Newsweek - Culture and Ideas

The Tragic Decline of the House of Versace

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:38:01 GMT

How the House of Versace went from rags to riches—and back again.

Pakistan's Art of Quiet Outrage

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:26:36 GMT

On Oct. 18, 2007, returned to Pakistan after eight years in exile, flying into Karachi, where she was greeted by a massive homecoming celebration. "We were so delighted she was back," recalls one of Pakistan's best-known contemporary artists, Rashid Rana, who was in Lahore at the time. "One felt sure good times were ahead." A few hours into the procession, two bombs exploded among the crowd. Bhutto escaped unharmed, but 143 other people were killed. Rana was among the millions who watched the event on television, images of the gnarled metal and flesh thereafter fixed in his mind.

Bluegrass and Old-time Music Legend Ralph Stanley: The Last Hillbilly

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:17:04 GMT

The world that Stanley evokes is fast fading. It's neither an insult nor a joke to call him the Last Hillbilly. He doesn't mind the word, he says, although now he's proud to be called Dr. Stanley, in acknowledgement of the honorary degree he received from Lincoln Memorial University in 1976. In his singing, songwriting, and playing, you hear the sounds of a world gone by, and you hear it plainly in the wistful tone of this account. "We were the last generation from these mountains to live from the earth," he says. "It was a hard life and there was a lot of suffering. But the music we made couldn't have come from any other place or time. The suffering was part of what made the music strong, and I reckon that's why it's lasted … What's real doesn't die."

Wes Anderson's 'Mr. Fox' Is Fantastic

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:09:34 GMT

Aline Saarinen: '50s Wonder Woman

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:01:11 GMT

Today, except for a few projects like the moribund TWA terminal at JFK, Eero Saarinen is better known for his furniture than his buildings. His "womb" chairs and pedestal tables (designed, he said, to "clear up the slum of legs" in the American home) are still big sellers for Knoll. But does anyone remember that he designed the beautifully soaring Dulles airport? Or CBS's "Black Rock" headquarters? Saarinen might find it oddly familiar that his chairs have eclipsed his architectural achievements: early in his career, he'd struggled against the long shadow cast by his father, Eliel, the revered Finnish architect who'd founded their Bloomfield Hills firm, just outside Detroit. Two years before Eliel's death in 1950, Eero had rushed to pop a champagne cork and toast his Papa after a telegram arrived congratulating Saarinen on his winning design for a memorial to commemorate the Louisiana Purchase in St. Louis. But the cable was a mistake: Eero had submitted his own idea—he was the winner, not his father. His scheme for the epic steel arch in St. Louis was a prelude to his future designs for corporate offices, embassies, and airports, veering away from his father's sensibility and embodying instead the triumphal spirit and swaggering power of postwar America. Saarinen gets his due in a fascinating exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York, "Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future," that explores his impact on the 1950s and '60s. What you don't expect is to discover the impact of a woman whom Saarinen himself has come to overshadow, though she was a cultural force in her own right. The woman was his wife.

Hollywood Discovers Korea's Talented Actors

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:52:13 GMT

Next up: Jeong Ji Hoon, a.k.a. Rain, a pop superstar in much of Asia but still little-known on the global stage. On Nov. 25, Joel Silver and the Wachowski brothers will release their latest big-budget martial-arts thriller, , starring Jeong as the title character, who seeks revenge on the secret society that raised and trained him and killed his best friend.

The Art of Louis XIV, on Display at Versailles

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:23:45 GMT

When it comes to the contemporary conception of luxury, the Western world is forever indebted to Louis XIV, the French monarch who can take credit for elevating lifestyle to a fine art. With his extensive acquisitions and ambitious projects, the "Sun King" embraced a pattern of conspicuous consumption echoed in the hypermaterialist culture that has defined the past 20 years. We may be living through the repercussions of our latest spending frenzy, but our fascination with the finer things in life remains undiminished. And , a new exhibit set in the Baroque splendor of the Palace of Versailles (through Feb. 7), sheds a timely light on the spirit of decadence.

Remaking Tweed for the Modern Era

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:59:52 GMT

I recently made a cameo appearance in a three-part BBC documentary about tweed; I was wheeled in to give a bit of historical context and to enthuse on the subject. The documentary dealt specifically with Harris tweed, a unique hirsute cloth made in Scotland's Outer Hebrides Islands. Its pretext was the changes being wrought in what is, quite literally, a cottage industry, with individual weavers working in their homes or garden sheds to make a cloth that is then returned to the mill, where it is finished and shipped all over the world. Its character owes much to an image thick with peat smoke and Gaelic, gently tinted by a thousand hues of lichen dye.

Film: Why Precious Should Be Taught Math

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:37:13 GMT

Why can't kids in movies ever do the math?

Dorothea Lange Restored Dignity to the Poor -- Baird

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:39:16 GMT

Dorothea Lange's politics of respect.

Why Politics Could Be Behind American Homicide -- Kelley

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:29:59 GMT

The surprising roots of homicide.

New Nirvana Material: Will Fans Buy It?

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:24:05 GMT

Just in time for the holidays, there's new material from Kurt Cobain's band. But true worshipers may not be thrilled.

Why Are the Venetians Fleeing Venice?

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:48:25 GMT

Venice may be engulfed by the ocean in the next century. But will any locals be around to see it happen?

We Read It: Levitt & Dubner's 'Superfreakonomics'

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 15:07:43 GMT

Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, the authors behind , are back with a sequel, inevitably titled . Four observations from the dismal-science duo:

Why You Can't Stop Gay Marriage and Marijuana

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 14:13:04 GMT

You can't stop either. Why that's good.

Space Race: NASA Lacks Funding to Pursue

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:29:53 GMT

Politicians won't get us back into the space race, but novelists just might.

D'Souza's New Book Promises Proof of the Afterlife

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:23:35 GMT

A new book promises incontrovertible proof of the afterlife. That's cold comfort to those of us left behind.

Boswell, Johnson, & the Birth of Modern Biography

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:22:04 GMT

When was the last time a notable person with lots to hide (obsessive-compulsive disorder, a refusal to bathe, the fact that he wore wigs that didn't fit) insisted that his biographer measure and record every fault with seismographic precision? It may well have been a good 236 years ago, on the morning in 1773 when Samuel Johnson divulged his theory on biography to James Boswell: "I well remember that Dr. Johnson maintained, that 'If a man is to write A Panegyrick, he may keep vices out of sight; but if he professes to write A Life, he must represent it as it really was:' And in the Hebrides he maintained, as appears from my Journal, that a man's intimate friend should mention his faults, if he writes his life."

Wanda Sykes and Late Night TV's New Color Barrier

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:02:44 GMT

African-Americans have done well breaking into late night. What they've failed in is being funny.

Calista Flockhart on Ally McBeal and Harrison Ford

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:38:39 GMT

It's been 12 years since Calista Flockhart started dancing with an imaginary baby, and now, Ally McBeal is finally back—on DVD. Flockhart spoke to Ramin Setoodeh.