Prince, seen here at the Grammys in February, is throwing a pajama party at his Paisley Park Studios.
Get ready to party like it's 1999 ... or like it's 3 a.m. and you're rocking out at Prince's house. His Royal Badness has invited fans to his Paisley Park Studios in Chanhassen, Minn., just outside Minneapolis, for a slumber party that's sure to beat any of your fond memories from junior high.
On Tuesday, the singer tweeted the simple word "hUNGRy?" with the picture of a flyer showing his band, 3rdEyeGirl in comfy-looking bedclothes, and featuring information about the upcoming Breakfast Experience Pajama Dance Party to be held on Saturday. A $50 donation is required, doors open at the eye-scorching hour of 2 a.m., and there is a dress code. "Dress 2 impress. Keep it classy!" the flyer implores.
The early hour and breakfast theme can be explained. Prince's new single is called "Breakfast Can Wait," though it's unclear if that will be the title track of an album. A teaser video he released (featuring Dave Chappelle as Prince) would seem to indicate it's a song from an album called "The Breakfast Experience," but Prince is nothing if not a little mysterious.
The flyer doesn't indicate if Prince himself will perform, but he has been giving concerts with Third Eye Girl as well as tweeting from their joint Twitter account. The Purple One has become known for some odd-hour concerts at Paisley Park, so it seems certain he won't be able to resist rocking out.
And the pancake motif? Back in 2004, when Chappelle imitated Prince in a comedy sketch, he told of Prince and his band the Revolution playing basketball against Chappelle and crew, and then serving them pancakes. Dig in, fans.
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's rand climbed to four-week highs against the dollar on Friday, lifted by buoyant emerging market investor sentiment following this week's resolution to the U.S. fiscal standoff.
Government bonds followed suit, with yields falling to May/June lows as investors whose risk appetite had been dented by the prospect of a default by the world's biggest economy came back to high-yielding emerging markets.
Currencies like the rand have also gained ground in recent weeks after the U.S. Federal Reserve delayed the start of a cut-back in its $85 billion-a-month bond purchases that have channeled a steady flow of portfolio money into emerging markets.
By 1543 GMT the local currency was at 9.7475 per dollar, up 0.74 percent from Thursday's New York close. It flirted briefly with 9.7410 earlier on Friday, the strongest it has been since September 20.
Against the euro, the rand was up 0.64 percent at 13.2825.
On the debt market, yields fell across the curve, with the 2026 secondary market benchmark shedding four basis points to 7.745 percent and the shorter-dated 2015 giving up 1.5 basis points to 5.755 percent.
Government bonds could however pull back next week if Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan adjusts his budget deficit forecast for the current fiscal year wider and signals increased debt issuance.
For its part, the rand, which has weakened nearly 16 percent since the start of the year, remains hostage to a yawning current account deficit of around 6 percent of GDP which makes it vulnerable to sudden flights of capital during spurts of risk aversion.
"Although the rand is cheap, its fundamental underpinnings remain weak," Standard Bank said in a market note.
"The Fed tapering delay and U.S. fiscal quick-fix will offer little more than a temporary reprieve."
NEW YORK (AP) — Little did Nico Muhly know when he composed "Two Boys" that the type of Internet deception he based the opera on would keep repeating over and over.
So when reports surfaced last winter that Notre Dame football star Manti Te'o was duped into an online relationship with a nonexistent woman, Muhly took notice.
"I was so happy," he said, "in a perverse way."
Then he explained how the Web had created such a tangled web.
"It wasn't just some sort of man and girl in the suburbs. So that to me was very satisfying," he added with a laugh, going on to cite the case of a physicist duped into smuggling cocaine while believing he was courting a bikini model.
"It happens to random people, to famous people, to really smart people, to educated people, to uneducated people. There's a real kind of egalitarian nature to deceit, you know what I mean?"
The work by the 32-year-old New Yorker receives its North American premiere at the Metropolitan Opera on Monday night, a fictionalized account of a British teenager who used the Internet in an attempt to arrange his own murder in 2003. The first composition to reach the Met stage from the company's 7-year-old commissioning program with Lincoln Center Theater, "Two Boys" has been revised since its world premiere two years ago at the English National Opera.
Starring mezzo-soprano Alice Coote as Detective Anne Strawson and tenor Paul Appleby as Brian, a 16-year-old accused in the stabbing of a 13-year-old named Jake, "Two Boys" is a starkly contemporary piece.
Met General Manager Peter Gelb said the adult themes ruled out the opera from inclusion in the company's high-definition theater simulcasts.
"It's full of such darkness, such personally really upsetting things that I have to witness that, yeah, I feel very tired," Coote said. "There's a lot of sexual and emotional abuse going on in this piece."
Gelb first became aware of Muhly when he was an executive at Sony. They started talking soon after Muhly was a pianist for a workshop of what became Rufus Wainwright's "Prima Donna."
Muhly wrote the opera with librettist Craig Lucas in a method Mozart, Verdi and Wagner would be unfamiliar with. When he had drafts of music ready, he would email them to Lucas as PDF files. Muhly composes at home and on the road — and on Amtrak trains.
"The cafe car is the best," he said. "I find out in advance where it's going to be and then wait by the staircase in Penn Station."
Reviews at the original run were lukewarm. Rupert Christiansen wrote in The Telegraph that it was "a bit of a bore — dreary and earnest rather than moving and gripping, and smartly derivative rather than distinctively individual. Yet I wish that I could have heard it again before passing judgment."
Since the London premiere, they've switched the beginnings of the two acts to make the work more linear, created more of a backstory to the detective, added about 1½ minutes of music, inserted dancing to the online chat room choruses and made minor changes to the orchestration,
"I think most operas after their first performance get revised, since the beginning of time," Muhly said. "And others go through a period of heavy, heavy revision, and then you realize the first instance was right."
Gelb has instituted a commitment to contemporary operas at the Met since he took over as general manager in 2006, presenting the company premieres of John Adams' "Nixon in China," Thomas Ades' "The Tempest" and Philip Glass' "Satyagraha." Trying to fill its 3,800 seats, the Met has put up posters in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, erected signs in New York City subways and advertised on MTV's "Catfish: The TV Show," a reality program about Manti Te'o-style trickery in online dating.
"In general a piece that is completely unfamiliar to the audience is harder to sell, obviously, than a piece that is familiar," Gelb said.
For all the modern technology, Appleby says the emotions of the story are familiar. He compares it to plays of Shakespeare and the French dramatist Cyrano de Bergerac.
"A very, old traditional story about people trying to reach out and looking, longing for a connection or longing for love and not feeling comfortable expressing themselves," he called it.
Everyone involved describes "Two Boys" as troubling.
"This is written in such a way that it almost expresses the disjointedness of daily life that we all live," Coote said. "What has become of us as humanity when we're so dominated now by the Internet, by technology, as our lives are quite a lot of the time being lived within those realms?"
A close look at Apple's iMessage system shows the company could easily intercept communications on the service despite its assurances to the contrary, researchers claimed Thursday at a security conference.
Apple asserted in June, following disclosures about the NSA's data collection programs, that iMessage, which lets users send texts over Wi-Fi for free, is protected by end-to-end encryption that makes it impossible for Apple or anyone else to descramble the messages.
But researchers at the Hack in the Box conference in Kuala Lumpur showed it would be possible for someone inside Apple, of their own volition or because they were forced to by a government, to intercept messages.
The company's claim that iMessage is protected by unbreakable encryption is "just basically lies," said Cyril Cattiaux, who has developed iOS jailbreak software and works for Quarkslab, a penetration testing and reverse engineering company in Paris.
The researchers emphasized they have no indication that Apple or the government is reading iMessages, only that it would be possible to do so.
Asked to comment, Apple didn't directly address the claims about iMessage and pointed instead to a statement it issued in June after the disclosures about the NSA's Prism data collection program.
The statement says in part that Apple first heard about Prism only when it was asked about it by news organizations. "We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers, and any government agency requesting customer content must get a court order," the statement says.
One document revealed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden indicated Apple became part of Prism in October 2012.
Apple uses public key cryptography to encrypt iMessages between the sender and the recipient. But its system for managing public keys is opaque, the researchers said, making it impossible to know if iMessages are being sent to a third party such as the NSA.
When someone sends an iMessage, the iOS device pulls the recipient's public key from Apple's non-public key server to create the ciphertext, or encrypted message. The iMessage is decrypted by the recipient using their private key.
The problem is "Apple has full control over this public key directory," Cattiaux said.
Trust has always been an issue with public keys. To send an encrypted message, the sender frequently has to trust that the key listed on the key server used to relay the message actually belongs to the recipient.
With few exceptions, the current crop of premium ultrabooks are all about the three Ps: Portability, Performance, and Pixels. The Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus delivers on all three. The design is carried over from Samsung's proto-ultrabook, the Samsung Series 9, which helped define the new thin and light category, and it's bolstered with one of Intel's high-performance, highly efficient fourth-generation Core i5 processors and a speedy solid-state drive (SSD). And when it comes to pixels, the Book 9 Plus wins hands down, thanks to an impressive QHD+ 3200 by 1800 display that tops everything else in the category, making it our new Editors' Choice for premium ultrabooks.
Design
The obvious place to start discussing the Book 9 Plus is the display, since it so easily grabs your attention the moment you power on the laptop. The 13.3-inch display boasts a whopping 3200 by 1800 Quad HD+ touch screen. The high-resolution display isn't just better than HD, it's better than just about anything. The most immediate comparison to come to mind is the Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch (Retina Display), with its Retina display, but there have also been a couple of premium laptops sold in recent months with higher than 1080p displays, like the Toshiba Kirabook, which ramped the display up to 2,560-by-1,440 resolution. Unlike Apple's Retina display, the ATIV Book 9 Plus also has 10-point touch, an essential feature for Windows 8.
While the display is comparable to the MacBook Pro with Retina, the more apt comparison for this svelte ultraportable is the Apple MacBook Air 13-inch (Mid 2013). Both share a similar sliver-thin design, a minimalist aesthetic, and an aluminum all-metal chassis; though Samsung largely eschews the bare metal look with a dark coat of paint and only a glint of metal along the edges of the chassis. The slim ultraportable measures 0.54 by 12.58 by 8.78 inches (HWD), which is about the same size as the Apple MacBook Air 13-inch, but just a bit heavier, weighing 3.06 pounds.
The ATIV Book 9 Plus has a full-size chiclet keyboard, complete with backlight. Joining the keyboard is a fairly large touchpad, measuring 4 inches wide and 2.7 inches high. The buttons are incorporated into the touch surface, and the touchpad also supports Windows 8 gestures.
To provide a firm backing for the touch screen, the laptop hinge opens smoothly to just past 90-degrees, and then requires more force to open further, similar to the dual-friction hinge used on the Editors' Choice Acer Aspire S7-392-6411. The result is a touch screen that holds firm against all of your poking and prodding while still opening and closing without issue. The one oddity of the ATIV Book 9 Lite is the decision to use a 180-degree hinge. This lets you open up the ultraportable to an extremely flat 180 degrees, but though you can, I can't for the life of me think of any circumstances in which you would actually want to.
Features
The narrow edges of the Book 9 Plus don't leave a lot of room for ports, but there's still a pretty good selection. On either side of the laptop is a full-size USB 3.0 for use with external drives and peripherals like mice and keyboards. On the right is a combination headphone and microphone jack, and a tiny connector that converts to full-size VGA with an accessory dongle ($39.99, not included). On the left, a microHDMI port lets you connect to a second monitor or HDTV, and a minuscule LAN port offers Gigabit Ethernet when using a different adapter dongle (also $39.99, but which is included with the laptop). Also on the left is an SD card slot, which is concealed by a spring loaded cover. However, unlike most port covers used on laptops, this one doesn't pull out, but instead swings in, revealing the card slot when in use and automatically protecting it as soon as the card is removed.
There are also a number of wireless options, with dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi providing 2.4GHz and 5.0GHz Internet connectivity that does better in crowded areas than 2.4GHz alone, and Bluetooth 4.0 + HS for use with smartphones and wireless peripherals. Finally, when you want to skip the dongles and cables, WiDi 4.1 lets you stream HD content wirelessly to WiDi-equipped TV or WiDi adapter.
The ATIV Book 9 Plus is equipped with a 128GB SSD, which helps keep the performance speedy and the boot times short, but doesn't provide a lot of local storage. If you tend to save images and video, you'll definitely want to pick up an external hard drive, preferably something that takes advantage of the USB 3.0 connections on the laptop.
Preinstalled on the hard drive are several programs and applications to accompany Windows 8, but two unique offerings from Samsung stand out. The first is Samsung SideSync, which lets you automatically sync files between the Book 9 Plus and several current Samsung Android smartphones, like the Editors' Choice Samsung Galaxy S4 (Verizon Wireless). When docked, files sync automatically and can be easily transferred back and forth from phone to PC, but the real magic comes in with goodies like the Virtual Phone, which puts your phone's screen on your laptop and lets you access the phone's functions (like text messaging) without leaving the desktop, and also lets you use your mouse and keyboard with the phone. Samsung also includes HomeSync Lite, which lets you use the PC as the central hub of a personal cloud, syncing files between multiple devices. While it skips the fees associated with paid cloud storage, it also is limited by the fact that it's tied to the laptop's local storage, which is still fairly small.
Other apps preinstalled on the ATIV Book 9 Plus include Skype, Netflix, iHeart Radio, Plants vs. Zombies, BitCasa, a 30-day trial of Norton Internet Security, and a free copy of Adobe Photoshop Elements 11. Samsung covers the Book 9 Plus with a one-year warranty.
Performance The Book 9 Plus is outfitted with 1.6GHz Intel Core i5-4200U processor, the same fourth-generation processor seen in the Acer Aspire S7-392-6411 and the Sony VAIO Pro 13. As a result, the Book 9 Plus has strong performance in tests like PCMark 7 (4,907 points) and Cinebench (2.50 points), where it fell right in line with the similarly equipped Acer Aspire S7 and the Sony VAIO Pro 13. In multimedia tests, the Book 9 Plus finished Handbrake in 1 minute 23 seconds, and cranked through Photoshop in 5:51, edging ahead of the Acer Aspire S7 in Photoshop (6:01) and topping the Apple MacBook Air 13-inch, (3:15 Handbrake, 7:07 Photoshop).
The Book 9 Plus makes the most of Intel's integrated graphics solution (Intel HD Graphics 4400), squeezing out 3DMark 11 scores of 1,655 points (Entry) and 271 points (Extreme), just behind the Acer Aspire S7 and just ahead of the Sony VAIO Pro 13. While the performance in gaming tests doesn't indicate any sort of gaming aptitude--the Book 9 Plus couldn't manage playable results at any settings--they do present an improvement over third-generation Intel integrated graphics.
With a 55Wh battery sealed in the chassis, the Book 9 Plus lasted 8 hours 15 minutes in our battery rundown test. This puts it right alongside the Acer Aspire S7, which lasted only 7 minutes longer (8:22), and well ahead of the Sony VAIO Pro 13 (6:23), but none of these hold a candle to the Apple MacBook Air 13-inch (Mid-2013), which nearly doubled the competition with 15:33 of battery life. Regardless, the Book 9 Plus still holds its own against other super-slim Windows ultraportables.
Conclusion
In terms of performance and battery life, the Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus is in line with other premium ultrabooks, both in performance scores and pricing. What the Book 9 Plus offers that others do not, however, is a higher-than-HD screen that rivals Apple's Retina Display. About the only thing I can knock the Book 9 Plus for is the use of ports that require dongles, but that's not so uncommon on thinner ultrabooks. For the price, it matches the portability and performance of the Editors' Choice Acer Aspire S7 and offers the sort of resolution you'll prize when working with photos or enjoying movies. Add it all up, and the Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus is the new Editors' Choice for premium ultrabooks.
The elusive British street artist Banksy arranged for a small collection of his work to be sold amid Central Park vendors on a New York City street. Passersby unknowingly purchased the Banksy originals for bargain prices, some even haggling down to $60 for a work of art worth thousands.
By Emily Christensen-Flowers, NBC News
Banksy made a monkey out of me.
On Saturday afternoon, I was taking two out-of-town friends on a tour of Central Park, giving them the insider's view of the city.
One pal idly mentioned that she was hoping to buy a bag — one of the designer knockoffs hawked on every Midtown corner.
Moments later, we happened to pass a table filled with white canvases covered in stenciled spray-paint images, near one of those ubiquitous "your-name-in-calligraphy" artists.
"Look at this guy," I said with a note of derision. "Knocking off Banksy."
Banksy, of course, is the world-famous street artist whose original works have sold for more than a million bucks and who is in the middle of a month-long "residency" in New York.
Every day, he completes a new work in the city and posts it on his website. There's been a slaughterhouse truck filled with stuffed animals, a delivery truck housing a trompe l'oeil paradise and a bunch of graffiti that's been instantly defaced.
I've been following his travels through the boroughs. Five years ago, I attended his installation in Greenwich Village. Plus, I studied art history in college.
So, I know a fake Banksy when I see one — I thought.
As counterfeits go, these were pretty good, I had to admit. I noticed there were quite a few pieces with a monkey motif, and my boyfriend really likes monkeys.
But as a street-smart New Yorker, I wasn't about to give my hard-earned cash — they were $60 each — to some con artist trying to capitalize on real art.
On we walked, out of the park and past the Museum of Modern Art, where Banksy once surreptitiously hung his own painting of a can of cream-of-tomato soup.
That guy — such a joker.
This time, however, the joke was on me and countless other New Yorkers and tourists who marched past the unassuming table with the sign "Spray Art."
Because, as I found out when I got to work on Monday and read a story about Banksy's weekend exploits, every single canvas on that table was the genuine article — and signed, to boot.
A video on his website revealed it took hours to make a sale. A woman bought two for her kids, after negotiating a 50% discount. A tourist bought two, and a man from Chicago bought four to decorate the blank walls of his new house.
Each one is worth at least five figures, if past sales are any indication. The bragging rights? Priceless.
All day, I've been replaying my brush with Banksy through my head, trying to figure out if I missed any tip-offs that a pot of art-world gold was right under my nose.
Nope.
Although, now that I think about it, one of those monkeys I was looking at for my boyfriend was wearing a signboard.
Well before Adlan Amagov made it to the States, he issued a kick heard around the world. In a 2009 fight in Rostov Oblast, Russia, Amagov entered the ring against an unsuspecting fighter named Maskhat Akhmetov. Amagov wore a sleepy expression on his face, very much like the ever-soporific Gegard Mousasi, as if the moment meant nothing much in the grand scheme of whatever it is we’re talking about.
Then he casually walked across the ring, sized up a spinning hook kick that came off so perfectly and so effortlessly and with such precision that it felt like the work of Hollywood choreography, dropping poor Akhmetov where he stood. Mother Russia’s jaw dropped, and a random December night in a dim lit theater became for Amagov what sportscasters like to call "a defining moment." That kick traveled across the pond to the U.S. long before Amagov did.
To the point that, when Amagov met his manager Sam Kardan finally convinced him to come to the States, after racking up an 8-1-1 record in Russia and the Ukraine, there weren’t a lot of volunteers willing to welcome him into the western cage.
"That kick definitely brought a lot of attention to me -- it was like Jean-Claude Van Damme," Amagov told MMA Fighting. "The U.S. was never in the plans quite honestly. I met Sam Kardan in Russia in 2008 when he came to meet Fedor Emelianenko, and I got introduced to him at that time. He said that there is a bright future for me in U.S. So we kept in touch, and got me a visa and then I came to America.
"We could not get a local fight as everyone watched that video with a kick as well. After two weeks in U.S., we got a contract with Strikeforce, though. It was a good trip."
That good trip, paved by a good kick, has ultimately led Amagov to the UFC, where he is facing T.J. Waldburger at UFC 166 in Houston Saturday night. The man they call "Borz," which is Chechen for "wolf," is one of the latest Russian intrigues to find his way into the trademarked eight-sided cage. Khabib Nurmagomedov, whom Amagov has trained with both at the Red Fury Fight Club in Russia and at AMA in New Jersey, has been raising eyebrows of late, too.
And Amagov got started into MMA by training with Russian’s highest end clients, names such as Fedor and Alexander Emelianenko. He went onto be a Russian sambo champion himself, which was a nice piece to hybridize into the broader fight game.
These days Amagov spends most of his time training with Greg Jackson and Mike Winkeljohn in Albuquerque. After going 3-1 in Strikeforce, he had his UFC debut against Chris Spang this past April in Stockholm and he was able to dictate what happened in the fight. Though he didn’t pull of any JCVD-style theatrics, he did present an assortment of kicks -- some familiar, and some impromptu flights of fancy.
"I think I dominated all three rounds," he says. "I demonstrated all of the kicks that exist in MMA, and even invented couple as I was going through the fight -- like kicking from behind while in a clinch against the cage. I wish I would have finished him but it was my first fight in the UFC and I was being cautious the goal was to win the fight."
In his prelim battle with Waldburger, there will be ample opportunity for that finish, because -- for one thing -- both fighters like to move forward. Better still, each has been known to take chances.
"[Waldburger] has good grappling, he submitted 13 out of 16 fights," Amagov says. "He means business. I think he is dangerous on the ground and he is an aggressive fighter -- a very aggressive fighter. I have respect for his skills. I do need to make a statement this fight as I transferred from Strikeforce and need to make a name for myself."
The fact that Amagov made it to the U.S. to pursue MMA is a story in itself. When his native Chechnya tried to gain independence from Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union 1991, Amagov was made privy to the horrors of war. In the first Chechnya war, the destruction got very close to his home in the village of Sernovodsk, when such things as air strikes became part of his daily existence.
"When I was eight years old in 1994, my school was blown up in a war that started in 1991," he says. "It was tough for all of us, as we lost our shelter and a lot of friends were forced to move out of the area after going through refugee camps."
The first war went on until late summer of 1996, before a second war began in 1999, and lingered on for long after. Amagov eventually relocated and found his silver lining.
"That's how I ended up in Moscow and started training combat sambo with the Emelianenko brothers," he says. "I think the war and the suffering that I witnessed has made me more composed and calm. I always analyze a situation before making conclusions."
Which goes a long way towards understanding why he looks so poised and unnervingly calm heading into his fights.
Other than a single shouted expletive toward the end of All is Lost, the only words we hear from its central character — a sailor adrift alone on the Indian Ocean — come right at the beginning, in a note of apology to unknown recipients for unspecified sins.
That cryptic missive aside, the movie's viscerally terrifying, weirdly ennobling language is all sight and sound. The sailor, known only as Our Man and played by Robert Redford, grunts and pants as he struggles to caulk a deep gash in his sailboat, inflicted by a stray cargo container that's lost its ship and is littering the ocean with Chinese-made children's sneakers.
Global capital bites back, perhaps. But as with several other plum films of this year's Oscar season — Gravity, Captain Phillips — the elements will bite harder. Our Man takes a vicious beating from nature, and the wishful thought crossed my mind that the character might be Jeremy Irons' brutally callous hedge fund manager from director J.C. Chandor's previous film, the underappreciated Margin Call, back on the big screen to get his just deserts.
Not that Our Man is telling. We hear the creak of ropes and the gentle lapping of waves around his bunk. The whisper swells into a roar, accompanied by whistling wind as a storm bears down on his rudderless boat. Loudest of all is the deep silence that tells Our Man he's all alone, his only compass an animal instinct to endure.
As recently as last year's The Company You Keep, in which he painfully miscast himself as a former Weather Underground activist on the run, the 77-year-old Redford was playing implausibly younger men. Here, his weathered face looking like the Grand Canyon, he moves like an old man, accustomed to competence but a touch geezerish, puffing away as he tries to fix every leak, re-establish each malfunctioning connection to the outside world. It's this that gives Our Man his force, and his aching vulnerability. If weather is the movie's showier star, Redford's lack of vanity makes him its taciturn equal.
All is Lost is as quiet as Margin Call was chatty; at a minimum, you might call this film a procedural. But like the best of the genre, its relentless focus on the material and the practical also gestures subtly at a life of the soul, however battered.
On its face, All is Lost digs deep into the frontier mythology — specifically calling back to Redford's rugged '70s turn in Sydney Pollack's Jeremiah Johnson — of the strong, silent American hero doing what he has to do to survive in an arbitrary, indifferent environment.
Yet in other ways the movie refuses standard heroics. We don't know what Our Man has done wrong, or whether his efforts to survive are an attempt at expiation, or even quite what happens to him at the end. The film's denouement can be read in at least two ways.
Tempting though it is to see his struggle as a blunt metaphor for navigating the storms of life itself, the movie seems to be asking something more specific than simply, how shall we live when we know we're going to die some time? It's posing a higher-stakes version of that question: How shall we live when death is palpably at hand? (Recommended)
Fifty bucks might sound expensive for an undershirt, but not when it means you can cancel your gym membership, stop buying gallons of protein powder, and sell all of your home gym equipment. Because not only does the Funkybod t-shirt promise to camouflage manboobs, it also creates the illusion you've got a muscular toned physique, no matter how frail you might be in real life.
Statin, osteoporosis drug combo may help treat parasitic infections
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 17-Oct-2013
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Contact: Silvia Moreno 706-542-4736 University of Georgia
Athens, Ga. Researchers at the University of Georgia have discovered that a combination of two commonly prescribed drugs used to treat high cholesterol and osteoporosis may serve as the foundation of a new treatment for toxoplasmosis, a parasitic infection caused by the protozoan Toxoplasma gondii. They published their findings recently in PLOS Pathogens.
Toxoplasma gondii is a parasite capable of infecting nearly all warm-blooded animals. While healthy human adults usually suffer no lasting ill effects from infection, it can be harmful or fatal to unborn fetuses or those with weakened immune systems.
"For many years, therapies for toxoplasmosis have focused on drugs that target only the parasite," said Silvia Moreno, senior author of the article and professor of cellular biology in UGA's Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. "But in this paper, we show how we can hit the parasite with two drugs simultaneously, one that affects body chemistry in the host and one that affects the parasite."
The UGA researchers discovered that a combination of the cholesterol lowering drug atorvastatin and osteoporosis medication zoledronic acid, both more commonly known by their respective trade names, Lipitor and Zometa, produce changes in the mammalian host and in the parasite that ultimately block parasite replication and spread of the infection.
"These two drugs have a strong synergy," said Moreno, who is also a member of UGA's Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases. "The mice we treated were cured from a lethal infection using this combination approach."
Moreno and her colleagues began working on this drug combination following a series of experiments with unexpected results. They created a genetically modified version of the parasite in the laboratory that lacked a specific enzyme essential for one of the organism's most basic functions.
They thought such an experiment was an excellent opportunity to observe how the absence of this enzyme would kill the parasites. But every time they checked on the supposedly defective parasites, they were healthy and appeared completely unaffected.
"We kept asking ourselves, 'How did this happen? This enzyme should be essential to the parasite's survival,'" said Zhu-Hong Li, a UGA research scientist and lead author of the article. "It's almost like a human surviving without food or air."
What they discovered is that in order to survive, Toxoplasma has evolved an extraordinary ability to siphon essential compounds from its host when it is unable to make them on its own. This led them to the two-drug therapy.
Zoledronic acid prevents synthesis in the parasite and atorvastatin inhibits production in the host.
When Toxoplasma cannot produce these important molecules itself or steal them from its host, the parasites die.
"These drugs have been studied extensively, they are FDA-approved and safe for most people," Moreno said. "Plus, one might not have to take the drugs for an extended period, just long enough to clear the infection."
Moreno cautions that more research must be done before this becomes an accepted treatment for humans, but she hopes that a similar strategy might work for other serious parasitic diseases, such as malaria and cryptosporidiosis.
Early experiments with an anti-malarial drug already suggest that combining atorvastatin with fosmidomycin, an antibiotic effective against malaria parasites, creates a more potent antimalarial cocktail and it may lessen the risk of drug resistance.
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UGA Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases
The University of Georgia Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases draws on a strong foundation of parasitology, immunology, cellular and molecular biology, biochemistry and genetics to develop medical and public health interventions for at-risk populations. Established in 1998, the center promotes international biomedical research and educational programs at UGA and throughout Georgia to address the parasitic and other tropical diseases that continue to threaten the health of people throughout the world. For more information about the center, see ctegd.uga.edu
Writer:
James Hataway, 706-542-5222, jhataway@uga.edu
Contact:
Silvia Moreno, 706-542-4736, smoreno@uga.edu
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Statin, osteoporosis drug combo may help treat parasitic infections
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 17-Oct-2013
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Contact: Silvia Moreno 706-542-4736 University of Georgia
Athens, Ga. Researchers at the University of Georgia have discovered that a combination of two commonly prescribed drugs used to treat high cholesterol and osteoporosis may serve as the foundation of a new treatment for toxoplasmosis, a parasitic infection caused by the protozoan Toxoplasma gondii. They published their findings recently in PLOS Pathogens.
Toxoplasma gondii is a parasite capable of infecting nearly all warm-blooded animals. While healthy human adults usually suffer no lasting ill effects from infection, it can be harmful or fatal to unborn fetuses or those with weakened immune systems.
"For many years, therapies for toxoplasmosis have focused on drugs that target only the parasite," said Silvia Moreno, senior author of the article and professor of cellular biology in UGA's Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. "But in this paper, we show how we can hit the parasite with two drugs simultaneously, one that affects body chemistry in the host and one that affects the parasite."
The UGA researchers discovered that a combination of the cholesterol lowering drug atorvastatin and osteoporosis medication zoledronic acid, both more commonly known by their respective trade names, Lipitor and Zometa, produce changes in the mammalian host and in the parasite that ultimately block parasite replication and spread of the infection.
"These two drugs have a strong synergy," said Moreno, who is also a member of UGA's Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases. "The mice we treated were cured from a lethal infection using this combination approach."
Moreno and her colleagues began working on this drug combination following a series of experiments with unexpected results. They created a genetically modified version of the parasite in the laboratory that lacked a specific enzyme essential for one of the organism's most basic functions.
They thought such an experiment was an excellent opportunity to observe how the absence of this enzyme would kill the parasites. But every time they checked on the supposedly defective parasites, they were healthy and appeared completely unaffected.
"We kept asking ourselves, 'How did this happen? This enzyme should be essential to the parasite's survival,'" said Zhu-Hong Li, a UGA research scientist and lead author of the article. "It's almost like a human surviving without food or air."
What they discovered is that in order to survive, Toxoplasma has evolved an extraordinary ability to siphon essential compounds from its host when it is unable to make them on its own. This led them to the two-drug therapy.
Zoledronic acid prevents synthesis in the parasite and atorvastatin inhibits production in the host.
When Toxoplasma cannot produce these important molecules itself or steal them from its host, the parasites die.
"These drugs have been studied extensively, they are FDA-approved and safe for most people," Moreno said. "Plus, one might not have to take the drugs for an extended period, just long enough to clear the infection."
Moreno cautions that more research must be done before this becomes an accepted treatment for humans, but she hopes that a similar strategy might work for other serious parasitic diseases, such as malaria and cryptosporidiosis.
Early experiments with an anti-malarial drug already suggest that combining atorvastatin with fosmidomycin, an antibiotic effective against malaria parasites, creates a more potent antimalarial cocktail and it may lessen the risk of drug resistance.
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UGA Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases
The University of Georgia Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases draws on a strong foundation of parasitology, immunology, cellular and molecular biology, biochemistry and genetics to develop medical and public health interventions for at-risk populations. Established in 1998, the center promotes international biomedical research and educational programs at UGA and throughout Georgia to address the parasitic and other tropical diseases that continue to threaten the health of people throughout the world. For more information about the center, see ctegd.uga.edu
Writer:
James Hataway, 706-542-5222, jhataway@uga.edu
Contact:
Silvia Moreno, 706-542-4736, smoreno@uga.edu
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The Serpentine Galleries' new visual identity was designed by Pentagram’s Marina Willer and Wolff Olins’ Brian Boylan. Image: Pentagram
The new logo features a brand new typeface and most notably, a big, gaping aperture that can be resized and repositioned anywhere in the word Serpentine. Image: Pentagram
It's meant to project a sense of openness. Image: Pentagram
It was unveiled to coincide with the opening of the Zaha Hadid-designed Sackler Gallery. Image: Pentagram
The entrance to The Magazine, The Serpentine's restaurant. Image: Pentagram
The restaurant's menus are meant to reflect Hadid's undulating structure. It's one of the more successful applications of the new branding. Image: Pentagram
The new branding in front of Sou Fujimoto's temporary pavilion. Image: Pentagram
The typeface, with its mix of sharp and rounded edges is supposed to be "approachable, welcoming and thought-provoking and challenging." Image: Pentagram
Logos require a new level of elasticity since they’re going to be used on signs, paper, tablets, web and in video. Image: Pentagram
The Serpentine Galleries' new visual identity was designed by Pentagram’s Marina Willer and Wolff Olins’ Brian Boylan. Image: Pentagram
The new logo features a brand new typeface and most notably, a big, gaping aperture that can be resized and repositioned anywhere in the word Serpentine. Image: Pentagram
It's meant to project a sense of openness. Image: Pentagram
It was unveiled to coincide with the opening of the Zaha Hadid-designed Sackler Gallery. Image: Pentagram
The entrance to The Magazine, The Serpentine's restaurant. Image: Pentagram
The restaurant's menus are meant to reflect Hadid's undulating structure. It's one of the more successful applications of the new branding. Image: Pentagram
The new branding in front of Sou Fujimoto's temporary pavilion. Image: Pentagram
The typeface, with its mix of sharp and rounded edges is supposed to be "approachable, welcoming and thought-provoking and challenging." Image: Pentagram
Logos require a new level of elasticity since they’re going to be used on signs, paper, tablets, web and in video. Image: Pentagram
The Serpentine Gallery is having a moment of transformation. With the opening of Zaha Hadid’s undulating, tent-like Sackler Gallery earlier this month, the museum has expanded its physical space and elaborated on its name, referring to itself now as the Serpentine Galleries. In fact, the London art institution has gone full throttle on its Cinderella moment and has gotten itself an entirely new visual identity.
Designed by Pentagram’s Marina Willer and Wolff Olins’ Brian Boylan, the Serpentine’s new logo features a brand new typeface and most notably, a big, gaping aperture that can be resized and repositioned anywhere within the word Serpentine. So on one sign you’ll see ‘Ser—pentine Galleries’ while on another you’ll see ‘Serpen—tine Galleries.’ Check out the website right now, and you’ll read it as ‘Serpe—ntine.’ It’s an interesting choice, and one that Willer says is meant to point to the pervading theme of the Serpentine’s new identity: openness. “The concept came from the idea of the Serpentine being an open landscape for arts and culture,” explains Willer. “Open as in free, in the open (park) and open to new art forms and ideas.”
Requisite design tropes aside, the Serpentine’s logo is really an attempt to demonstrate that the gallery is more than just a place to hang art. Like most media-centric companies, the Serpentine is multifaceted—it’s a gallery, a restaurant, a cultural centerpiece amidst a sprawling park. But how do you explain that you’re actually many things though a simple logo? The Serpentine’s answer is the aperture, a hole that can be filled with a pretty photo of the park or an image from an upcoming exhibition depending on the occasion. It’s a smarter, better looking way to approach the idea of the logo as a customizable container, which other companies have unsuccessfully attempted. Think back to the failed ‘My__’ logo, which fell flat not just because it was lame design, but also because Myspace itself didn’t know what belonged in the blank.
Serpentine’s new logo offers total flexibility.
The Serpentine, for its part, seems to be aware of its value and what it offers the world, which helps to anchor the limitless possibilities of the aperture. Even beyond the conceptual ideas behind the new Serpentine identity, it’s true that more and more, logos require total flexibility. Like we saw with the Whitney’s responsive W, modern logos require a new level of elasticity since they’re going to be used on signs, paper, tablets, web and in video. An authoritarian logo has its merits, and it certainly conveys a cohesive sense of branding, but art museums in particular have the convenience, an obligation even, to push the boundaries of what we’re used to.
The accompanying logo typeface, designed by Pentagram’s Ian Osborne, is, for lack of a better word, quirky. With its mix of rounded and sharp edges, it’s definitely an update to the “englishness” of Graphic Thought Facility’s modified Monotype Grotesque that had been used across branding materials since 2009. Willer explains, “We used round and sharp corners on the logo typeface to be both approachable, welcoming and thought-provoking, challenging. With him [Osborne], we created a font that is modern and straightforward as we think the voice of Serpentine should be.” It hasn’t been universally loved, with some critics lambasting the font for being too much on an already visually-heavy palette. And true, when compared to the Serpentine’s stoic logo of the past, this one is certainly livelier and more inviting, even if it does try just a little too hard to be those things. When it’s all said and done though, the Serpentine got what it wanted (and needed) because this logo does feel—you have to admit—open.
Case Western Reserve School of Medicine wins prestigious NCI sponsored Provocative Questions grant
Public release date: 14-Oct-2013 [
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Contact: Christine Somosi Christine.Somosi@case.edu 216-368-6287 Case Western Reserve University
The $1.9 million research grant will allow investigators to detect tumors in the earliest stages of formation
The National Cancer Institute's (NCI) new Provocative Questions research funding program has awarded a prestigious grant to researchers at the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center and Case Western Reserve University's Schools of Medicine and Engineering to study tumor detection at the earliest stages of growth.
"We know that the best way to fight cancer is to find tumors when they are small and have not yet left their primary location," said principal investigator Susann Brady-Kalnay, PhD, professor of molecular biology and microbiology at Case Western Reserve University. "Our unique approach uses molecular imaging agents that recognize tumors using conventional MR scanners. We envision that this technological advance will allow us to detect very early stage tumors using conventional MRI machines that currently exist at most major hospitals."
"Now that we have received the grant, our hope is to translate our discoveries into clinical practice," said Brady-Kalnay. "With this technology, the radiologist will be confident that the abnormality on an MRI is actually a malignant tumor. This will inform the surgeon where all the tumor cells are located in order to remove them, and then the oncologist will be able to monitor how well each individual patient is responding to a given chemotherapy or radiation treatment," stated Brady-Kalnay.
CWRU was uniquely positioned to win the Provocative Questions grant because of the University's expertise in building world-class interdisciplinary teams that function with a high level of collaboration and cooperation. This strong suit is evident in the Provocative Questions grant team which includes chemists, MRI physicists, radiologists, biomedical engineers and cancer biologists, winning the $1.9 million award.
"Dr. Brady-Kalnay's novel approach is built on her discovery of an abnormal protein fragment on tumor cells that encourages their movement through tissue," stated Stanton Gerson, MD, Asa and Patricia Shiverick- Jane Shiverick (Tripp) Professor of Hematological Oncology, director of the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center and director of the Seidman Cancer Center at UH Case Medical Center. "This is a key factor that starts the process of metastasis, the most devastating part of cancer growth. Finding these cells early, and pinpointing their location by MR is a phenomenal advancement in the field of cancer diagnosis," noted Gerson.
The grant is part of the NCI's Provocative Questions Project, conceived by NCI Director Harold Varmus, MD, to challenge cancer researchers to provide answers for 24 perplexing questions in cancer research. In 2012, the NCI assembled a list of important questions to stimulate the research community to use multiple scientific disciplines, including clinical and laboratory science and epidemiology, in novel ways to investigate promising but neglected or unexplored areas of research. A Provocative Questions
research project is charged with tackling broad questions in cancer biology and aims for a 5-10- year time frame for making significant progress.
The Case Western Reserve University grant is one of only 30 awarded nationwide by the NCI in 2013 and only one of two in Ohio. The research team will address the NCI's fifth Provocative Question: "Can tumors be detected when they are two to three orders of magnitude smaller than those currently detected with in vivo imaging modalities?"
###
In addition to Brady-Kalnay, the research team includes Mark Griswold, PhD, professor of radiology; Vikas Gulani, assistant professor of radiology; Zheng-Rong Lu, PhD, the M. Frank and Margaret Domiter Rudy Professor of Biomedical Engineering; and David Wilson, the Robert J. Herbold Professor, Biomedical Engineering.
About Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine
Founded in 1843, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine is the largest medical research institution in Ohio and is among the nation's top medical schools for research funding from the National Institutes of Health. The School of Medicine is recognized throughout the international medical community for outstanding achievements in teaching. The School's innovative and pioneering Western Reserve2 curriculum interweaves four themes--research and scholarship, clinical mastery, leadership, and civic professionalism--to prepare students for the practice of evidence-based medicine in the rapidly changing health care environment of the 21st century. Nine Nobel Laureates have been affiliated with the School of Medicine.
Annually, the School of Medicine trains more than 800 MD and MD/PhD students and ranks in the top 25 among U.S. research-oriented medical schools as designated by U.S. News & World Report's "Guide to Graduate Education."
The School of Medicine's primary affiliate is University Hospitals Case Medical Center and is additionally affiliated with MetroHealth Medical Center, the Louis Stokes Cleveland Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and the Cleveland Clinic, with which it established the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University in 2002. http://casemed.case.edu
About Case Comprehensive Cancer Center
Case Comprehensive Cancer Center is an NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center located at Case Western Reserve University. The center, now in its 25th year of funding, integrates the cancer research activities of the largest biomedical research and health care institutions in Ohio Case Western Reserve, University Hospitals (UH) Case Medical Center and the Cleveland Clinic. NCI-designated cancer centers are characterized by scientific excellence and the capability to integrate a diversity of research approaches to focus on the problem of cancer. It is led by Stanton Gerson, MD, Asa and Patricia Shiverick- Jane Shiverick (Tripp) Professor of Hematological Oncology, director of the National Center for Regenerative Medicine, Case Western Reserve, and director of the Seidman Cancer Center at UH Case Medical Center.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Case Western Reserve School of Medicine wins prestigious NCI sponsored Provocative Questions grant
Public release date: 14-Oct-2013 [
| E-mail
| Share
]
Contact: Christine Somosi Christine.Somosi@case.edu 216-368-6287 Case Western Reserve University
The $1.9 million research grant will allow investigators to detect tumors in the earliest stages of formation
The National Cancer Institute's (NCI) new Provocative Questions research funding program has awarded a prestigious grant to researchers at the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center and Case Western Reserve University's Schools of Medicine and Engineering to study tumor detection at the earliest stages of growth.
"We know that the best way to fight cancer is to find tumors when they are small and have not yet left their primary location," said principal investigator Susann Brady-Kalnay, PhD, professor of molecular biology and microbiology at Case Western Reserve University. "Our unique approach uses molecular imaging agents that recognize tumors using conventional MR scanners. We envision that this technological advance will allow us to detect very early stage tumors using conventional MRI machines that currently exist at most major hospitals."
"Now that we have received the grant, our hope is to translate our discoveries into clinical practice," said Brady-Kalnay. "With this technology, the radiologist will be confident that the abnormality on an MRI is actually a malignant tumor. This will inform the surgeon where all the tumor cells are located in order to remove them, and then the oncologist will be able to monitor how well each individual patient is responding to a given chemotherapy or radiation treatment," stated Brady-Kalnay.
CWRU was uniquely positioned to win the Provocative Questions grant because of the University's expertise in building world-class interdisciplinary teams that function with a high level of collaboration and cooperation. This strong suit is evident in the Provocative Questions grant team which includes chemists, MRI physicists, radiologists, biomedical engineers and cancer biologists, winning the $1.9 million award.
"Dr. Brady-Kalnay's novel approach is built on her discovery of an abnormal protein fragment on tumor cells that encourages their movement through tissue," stated Stanton Gerson, MD, Asa and Patricia Shiverick- Jane Shiverick (Tripp) Professor of Hematological Oncology, director of the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center and director of the Seidman Cancer Center at UH Case Medical Center. "This is a key factor that starts the process of metastasis, the most devastating part of cancer growth. Finding these cells early, and pinpointing their location by MR is a phenomenal advancement in the field of cancer diagnosis," noted Gerson.
The grant is part of the NCI's Provocative Questions Project, conceived by NCI Director Harold Varmus, MD, to challenge cancer researchers to provide answers for 24 perplexing questions in cancer research. In 2012, the NCI assembled a list of important questions to stimulate the research community to use multiple scientific disciplines, including clinical and laboratory science and epidemiology, in novel ways to investigate promising but neglected or unexplored areas of research. A Provocative Questions
research project is charged with tackling broad questions in cancer biology and aims for a 5-10- year time frame for making significant progress.
The Case Western Reserve University grant is one of only 30 awarded nationwide by the NCI in 2013 and only one of two in Ohio. The research team will address the NCI's fifth Provocative Question: "Can tumors be detected when they are two to three orders of magnitude smaller than those currently detected with in vivo imaging modalities?"
###
In addition to Brady-Kalnay, the research team includes Mark Griswold, PhD, professor of radiology; Vikas Gulani, assistant professor of radiology; Zheng-Rong Lu, PhD, the M. Frank and Margaret Domiter Rudy Professor of Biomedical Engineering; and David Wilson, the Robert J. Herbold Professor, Biomedical Engineering.
About Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine
Founded in 1843, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine is the largest medical research institution in Ohio and is among the nation's top medical schools for research funding from the National Institutes of Health. The School of Medicine is recognized throughout the international medical community for outstanding achievements in teaching. The School's innovative and pioneering Western Reserve2 curriculum interweaves four themes--research and scholarship, clinical mastery, leadership, and civic professionalism--to prepare students for the practice of evidence-based medicine in the rapidly changing health care environment of the 21st century. Nine Nobel Laureates have been affiliated with the School of Medicine.
Annually, the School of Medicine trains more than 800 MD and MD/PhD students and ranks in the top 25 among U.S. research-oriented medical schools as designated by U.S. News & World Report's "Guide to Graduate Education."
The School of Medicine's primary affiliate is University Hospitals Case Medical Center and is additionally affiliated with MetroHealth Medical Center, the Louis Stokes Cleveland Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and the Cleveland Clinic, with which it established the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University in 2002. http://casemed.case.edu
About Case Comprehensive Cancer Center
Case Comprehensive Cancer Center is an NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center located at Case Western Reserve University. The center, now in its 25th year of funding, integrates the cancer research activities of the largest biomedical research and health care institutions in Ohio Case Western Reserve, University Hospitals (UH) Case Medical Center and the Cleveland Clinic. NCI-designated cancer centers are characterized by scientific excellence and the capability to integrate a diversity of research approaches to focus on the problem of cancer. It is led by Stanton Gerson, MD, Asa and Patricia Shiverick- Jane Shiverick (Tripp) Professor of Hematological Oncology, director of the National Center for Regenerative Medicine, Case Western Reserve, and director of the Seidman Cancer Center at UH Case Medical Center.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Google Reader stand-in Feedly has picked up a bounty of tweaks and features in its latest version, which just hit Google Play. Now in its 17th iteration, the app starts up 300 percent faster, boasts smoother scrolling, a retooled widget and a new discover section to peruse stories. Design buffs will ...
Dominic West and Helena Bonham Carter star as Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in Burton and Taylor, a new made-for-TV movie from BBC America.
BBC America
Dominic West and Helena Bonham Carter star as Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in Burton and Taylor, a new made-for-TV movie from BBC America.
BBC America
You have to be of a certain age to remember firsthand the tornado of publicity that erupted when Liz Taylor, the former child star turned screen vamp, first met British stage star Richard Burton on the set of the 1963 movie Cleopatra. But it's still one of Hollywood's most famous and inescapable love stories.
He played Mark Antony, she played the Queen of the Nile, and just like their onscreen characters, they fell in love. Though Liz and Dick were married to others at the time, they began a torrid affair, the coverage of which spread outside the gossip columns. Eventually, they divorced their spouses and got married. After 10 years and many films together, they divorced — then, after a while, married each other a second time, then got divorced again. That all happened by 1976.
In the early '80s, Liz and Dick decided to reunite once again — but this time, only professionally, as the stars of a limited-run Broadway revival of the Noel Coward comedy Private Lives. The play was about a long-divorced couple who meet while on honeymoons with new spouses — but whose love for one another is rekindled during the chance encounter.
Liz, who was popping pills and drinking at the time, may have wished for life to imitate art. Dick, newly sober, considered Liz one more compelling addiction it was wiser for him to avoid. And it's this period of their lives that screenwriter William Ivory examines in the new BBC America telemovie import, Burton and Taylor.
It's a highly entertaining study, for two reasons. One is the decision to peek at the private lives of these very public figures through such a tiny, fixed peephole. It's much more satisfying than watching a boring by-the-numbers recreation of career highlights, like last year's horrible Lifetime telemovie Liz & Dick, starring Lindsay Lohan. That was more focused on getting the costumes and makeup right than caring about the performances or character insights. Burton and Taylor, though, stays in one place long enough to make us feel their emotions — and, because of the excellent performances, believe them.
The performances are the other reason this drama works. The stars of Burton and Taylor sound like unlikely choices, but they mesh perfectly. Helena Bonham Carter, who's spent much of the past decade playing cartoonish characters for Tim Burton and others, plays Liz with a fire, and a vulnerability, that quickly make the impersonation succeed. And as Richard Burton, one of the most commanding and forceful actors of his generation, the movie casts Dominic West, whom fans of The Wire know well as Detective McNulty.
Here, the native British actor gets to drop the accent he used for that HBO series, and approximate Richard Burton's gravelly, velvety tones. West does it so well that he, too, quickly makes you forget about the performer and get drawn into the often intimate action.
Burton and Taylor is as serious as last year's Liz & Dick telemovie was campy. For writer Ivory and director Richard Laxton, it's easily a career best. For the stars, it's one more triumph to add to their already impressive resumes. And for other TV writers and producers looking to dramatize the lives of famous figures, Burton and Taylor — like Steven Spielberg's narrowly focused movie biography of Lincoln — serves as a very clear lesson. Sometimes, when deciding how much of a life to examine, less very definitely is more.
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Google Reader stand-in Feedly has picked up a bounty of tweaks and features in its latest version, which just hit Google Play. Now in its 17th iteration, the app starts up 300 percent faster, boasts smoother scrolling, a retooled widget and a new discover section to peruse stories. Design buffs will ...