Even at 40, The Shining still Frightens and Puzzles
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Film director Stanley Kubrick was not into power lunches. He didn’t use focus groups for ideas, nor did he chase box office bucks with mindless pandering. Reclusive, eccentric, and removed from the Hollywood ethos, Kubrick was a visionary whose work is fresh today because it was created with complete artistic authenticity. This year marks the […]
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Spending a Quarantine Holiday with the Stars
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Is the Coronavirus stifling your Holly Jolly this year? Waiting in line to be tested, avoiding large family gatherings, and settling for Zoom instead of real hugs? Not exactly comfy-cozy? It’s time to recall the words of painter Dorothea Tanning: “Art has always been the raft onto which we climb to save our sanity.” Best yet, […]
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Rituals Impact Grief Recovery after the Loss of a Loved One
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“Dying, a man may be loved, hated, mourned, missed; but once dead, he becomes the chief ornament of a complicated and formal social celebration.” These words from author John Steinbeck are cynical, but revelatory: across cultures, in many different ways, we embrace rituals at the time of death. And, we bestow them freely upon the deceased, whatever […]
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Best Recordings by the First Lady of Song, Ella Fitzgerald
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The inscription on Ella Fitzgerald’s grave marker at the Inglewood Park Cemetery in Los Angeles is unambiguous. It reads: “The First Lady of Song.” If anything, this might be an understatement. “She’s one of the purest examples of God in art,” Hamilton star Leslie Odom, Jr. proclaimed. Bing Crosby said, “Man, woman or child, […]
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New Rebecca on Netflix Misses Hitchcock
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“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” Those nine words, written by Daphne du Maurier in 1937, are among the most recognizable first lines of fiction in the twentieth century. Pithy and provocative, they set the misty tone of Rebecca, the gothic classic which, to date, has sold more than three million copies. It was the […]
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