Although Kindle sales have seemed strong since its debut nearly two years ago, the future of Amazon’s e-reader may not be rosy, according to The Atlantic’s Kevin Maney, who sums up the “Kindle problem” thusly: “[I]n aiming to provide both a great experience and supreme convenience, it has achieved neither.”
Let’s get something straight, America. Charles Darwin was right. Only 39 percent of you believe that, but his theory of evolution is the basis of modern biological science. Deal with it. A new film about the man can’t get distribution in the U.S. because—this is embarrassing just to type—150 years after “On the Origin of Species,” he’s too controversial in these parts.
A series of silk-screen paintings, made by Andy Warhol and mainly depicting ’70s-era athletes such as Dorothy Hamill and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, has allegedly been stolen from collector Richard L. Weisman’s home on Los Angeles’ Westside.
Somewhere in Afghanistan there’s a statue of Buddha more than 1,000 feet long, according to the ancient journal of 7th century Chinese pilgrim Xuan Zang. Dr. Zemaryalai Tarzi, an Afghan archeologist with a sense of adventure, believes the legend.
The Internet has introduced a whole host of new marvels to the world, but as this list compiled by the U.K.’s Telegraph demonstrates, the Web giveth and the Web taketh away. And it has taken away a few things from users’ lives that we might miss (see: “The art of polite disagreement”)—others, not so much (cf. “Sarah Palin”).
What’s up with erstwhile Republican congressional powerhouse Tom DeLay deciding to hoof it on “Dancing With the Stars” afore a national audience? Some of his GOP buds are perplexed by this unorthodox career maneuver, but as DeLay himself points out, politicians tend to love the spotlight.
Oliver Stone made quite a dramatic entrance at the Venice Film Festival on Monday for the premiere of his documentary, “South of the Border”—the director was joined on the red carpet by none other than Venezuela President Hugo Chavez, the subject of his film.
Annie Leibovitz may be the most famous portrait photographer in the world. According to one angry Italian, she’s also a thief. Paolo Pizzetti is suing Leibovitz for allegedly using his photos in a calendar without permission. She’s also on the hook for a $24-million loan and could lose the rights to her work.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has a way of popping up in any number of seemingly unrelated arenas across the world, such as the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival, where a planned Tel Aviv-themed program has spurred several entertainers, including Jane Fonda, Danny Glover and David Byrne, as well as writers and filmmakers, to sign a letter of protest that’s shaking things up with just days to go before the fest begins. All of the 10 films in City to City, a new program at the festival, will focus on the Israeli city.
Disgraced former Wall Street baron Bernard Madoff might have made millions swindling others for profit during his heyday, but he doesn’t seem to have made much of a literary cottage industry for writers presumably looking to cash in on his downfall. Not even the “I-was-Bernie’s-mistress” angle is tempting book buyers at this point.
Not so long ago, it seemed like big news that a woman—CBS’ Katie Couric—would be chosen to anchor the nightly news at a major network. Now Couric’s got some competition in Diane Sawyer, who’ll replace Charlie Gibson at ABC’s “World News” starting in January.
Although the world at large has yet to find out exactly what spurred Sarah Palin to vacate her post as Alaska’s governor this summer, her almost-son-in-law Levi Johnston pipes up (surprise!) in the latest edition of Vanity Fair, helpfully offering that Palin’s plan had something to do with money. This kid is on a tear.
Oh, what a tangled web Spider-Man weaves. Thanks largely to the multibillion-dollar success of Marvel’s characters on the big screen, Disney is buying the fabled comic book company for $4 billion in cash and stock. The Mouse House says Marvel characters will soon be appearing at its theme parks, but that isn’t the half of it.
A recent squabble between “The Shock Doctrine” author Naomi Klein and the director who is adapting her book into a documentary film has led Klein to ask that her name be taken off the credits. Conflict reportedly arose over the form of the documentary, and the director’s use of narration rather than interviews as the key story-telling device.
It’s well known that Adolf Hitler dabbled in watercolor and that the Führer and his Nazi underlings amassed vast stashes of ill-begotten works of art, but according to art historian Birgit Schwarz, Hitler’s artistic streak ran deeper into the dark zones of his psyche than most people realize.
Quentin Tarantino certainly took full cinematic license and ran with it in his Nazi-bashing big-screen extravaganza “Inglourious Basterds,” but as Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Gleiberman explains, some people are getting pretty fired up about the film’s convention-busting climax, worrying that it could lead impressionable future generations astray about what really happened at the end of World War II.
Is it possible to pluck the Beatles’ psychedelic classic “Yellow Submarine” out of its original 1968 context, remake it and plunk it down somewhere around the year 2012 ... just in time for the London Olympics?
The American television industry is in crisis, according to Advertising Age critic Bob Garfield, who figures prominently in The Wrap’s two-part look into the future of the industry. In fact, says Garfield, we’re seeing early signs of “the total collapse of the network television model.”
This has to rank among the more embarrassing airport diplomacy blunders in post-9/11 America: U.S. immigration officials pulled Bollywood megastar Shah Rukh “King” Khan aside for questioning at the Newark Liberty International Airport on Friday, failing to recognize the “King of Bollywood,” thus causing an international stir of a decidedly undesirable sort.
With multiple gadgets and screens constantly running, and perhaps even a different sense of time than our forebears had, it’s no surprise that powering down long enough to curl up with a book is becoming an endangered activity—although, as David L. Ulin argues in the Los Angeles Times, it’s still a very vital contemplative practice to pursue.
Sarah Palin is facing several challenges these days, what with her pile of legal bills, self-reinvention campaign, the whole not-being-governor thing and her daughter Bristol’s pesky ex-boyfriend, Levi Johnston, who seems to want to bask in the limelight as long as possible. Most recently, Johnston, 19, made an appearance at Sunday’s Teen Choice Awards ... as the date of comedian Kathy Griffin, 48.
Now, everyone knows that even the toniest of Ivy League institutions recently suffered substantial blows to their massive endowment funds, but Harvard University’s idea to launch a menswear line called Harvard Yard just seems like school branding gone horribly awry.
The economic downturn has been rough on countless industries, and arts organizations in New York City that rely on endowment money to survive have been hit hard—not just, as City Journal’s James Panero points out, by the immediate effects of the meltdown felt round the world, but also by the “indirect effects” of how some of their funds have been managed.
Amazon’s Kindle reader might still be a great device in the estimation of some literary aficionados, but the honeymoon is over for Michigan high school student (and potential member of Future Lawyers of America) Justin D. Gawronski, who’s getting litigious with the online superseller after his copy of George Orwell’s “1984” was yanked from his Kindle in July.
It’s no secret that Keith Olbermann and Bill O’Reilly don’t get along, but the two TV personalities have drastically scaled back their attacks on one another ever since a private meeting between GE and News Corp. CEOs determined the feud was bad for the bottom line.
Where Are the Real Deficit Hawks?
