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Inner and Outer Cartography in Circle Line: Around London in a Small Boat
Steffan Meyric Hughes has a thing for Google Earth. In his quirky and charming book Circle Line: Around London in a Small Boat, issued in the U.S. in paperback last week, he is casual but clear in...
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'Straight Outta Compton': A Hip-Hop Book-and-Film Primer
"You are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge." So began N.W.A.'s seminal 1988 record, Straight Outta Compton, an angry, complex hip-hop salvo that announced the West Coast crew as an...
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The Jessica Jones Primer: What You Need to Know
When Marvel Comics announced their groundbreaking production deal with Netflix, there was an understandable level of cautious excitement. That excitement started to further build, particularly when the...
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The New Tsar: Putin and the Long Chain of Russian Rulers
Vladimir Putin/Photo © Pete Souza/WhiteHouse.gov Steven Lee Meyers opens The New Tsar, his new biography of Vladimir Putin, with several pages describing thirty-year-old Putin using his wits and...
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9 Books to Make the Wait for ‘Narcos’ Season 2 Blow By
The good news for fans of Netflix's original series "Narcos" - which premiered in late August to dramatize for the masses the story of the rise of Pablo Escobar - is that the show has been picked up...
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Get Ready: Your Must-Know Guide to Deadpool
Ryan Reynolds in ‘Deadpool’/Image © Twentieth Century Fox It is stunning how far comic book adaptations have come since “Batman Begins” and “Iron Man” changed the game a decade ago. Had someone told...
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Wicked Reading: 7 Books to Prep for ‘The Witch’
Anya Taylor-Joy in ‘The Witch’/Image © A24 The horror genre has long been fickle – at least in terms of film. Prone to fits and starts, there have been periods of rising quality offset by weaker...
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70 Years of Sunshine Noir: A 5-Film Guide
Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray in ‘Double Indemnity’/Image © Paramount Pictures It’s that time of year again. Technically it’s spring, but less technically it’s “sprintertime,” in which the...
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Bard On-screen: 11 Must-See Shakespeare Adaptations
Judi Dench and Ian Richardson in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’/Image © Filmways Pictures William Shakespeare adaptations come in all shapes and sizes – classic, interpretative, Branagh – and there are...
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Where to Start with Literary Bliss: An Alice Munro Primer
Alice Munro/Photo © Derek Shapton Just before Christmas last year, I impulsively bought myself Family Furnishings: Selected Stories, 1995-2014 by Alice Munro. I thought I’d already read most of the...
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50 Years On: Montgomery Clift’s 10 Best Adapted Roles
Montgomery Clift/Photo: CC/FilmStarVintage/Flickr Saturday, July 23, marks fifty years since the death of Montgomery Clift, at forty-five years old. The official cause was heart attack, with other...
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Torch Cinema: 9 Movies to Stoke Your Olympics Spirit
Jack O’Connell in ‘Unbroken’/Image © Universal Pictures Some of us just can’t get enough of all things Olympics. However, whether you’re the sort of fan who tunes in for everything from archery and...
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Black Panther Primer: 11 Books and Films on the Movement
Huey Newton and Bobby Steale/Photo: CC/Wikipedia African Americans’ struggle for equality in America has taken on many shapes and strategies since the Thirteenth Amendment, which officially abolished...
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Misdeed Reads: 12 Best True Crime Books
Photo © Shutterstock With a seemingly unending parade of true crime tales making their way across nearly all forms of media – “The Case of JonBenet Ramsey” on CBS, HBO’s “The Jinx,” Netflix’s “Making...
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Where to Start: The 7 Must-Read Sherlock Holmes Stories
Sherlock Holmes statue in London, England/Photo © Shutterstock “Elementary,” “Sherlock,” “House,” “Sherlock Holmes”: These are just some of the more obvious adaptations of the great series of work by...
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Get Ready: Your Must-Know Guide to Deadpool
Ryan Reynolds in ‘Deadpool’/Image © Twentieth Century Fox It is stunning how far comic book adaptations have come since “Batman Begins” and “Iron Man” changed the game a decade ago. Had someone told...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Wicked Reading: 7 Books to Prep for ‘The Witch’
Anya Taylor-Joy in ‘The Witch’/Image © A24 The horror genre has long been fickle – at least in terms of film. Prone to fits and starts, there have been periods of rising quality offset by weaker...
View ArticleClik here to view.
70 Years of Sunshine Noir: A 5-Film Guide
Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray in ‘Double Indemnity’/Image © Paramount Pictures It’s that time of year again. Technically it’s spring, but less technically it’s “sprintertime,” in which the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bard On-screen: 11 Must-See Shakespeare Adaptations
Judi Dench and Ian Richardson in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’/Image © Filmways Pictures William Shakespeare adaptations come in all shapes and sizes – classic, interpretative, Branagh – and there are...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Where to Start with Literary Bliss: An Alice Munro Primer
Alice Munro/Photo © Derek Shapton Just before Christmas last year, I impulsively bought myself Family Furnishings: Selected Stories, 1995-2014 by Alice Munro. I thought I’d already read most of the...
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