Arts & Life

Johanna Day as Margie and Andrew Long as Mike in the recent Arena Stage production of David Lindsay-Abaire's Good People. The childhood friends drift apart as their lives take on very different socioeconomic dimensions.

Arts

Familiar Folks Make Up A Play's 'Good People'

12:38pm March 18, 2013

by Elizabeth Blair

The most frequently produced play in America these days is a semiautobiographical look at class divides in the modern U.S. David Lindsay-Abaire's Good People explores what can happen when two kids from the same neighborhood grow up to become two very different adults.

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Dome in Odate (multipurpose dome), Odate-shi, Akita, Japan

Arts

2013 Pritzker Winner Toyo Ito Finds Inspiration In Air, Wind And Water

7:48pm March 17, 2013

by Neda Ulaby

"People who live in cities have become more isolated than ever," says the 71-year-old architect based in Tokyo. "I would like to use architecture to create bonds between people." Ito has designed stadiums, libraries, parks, theaters, homes and more in his four-decade career.

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Books
Arts

Famine Ship Jeanie Johnston Sailed Through Grim Odds

7:48pm March 17, 2013

by NPR Staff

In the mid-19th century, more than a million Irish fled the potato famine in search of a better life. But the fate they met aboard so-called "coffin ships" headed to the New World was often as bad as what they left behind. Not so for those lucky enough to find their way onto one ship. Kathryn Miles tells the story in her book, All Standing.

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The noisy film is mostly wordless, with animals and nature filling in the blanks between its strangely stark images.

Arts

'Leviathan': The Fishing Life, From 360 Degrees

7:46am March 16, 2013

by Pat Dowell

Leviathan is a new film that's a documentary, and yet not quite a documentary. The mostly wordless art piece uses tiny cameras and dramatic soundscaping to probe the edges of human-animal interaction off the coast of New England. The filmmakers explain their unusual production process.

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Ginger & Rosa (starring Alice Englert and Elle Fanning) was directed by Sally Potter, who is perhaps best known for her 1992 film Orlando.

Arts

Three New Films Examine What It Means When Girls Act Out

5:37pm March 15, 2013

by David Edelstein

Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers, Sally Potter's Ginger & Rosa and Cristian Mungiu's Beyond the Hills are wildly different films, yet they share a common impulse: to demonstrate indelibly how for girls, behaving outrageously is still a political act.

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Navy veteran Freddie (Phoenix) falls under the influence of cult leader Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman) in Anderson's film, which critic Ella Taylor describes as "one of the most twisted father-son tales ever told."

Arts

Paul Thomas Anderson, The Man Behind 'The Master'

11:52am March 15, 2013

The director of Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood talks to Fresh Air's Terry Gross about The Master, a tense drama with indelible performances from Philip Seymour Hoffman, Joaquin Phoenix and Amy Adams.

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'Bankers' New Clothes' Leave Too Little Skin In The Game

6:50am March 15, 2013

by NPR Staff

Anat Admati, finance professor at Stanford and co-author of a new book on American banks, argues that banks carry too much debt and have too little equity. Government support allows them to hide their risky behavior, distorting the economy as a whole, she says.

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Claire Vaye Watkins' debut collection of short stories — Battleborn — is informed by her childhood in the West.

Books
Arts

Two Awards In One Day For 'Battleborn' Author Claire Vaye Watkins

4:19pm March 14, 2013

On Wednesday, it was announced that the 28-year-old fiction writer had won the Story Prize as well as the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her debut story collection explores the landscape, people and history of the American West.

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Jake Tapper Takes A Host Chair At CNN

3:24pm March 14, 2013

The veteran reporter has recently moved from ABC News to CNN where he now hosts his own show and serves as Chief Washington Correspondent. In Part II of this interview, Tapper talks about fact-checking the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and blow back from the White House after asking tough questions.

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Arts

How Dictionary Searches Define Readers

2:44pm March 14, 2013

After Vice President Joe Biden used the term "malarkey" in a 2012 debate, searches for the word in online dictionaries surged. Now that dictionaries are readily available with a mouse click or finger tap, dictionary publishers can track the correlation between word searches and current events.

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