“[He] lent his burly frame and Texas drawl to numerous TV series beginning in the late 1970s. In addition to the acclaimed HBO series Deadwood, he was seen on shows including Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Nashville and 24, on which he played the vice president of the United States. Among the movies in which he appeared were Red Dawn (1984) … Oliver Stone’s Nixon (1995), in which he played Alexander Haig. He won an Emmy in 1980 … for his performance as the leader of the Jonestown cult in the mini-series Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Dancer Amy Aldridge Bids Farewell To Pennsylvania Ballet After 23 Seasons
“Two by two, her fellow dancers, mostly in street clothes, walked on stage and placed single red roses at her feet as the audience gave her a standing ovation for more than 10 minutes.” (And, happily, this departure was entirely voluntary.)
Thousands Protest In Moscow To Save Constructivist Architecture
“Described by many residents as a property grab akin to the forced collectivisation of property under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin,” the plan to demolish up to 4,500 buildings and relocate up to 1.6 million residents targets “Constructivist complexes built in the early Soviet years and still used as residential housing.”
West Bank Archaeological Site/Museum Must Deal With All Religions And Cultures, Rules Israeli Supreme Court
“Tourists at Tel Shiloh face ‘dissonance’, [the plaintiffs’ lawyer] says, because labels in Hebrew and English primarily underscore the Jewish biblical history about Israelites and the Tabernacle, while many of the ancient buildings and artefacts on display date from the Muslim and Byzantine periods.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 05.15.17
Circles of Life
Tamar Rogoff’s Grand Rounds at La MaMa, April 27 through May 14. … read more
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2017-05-14
Suspension of Suspense: Christie’s Tops Sotheby’s in Relying on Pre-Arranged Bids for Major Auctions
After Sotheby’s public disclosure last Wednesday of how much it is relying on guarantees in general and irrevocable bids in particular, Christie’s on Friday responded to my question about its own guarantee portfolio. … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2017-05-15
The missing question in A Quiet Passion
I was surprised to identify, in the placid strings that conclude the extraordinary film A Quiet Passion, a bit of decomposed Ives: the action dissolves into The Unanswered Question, stripped of trumpet and winds. … read more
AJBlog: Infinite Curves Published 2017-05-15
In praise of drabness
In 2008 I wrote an essay for National Review about Dragnet. It’s never been reprinted and isn’t available on line, and since I happen to like it a lot, I decided to post it here. … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2017-05-15
In Search Of Robert Rauschenberg
Deborah Solomon travels to Lafayette, La. to meet the artist’s sister and learn about his dyslexia and their fundamentalist Christian upbringing, talks to a classmate at Black Mountain College from whom he stole a quilt to use in an early artwork (“The next time I saw it was at the Leo Castelli Gallery”), and has coffee-with-Häagen-Dazs in a Williamsburg loft with Susan Weil, Rauschenberg’s ex-wife and the woman who taught him how to make photograms.
Caravaggio, Virtuoso of Compassion
Caravaggio? The hot-tempered, violent Caravaggio?? Yes, writes, Ingrid D. Rowland. Comparing his work with that of several of his disciples and contemporaries, she finds that what really sets Caravaggio apart is the compassion he shows in the way he depicts the characters in his paintings.
We’d Have No Concept Of ‘News’ Without Our Particular Ideas About Time
“While we frequently wring our hands about the fact that news is in ‘crisis’, we rarely discuss what news actually is. Much like history, news is fundamentally a way of imposing order on the messy totality of what’s going on around us. The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘news’ as ‘newly received or noteworthy information, especially about recent or important events’. Or, in [historian Robert] Darnton’s words, news is ‘stories about what happened’. What we consider to be news is therefore intimately connected to our perception of time.”
Why Audiences Love Southern Gothic
From Faulkner’s fiction to Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil to True Blood to S-Town, readers, viewers and listeners devour the stuff. Why? As Kat Eschner explains, it’s not (just) for the grotesquerie.
What Happens In Poetry Lovers’ Brains When They Hear Some Really Good Poems
Neuroscientists, doing what neuroscientists do, hooked up a group of poetry fans to a bunch of scanners and meters – including the “goosecam,” which looks for goosebumps – and had them listen to classic verse. All of them reported experiencing chills.