NEW YORK (AP) — Sidney Poitier, the groundbreaking actor and enduring inspiration who transformed how Black people were portrayed on screen and became the first… Login to continue reading Login…
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Grammy Awards were postponed Wednesday weeks before the planned Los Angeles ceremony over what organizers called “too many risks” from the omicron… Login to continue reading Login…
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Betty White, whose saucy, up-for-anything charm made her a television mainstay for more than 60 years, whether as a man-crazy TV… Login to continue reading Login…
After traveling around the world delivering gifts to all the good boys and girls, Santa Claus has made his way into the United States. Santa’s… Login to continue reading Login…
Some of us prefer Christmas music on the pensive side, with wistful lyrics about dusky snowfalls and memories. It’s not joy being sought, but permission to wallow in melancholy. • Others relish the frisky sounds of sleigh bells and cascades of horns that embellish so many holiday classics. The season doesn’t go into effect until they’ve literally rocked around the Christmas tree. • There just might be a Christmas song for all tastes – jolly to melancholy – so corralling them into one list is not only futile, but impossible. • Still, we try. • Our Christmas guide touches on classic and current artists with rock, country, R&B and straight-up pop. Maybe you’ll find something to add to holiday cheer … or prompt a tear.
Every year, it’s the same old argument: “Die Hard” is a Christmas movie. • Or it’s not. • Actually, it’s an argument for all seasons, not just the holiday one. The argument, I get. The level of devotion to one side or the other, not so much. • Because it doesn’t really matter. • Anything can be a holiday movie. It all has to do with what the movie means to you — no matter what holiday you celebrate, if a film moves you in the manner of the season, it counts. • Don’t let anyone tell you differently.
One may read a sentence, write a sentence, be sentenced. The word’s meaning is informed by power: who wields it, who is subject to it. In Louise Erdrich’s dazzling sentencesoaked new novel “The Sentence” ((HarperCollins, 400 pp., eeee), a woman named Tookie grapples with how the claims of the past – lineage, brutality, love – come to shape and illuminate the present.
In the prologue to his latest book, prolific historian H. W. Brands writes: “In every colony, and then every state, were thousands of men and women who wanted nothing to do with independence.” This schism is the premise of “Our First Civil War: Patriots and Loyalists in the American Revolution” (Doubleday, 496 pp., eeEE).
There is so much to enjoy about “Encanto” – the songs, the gorgeous animation, the cultural traditions. • All of which make the script’s serious shortcomings all the more surprising and disappointing. • A major plot development arrives out of nowhere, unearned, and changes everything. Then a further development undercuts the apparent message the filmmakers have been trying to send for the entire movie. • It’s confusing at best. • Too bad. Because there is a lot of joy in the Disney film, directed by Jared Bush, Byron Howard and Charise Castro Smith.
Thanksgiving is a day Americans have set aside for not just eating turkey and drowning out family with televised sporting events but also giving thanks and taking stock, perhaps, in that for which we should be grateful.