPERA METROPOLITAN OPERA Bartlett Sher’s rambunctious staging of “Il Barbiere di Siviglia” returns to the repertory, with Rodion Pogossov in the title role and Diana Damrau as Rosina, as well as Colin Lee, John Del Carlo, and Ferruccio Furlanetto; Maurizio Benini . . .
newyorker.com | 06-Feb-2012 06:00

Goings on About Town: Dance
goatTitle-->NEW YORK CITY BALLET In the next two weeks, the company will offer a broad swath of repertory by Balanchine, Robbins, and Ratmansky, as well as several performances of two large-scale narrative ballets by Peter Martins and Lynne Taylor-Corbett. On the Balanchine front, N.Y.C.B. presents the . . .
newyorker.com | 06-Feb-2012 06:00

Goings on About Town: Movies
PageBreak -->OPENING BULLHEAD Michaël R. Roskam directed this drama, about a farmer (Matthias Schoenaerts) who makes a deal with an underworld meat trader. In Dutch and French. Opening Feb. 17. (In limited release.) CHICO & RITA Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal directed . . .
newyorker.com | 06-Feb-2012 06:00

Goings on About Town: Night Life
PageBreak -->ROCK AND POP Musicians and night-club proprietors live complicated lives; it’s advisable to check in advance to confirm engagements. “AMERICAN SONGBOOK” Feb. 8: The baritone raconteur Bill Callahan, the artist formerly known as Smog, brings his Americana-inflected songs to . . .
newyorker.com | 06-Feb-2012 06:00

Goings on About Town: On the Horizon
THE THEATRE RESURRECTION March 1 Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s 1971 rock musical, “Jesus Christ Superstar,” is back, in a production that originated at last year’s Stratford Shakespeare Festival. Des McAnuff directs, at the Neil Simon. (212-239-6200.) CLASSICAL MUSIC BACK IN BLACK March . . .
newyorker.com | 06-Feb-2012 06:00

Goings on About Town: Readings and Talks
goatTitle-->“SELECTED SHORTS” Jerry Stiller, Anne Meara, and Stephen Lang join the New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast for an evening based on her new book, “What I Hate from A to Z.” (Symphony Space, Broadway at 95th St. 212-864-5400. Feb. 8 at 7.) “ . . .
newyorker.com | 06-Feb-2012 06:00

Goings on About Town: Above and Beyond
goatTitle-->WESTMINSTER KENNEL CLUB DOG SHOW Samoyeds, Cavalier King Charles spaniels, golden retrievers, Rhodesian ridgebacks, French bulldogs, dachshunds, and many other breeds come to town for the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. (Madison Square Garden, Seventh Ave. at 33rd St. 800-745-3000. For more information, visit westminsterkennelclub.org. Feb. 13-14.)
newyorker.com | 06-Feb-2012 06:00

Your Eustace, 2012: Eustace Tilley Contest.
A portfolio of the winning entries to the 2012 Eustace Tilley Contest, an invitation to redefine The New Yorker’s presiding dandy.
newyorker.com | 06-Feb-2012 06:00

Goings on About Town: The Theatre
PageBreak -->OPENINGS AND PREVIEWS Please call the phone number listed with the theatre for timetables and ticket information. AND GOD CREATED GREAT WHALES Rinde Eckert wrote and stars in this musical, about a composer with mental illness who tries to write an opera based on “ . . .
newyorker.com | 06-Feb-2012 06:00

John Lahr: “Look Back in Anger,” a John Osborne revival.
John Osborne’s rowdy, shocking anger—first broadcast in his play “Look Back in Anger,” which is now in revival at the Roundabout Theatre Company’s Laura Pels—was his trademark, his gift, and his epitaph. “When the bell rings, I not only . . . (Subscription required.)
newyorker.com | 06-Feb-2012 06:00

Sasha Frere-Jones: Rick Ross and the life style of a boss.
A central motif in contemporary hip-hop is rapping about drug dealing by artists who may not actually sell narcotics. Among others, Jay-Z, Clipse, and Young Jeezy have rhymed about a past or present involvement in the trade on the street. It’s typically impossible to determine whether . . .
newyorker.com | 06-Feb-2012 06:00

Emily Nussbaum: Children’s TV enjoys a renaissance.
When children’s television comes up in conversation, everyone knows the drill. Begin with the sinister idiom “screen time.” To show you’re no prig, make a warm remark about “Sesame Street.” Name your favorite Muppet. (I suggest Beaker or the Swedish chef.) Then . . . (Subscription required.)
newyorker.com | 06-Feb-2012 06:00

Emily Nussbaum: “The Loving Story,” “Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory,” on HBO.
HBO has two new documentaries, each dramatizing a miscarriage of justice. In January, the cable channel began airing Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s “Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory,” which was nominated for an Oscar for best documentary. It’s the capper to their nearly two-decade . . . (Subscription required.)
newyorker.com | 06-Feb-2012 06:00

Andrea K. Scott: Ciano in the Flatiron District.
If some locations seem cursed for new restaurants, can others be lucky? The Tuscan-style Beppe was a hit for nine years, before closing in 2010. Within months, another upscale down-home establishment sprang up in its place, helmed by the rising star Shea Gallante, and it may well be . . .
newyorker.com | 06-Feb-2012 06:00

Alex Ross: ISSUE Project Room’s permanent space.
The avant-garde performance center ISSUE Project Room—which has variously inhabited a garage in the East Village, an empty oil silo on the Gowanus Canal, and the Old American Can Factory, also in the Gowanus area—has finally found a permanent home: 110 Livingston, a Renaissance-style . . . (Subscription required.)
newyorker.com | 06-Feb-2012 06:00

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 . . .
newyorker.com | 06-Feb-2012 06:00

Andrea K. Scott: Klara Lidén, at the Reena Spaulings gallery.
New York may be a concrete jungle, but it does have some soil and sky. Walter De Maria’s land-art knockout, “The New York Earth Room,” is two hundred and eighty thousand pounds of black dirt, maintained in a SoHo loft by the Dia Art Foundation . . . (Subscription required.)
newyorker.com | 06-Feb-2012 06:00

Anthony Lane: M.R. James’s “Collected Ghost Stories.”
The name of Montague Rhodes James is not widely recognized in America, and there will be little fellow-feeling for the world he chose to inhabit. Indeed, it seems as remote as a cold, unvisitable planet, viewed from afar. James was born in southeast England in 1862. His father, Herbert . . . (Subscription required.)
newyorker.com | 06-Feb-2012 06:00

Ben Greenman: Sinéad O’Connor’s “How About I Be Me (And You Be You)?”
Sinéad O’Connor has always had a talent for distracting people from her talent. In 1992, she famously tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II on “Saturday Night Live,” and, slightly less famously, was booed offstage at a Bob Dylan tribute weeks later . . . (Subscription required.)
newyorker.com | 06-Feb-2012 06:00

Books: “American Egyptologist” by Jeffrey Abt, review.
Born in Illinois in 1865, James Henry Breasted turned an early interest in the ministry and a talent for languages into a remarkable career as America’s first formally trained Egyptologist. He specialized in the recording of inscriptions and wanted nothing less than “the recopying and republication of . . . (Subscription required.)
newyorker.com | 06-Feb-2012 06:00

Books: “Nod House” by Nathaniel Mackey, review.
In oblique, elliptical fashion, these poems follow the dispersal of African peoples by half a millennium of catastrophes, from slavery to Hurricane Katrina. Mackey’s narrative concerns the citizens of a dim necropolis called Quag. The wanderings of his characters, who have names like St. Sufferhead, Anuncia, and Huff . . . (Subscription required.)
newyorker.com | 06-Feb-2012 06:00

Books: “Saladin” by Anne-Marie Eddé, review.
In 1187, the Muslim military ruler Saladin captured Jerusalem from the descendants of crusaders. The news electrified Europe, and England and France imposed a “Saladin tithe,” to fund the Third Crusade. Eddé’s book portrays Saladin amid a medieval world in motion: He dispatches sons and . . . (Subscription required.)
newyorker.com | 06-Feb-2012 06:00

Books: “Vulture Peak” by John Burdett, review.
The fifth installment in Burdett’s Bangkok-based crime series begins with a triple homicide whose victims have had every salable body part removed. Among the suspects are identical-twin Chinese heiresses—gorgeous, of course—whose hobbies include playing Russian roulette and collecting embalmed male genitalia. Burdett . . . (Subscription required.)
newyorker.com | 06-Feb-2012 06:00

David Denby: “Chronicle,” “In Darkness” reviews.
8220;Chronicle” is a mildly experimental commercial film, and, for the most part, it’s loose-limbed fun. The picture takes off from “The Blair Witch Project” and other movies that use point-of-view techniques: we see footage shot by a character’s digital . . . (Subscription required.)
newyorker.com | 06-Feb-2012 06:00

David Denby: “The Story of G.I. Joe,” at Film Forum.
Of all the Second World War movies about American fighting platoons, “The Story of G.I. Joe,” made by William Wellman in 1945, is probably the grimmest and most poetic and the least tied to genre clichés. (It screens at Film Forum on Feb. 22, in a . . . (Subscription required.)
newyorker.com | 06-Feb-2012 06:00

Madonna dazzles in Super Bowl half-time show

Madonna dazzled the Super Bowl crowd with a high-octane half-time show that started with an army of Roman gladiators and ended with plea for world peace written in lights.

The glittering 12-minute performance at Lucas Oil Stadium featuring several guest stars had legions of fans racing to Twitter to give their thumbs-up, with some going so far as to declare it one of the best in Super Bowl history.

"Now THAT was a halftime show!" said @michaelsette7 of Toronto in a typical tweet of approval. "All hail the queen. Bow down everyone, bow down!"

france24.com | 06-Feb-2012 04:30

Miss Piggy to present BAFTA awards in Britain

The organisers of the BAFTA film awards in Britain have unveiled Miss Piggy as one of the show's hosts, promising spiky questions for Hollywood luminaries George Clooney and Brad Pitt.

The glamorous pink star of "The Muppets" will be the red carpet host of the British Academy Film Awards 2012 on Sunday, the organisers said Monday.

She is honing her flirting skills as she prepares to meet Best Actor nominees Clooney, Pitt, Michael Fassbender, Gary Oldman and "The Artist" star Jean Dujardin at the Royal Opera House in London.

france24.com | 06-Feb-2012 02:50

Steven Leiber, Dealer in Artists’ Ephemera, Dies at 54
Mr. Leiber founded a San Francisco gallery that is a prime source for brochures, posters, fliers and the like produced by artists.


International Herald Tribune | 06-Feb-2012 02:30

Television Review: ‘Smash,’ on NBC, With Debra Messing and Anjelica Huston
“Smash,” NBC’s series about backstage Broadway comes with New York and Hollywood names off screen (Steven Spielberg, Therese Rebeck) and on (Debra Messing and Brian d’Arcy James).


International Herald Tribune | 05-Feb-2012 23:56

54 Below, Restaurant-Nightclub Under the Former Studio 54
The nightspot named 54 Below, a 160-seat space, is scheduled to open in early June with a two-week engagement by Patti LuPone.


International Herald Tribune | 05-Feb-2012 23:46