The New Republic

On the front page of the Weekend Arts section on Friday, the Times published an above-the-fold celebration of the work of Cary Grant so backhanded and begrudging as to be genuinely mystifying. The occasion was a retrospective taking place at BAMcinematek, and the author was Mike Hall, who usually writes about television. Hall begins by noting READ MORE >>

The Arts Section of today's New York Times carries a front-page ad for the movie Julie & Julia. It seems a bit unnecessary. READ MORE >>

Anyone familiar with that unpleasant saying, "beat you like a red-headed stepchild"? Turns out, beating a redhead is even crueler than whalloping your average child, since redheads are now thought to have greater sensitivity to pain. READ MORE >>

She leaves today for a seven-nation trip, visiting some troubled destinations, including Barack Obama Sr.'s native Kenya. She'll have an especially interesting meeting in Kenya with the president of Somalia, whose country is currently fending off an Islamist insurgency and has become a new magnet for al Qaeda fighters.  READ MORE >>

As someone who tends to take a pretty dismissive view of complaints about "corporate" media, I think Glenn Greenwald is dead on in his response to this NYT article about the truce GE and the News Corporation decreed between their two news networks, MSNBC and Fox: READ MORE >>

Ellen Barry has a terrific piece in The New York Times on the Russian reaction to Joe Biden's off-the-cuff remarks about Russian-American relations. READ MORE >>

A recent dispatch from Iraq by The New York Times' Elisabeth Bumiller articulated something that has been true for several months now: America has moved on from the Iraq War. Much of the 2008 election was organized around that conflict. Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton in large measure by deriding the judgment she showed in supporting the 2003 Iraq war resolution. And John McCain's public embrace of George W. READ MORE >>

This post contains spoilers: Do not read if you plan on seeing Funny People. READ MORE >>

It is always nice to read a relatively sanguine piece about the political situation in Pakistan. Sabrina Tavernise's excellent New York Times dispatch makes one important and usually obscured point: READ MORE >>

Excellent story in the Washington Post today about an experiment in Harlem to create not just an alternative schools, but an alternative community around the schools, and it seems to be working. It bears out the view that the problems in schools that cater to kids from foster homes or low income homes with single mothers can't be solved simply by getting better principals or teachers. The Obama administration has put money in its budget to try to replicate the Promise Academies elsewhere. READ MORE >>