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| Michael Jackson's incredibly moving This Is It.
October 28, 2009 at 11:54 pm
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| The news in late summer about the plans to release This Is It (Sony Pictures), a movie documenting Michael Jackson's rehearsal process for the stage show he was preparing at the time of his death, didn't bode well. Given that the footage in question wasn't intended for a film but for Jackson's own archive, it seemed inevitable that the result would be an exploitive, thrown-together mishmash, a random bunch of murky home-video snippets padded out with sentimental talking-head interviews and montages of too-often-seen footage of old MTV videos and tabloid news headlines.
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Sponsored Topics: Michael Jackson - This Is It - Film - Sony Pictures Entertainment - MTV |
| Newspapers aren't doing as badly as you think.
October 28, 2009 at 10:58 pm
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| Recent numbers provided newspaper lovers with fodder for despair and newspaper haters with fodder for glee. As Reuters reported, citing Audit Bureau of Circulations figures, "Average weekday circulation at 379 daily newspapers fell 10.6 percent to about 30.4 million copies for the six months that ended on Sept. 30, 2009 from the same period last year." "Those numbers take my breath away," said Josh Marshall. "A ten percent decline year over year is the rate of a mode of distribution going out of existence." Kevin Drum of Mother Jones reaffirmed his view that newspapers would be gone by 2025. Megan McArdle of the Atlantic declared, "I think we're witnessing the end of the newspaper business, full stop, not the end of the newspaper business as we know it."
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Sponsored Topics: Newspaper - Audit Bureau of Circulation - Newspaper circulation - Mother Jones - Publishers |
| How does France distinguish between "cults" and organized religions?
October 28, 2009 at 10:51 pm
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| A French court fined the Church of Scientology $888,000 on Tuesday after a couple claimed they'd been manipulated into buying between $30,000 and $73,000 worth of church products. The verdict is "a historical turning point for the fight against cult abuses," said the leader of France's "government cult-fighting unit." How does this special cult-busting unit distinguish between cults and bona fide religions?
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Sponsored Topics: Church of Scientology - France - Religion and Spirituality - Scientology - Opposing Views |
| Why the president will be setting low expectations in Afghanistan.
October 28, 2009 at 10:34 pm
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| What will Afghanistan look like when American troops leave? President Obama will have to answer that question in the coming weeks at the same time he announces whether he'll be sending new troops into the fight. The answer will help define success for the military—and it's also key to selling Obama's new strategy to the public.
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Sponsored Topics: Afghanistan - United States - Barack Obama - Military - Asia |
| The worst thing about President Karzai's brother's CIA gig.
October 28, 2009 at 10:19 pm
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| The New York Times' lead story today—that the CIA has been making regular payments to Ahmed Wali Karzai, the Afghan president's brother who is widely suspected of involvement in the drug trade—is even worse news than it sounds.
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Sponsored Topics: Ahmed Wali Karzai - New York Times - Central Intelligence Agency - Illegal drug trade - Afghanistan |
| How the AvantGrand, Yamaha's new electronic piano, improves upon a 300-year-old instrument.
October 28, 2009 at 9:55 pm
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| There are nine pianos squeezed into the back of Yamaha's music salon in the old Aeolian Building in New York, and between them they represent an abridged history of technology's assault on the instrument. Against the wall you'll find a majestic 9-foot grand and two of its 6-foot cousins—not an electric bone in their bodies. A few feet away is a modern player piano, the Disklavier Pro, which is still an acoustic piano but is outfitted with gadgets that can resurrect Art Tatum if you insert the correct 3½-inch floppy. (Think Darth Vader: still human but with a lot of gizmos for extra functionality.) And over by the door is the newest addition to the Yamaha family, the just-released AvantGrand. It doesn't even have strings.
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Sponsored Topics: Piano - Yamaha - Disklavier - Yamaha Corporation - New York City |
| Finally, a great comedy about fantasy football.
October 28, 2009 at 7:44 pm
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| On The League (FX, Thursdays at 10:30 p.m. ET), a merry comedy about the miseries of contemporary masculinity, five overgrown adolescents engage in their bonding over fantasy football. In America, 27 million adults count themselves owners of make-believe football teams, and they may be disappointed to see that The League concerns itself with their passion only superficially. If you are well-informed enough to know that the Lions suck and the Mannings do not, then you are perfectly well-equipped to appreciate all of the football references here, which are well outnumbered by jokes that rely on the viewer's familiarity with human genitalia.
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Sponsored Topics: Fantasy - League - American football - Sports - United States | | |
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