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On a recent cool, damp, overcast afternoon in Hong Kong, a modest crowd of artists, collectors and curious browsers filled a gallery for the opening of “The Flowers of Evil,” an exhibition of fine art photography in an industrial district outside the city center. Visitors emerged from a dusty freight elevator, slipped into a large … Read more
James Taylor-Foster, a 32-year-old British-Swedish curator, wants you to fall asleep at their exhibition. Taylor-Foster, who uses he/they pronouns, said that would be the ultimate compliment for “WEIRD SENSATION FEELS GOOD: The World of ASMR.” “It’s a weird space of public intimacy that requires a certain degree of vulnerability,” said Taylor-Foster, who curated the show, … Read more
It’s partly why the most popular brand of best man or maid of honor toast is the gentle roast. The best man leans on personal stories to insult and haze the groom he knows well, then gushes vaguely about the bride he doesn’t. The goal here is making the target cringe, but not too much. … Read more
Whenever I talk about fantasy, readers hear it with a capital F. They conjure images of wizards and magic, dragons and fictional maps. And while there certainly is a section of the market devoted to tales with those traditional trappings, I imagine fantasy as far less monolithic — not a single furnished room but an … Read more
When the hard-boiled private-eye detective story was born about a hundred years ago, the United States was a few years removed from a pandemic, grappling with Prohibition and reeling from the influences of far-right ideology on government. With chaos rampant, the tidy, puzzle-minded investigations of Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot and their ilk didn’t satisfy readers … Read more
A Dopey movie makes us grumpy. ‘Snow White’ Directed by Marc Webb, this fairy-tale reimagining sees Snow White (Rachel Zegler) rescuing the seven dwarfs as they rebel against the Evil Queen (Gal Gadot). From our review: In an essay pegged to Disney’s unhappy 2019 live-action version of “Aladdin,” the critic Aisha Harris wrote in The … Read more
Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now. This Wasn’t on the Syllabus On Thursday, President Trump signed an executive order gutting the Department of Education. “They … Read more
Mark Rylance sat quietly and alone, his black-capped head bowed, his eyes closed. Nearby in a grand chamber, Damian Lewis stood resplendent in a huge gold jacket, playing King Henry VIII, as the director Peter Kosminsky rearranged some actors playing courtiers. It was Shoot Day 77, last spring, at Bishop’s Palace in Wells, England, one … Read more
In 1943, in wartime England, a homeless person dies in the street after ingesting rat poison. Given a fake postmortem identity by British counterintelligence officers — no effort to find his family is made — he is dressed in a military uniform, sealed in a cooler, then ejected from a submarine near the coast of … Read more
A posthumous memoir by the Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, which detailed his fight against autocracy and corruption in Russia and was published eight months after he died in prison, won a National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. Announcing the award, Rebecca Hussey, a member of the autobiography committee, praised the memoir, “Patriot,” as … Read more