The opposite of acting
Last Saturday, the day Paul Newman died, I went to the movies. I didn’t feel like weeping along with Richard Gere and Diane Lane in “Nights in Rodanthe” or suffering through the dysfunctionality of “Fireproof” or “Towelhead.” I had no need to watch Spike Lee correct the record about black World War II soldiers in “Miracle at St. Anna.” So I went with the crowd to see the weekend box-office winner, “Eagle Eye.” But watching all the Stephen Spielberg-produced mayhem about a Pentagon computer taking control of the government, my mind kept going back to Paul Newman. The end of an era proclaimed the tributes pouring in for the iconic 83-year-old actor. His obituary, which read like a great script from Hollywood’s golden age, alluded to him as the last of the Movie Stars who fulfilled our fantasies … when our fantasies were a lot simpler.
» Full StoryLearning his lines
It’s a voice that can inspire terror, just talking about what’s for dinner. But at the other end of the phone line, it sounds cheery, downright friendly.
“Rick? Tony Hopkins.
Bad intelligence
When no one could find any weapons of mass destruction, it raised the possibility that we might have gone to war in Iraq by mistake. The people responsible for making the call blamed it on bad intelligence.
They were being literal.
Run over by a trailer
A curious fact of modern life is the way it keeps getting harder to find the line between what we call entertainment and what we call reality.
This political season may mark the watershed when we stop trying.
Hippie history
Not long after Hawaii became a state, the hippies started arriving. Many were fleeing all the upheaval rocking the Mainland at the time — the Vietnam war, the racism, the riots in the streets.
» Full StoryMAKING THE SCENE
The irony of it all isn’t lost on Woody Allen. Now that he’s finally beginning to get the drift of what really goes on between men and women, he’s personally too old to do much about it.
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