NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t

FRESH AIR Danny Boyle, the director of the Oscar-nominated Slumdog Millionaire, says that filming in India presented a variety of difficulties, from language barriers to a limited crew size, but the on-location work allowed him to represent India’s “incredibly rich and complex society.” Slumdog Millionaire tells the story of an orphan boy who gets a shot at glory on the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?. The film has garnered 10 Oscar nominations, including nods for best picture and director. Boyle’s other films include Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, Sunshine and Shallow Grave. RADIO TIMES Hour 1 During […]

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OBAMALICIOUS: Reason # 647 Why Obama Is The Best Thing To Happen To The White House Since Lincoln Dreamed Up The Emancipation Proclamation

BOSTON PHOENIX: In his bestselling autobiography, Dreams From My Father, President Obama introduces us to his high school friend, “Ray,” who, like him, is bi-racial. Who, also like him, is casting about to find his place in the world. But, who, unlike him, has a potty mouth that would make a sailor blush. Best of all? When reading the audiobook version of his bio, Obama does impressions of Ray’s manner of speech. Swear words and all. It’s fucking awesome. And it’s a way of talking we probably won’t be hearing from him now that he’s POTUS. Or will we? MORE […]

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THE REVOLUTION WILL BE COMMERCIALIZED: Q&A With NYT’s Consumed Columnist Rob Walker

BY ELIZABETH FLYNN Rob Walker wants you to think before you sink your money into another superficial purchase. Walker — who writes the Consumed column for the New York Times Sunday Magazine, and author of Buying In, a highly-readable dissection of the dark art of branding — began his career focusing on advertising and media campaigns in 2000, writing the Moneybox column and other contributions for the online magazine Slate. Through his research into corporate strategies to incite a buying frenzy in consumers, he started asking some questions: If consumers had become, as many studies proclaimed “hyperaware” and “immune” to […]

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BOOK EXCERPT: Tear Down This Myth

EDITOR’S NOTE: Phawker is proud to bring you this excerpt from Daily News scribe/Attytood blogger-in-chief Will Bunch’s soon-to-publish Tear Down This Myth: How The Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics And Haunts Our Future, a meaty, pointed dissection of the dream factory mythologizing of Ronald Reagan’s presidency — how this is being done, why, and the impact such historical revisionism has on our current political landscape. The short answer to all the above can be found the following quote from George Orwell, which kicks off the book: ‘Who controls the past’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls […]

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RABBIT AT REST: John Updike Dead At 76

NEW YORK TIMES: John Updike, the kaleidoscopically gifted writer whose quartet of Rabbit Angstrom novels highlighted so vast and protean a body of fiction, verse, essays and criticism as to earn him comparisons with Henry James and Edmund Wilson among American men of letters, died today at a hospice outside Boston. He was 76 and lived in Beverly Farms, Mass. The cause was cancer, according to a statement by Alfred A. Knopf, his publisher. Where James and Wilson focused largely on elite Americans in a European context, Mr. Updike wrote of ordinary citizens in small-town and urban settings. His best-known […]

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NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t

FRESH AIR In his new book, We Can Have Peace In The Holy Land: A Plan That Will Work, former President Jimmy Carter presents his strategy to end fighting between Israelis and Palestinians. The 39th president of the United States, Carter is the author of Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid and the founder of The Carter Center, an organization that promotes conflict resolution and peace. ALSO, Ethan Bronner, the Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York Times, has written about the Arab-Israeli conflict for more than 25 years. Recently, he has been covering the conflict in Gaza. In a Jan. 24 […]

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THEATER: Five Reasons To See Tennessee Williams’ Streetcar Named Desire At The Walnut St. Theater

1. Blanche DuBois is the first lady of the American stage. Whereas the motion picture of Tennessee William’s A Street Car Named Desire draws attention to Brando’s gritty portrayal of Stanely Kolwalski, it seems as though Williams intended Blanche Dubois, played with gravitational pull by Susan Riley Stevens, to hold center stage for playhouse productions. The production was all of three hours long, which can be demanding even for the most ardent theater-lovers, but Stevens entertained, intrigued and beguiled effortlessly for the entire production, and could have done so longer. And this was no small feat. Stevens delivered more than […]

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