Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven, from a screenplay by William Monohan, was reportedly conceived before the invasion of Iraq pitted contemporary Christian soldiers against their Muslim counterparts. Even so, before Iraq, there had been ever-increasing tensions between Christians and Muslims in the wake of 9/11. It is therefore difficult to imagine what Mr. Scott and Read More
The other night, I had the Kafkaesque experience of showing up at a restaurant I’d been to just three weeks earlier to find it had disappeared. Gone without a trace. My friend and I searched the shuttered storefronts on Cleveland Place in Soho until I began to wonder if I’d never been to the restaurant Read More
We thought it was finished. The ovens are long cooled, the anti-vermin gas dissipated into purifying clouds, cleansed air, nightmarish fable. The cries of the naked, decades gone, are mute; the bullets splitting throats and breasts and skulls, the human waterfall of bodies tipping over into the wooded ravine at Babi Yar, are no more Read More
Tim Fywell’s I Capture the Castle, from a screenplay by Heidi Thomas, is adapted from Dodie Smith’s 1948 novel of the same name. Most famous for penning the children’s classic The Hundred and One Dalmatians-later adapted into a big money spinner by Walt Disney Pictures-Smith (1896-1990) was a well-regarded British playwright of the 1930′s. I Read More
My father, he’s an enthusiast. When he likes something, he really likes it. A little over a year ago, while watching Shrek with his youngest grandson, he discovered Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” (sung in that instance by Rufus Wainwright). Shortly after, he bought himself the soundtrack, and then he sought out every imaginable Leonard Cohen version Read More
Jesse Jackson had a close call last week, narrowly missing being publicly exposed as a staunch friend to terrorists and anti-Semites, and having what’s left of his career forever ruined. As it was, only a few newspapers reported that Mr. Jackson was en route to a meeting with Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the founder of the Read More
Hanukkah was once a minor holiday, a playful reminder of miracles that cast a warming light against the winter darkness. The game of dreidel was an innocent sort of gambling pleasure: an easy way to teach children that chance is beyond cajoling, that you win or lose, double or nothing, depending on the breath in Read More
The death and funeral of Katharine Graham, proprietor of The Washington Post , has been one of those passages that must provoke reflection. As is usual with the passing from the scene of a central and significant figure, the best and worst came out. Indeed, the list of ushers–chosen possibly by Mrs. Graham, possibly by Read More
“My ex-husband was always a pain about his food,” said an English friend over lunch at Craft. “He once actually asked a waiter if he could have the roast beef on the menu without the roast beef.”
He would not have been considered a pain at Craft, a new restaurant in the Flatiron district. Here, Read More
JERUSALEM-Three words, if Palestine becomes Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Senate Waterloo: Don’t blame Suha.
Mrs. Yasir Arafat did mortify Mrs. Clinton during their brief but bruising encounter on Thursday, Nov. 11, at the Palestinian perch of Ramallah. There, as you may have heard, Mrs. Arafat felt moved to apprise the First Lady, who was fresh Read More
