archive
Television
Tina Fey: Sarah Palin And 'Saturday Night' Satire
January 25, 2013 Fey's impersonation of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin helped draw record audiences to Saturday Night Live in the fall of 2008. The former head writer for SNL opens up about politics, satire and her Emmy Award-winning sitcom, 30 Rock, which will have its series finale on January 31.
Movies
For Would-Be Sundancers, Kickstarter Can Fuel Films
January 25, 2013 Financing a movie can be tough — but more and more filmmakers are crowdsourcing their creative cash. Nearly 10 percent of the films at this year's Sundance Film Festival found backers through the online fundraiser Kickstarter.
Television
Lives Of Praise, Lives In Progress On 'The Sisterhood'
January 25, 2013 The Sisterhood is a new reality show about the lives and struggles of five Atlanta-area preachers' wives. The show has been likened to the Real Housewives franchise and has drawn criticism for its warts-and-all portrayal of the women. But they say they felt called by God to participate.
Movie Reviews
'Yossi': Out In Israel, And That's Just Fine
January 24, 2013 From Israel's most beloved pop filmmaker comes a tender, joyous pleasure of a movie about love blooming in the wake of loss.
Movie Reviews
A Political 'Knife Fight' With All The Edge Of A Spork
January 24, 2013 There are brief moments of political zen in the campaign-consultant satire Knife Fight, but the film mostly falls victim to its own brand of shallow, delusional spin.
Movie Reviews
The Hard-Earned Liberty Of 'Happy People'
January 24, 2013 Werner Herzog might root for the wild side in any given man-vs.-nature narrative, but his latest film allows for a gentle kind of harmony. Graceful and pure, Happy People: A Year In The Taiga shows what happens when man works with, not against, nature. (Recommended)
Movie Reviews
'Resolution': Another Cabin, A Very Different Show
January 24, 2013 A one-on-one drug intervention becomes a chilling horror story as ominous artifacts and disturbing characters crowd two old friends in Resolution, an artful deconstruction of the modern scary movie. (Recommended)
Movie Reviews
Spoiler Alert: 'John Dies,' But The Rest? Who Can Tell?
January 24, 2013 Based on a web serial, Don Coscarelli's loopy, disorienting horror fantasy film seems like an overeager bid for cult-hit status, piling flashbacks on top of flashbacks on top of parallel universes, portals, space bugs, ESP, and a talking dog.
The Salt
Maxing Out The Mini Season For Maine Shrimp
January 24, 2013 Mainers say the shrimp have a sweet and delicate flavor. But there won't be many of them to go around this year. The fishing season is short, the allowable catch is small and the number of shrimp in the Gulf of Maine has been dwindling for a while now.
Monkey See
Home Video Review: 'Buster Keaton: The Ultimate Collection'
January 24, 2013 Buster Keaton, the great genius of silent comedy, gets celebrated in a 14-disc box set that contains all of his classic silent comedies as well as a raft of shorts and extras.
Oscars 2013: The 85th Annual Academy Awards
Filmmaker Holds Up A Mirror In Interviews With Israel's 'Gatekeepers'
January 24, 2013 Dror Moreh's Oscar-nominated documentary, The Gatekeepers, is built around the confessions and ruminations of the six surviving heads of the Shin Bet — Israel's domestic security service.
Author Interviews
'Going Clear': A New Book Delves Into Scientology
January 24, 2013 Lawrence Wright's Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief looks at the world of the controversial church and the life of its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, who died in 1986.
Book Reviews
An 'Artful' Approach To Literary Criticism
January 24, 2013 Ali Smith's new book, Artful, began as a series of lectures on comparative literature, given at Oxford last year. The lectures have been given a fictional shell, the story of an unnamed narrator finding a cache of essays in the study of her dead lover. Reviewer John Wilwol calls Artful "superb."
Research News
Shall I Encode Thee In DNA? Sonnets Stored On Double Helix
January 24, 2013 The world is full of data — and that's a problem. We have to find a place to store all those digital photos, tax records and unfinished novels. British scientists have demonstrated a possible solution: They've stored all of Shakespeare's sonnets on several small stretches of DNA.

