Copyright 2008 The New York Sun Thu, 24 Jul 2008 03:25:11 -0400 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Arts+ :: Stories from The New York Sun http://www.nysun.com/arts istoll@nysun.com (Ira Stoll) webmaster@nysun.com en-us LANCE ESPLUND http://www.nysun.com/arts/before-during-after-the-fall-durer-at-mobia/82509/ Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST The German painter, printmaker, draftsman, graphic designer, typographer, and art theorist Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) was unhappily married. Erwin Panofsky, in his unsurpassed monograph on the artist, reminds us that this fact, though it may seem trivial, illuminates Dürer's importance to the Northern Renaissance. Dürer's wife, "Agnes Frey," Panofsky writes, "thought that the man she had married was a painter in the late medieval sense, an honest craftsman who produced pictures as a tailor made... JAMES GARDNER http://www.nysun.com/arts/chaos-and-danger-in-architectural-design/82534/ Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST In the evolution of the 20th-century city, New York played a crucial role. Gotham haunted the imagination of everyone from John Dos Passos and H.G. Wells to Le Corbusier and the German Expressionist director Fritz Lang. A man-made colossus, it embodied in its concrete grid and in the tidal migrations of its pedestrians the very spirit and rhythm of the modern age. By now, that affinity is so well known as to seem platitudinous. Less well known is that, half a century later, with the dawn of... ERIC GRODE http://www.nysun.com/arts/nameless-homeless-borderline-soulless-ralph/82507/ Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST One's musical preferences speak volumes about one's outlook on life. Beatles versus Stones, Copland versus Schonberg, Biggie versus Tupac, Rodgers and Hammerstein versus Rodgers and Hart: Each offers a digestible (if occasionally — and sometimes self-consciously — misleading) primer on the values and aspirations of the respondent. But what if the answer is "None of the above"? Such is the state of the nameless, homeless, and borderline soulless narrator of "First Love," the pungent 1945 Samuel... ERICA ORDEN http://www.nysun.com/arts/up-for-bid-at-scope-hamptons-collector-mentorship/82508/ Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST When fairgoers bid at the Scope Hamptons auction, they won't be raising their paddles for a painting by Damien Hirst or Takashi Murakami. They'll be bidding on something potentially far more valuable: wisdom. Today, Scope Hamptons opens its first Collector Mentorship Auction, where young art collectors from the Whitney Contemporaries, the Guggenheim Museum's Young Collectors Council, the Core Club, and the Soho House, among others, can bid on the opportunity to spend time with seasoned... FRANCIS MORRONE http://www.nysun.com/arts/a-victorian-neighborhood-remade/82510/ Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST My favorite blocks in Manhattan include the side streets that fill the area between Gramercy Park and Madison Square: 20th, 21st, and 22nd streets between Park Avenue South and Broadway. These blocks were, in the middle of the 19th century, an extremely fashionable residential section. Several houses from that period, since made over to other uses, remain to attest to the days when this neighborhood was the latest fashionable faubourg in upper-class Manhattan's once relentless uptown trek. The... WILLIAM MEYERS http://www.nysun.com/arts/dream-weavers-captured-in-print/82502/ Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST The Sasha Wolf Gallery has organized its current exhibition around dreams. "In Our Dreams" is a group show of 20 pictures — some black-and-white, some in color, ranging in size from 8 by 10 inches to 30 by 40 inches, taken between 1940 and this year — embracing several technologies and the different visions of the 19 photographers represented. The show was curated by Ms. Wolf and the photographer Peter Kayafas, one of whose pictures is included, and has pictures of people dreaming, pictures... JOEL LOBENTHAL http://www.nysun.com/arts/sampling-the-delouche-series/82499/ Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST This week at the Walter Reade Theater, the Film Society of Lincoln Center offers a rare opportunity to sample Dominique Delouche's remarkable series of films about dance and dancers. In some of them, Mr. Delouche allows the subject to take us along on a visit to the past. In "Maia," Maia Plisetskaya stands on the site of the house in Moscow where she lived as a 12-year-old when, in 1937, her father was arrested, vanishing into the black hole of Stalin's purges. In "Les Cahiers retrouvés de Nina... STEPHEN MAINE http://www.nysun.com/arts/a-delicious-paradox/82503/ Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST A hidden gem of a summer group show now on view at Gary Snyder's recently inaugurated Project Space offers the delicious paradox of a tightly curated exhibition attesting to the fecund sprawl of contemporary abstract painting. The show's title implies that no single modifier of "abstraction" will suffice to characterize a currently dominant trend; reductive, gestural, and hard-edge proclivities are represented by accomplished mid-career painters. As always, more interesting than genre... Staff Reporter of the Sun http://www.nysun.com/arts/moma-names-new-design-curator/82493/ Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Juliet Kinchin will join the staff of the Museum of Modern Art as a curator in the department of architecture and design, the museum announced today. Ms. Kinchin comes to MoMA from the Glasgow School of Art, where she was a senior lecturer of art and design. She has also taught at the Bard Graduate Center for Study in the Decorative Arts and was a curator of decorative arts in several Glasgow museums and art galleries and at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Ms. Kinchin's specialty is... Staff Reporter of the Sun http://www.nysun.com/arts/kyu-sung-woo-wins-ho-am-prize/82494/ Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Kyu Sung Woo will be the first architect to receive the Ho-Am Prize in the Arts, an award that recognizes ethnic Koreans who have made noteworthy contributions to arts and culture through their creative endeavors. The Ho-Am Prize, which honors five Koreans each year for achievement in science, engineering, medicine, community service, and the arts, is sometimes called the Korean Nobel. The prize, endowed by Samsung, includes a $200,000 cash award. Mr. Woo is a Korean-born American architect... Associated Press http://www.nysun.com/arts/guernica-in-good-health/82495/ Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST "Guernica" depicts intense suffering, but its own health is not in danger. That's the diagnosis after the first X-ray of Pablo Picasso's 20th-century anti-war opus carried out by the Reina Sofia art museum in Madrid. The X-ray of the large-format canvas — 11 feet by 25 feet — was part of a series of tests begun more than a year ago on one of the world's most prized masterpieces. The piece's last major analysis a decade ago turned up 129 imperfections — ranging from cracks to creases to marks... Bloomberg News http://www.nysun.com/arts/russia-will-rebuild-residence-of-nicholas-ii/82496/ Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST The Russian government will reconstruct the Lower Dacha, the former residence of Tsar Nicholas II, destroyed in World War II, Vadim Znamenov, director of the Peterhof Estate Museum, said. From 1894 to 1914, the imperial family lived mostly at the Lower Dacha, a small palace on the Peterhof estate, about 30 kilometers southwest of St. Petersburg on the Gulf of Finland, Mr. Znamenov said. The Nazis held Peterhof in 1941 and stayed until 1944 when the Red Army booted them out. On July 17, Russia... Bloomberg News http://www.nysun.com/arts/berlin-to-host-sculpture-fair/82497/ Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Blumka Gallery of New York, Galerie Thomas of Munich, and Sam Fogg of London are among more than 20 international dealers who have signed up for Berlin's "SCULPTURA — European Sculpture Fair." This new event, scheduled for November 13-16, will take place in the covered Schlueterhof courtyard of the Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin. "The European fair landscape is diverse, but the range of pieces offered is usually too wide," an e-mailed statement released by the organizers said. It said... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/candlelight-and-conversation-laurie-andersons/82505/ Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Laurie Anderson calls it a "concert poem." Depending on your point of view, you might categorize it as an art-rock song cycle or a spoken-word performance set to music. But whatever you term it, Ms. Anderson's "Homeland," which opened on Tuesday in its Lincoln Center Festival incarnation, is the work of a consummate artist at the highest level of her craft. "Homeland," staged with austere elegance at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Frederick P. Rose Hall, unfolds in front of a giant scrim that is... MAUREEN MULLARKEY http://www.nysun.com/arts/the-ring-of-truth-max-beckmann-self-portrait-with/82501/ Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Without exaggeration, Max Beckmann (1884-1950) was the greatest German painter of the 20th century. He was a painter's painter, broader in range and more complex than his contemporaries. And he sustained his productivity at the highest possible level longer than others. "Max Beckmann: Self-Portrait With Horn," opening today at the Neue Galerie, is a splendid opportunity to view his painting and graphic work in context with the three Weimar artists who are best seen in relation to him: Otto Dix... JOHN GOODRICH http://www.nysun.com/arts/devotional-objects-retablos-at-paul-thiebaud/82504/ Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST One of the most reliable rewards of folk art is its honesty: the straightforward methods and materials of its making, and the directness of its purpose. The small devotional paintings known as retablos are especially poignant for their frank demonstrations of faith. Produced by the thousands by anonymous 19th-century Mexican artists, these images of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and countless saints were placed in home altars and left at pilgrimage sites. Today they intrigue particularly for their... DAVID COHEN http://www.nysun.com/arts/shh-hammershi-is-on-display/82500/ Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Whenever there is an exhibition of the Symbolist painter Vilhelm Hammershøi, his quietude is invoked. When he was shown at the Guggenheim in New York 10 years ago, partly through the efforts of the late Robert Rosenblum, who helped revive international interest in a master neglected since his untimely death at age 52 in 1916, the show was subtitled "Danish Painter of Solitude and Light." At the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., in 1983, it was "Stillness and Light." And now, at London's... Bloomberg News http://www.nysun.com/arts/abramovich-finances-kabakov-show/82405/ Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Billionaire Roman Abramovich, owner of London's Chelsea Football Club, will finance Russia's first retrospective by postwar artists Ilya and Emilia Kabakov. The Moscow show opens September 15, and features more than 150 paintings, drawings, and objects. It will run until October 15 simultaneously at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, the Winzavod contemporary art center, and the Garage center for contemporary art, founded by Daria Zhukova, Mr. Abramovich's girlfriend. The New York-based Mr... DANIEL WALKER HOWE http://www.nysun.com/arts/frontier-exegesis-walter-nugents-habits-of-empire/82415/ Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST The prolific and versatile historian Walter Nugent of Notre Dame University has just published a lucid, vivid, and above all candid history of American expansion under a perceptive title, "Habits of Empire" (Alfred A. Knopf, 387 pages, $30). Mr. Nugent's account emphasizes the nation's early years, when Americans were forming their "habits," but his readers will undoubtedly be continually applying what he says about Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, Polk, and McKinley to what they read in their... ERIC ORMSBY http://www.nysun.com/arts/the-country-of-quixote-henry-kamens-imagining/82416/ Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Hamlet showed "method in his madness" but the same cannot be said of Don Quixote. When the Knight of the Mournful Countenance is interviewed late in the novel by Don Diego de Miranda, that worthy sees him "as a sane man with madness in him, and as a madman with the same tendencies," in John Rutherford's translation. Don Diego was especially puzzled because what Don Quixote said "was coherent, elegant and well expressed, and what he did was absurd, foolhardy and stupid." "Hamlet" was first... ADAM KIRSCH http://www.nysun.com/arts/hugh-trevor-ropers-the-invention-of-scotland/82417/ Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Every April, New York's proud Scottish-Americans celebrate their heritage with the Tartan Day Parade, processing up Sixth Avenue in a sea of kilts, to the noble blare of the bagpipes. If you are thinking of attending the festivities next year, however, you might want to keep quiet about having read "The Invention of Scotland" (Yale University Press, 304 pages, $30), a punchy new book by the late historian Hugh Trevor-Roper. For as Trevor-Roper points out with ill-concealed glee, tartan and... Associated Press http://www.nysun.com/arts/reports-bale-assaulted-mother-sister/82403/ Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST "Batman" star Christian Bale was arrested Tuesday over allegations of assaulting his mother and sister, police and British news outlets said. British news outlets had reported that Mr. Bale's mother and sister complained they were assaulted by the 34-year-old actor at the Dorchester Hotel in London on Sunday night, a day before the European premiere of his latest film, "The Dark Knight." The women made the allegation at a local police station in southern England on Monday, Britain's Press... Bloomberg News http://www.nysun.com/arts/adele-radiohead-lead-mercury-prize-short-list/82404/ Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Albums by Adele and Radiohead are among the 12-strong short list for the U.K.'s 2008 Nationwide Mercury Prize, announced Tuesday. Soul singer Adele, now 20, was nominated for her debut "19," and the short list also includes 18-year-old Laura Marling, whose first CD is called "Alas I Cannot Swim." Led Zeppelin veteran Robert Plant, 59, is also nominated, for his album with Alison Krauss, "Raising Sand." "This turns out to be a remarkably rich year for British music," Simon Frith, chairman of the... Bloomberg News http://www.nysun.com/arts/8m-qing-dynasty-vase-heads-to-auction/82406/ Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST A Qing Dynasty vase that fetched $3,574 in 1971 may sell for $8 million in December at Christie's International's auction of Chinese antiques. The imperial vase, painted with flower sprays and enameled butterflies, is part of a collection that once belonged to the wife of the late art dealer J.T. Tai. The 151 artworks are being sold by the Ping Y. Tai Foundation in three auctions in New York and Hong Kong starting September 17, Christie's said in a statement. The sale may raise a combined $28... Staff Reporter of the Sun http://www.nysun.com/arts/gavin-creel-diana-degarmo-join-godspell/82407/ Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Tony Award nominee Gavin Creel and 2004 "American Idol" finalist Diana DeGarmo will star in a revival of Stephen Schwartz's 1976 Broadway musical, "Godspell," producers Adam Epstein, Broadway Across America, Stewart Lane, and Bonnie Comley announced Tuesday. Preview performances will begin September 29 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. Daniel Goldstein ("All Shook Up") will direct the revival of the musical, whose original run ended 31 years ago. Joshua Henry, currently performing in "In the... BENJAMIN LYTAL http://www.nysun.com/arts/war-peace-azuelas-underdogs-and-bosmans-mafeking/82420/ Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Novels that show the sordid side of war are not scarce. Classics abound, but they do not glut; each book is as distinct as its war. Mariano Azuela's "The Underdogs" (Penguin Classics, 148 pages, $8) realizes a war that we often forget, though it is relatively near at hand in time and space. Azuela (1873-1952) participated in the Mexican Revolution (1911-17), serving as a doctor in the army of Pancho Villa, before the fortunes of war sent him packing across the border to El Paso, Texas... OTTO PENZLER http://www.nysun.com/arts/the-crime-scene-hit-and-run-by-lawrence-block/82421/ Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST There are a lot of outstanding crime writers working today in what I like to think of as the platinum age of mystery fiction, but none is more versatile than Lawrence Block, with only Donald E. Westlake as his equal. Mr. Block's finest novels are those about Matthew Scudder, a former New York City policeman with a serious drinking problem, who becomes a sort-of unofficial private eye (he does what private eyes do, mostly as favors to people he knows, but has no license); in the later books, he... HUGH BROGAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/the-special-relationship-elisa-tamarkins/82419/ Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST In "Anglophilia" (University of Chicago Press, 384 pages, $35), Elisa Tamarkin has hit on a first-rate idea: Americans in the 19th century were noted (by non-Americans) for their national vanity, chauvinism, and Anglophobia. And yet, as Ms. Tamarkin establishes, they were marked equally by what she calls Anglophilia: a sentimental respect, amounting almost to love, for England, and a fascination with its history, culture, politics, manners, and way of life. Anglophilia, in short, was as much a... Associated Press http://www.nysun.com/arts/folk-singer-artie-traum-dies-at-65/82314/ Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Artie Traum, a veteran folk songwriter and guitarist who came out of the famous Greenwich Village music scene of the '60s, is dead. He was 65. Jeff Heiman, Traum's manager, said he died Sunday at his home in Woodstock from cancer that spread to his liver. Traum produced and recorded with some of the biggest names in folk and rock, from Bela Fleck to the Band, according to his Web site. He is widely known for playing and recording with his brother, Happy Traum... Associated Press http://www.nysun.com/arts/courtney-love-sued-over-nirvana-catalog-sale/82442/ Tue, 22 Jul 2008 22:34:41 EST LOS ANGELES — A business management and accounting firm sued Courtney Love for nearly $1 million today, claiming she failed to pay them a share of profits from the sale of Nirvana's publishing catalog. Ms. Love is the widow of Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain. The five-page lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court this afternoon claims she sold a portion of his share of Nirvana's publishing catalog for $19.5 million. Los Angeles-based London & Co. alleges Ms. Love broke an oral contract to share... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/a-persecuted-artists-call-for-help/82376/ Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST More than any other work from the 1930s, Max Beckmann's "Self-Portrait With Horn" encapsulates the position of the persecuted and exiled artist in fascist-dominated Europe. Executed in 1938, after Beckmann had fled Germany for Amsterdam, the painting shows Beckmann, wearing a bohemian robe and a grim expression, holding a horn. His pose suggests that he has just blown the horn — a call for help, a rallying cry for humanists around the world — and that he is waiting, perhaps in vain, for the... OLIVER SCHWANER-ALBRIGHT http://www.nysun.com/arts/design-challenge-fend-off-disaster/82330/ Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST The show "Why Structures Fail: Challenges to Engineering Design," on display at the City College of New York, could do away with the "why" in the title. The exhibition is little more than a few poster boards in the atrium of the college's Morris R. Cohen Library, but it drives home a simple message that resonates all the more in light of recent high-profile accidents at New York's construction sites: Structures fail, and the engineer's job isn't so much to stop the failures as it is to plan... STEVE DOLLAR http://www.nysun.com/arts/pitchfork-hosts-a-perma-rock-festival/82331/ Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST CHICAGO — As concepts go, the notion of pop acts going onstage to reprise their best-loved albums front to back isn't particularly new. To conclude its 1989 "Green" tour, R.E.M. threw in a surprise set at its Atlanta homecoming show, playing its debut album "Murmur" in original track order as a no-fuss bonus for its fans. These days, however, all quarters of the music industry are looking for ways to generate a marketable buzz as record sales plummet and recorded music becomes an ephemeral... BRENDAN BERNHARD http://www.nysun.com/arts/mad-men-return-after-a-five-martini-lunch/82351/ Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST The new season of AMC's "Mad Men," which makes its premiere at 10 p.m. on Sunday, comes with a special request that critics not give away the "pivotal storyline moments" in the first two episodes, and allow the audience to discover them for themselves. That's presuming they can find them, of course. One of the retro charms of the first season of "Mad Men" was that it moved at the stately pace of someone returning to work from a five-martini lunch, and that continues to be the case this year, as... JAMES GARDNER http://www.nysun.com/arts/the-switch-building-a-lower-east-side/82332/ Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Manhattan is a land of narcissists, or so it often seems, with each citizen hell-bent on winning the fullest measure of attention through his or her wardrobe and personal comportment. And so you might think that our architectural stock would exhibit a similar excess, a similar individualism at all costs. But in fact, more often than not, the borough of Manhattan has been defined by an ineradicable architectural conservatism and banality. Perhaps it is the grid plan itself, promulgated in 1811... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/borrowing-with-fine-art-as-collateral/82333/ Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST With the stock market volatile and housing in a slump, many wealthy individuals are looking to tap another kind of equity — the kind hanging on their walls. Specialists at banks and auction houses say that more of their clients recently are interested in borrowing against their art collections. "We are seeing increased activity in art financing transactions," a senior vice president in structured lending at U.S. Trust, John Arena, said. Some of his clients are borrowing in order to purchase... BRET McCABE http://www.nysun.com/arts/electroma-a-wordless-film-from-daft-punk/82336/ Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Daft Punk's feature film debut, "Electroma," proves that the French electronic duo's recent exploration of robot alter egos isn't just shtick. In fact, "Electroma," out today on DVD, feels like a culmination of themes the duo has explored since its 2005 album "Human After All," such as the wonderfully frustrating and tragic experience of being alive. Fans of Daft Punk's bubbly, bass-heavy, and dance floor-ready beats and melodic pop should bear in mind that none of the group's music is featured... JAY NORDLINGER http://www.nysun.com/arts/the-undiscovered-henry-purcell/82337/ Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Henry Purcell is known for his songs, hymns, anthems, odes, operas — in short, for his vocal music. Which is all the more reason to welcome an excellent forthcoming CD of his keyboard music. Just to refresh your memory, Purcell was a composer of the English Baroque, living from 1659 to 1695. And he was a towering genius. We think of Mozart, Schubert, and Mendelssohn as composers who died young (35, 31, and 38). Purcell's short span — 36 years — was another blow in musical history. We appreciate... Bloomberg News http://www.nysun.com/arts/court-wardrobe-malfunction-should-not-cost-cbs/82305/ Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST CBS Corp. shouldn't be held liable for the split-second exposure of singer Janet Jackson's breast by another performer during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show, a federal court ruled, tossing out a $550,000 indecency fine. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission's policy in determining indecency was "arbitrary and capricious" as applied to CBS, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Philadelphia ruled Monday. The network said viewers got a glimpse of Ms. Jackson's breast for 9/16ths of a second in... Bloomberg News http://www.nysun.com/arts/art-dealer-and-collector-hildy-beyeler-dies/82306/ Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Hildy Beyeler, who with her husband Ernst Beyeler established a foundation to house the art collection they built up over 50 years, has died. She was 86. Beyeler died at home in Riehen, near Basel, Switzerland, on July 18 after a long illness, according to Catherine Schott, a spokeswoman for the Fondation Beyeler. The Beyelers were art dealers who kept some paintings that they didn't want to sell to decorate their home. Artists represented in their collection of about 200 works include Max... Staff Reporter of the Sun http://www.nysun.com/arts/christies-to-launch-design-sale/82312/ Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Christie's will hold its first ever sale dedicated to contemporary design on September 8, the auction house announced Monday. The sale of 30 lots will include pieces by Marc Newson, Forrest Myers, Zaha Hadid, Ron Arad, Maarten Baas, Shiro Kuramata, Ettore Sottsass, and Harush Shlomo. Estimates range from $6,000 to $300,000, and the sale is expected to generate a total between $1.2 million and $1.7 million... Associated Press http://www.nysun.com/arts/ebert-roeper-call-it-quits/82313/ Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST The Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert says he's cutting ties with the television show that he and the late Gene Siskel made famous. In an e-mail to the Associated Press yesterday, Mr. Ebert said Disney-ABC Domestic Television had decided to take the show "in a new direction" and he won't be associated with it. His announcement came a day after the Chicago Sun-Times columnist Richard Roeper said he was leaving the nationally syndicated "At the Movies With Ebert & Roeper." Mr. Roeper said... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/a-very-british-tv-export/82352/ Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST "Spaced," one of the great television shows of the last decade, is finally coming out on DVD in America. This beloved British sitcom ran for just two seasons, from 1999 to 2001, and was the first project by the crew that made "Shaun of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz": director Edgar Wright and actors Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Jessica (Stevenson) Hynes. It is as sharp and character-driven as "Friends" was in its heyday, but "Spaced" revels in drug use and pop-culture references. Though it has a... REBECCA THOMAS http://www.nysun.com/arts/the-two-faces-of-angelina-jolie/82353/ Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST It's been a busy summer for Angelina Jolie. Her new action-adventure film "Wanted" — which as of this weekend passed the $100 million mark — opened on June 27. About two weeks later, on July 12, the actress gave birth to fraternal twins, raising the number of her children to six; three were adopted from orphanages in Cambodia, Ethiopia, and Vietnam. In addition to her clear commitment to her family life, she is also active in the political sphere with human rights issues. Ms. Jolie is a U.N... MICHAEL RUBIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/the-way-forward-ken-pollacks-a-path-out-of/82338/ Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST The Middle East will continue to dominate American security concerns regardless of who next occupies the Oval Office. Record oil prices, terrorism, Israel's security, Iraqi stability, and Iran's nuclear ambitions will top the new president's foreign policy agenda, whatever his ideological outlook. With "A Path Out of the Desert" (Random House, 592 pages, $30), Ken Pollack, a former CIA analyst and Clinton-era National Security Council staffer, has penned a thoughtful rejoinder to those who... CHRISTOPHER WILLCOX http://www.nysun.com/arts/a-nation-on-a-hill-ted-widmers-ark-of-liberties/82339/ Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Only a former speechwriter for President Clinton could write a history as replete as this one with equivocation, empty rhetoric, and triangulation. Ted Widmer's "Ark of the Liberties" (Hill and Wang, 384 pages, $25) presents itself as a survey of presidential leadership on the subject of freedom at home and abroad, though it's really not a history at all, but a tawdry score-settling enterprise designed to cast a favorable light on his former boss and previous Democratic presidents, and an... NICHOLAS WAPSHOTT http://www.nysun.com/arts/looking-at-churchill-with-loving-eyes/82282/ Mon, 21 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST When Celia Sandys was born in 1943, her grandfather, Winston Churchill, was at the peak of his powers. He had been prime minister for three years. The Nazi invasion had been postponed indefinitely after the Battle of Britain, and Churchill had finally persuaded President Franklin Roosevelt to join the war. The overwhelming might of the American forces and materiel being assembled in Britain in preparation for D-Day the following year meant it was only a matter of time before Hitler would be... JAY NORDLINGER http://www.nysun.com/arts/pedals-pumps-and-pipes-too-jane-watts-at-trinity/82243/ Mon, 21 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST It is maybe the most charming name on the current New York scene: "Pedals and Pumps: A Festival of Organ Divas." This is a series of organ recitals held at Trinity Church, at Broadway and Wall Street. They take place on Thursday at 1 o'clock. All the organists are women. And last Thursday's recitalist was Jane Watts, of Britain. Since 1991, she has been affiliated with the Bach Choir (London). Trinity literature says that the series "highlights contemporary female musicianship" — a gag-making... ERIC GRODE http://www.nysun.com/arts/the-beckettian-sleeper-hit-at-lincoln-center/82242/ Mon, 21 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST "Be again, be again. (Pause.) All that old misery. (Pause.) Once wasn't enough for you." Those words from "Krapp's Last Tape," along with every other word that Samuel Beckett ever wrote for the stage, were heard at the Lincoln Center Festival in 1996, courtesy of Dublin's Gate Theatre. Once apparently wasn't enough, though, for festivalgoers, though, so the Gate has dug a little deeper into Beckett's archives and offered up some new misery — along with joy, bafflement, perversity, and general... WILL FRIEDWALD http://www.nysun.com/arts/on-trumpet-and-vocals-unclassifiable-talent/82257/ Mon, 21 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST The music industry may be preoccupied with charts and categories, but some musicians defy classification. Trumpeter Kenny Wheeler and singer Norma Winstone, both of whom have new releases out, are two examples of talents that resist all manner of charts, graphs, lists — and even maps. In the case of Kenny Wheeler, it is difficult to say what kind of jazzman he is — bopper, avant-gardesman, big band player. And it is equally difficult to classify him in terms of nationality. Mr. Wheeler was born...