Arts & Life

Liza Colon-Zayas plays a troubled character named Odessa Ortiz, who finds her better self online. She's pictured above with Bill Heck, as Fountainhead.

Arts

A Vet's Haunted Homecoming In 'Water By The Spoonful'

6:06am January 08, 2013

by Jeff Lunden

Quiara Alegria Hudes' Pulitzer Prize-winning drama opens off-Broadway on Tuesday. The play is the second in a trilogy focused on an injured Iraq veteran named Elliot — a character based on Hudes' cousin. "I just remember the instant I saw him, there was just something changed in his eye," she says.

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John Schlesinger's 1971 film Sunday Bloody Sunday has just been released on Blu-ray. The film's complex love triangle starred Peter Finch, Murray Head and Glenda Jackson.

Mozart's Starring Role In 'Sunday Bloody Sunday'

1:35pm January 07, 2013

by Lloyd Schwartz

The 1971 John Schlesinger film, recently released on Blu-ray, tells the story of a love triangle and makes moving use of a trio from the opera Cosi fan tutte as the film's musical theme.

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Jim Carter as Mr. Carson in Downton Abbey. The third season premiered on PBS Sunday.

Julian Fellowes On The Rules Of 'Downton'

1:23pm January 07, 2013

On the hit Masterpiece Theater series, the social rules the characters have always known are changing as the world events of the 20th century unfold. The series' creator, Julian Fellowes, says his relatives who lived through that era inspired his lasting interest in class.

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Books
Arts

Mapping A History Of The World, And Our Place In It

7:56am January 07, 2013

by NPR Staff

On the Map author Simon Garfield speaks with NPR's Steve Inskeep about the history of maps, how they can be used as political tools, and how GPS and modern mapping applications are changing the way we see ourselves and our place in the world.

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Books
Arts

Re-Creating The 'Lost Carving' Of An English Genius

7:06pm January 06, 2013

by NPR Staff

David Esterly's life was changed in the 1970s when he came across wood carvings done by Grinling Gibbons more than 300 years earlier. Esterly became a wood carver, and even re-created one of Gibbons' pieces that was destroyed in a fire.

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Books
Arts

'Death Of Bees' Captures A Grim, Gory Coming-Of-Age

9:59am January 05, 2013

by NPR Staff

"Today is my birthday. Today I am fifteen. Today I buried my parents in the backyard." So begins Lisa O'Donnell's novel about two sisters who find their parents dead and, instead of reporting it, decide to keep it a secret until they can make it on their own.

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Arts

Frank Calabrese Jr. On Opening His 'Family Secrets'

12:04pm January 04, 2013

Frank Calabrese Jr. wrote a memoir about bringing down his father's murderous Chicago crime family. In Operation Family Secrets, Frank detailed how he helped the FBI convict his father of several murders by wearing a hidden wire and taping his father's conversations. His father died Christmas Day.

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The singer Skin of Skunk Anansie performs at Brixton Academy in London last month. She wrote the foreword to Laina Dawes' What Are You Doing Here?: A Black Woman's Life and Liberation in Heavy Metal.

The 'Life And Liberation' Of A Black Female Metal Fan

10:15am January 04, 2013

by NPR Staff

Writer Laina Dawes has loved heavy metal ever since she got her first Kiss album at age 8. But the metal community hasn't always loved her back, as she explains in her book What Are You Doing Here?

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Accountants from PricewaterhouseCoopers prepare ballots for last year's Oscars mailing. Glitches in a new online voting system have prompted organizers to push back this year's balloting deadline.

Arts

E-Vote Hiccups Delay Oscar Balloting

6:10pm January 03, 2013

by NPR Staff

A new online option was meant to make things easier for Oscar voters — but widespread reports of difficulties have prompted the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to extend the deadline.

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Social changes, romantic intrigues and financial crises grip the English country estate in the third season of Downton Abbey, starting Sunday on PBS. Shirley MacLaine joins the cast as Cora's wealthy American mother, Martha Levinson.

Arts

'Downton' Returns With Aristocratic Class And Clash

2:16pm January 03, 2013

by David Bianculli

On Sunday, the PBS anthology series Masterpiece Classic begins its third season of Downton Abbey, the British period drama that has taken England — and America — by storm.

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