A Hitchcockian-looking drama from Germany, winner of numerous European film awards, and nominee for Best Foreign Film in this month's ceremonies, The Lives of Others is being praised as a rare breed of period film. Its gaze firmly cemented in the past, it looks to subtly glance at the present, sketching historical precedents as if they were blueprints for today's political movements. (more)

Since I'd finally committed myself to being a professional writer, getting published in Best New American Voices seemed like the ideal first step. I flipped to the back of the book to see if my school was listed among the one hundred and fifteen programs
participating in the project. It was. I'd found my new ambition. (more)

The President and several Middle Eastern leaders are ushered in as you run to the kitchen. You swing open the refrigerator door and what you see sends you into a panic: leftover Thai food, beer, chocolate syrup, lettuce, strawberry-mango yogurt and four packets of ketchup. (more)

Knowing our stopover in "misery land" will be brief can lead to a period of great personal and artistic growth and development. Our creative fires light up and, all of a sudden, we arrive at solutions previously unimagined. (more)

Some aspects of Estrin's work are extremely confrontational and may make a lot of readers uncomfortable. Krieger slowly develops into a Kahane-like figure—a warrior Jew who advocates violence as a means of achieving socio-political goals and satisfactions. In an interesting review of the book, for Pop Matters, Jason B. Jones points out that some readers, not knowing much about Estrin, may tend to assume that Krieger is just a thinly disguised version of the author, himself, when, in fact, it seems that exactly the opposite is true. (more)

Already a saxophonist with a thing for John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, and others of his contemporaneous, freer breed of jazzbos, Harley got turned onto Scotland's most notorious musical instrument export during a period of national mourning: he heard it played at
John F. Kennedy's funeral service. (more)

If I guess correctly, the songwriter will be cursed for his predictability; and if I guess incorrectly, he's being willfully obtuse—a word I learned from my publisher, who applied it to the title of my last book. It's a no-win situation that's made even worse when the lyrics are unintelligible, the voice a shriek embedded in noise. This makes me feel both cranky and old, the type of pill who says things like "You and that rock!" (more)

The remnants of Christmas remain in evidence—decorations being lazily taken down, despite the fact that it's February. Winter's been kind—predominantly mild, with only fleeting moments of severe weather; but, true to the way of Paris, even bitter cold does little to stub out a widespread yen to explore new art. (more)

With layout set deliberately to resemble a ship approaching a destination, "O Captain! My Captain!" is a masterful but rare example of rhymed, rhythmically regular verse by a poet renowned for innovative form and structure. There's no doubt the use of rhyme was intentional; written as immediate response to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, in 1865, it served to create a fittingly somber, exalted effect: a bitter-sweet elegy of commiseration and commemoration. (more)

There's a sisterhood of suffering, and it's gathering at the UN in February—despite language and cultural barriers, differing habits and occasional misconceptions. It's not about who suffers more or in what way, but that we share the tie of sisterhood and jointly stand to determinedly turn suffering into joy. (more)