Arts

Peter Baker's other books include The Breach and Kremlin Rising.

'Days Of Fire': The Evolution Of The Bush-Cheney White House

5:00pm November 09, 2013

by NPR Staff

Peter Baker covered the George W. Bush administration for The New York Times. In his new book, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Baker takes a second look at those controversial years.

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Arts

'We Will Rock You': A Bohemian Musical

11:24am November 09, 2013

by Allison Keyes

A musical featuring songs by the British rock band Queen, about a post-rock 'n' roll world where half-remembered hits have a mythical force, is beginning its first North American tour. Queen guitarist Brian May says the show's anti-corporate message brings the power of rock back to the people.

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Jake Gyllenhaal plays the stoic Detective Loki in Prisoners, trying to track down two missing girls.

Arts

Jake Gyllenhaal, Going After What's Real

8:08pm November 08, 2013

by NPR Staff

On a visit to the set of Nightcrawler, NPR's Audie Cornish talks to the actor about his changing career and his recent crime drama, Prisoners, where he plays a solemn detective in search of two young missing girls.

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This Blockbuster store in Mission, Texas, is franchised by Border Entertainment. The company has 26 stores across Texas and Alaska that will live on after the last 300 or so company-owned stores are closed by early January 2014.

Blockbuster Fades Out, But Some Zombie Stores Will Live On

8:08pm November 08, 2013

by Serri Graslie

Dish Network announced this week that it will shutter the 300 or so remaining Blockbuster stores it owns across the country. But in some places, dozens of the video stores will have an unlikely afterlife.

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Books
Arts

In Art Lost And Found, The Echoes Of A Century's Upheaval

8:08pm November 08, 2013

by Susan Choi

Earlier this week, German authorities announced that a trove of Nazi-looted art, once thought lost, had been discovered in a Munich apartment. That news has sparked the imagination of author Susan Choi, who recalls reading a novel with a similar theme: Jenny Erpenbeck's Visitation.

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Arts

Kripplekrunk, a Czech Folk Tale, and Joel Fan Gives Concert at the Music Academy of NC

1:25pm November 08, 2013

by David Ford

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Steve Young learned about industrial musicals when he started coming across compilations, like this one, in used record stores. (You definitely want to click to enlarge this.)

Sales Take Center Stage: To Boost Morale, Companies Burst Into Song

9:47am November 08, 2013

Industrial musicals were like Broadway shows, only written and performed for corporate sales meetings or conventions. And as ridiculous as the songs were — "My bathroom, my bathroom is a private kind of place" — they were often delivered by very talented people.

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Books
Arts

Female Friendship Puts 'New' Angle On Italian Classism And Machismo

9:46am November 08, 2013

by John Powers

Bound by the confines of gender and finances, two young women take divergent paths in Elena Ferrante's The Story of a New Name, the second book in her "Neapolitan Novels" trilogy. Critic John Powers believes the bold, expansive series to be semi-autobiographical, a revelation from a secretive author who won't reveal her true name.

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Arts

Pianist Joel Fan Works With Young Musicians at Music Academy of North Carolina

8:45am November 08, 2013

by David Ford

The New York Times says Joel Fan's piano playing has a “…powerful touch and big sound with the sparkle and rhythmic suppleness of a jazz improviser”. That suppleness enables him to take on a huge variety of musical styles from Beethoven's Triple Concerto performances alongside Yo-Yo Ma and Jonathan Gandelsman to new works like Derek Bermel's Funk Studies. Joel's appreciation for composition grew from his longtime mentor, the late American composer/pianist Leon Kirchner who died in 2009. The Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and his music were at the center of Joel's recent CD Leon Kirchner Revelations on Verdant World Records which we sample today now. This is Kirchner's last work The Forbidden. Joel Fan spoke with David Ford by phone from his studio in New York.

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Celebrity photographer Editta Sherman photographs actor Don Ameche in her studio circa 1950.

Arts

Photographer Editta Sherman, 'Duchess Of Carnegie Hall,' Dies At 101

8:16pm November 07, 2013

For six decades, in her light-filled studio on top of New York's Carnegie Hall, Sherman photographed celebrities from Leonard Bernstein to Yul Brynner to Joe DiMaggio. She was a legend as a portrait photographer — and she'd tell you that herself.

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