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.
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
Click through to read the full review at PopMatters.
Leave the traffic behind and blow all the gas money because, where you're going, you don't need a vehicle
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.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.