The qualifying rounds of the US Open are underway at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Queens. The actual tournament – the last of the four Slams – begins with first-round play Monday, Aug. 28. In the meantime, enjoy the game’s stars in a lighter mood at Arthur Ashe Kids’ Day on Saturday, Aug. 26.
On the tournament’s infrastructure front, the big news is the temporary Louie (as in Louis Armstrong Stadium) while the United States Tennis Association readies the new Louie for its Big Apple Bow next year. On the personnel front, a number of big names will be missing this year. ...
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Read MoreOne of the many complexities that has come to light in the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus that is the Trump White House is the supposed New Yorkification of Washington D.C. The two cities have always had an uneasy relationship ever since Alexander Hamilton, perhaps the ultimate New Yorker, and Thomas Jefferson, perhaps the ultimate non-New Yorker, struck a deal that would make Washington the political capital of the country and New York, the financial one.
Even today, this remains an unusual arrangement but one that has worked for the United States. As Ric Burns notes in his superb “New York: A Documentary Film," ...
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Read MoreI am a collector of “Hamlets.”
My first stage experience of Shakespeare’s best play occurred when I was 15 and saw the now-defunct American Shakespeare Festival’s production with Brian Bedford in the title role. It was striped tights, codpieces and an emphasis on Hamlet’s friendship with Horatio. I can still see Bedford, whom I would later interview about the part, being carried off the stage at the end – his head thrown back, his long, dark hair cascading. I loved it, though that may not have been my first “Hamlet” experience. ...
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Read MoreA shout-out to Frank Bruni of The New York Times for a truly terrific column about President Donald J. Trump and Vladimir Putin and the bromance of the century (although French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau may yet give them a run for their money).
Brilliant though the column is in comparing Pump (Putin-Trump) to the great love stories (“Romeo and Juliet,” “Casablanca”), Bruni missed one, “Brokeback Mountain.” When the haunting movie of Annie Proulx’s sparely beautiful story came out in 2005, much was made of the gay love story. ...
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Read MoreIt’s interesting – and not entirely coincidental that Mika-gate exploded right at the end of Pride Month and in a summer that has seen the release of “Wonder Woman” and “The Beguiled,” a movie told from the female viewpoint. Culture continues to consider women even if President Donald J. Trump rarely does (though he did take a shine to blond Irish reporter Caitriona Perry.)
That he fails to take a shine to blond journalists who challenge him like Megan Kelly and Mika Brzezinski is more the material point. ...
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Read MoreMuch has been made about how Sofia Coppola’s “The Beguiled” is a feminist reimagining of a 1971 Clint Eastwood movie that was itself an adaptation of Thomas P. Cullinan’s Southern Gothic novel, “A Painted Devil.” But the well-crafted remake turns out to be less about feminism and the female perspective than about the sacrifice of the individual – male or female – to the survival of the group. ...
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Read MoreOccam’s Razor is a philosophical principle attributed to the medieval English Franciscan friar William of Ockham that basically says that the simplest explanation is probably the correct one.
I couldn’t help but think of this with regard to the brouhaha over Montana congressional candidate Greg Gianforte body-slamming the reporter who dared question him about his views on health care. Everyone is up in arms about the disrespect for the First Amendment and the Fourth Estate and I, as a journalist, concur. ...
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