Culture

cannes 2013

'Only God Forgives' Photocall - The 66th Annual Cannes Film Festival

Cannes: Kristin Scott Thomas is Saving Grace in Only God Forgives and Robert Redford Puts the Oscars on Notice

CANNES, France — Only God Forgives: unforgettable? More like unforgivable. Back in 2011, Nicolas Winding Refn’s first outing with Hollywood hunk Ryan Gosling resulted in the suave, rapturous crime thriller Drive, which premiered here in Cannes and nabbed the Danish filmmaker the prize for Best Director. So expectations were not unreasonably high for this Read More

books

Karl Ove Knausgaard.

His Life (All of It) as a Man: Karl Ove Knausgaard’s Rambling New Volume of ‘My Struggle’

The first book of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s six-volume autobiographical novel My Struggle was published in Norway in 2009 and the final volume in 2011. The books have since sold half a million copies there, a number that represents something like one in ten Norwegians. Still, when the first volume of My Struggle was published in the United States last year, translated by Don Bartlett, it was thanks to a small non-profit in Brooklyn called Archipelago Books, which in turn relied upon the New York state government and charitable foundations to subsidize the effort. Narrated by the author, whose family and friends are the central characters, Mr. Knausgaard’s books recount his life in full, from the most banal memories to the most important events. Upon the publication of Book Two and a paperback reissue of Book One by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Mr. Knausgaard has won a very loyal English-speaking readership. It turns out that assembling IKEA furniture while contemplating the meaninglessness of our lives transcends the boundaries of nationality and language. As Mr. Knausgaard writes, “As is always the case with books that seem to be groundbreaking, they put into words what for me had been suspicions, feelings, hunches.” Read More

books

Steal the Menu

On the Page: Raymond Sokolov and Anna Badkhen

STEAL THE MENU: A MEMOIR OF FORTY YEARS IN FOOD
RAYMOND SOKOLOV
(Knopf, 242 pp., $25.95)

It’s hard to believe in these gourmet-mad times, but 40 years ago the U.S. had “no radicchio, no world-class restaurant, no foie gras, no Sichuan food.” So recalls lifelong food writer Raymond Sokolov in this entertaining memoir. Mr. Sokolov Read More

theater

Turturro. (Getty Images)

Not So Lonely at the Top: John Turturro Scales Great Heights in the Service of Ibsen

At the Brooklyn Academy of Music, once a night, John Turturro has been climbing a steeple. To a quiet drumbeat, he goes hand over hand up the side of a tilting house, and when he reaches the top, he does not beat his chest like King Kong.

“I’m just trying to be careful,” he said last week.

His wife and friends watch from below, panicked and exhilarated, and the audience feels the same, joined together for a few minutes in the timeless tension of wondering whether or not a man is going to fall. Read More

Shindigger

Pam Schafler and Mika Brzezinski.

War of the Words: Sharp-tongued Honorees and Attendees Spit Daggers at NYC Galas

There wasn’t a drop of red wine at the New York Historical Society’s perennial Strawberry Festival luncheon last week, and Shindigger was left to wonder: wasn’t it five o’clock somewhere? Sure, there was a delicious quinoa, truffle and herb salad, but that wasn’t why everyone had turned out. It was to see Morning Joe’s Mika Brzezinski receive the Women in Public Life award. Read More