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SHOW: Gad Elmaleh, the international comic
The language barrier can make it hard to export humour but the French actor and humorist Gad Elmaleh has succeeded. A star in France and in his native Morocco, Elmaleh has begun his conquest of English speaking countries.
Source : france24.com | 15-Oct-2008 17:22

San Francisco Ballet's excellent Balanchine
The company's performance of "The Four Temperaments" is the best account of this tremendous ballet the reviewer has seen in the world in several years.
Source : International Herald Tribune | 15-Oct-2008 14:17

Naples's notoriety trumps its culture
Culture was supposed to be Naples's salvation, but the city's problems with trash and crime are still overpowering any gains.
Source : International Herald Tribune | 15-Oct-2008 14:17

Book Review: 'I See You Everywhere'
In her third and most autobiographical novel, Julia Glass presents a double portrait of mismatched sisters, Louisa and Clem Jardine, whose lives are intertwined.
Source : International Herald Tribune | 15-Oct-2008 14:17

CINEMA - SHOOTING: Travolta Paris film shoot destroyed
A John Travolta film shoot in a rough Paris suburb has been called off after arsonists torched a fleet of stunt cars in the neighbourhood, producers and officials said.
Source : france24.com | 14-Oct-2008 23:00

'Armide' keeps fires burning for a Baroque opera revival
First with "Thésée" last season and, currently, "Armide," Paris has warmed to the operas of Jean-Baptiste Lully, the Baroque composer whose "lyric tragedies" from the age of the Sun King form the cornerstone of French opera.
Source : International Herald Tribune | 14-Oct-2008 18:33

Targeted Pashtun singer finds a haven in New York
A hostile cultural climate forced Haroon Bacha, a Pashtun musician, to leave Pakistan and come to New York.
Source : International Herald Tribune | 14-Oct-2008 18:33

An Irish playwright revisits the American dream
Ronan Noone has moved to American subjects after the series of Irish ensemble plays, and is taking on New York with a star, Campbell Scott, in "The Atheist," about a compromised, washed-up celebrity journalist.
Source : International Herald Tribune | 14-Oct-2008 18:33

Everett Kuntz: A lens tenderly turned on a hometown
The University of Iowa Press has just published photographs of Ridgeway, Iowa, taken by Kuntz as a teenager in the 1930s, in a slim volume, "Sunday Afternoon on the Porch."
Source : International Herald Tribune | 14-Oct-2008 18:33

Three characters, one actor, and a high school mockumentary
"Summer Heights High," an Australian comedy created by and starring Chris Lilley, ventures close to reality in testing boundary-pushing topics at a high school.
Source : International Herald Tribune | 14-Oct-2008 18:33

Book Reviews: 'A Promise to Ourselves' and 'The Brass Verdict'
Alec Baldwin's writes a sad, serious book about divorce and its consequences, while Michael Connelly brings two of his star characters together in another murder mystery.
Source : International Herald Tribune | 14-Oct-2008 18:33

Alan Jackson, Reba McEntire, Dennis Hopper
A roundup of the day's celebrity news.
Source : International Herald Tribune | 14-Oct-2008 18:33

'Descartes' Bones' by Russell Shorto
The book is a 'Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason.'
Source : International Herald Tribune | 14-Oct-2008 18:33

When caricature becomes the message
A bumbling president, a rube candidate, a greedy politician - such are the caricatures of political life. Whether accurate or not, they can be more powerful than any argument.
Source : International Herald Tribune | 14-Oct-2008 18:17

LITERATURE - HISTORY: Kundera claims provoke dismay in homeland
Former peers and protégés of the Czech author Milan Kundera have reacted with dismay to accusations that he informed on a Czech deserter turned US spy after the 1948 communist coup.
Source : france24.com | 14-Oct-2008 17:30

CINEMA: Actor Guillaume Depardieu dies aged 37
The son of French film star Gérard Depardieu died Monday in a Paris area hospital from a bout of acute pneumonia, his agent said. A leading French actor in his own right, he appeared in some 20 films, including Pierre Schoeller's "Versailles".
Source : france24.com | 13-Oct-2008 20:15

LITERATURE - HISTORY: Kundera denies he betrayed Cold War deserter
Renowned Czech writer Milan Kundera strongly denied allegations contained in a communist-era police report from 1950 suggesting he had denounced a young pilot who deserted and was subsequently sentenced to 22 years in prison.
Source : france24.com | 13-Oct-2008 19:30

Poland prepares for Chopin's bicentennial
On the 200th anniversary of the composer's birth, Poland is planning concerts, recitals, conferences and other events.
Source : International Herald Tribune | 13-Oct-2008 18:47

OBITUARY: Jazz photographer William Baxton dies
William Baxton, 80, died of congestive heart failure in Los Angeles early on Saturday. The photographer was best known for capturing unique images of the greatest jazz musicians of the 1950s, from Stan Getz to Duke Ellington.
Source : france24.com | 13-Oct-2008 16:05

Tempting controversy at the Comédie Française
Muriel Mayette, the administrateur général in charge of the Comédie-Française, is embroiled in a headache-inducing controversy about her hope to extend the Comédie's activities to the MC93 theater in Bobigny.
Source : International Herald Tribune | 13-Oct-2008 12:45

CONTEMPORARY ART: Fourty years of modern art in Venice
In the Renaissance city of Venice, at the Palazzo Grassi, French billionaire and philanthropist François Pinault has financed a retrospective exhibit of 40 years of Italian modern art.
Source : france24.com | 13-Oct-2008 10:26

John Lahr: Martyrdom and marriage onstage.
In Robert Bolt’s 1960 hit “A Man for All Seasons” (now in a Roundabout Theatre Company revival, at the American Airlines, under the direction of Doug Hughes), Cardinal Wolsey (Dakin Matthews) asks Sir Thomas More (Frank Langella) a question that is meant to wrong-foot him. “Take you altogether, Thomas . . .
Source : newyorker.com | 13-Oct-2008 06:00

Vince Aletti: Gilbert & George, at the Brooklyn Museum.
The world of Gilbert & George, now on gaudy, overwhelming display at the Brooklyn Museum, revolves around the artists themselves, a pair of Brits dressed in conservative suits--or in nothing at all. On the evidence of some hundred photographs and drawings made between 1970 and 2006, the couple’s work, which . . .
Source : newyorker.com | 13-Oct-2008 06:00

Books: "Antoine’s Alphabet: Watteau and His World"
In 1944, Cyril Connolly, having just passed his fortieth birthday and in a melancholy mood, published “The Unquiet Grave,” a gloriously strange book of fragments, quotations, epigrams, impressions, and wartime journal entries--a kind of aesthetic autobiography--under the pseudonym Palinurus. Perl, the art critic for the New Republic, has . . .
Source : newyorker.com | 13-Oct-2008 06:00

Books: "The Elegance of the Hedgehog"
In this supple novel of ideas, a best-seller in France, the unschooled middle-aged concierge of an upper-class Paris apartment building acts like a stereotypical concierge, leaving the television on all day and sharing her quarters with an old, fat cat, but she secretly consumes vast quantities of . . .
Source : newyorker.com | 13-Oct-2008 06:00

Books: "The English Major"
The protagonist of this wistfully comic novel is a sixty-year-old English teacher turned farmer, whose wife has left him for another man, and who takes to the road in the quixotic pursuit of renaming all the birds and all the states. Along the way, he picks up a . . .
Source : newyorker.com | 13-Oct-2008 06:00

Books: "The House at Sugar Beach"
Cooper is a descendant of the Congo People--the élite who once governed Liberia--and can trace her ancestry to the freed American slaves who colonized the country in the eighteen-hundreds. In 1980, she and her family fled Monrovia following a coup; her mother was raped and, on her . . .
Source : newyorker.com | 13-Oct-2008 06:00

Elizabeth Kolbert: Emily Post, at home.
New York’s moneyed class has always loved to read about itself. In the early years of the twentieth century, it particularly loved to do so in a magazine called Town Topics: The Journal of Society. Far and away the weekly’s most popular feature, titled “Saunterings,” offered material of a sort . . .
Source : newyorker.com | 13-Oct-2008 06:00

Goings on About Town: Readings and Talks
RUBIN MUSEUM OF ART Ellen Burstyn, Brian Cox, Linus Roache, and others give a dramatic reading based on the Dhammapada, a central text of Buddhism. (150 W. 17th St. 212-620-5000, ext. 344. Oct. 15 at 7.) UNION HALL Jay McInerney, Kate Christensen, and Arthur Phillips read short stories they have . . .
Source : newyorker.com | 13-Oct-2008 06:00

Jeffrey Frank: Per Petterson's "To Siberia."
On April 7, 1990, the ferryboat Scandinavian Star sailed from Oslo toward Frederikshavn, in the northern part of Denmark, carrying nearly five hundred passengers. The ship caught fire, and more than a hundred and fifty people perished. Four of the dead belonged to the family of the Norwegian novelist Per . . .
Source : newyorker.com | 13-Oct-2008 06:00

Louis Menand: Is texting here to stay?
Is texting bringing us closer to the end of life as we currently tolerate it? Enough people have suggested that it is to have inspired David Crystal to produce “Txtng: The Gr8 Db8” (Oxford; $19.95). “I don’t think I have ever come across a topic which has attracted more . . .
Source : newyorker.com | 13-Oct-2008 06:00

Jill Lepore: Writing campaign lives.
Biographers of Andrew Jackson used to be cursed. On January 8, 1815, the General led American forces in a stunning defeat of an invading British Army, winning the Battle of New Orleans at the end of the War of 1812. With a political career in mind, he cast about for . . .
Source : newyorker.com | 13-Oct-2008 06:00

Goings on About Town: The Theatre
OPENINGS AND PREVIEWS Please call the phone number listed with the theatre for timetables and ticket information. ALL MY SONS John Lithgow, Dianne Wiest, Patrick Wilson, and Katie Holmes star in Arthur Miller’s play from 1947, about a businessman’s shady dealings during the Second World War. Simon McBurney directs. In . . .
Source : newyorker.com | 13-Oct-2008 06:00

Anthony Lane: "Filth and Wisdom," "RocknRolla," and "What Just Happened?"
There have been countless occasions on which a husband and wife have acted together onscreen. A pair of mating movie directors, however, is altogether a more exotic find, and, as for both having a film released in the same month, it’s almost unheard of. “Wanda,” for instance, Barbara Loden’s impressive . . .
Source : newyorker.com | 13-Oct-2008 06:00

Anthony Lane: Andrzej Wajda, at Anthology Film Archives and Lincoln Center.
This is Andrzej Wajda season in New York. From Oct. 24 through Oct. 28, Anthology Film Archives is screening plays he filmed for Polish television, including a 1991 “Hamlet” with a female lead, and from Oct. 17 through Nov. 13 a complete retrospective is being mounted at Lincoln Center. One . . .
Source : newyorker.com | 13-Oct-2008 06:00

Ben Greenman: Outtakes and rarities, from Bob Dylan.
Bob Dylan’s new collection of outtakes and rarities, “Tell Tale Signs: Rare and Unreleased, 1989-2006” (Sony), is an object lesson in the oddness of modern record distribution. In addition to the basic two-disk version, which has twenty-seven songs, there is a deluxe edition that includes an extra CD . . .
Source : newyorker.com | 13-Oct-2008 06:00

Goings on About Town: Above and Beyond
HAROLD CLURMAN FESTIVAL OF THE ARTS The Stella Adler Studio of Acting’s annual gathering gets under way on Oct. 17, with a symposium at Cooper Union’s Great Hall (7 E. 7th St.) about art and social activism in Africa, featuring Winter Miller, John Prendergast, Nima Elbagir, and others. It is . . .
Source : newyorker.com | 13-Oct-2008 06:00

Goings on About Town: Art
MUSEUMS AND LIBRARIES METROPOLITAN MUSEUM Fifth Ave. at 82nd St. (212-535-7710)--“Giorgio Morandi, 1890-1964.” Through Dec. 14. | “Landscapes Clear and Radiant: The Art of Wang Hui (1632-1717).” Through Jan. 4. | “Royal Porcelain from the Twinight Collection: 1800-1850.” Through April 19. | “Jeff Koons on the Roof.” Through Oct. 26. | “Rhythms of . . .
Source : newyorker.com | 13-Oct-2008 06:00

Goings on About Town: Classical Music
OPERA METROPOLITAN OPERA Mary Zimmerman’s daring--and rewarding--new production of “Lucia di Lammermoor” stars Diana Damrau (in the title role), along with Piotr Beczala, Vladimir Stoyanov, and Ildar Abdrazakov; Marco Armiliato, the Met’s reliable Italian hand, is on the podium. (Oct. 15 at 8 and Oct. 18 at 8:30 . . .
Source : newyorker.com | 13-Oct-2008 06:00

Goings on About Town: Dance
AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE Fresh from its recent coup--snapping up the Russian choreographer Alexei Ratmansky for the position of artist-in-residence--the company presents its two-week fall season at City Center, which is focussed on the British choreographer Antony Tudor, whose centennial is this year. On opening night . . .
Source : newyorker.com | 13-Oct-2008 06:00

Goings on About Town: Movies
OPENING AZUR AND ASMAR Michel Ocelot directed this animated fable, set in the Middle Ages, about a man seeking his long-lost brother. Opening Oct. 17. (IFC Center.) THE ELEPHANT KING In this drama, a woman (Ellen Burstyn) sends one of her sons (Tate Ellington) to bring the other (Jonno . . .
Source : newyorker.com | 13-Oct-2008 06:00

Goings on About Town: Night Life
ROCK AND POP Musicians and night-club proprietors live complicated lives; it’s advisable to call ahead to confirm engagements. APOLLO THEATRE 253 W. 125th St. (212-531-5300)--Oct. 16: The lead singer of Antony and the Johnsons, who has a sweet and haunting voice reminiscent of Bryan Ferry’s, won a Mercury . . .
Source : newyorker.com | 13-Oct-2008 06:00

Goings on About Town: On the Horizon
ART THE LONG GOODBYE Oct. 24-Feb. 1 The Met bids a fond farewell to its director of thirty-one years with “The Philippe de Montebello Years: Curators Celebrate Three Decades of Acquisitions.” The exhibition features some three hundred objects, including a sixteenth-century Islamic manuscript that illustrates “worldly and . . .
Source : newyorker.com | 13-Oct-2008 06:00

AC/DC extends its rock legacy, its way
AC/DC's new album, "Black Ice," is its most focused release in almost two decades, full of fist-pumping riffs and shout-along choruses.
Source : International Herald Tribune | 12-Oct-2008 14:39

Ceding control to a world of random beauty
The history of modern design has been all about control. Not any more.
Source : International Herald Tribune | 12-Oct-2008 14:39

Book review: 'The Development' and 'The Legal Limit'
John Barth's stories look at the loosely linked lives of the elderly at a gated community. Martin Clark writes a deep yet playful story in which the adventure hinges on the decisions of morally ambiguous characters.
Source : International Herald Tribune | 12-Oct-2008 14:39