It's time to tote those books to the parks and beaches. I got local indie booksellers to recommend the summer's biggest titles. You can download the PDF, or read it online here.
For the June issue, I produced a 24-page Health and Fitness Guide, conceiving, pitching, and assigning all of the s. Articles include:
-Doctors Ditching Medicine for Medi-Spas
-Meeting Non-Weight-Loss Fitness Goals (Running Faster, Toning Up, Decreasing Heart Rate, etc.)
-The Biggest Threats to the Health of High Schoolers
-One Local Girl's Success with Gene-Based Therapy for Cystic Fibrosis
-Fifteen Common Health Myths Debunked
-Five New Healthy Food to Eat in 2013
-Q&As with Westchester's Health Experts-Why Health and Fitness Should Be a Family Commitment
Of course, I couldn't resist writing of of my own, a slideshow gallery about gadgets and apps that can get people started on the road to fitness.
Gadgets and Apps to Get You Going
Here, my favorite:
THE RUNNING DEAD: Nothing motivates as much as sheer terror: It gets the heart pounding and the legs moving. Do you think you’d have as much trouble with your get-up-and-go if you were running for your life amidst the zombie apocalypse? The Zombies, Run! The 5K Training app deposits you in the middle of one of 30+ missions; you need to run (in real life) to avoid (virtual) zombies, all set to your favorite adrenaline-pumping music. You’ll also be sent to collect critical supplies and return them to your base to save civilization as you know it. Available for iPhones/iPads, Android, and Windows phones, $1.99; zombiesrungame.com.
Click on "Gadgets and Apps" to see the rest of the gallery, or check out the rest of the Health and Fitness Guide.
Even though the show is basically pre-cancelled by Fox, I reviewed it and found it entertaining.
First challenge: complete a game of Trivial Pursuit, with all the questions altered to cover family history. (Dare we call that “adorkable?”) When the trio returns to home to compete for the money, running into former best friends and ex-sweethearts, The Goodwin Games expands its focus beyond the borders of a family-based sitcom. Now it becomes part-homecoming, part-Parenthood, part-It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad Mad World, with elements of David Fincher’s The Game thrown in for good measure...
It doesn’t seem likely that the estate will be settled before the show goes off the air. Yet even though the show may never fulfill its central plot purpose, watching the reduced number of episodes may be like one of Benjamin’s challenges: a little silly, likely to conjure up a few heavy sighs, but ultimately an entertaining diversion.
Click through to read the full review at PopMatters.
Island Vacations: Car-Free Destinations for Your Big Summer Trip
Leave the traffic behind and blow all the gas money because, where you're going, you don't need a vehicle
Rottnest Island
Australia
Just a little more than 11 miles west of Perth is a sun-worshipper's haven, with beaches and bays ready for surfers, snorkelers, swimmers, and divers. The best views to be found are actually just off the island—and under the water. In addition to the tropical fish—and more than 130 species of tropical fish have been spotted here—there are a number of shipwrecks to be explored off the coast, including at least three that can be reached by snorkelers without a boat. The destination is popular with students partying to celebrate the end of their terms, so it's wise to book in advance.
Getting Around: You can rent a bike. You can hop on a bus. (Yes, cars are forbidden, but coaches are allowed to traverse the six-mile-long island.) Or you can do both with the combo Bike & Bus pass. For $30 to $40, you'll be given the use of a bike but, when the fatigue sets in at the end of the day, you can hop on any of the Bayseeker buses that run a regular circuit around the island. Just leave your bike at the bus stop, and it'll be collected for you.
Getting There: Rottnest Island has the requisite ferries, including the Rottnest Fast Express, from Fremantle and Perth City, and the Rottnest Fast Ferries, from Hillary. But there are also a few airlines that service the island without requiring an expensive private charter (and arriving by air gives you the chance to take some aerial photos). Check out the on-demand services of Rottnest Air Taxi or Ozwest Aviation.
FYI: The name Rottnest came to be when a Dutch explorer saw the island's native marsupials and thought they were rats. (The island's name translates to "Rats' Nest.") In fact, the animals he saw were not rats, but Quokkas. They look like crosses between cat-sized squirrels and mini-kangaroos, and they're adorable.
Australia
Just a little more than 11 miles west of Perth is a sun-worshipper's haven, with beaches and bays ready for surfers, snorkelers, swimmers, and divers. The best views to be found are actually just off the island—and under the water. In addition to the tropical fish—and more than 130 species of tropical fish have been spotted here—there are a number of shipwrecks to be explored off the coast, including at least three that can be reached by snorkelers without a boat. The destination is popular with students partying to celebrate the end of their terms, so it's wise to book in advance.
Getting Around: You can rent a bike. You can hop on a bus. (Yes, cars are forbidden, but coaches are allowed to traverse the six-mile-long island.) Or you can do both with the combo Bike & Bus pass. For $30 to $40, you'll be given the use of a bike but, when the fatigue sets in at the end of the day, you can hop on any of the Bayseeker buses that run a regular circuit around the island. Just leave your bike at the bus stop, and it'll be collected for you.
Getting There: Rottnest Island has the requisite ferries, including the Rottnest Fast Express, from Fremantle and Perth City, and the Rottnest Fast Ferries, from Hillary. But there are also a few airlines that service the island without requiring an expensive private charter (and arriving by air gives you the chance to take some aerial photos). Check out the on-demand services of Rottnest Air Taxi or Ozwest Aviation.
FYI: The name Rottnest came to be when a Dutch explorer saw the island's native marsupials and thought they were rats. (The island's name translates to "Rats' Nest.") In fact, the animals he saw were not rats, but Quokkas. They look like crosses between cat-sized squirrels and mini-kangaroos, and they're adorable.
Click through to read the read of the slideshow at the Condé Nast Traveler's website.
Photo: ADS/Alamy
As part of the Condé Nast Traveler's New York blog, I profiled 10 gardens.
New York City's Outstanding Urban Gardens
Wave Hill
Wave Hill is an interesting combination of historic home and nature conservatory. The mansion, set on a hill overlooking the Hudson River, has had several VIP residents: Theodore Roosevelt's family rented it for summers, Mark Twain leased it for a time, and Arturo Toscanini lived here from 1942 to 1945. After a two-year renovation, the house reopens this July 6 and 7, but you don't have to wait until then to enjoy the rest of this public garden and cultural center. Nab an adirondack chair on the huge sloping lawn; wander the aquatic, herb or flower gardens; hike a short nature trail; or take pictures of the Palisades from the Italianate pergola. If you're lucky you might spot a proposal or a wedding—Wave Hill is a popular place for both.
Click through to read the rest at the Condé Nast Traveler's website.
Photo courtesy of Wave Hill.
My guide to all of the great films that are coming out this summer. Download the PDF, or read it online here.
Two of the worst Alice adaptations I've ever seen!
A 3-Dimensional World, Flattened: 'Alice Through the Looking Glass' & 'Alice in Wonderland'
...Alice Through the Looking Glass is hardly a joy to watch. The scenes mostly take place with the actors standing in front of painted, storybook backgrounds, a halo of green-screen surrounding them. In each scene, Alice comes upon another character, they stand almost stock-still and have some kind of loopy conversation, a poem is recited (reenacted by different actors in front of a different storybook background), and Alice is on her way again. It’s hardly cinematic and barely even dramatic. It’s one step beyond having someone read the book aloud at the local library.With all of its limitations, somehow Alice in Wonderland manages to be worse. The cheap sets and poor effects are still present despite the 13 year gap. Kate Dorning, who’s taken over the role of Alice, seems much too old for the part—with someone as old as she is demonstrating a basic lack of understand about how the world works, she comes across as just plain simple (and with a squeakily high voice). Sometimes she argues with herself aloud, other times her inner monologue is presented as a voiceover, and it’s impossible to tell why one is used over the other...
... With the low-budget production values and bad special effects, Alice Through the Looking Glass and Alice in Wonderland combine the worst of public-access television with the worst of community theater. Take, for instance, the caucus race in Alice in Wonderland. There’s a crowd of extras, but the stage is so small there isn’t room for any running. Instead, the characters just shuffle about, remarking at how chaotic it all seems. It’s so ineffective, it can’t even be appreciated as camp.
Click through to read the full review on PopMatters.
I'm in the process of migrating my clips archive from Posterous to PostHaven. As with any big move, there are some snags here and there--namely, the PDFs in my "Recent Work" page have not yet migrated over, something I've been told is a known issue--but I'm hoping to clean it up as soon as I can. Until then, bear with me.
And, since the stage version of Les Misérables is performed mostly on black-box stage with few big sets, you can feel Hooper reaching for the other extreme. He breaks away with massive setpieces. This involves shots of Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) helping tow a larger-than-life warship into an enormous dry dock, walking over expansive mountains, and mingling with poor masses so gritty their dirt seems almost to smear on the screen. Hooper says his goal was to hit audiences with a “shocking level of realism” that you wouldn’t find in a stage performance.
Going for “realism” is where Les Misérables is less successful. The authenticity Hooper strives for when capturing the live singing doesn’t carry through the rest of the production. Those huge sets are actually on a sound stage (a famous one, Pinewood Studios). They don’t necessarily look fake, but they do, despite Hooper’s best efforts, look stagey. In the end, the movie is still a musical, entirely sung through with little or no spoken dialogue scenes, filmed on a big theatrical set. The production hasn’t strayed all that far from its West End roots.Click through to read the rest of the review at PopMatters.
