News & Topics

  Enjoy Madrid through the suggestions of DesignSponge editor and throw-pillow addict Grace Bonney. (Design Sponge)   Fans of sparkly nonsense, rejoice! “Captain E.O.”—the 17-minute sci-fi spectacular starring Michael Jackson returns to Disneyland after a 13-year absence. (Gridskipper)   Ever since we watched “Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus“, we’ve been wondering how said Mega Shark could have eaten an airplane ... Read More »

  Yes, of all the artists profiled in our upcoming title, “Art + Travel Europe: Step into the Lives of Five Famous Painters”, Caravaggio is the most randy, rough, and dangerous of the bunch. A playboy, bon vivant, and murderer, Caravaggio’s taste a facility for sin has become almost as famous as his ability with a paintbrush. It’s interesting, then, ... Read More »

  After all that shouting and scheming, EMI will not be selling Abbey Road Studios. (NYT)   Jello Biafra, singer of seminal L.A. punk band The Dead Kennedys, is now touring the country with his new band…wait for it… The Guantanamo School of Medicine. (Brooklyn Vegan)   Here’s a rarity, a blooper reel from Hollywood’s Golden Age including flubs by ... Read More »

  For those who want to travel the world through a prism of their own obsessions—art, music, or film—our guides are invaluable resource. Where did Jimmy Stewart dive into San Francisco Bay in “Vertigo”? Where’s the best place to see Parisian rap live? What bars and speakeasies have inspired Hong Kong filmmakers? The answers to these and thousands of other ... Read More »

  If New Yorkers have Film Forum and the Parisians have the Cinémathèque Française, so too do the people of Los Angeles have their beloved, seedy New Beverly Cinema. Famous for midnight screenings, double features, running 35mm prints, and hosting festivals that are more John Hughes or Russ Meyer than Francois Truffaut or Stan Brakhage, the movie palace was under ... Read More »

  We spend enough time in mainstream museums that we often get tired of eating our American history with a slice of apple pie and vanilla ice cream. A new museum soon to open in New York, however, is offering a darker look at “The American Century” and a new book features raw, crowd-sourced images from the time when photography ... Read More »

  From the early days of film, America turned to the cowboy, that stoic dust-covered hero in leather and denim, to create a origin myth about ourselves, to define ourselves as we trotted out of our isolationist past into a global future. Now that bronco-ridin’ figure, so much as he ever existed in true life, is in his sunset years—the ... Read More »

  No sooner did we mention the fact that record-company giant EMI is reacting to several quarters of low returns by putting the legendary Abbey Road Studios on the market than a group of interested parties left a notice about a grassroots effort to buy and preserve the place where most of the Beatles’ catalog and dozens of other genre-changing ... Read More »