It’s not your typical relaxing day in Martha’s Vineyard: while on vacation, Atlantic writer Jeffrey Goldberg got a call out of the blue from Fidel Castro’s office, inviting him down to the island for a chat, he explains in a piece titled “Fidel to Ahmadinejad: ‘Stop Slandering the Jews.’” Apparently Fidel simply liked one Read More
Don’t be fooled by the freshly scrubbed floors, potted, tropical-looking plants and lively Latin music at Jeremy Merrin’s newest restaurant, located at 2911 Broadway, across from Columbia University.
This is, in fact, Jack Kerouac’s favorite New York dive bar. At least, it used to be.
Though, initially, you’d be hard-pressed to figure that out. The Read More
Just how powerful is The New York Times? That’s the question asked by one of the paper’s own senior correspondents, Anthony DePalma, in his new book, The Man Who Invented Fidel. In conservative circles, and particularly among older Cuban exiles in Miami, Herbert Matthews has long been viewed as the scoop-hungry reporter who was charmed Read More
If United 93 is to be the first entry in what threatens to become an archival library of depressing movie projects about the tragedies of 9/11, it will pretty much depend on success or failure at the box office, not to mention the tolerance level of an audience that extends beyond the families and friends Read More
It’s not often that an experienced critic finds himself confronting the work of an “unknown” painter—unknown, that is, to the critic—only to discover that he’s looking at the paintings of a master talent. But this was my experience upon visiting the exhibition of paintings by the Cuban artist Tomás Sánchez (b. 1948) at the Marlborough Read More
I Don’t Wanna Havana
After watching all 80 minutes of the tepid remake Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights , I can tell you that I did not have the time of my life-this I swear-and I owe it all to … well, I guess everyone involved is to blame.
Directed by Guy Ferland and set Read More
A ponderous medieval thriller may not exactly be what everyone’s been hoping for as a welcome antidote to overhyped crucifixion fables by Mel Gibson and the sudden new avalanche of brain-atrophying time-wasters about teenagers trying to get laid, but at least it’s different. The Reckoning , directed by Paul McGuigan and set in the English Read More
Despite his blustering and joking during his recent trip across Europe and Russia, George W. Bush surely wonders sometimes why nations otherwise friendly to America are so suspicious of him and his government. It must be frustrating that millions of people abroad (and more than a few at home, despite “patriotic” strictures against dissent) question Read More
All over Havana, touts want you to buy black-market cigars at a fraction of the government price, and they make lewd pantomimes of puffing as you walk by shadowy alleyways, but it wasn’t ’til we’d been in Cuba a few days that my wife and I followed an earnest young man into the back of Read More
Of late, we have been treated to a continuous spouting and fuming emanating from the general direction of Miami, where the Cubans or Cuban exiles have been carrying on at a great rate about that 6-year-old child whom they don’t want returned to the Communist island non-paradise. At the risk of saying something unfashionably insensitive, Read More
