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Me and J just finished the last episode of Harper’s Island, CBS’s now defunct 13-episode tale of revenge in which each member of a wedding party–trapped on an island–meet their grisly end “one by one,” as a child’s voiceover reminds us frequently, ominously. It’s basically Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians updated. I was hooked from the…
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Time flies, I thought, as my partner and I wandered the main drag on a recent, all-too-brief trip to Woodstock. The media heralds the 40th anniversary of the event that besieged Yasgur’s farm and a generation’s doobie-fueled conscience, but little of its genuine spirit (what I imagine that to be) lives in the new land…
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To have a body that’s its own punch line, or a voice so instantly recognizable it coaxes a smile from the listener—many comics inhabit one or the other genre, or work the two simultaneously, like the great Eugene Pallette (if you haven’t seen The Lady Eve, you’re depriving yourselves of sublime hilarity). Or Dom DeLuise….
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No fun to be found in the papers this weekend. Jack Cardiff, the groundbreaking cinematographer of many films, but notably, The Red Shoes and one of my favorites, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s Black Narcissus, said goodbye. So did Beatrice Arthur, an actress who did her strong woman number in the TV series Maude and…
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Fox’s Prison Break is back from hiatus–it’s the final season, and for those of us who like our jailbreaks hot and twisty, 9pm on Friday is now blacked out on our calendars. Above, Dominic Purcell, Wentworth Miller and William Fichtner
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A strange week, ending with a Manhattan snow shower on the day the city held a wake for an actress whose end qualifies as legitimate tragedy. Such events upend us like unexpected storms; for me, it unlocked the genesis for the elegiac aspect of this blog. Back in the early nineties I was appearing as…
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A Redgrave’s been felled. Natasha, a daughter of Vanessa, suffered injuries resulting from a skiing accident. This lovely actress was scheduled for an upcoming NY revival of A Little Night Music; the rumor is, she’s suffered brain damage, and is in critical condition. Hope they’re not true–still harbor ecstatic memories of her in Cabaret, and…
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