The Turkish soap opera Noor, with its independent-minded heroine and her romantic, supportive husband, is knocking the Arab world back on its heels. For the first time, apparently, Arab women are getting an idea of what husbands are supposed to be like. (Passionate, engaged, loving, supportive . . . and, of course, drop-dead gorgeous.)“The series […]

There’s nothing for setting the tone like beginning your film with an act of moral cowardice, just to let everyone know where we all stand. This we find in Saints and Soldiers, a World War II drama— “Based on Real Events” —which opens with the Malmedy Massacre, which as history (but not Bill O’Reilly) knows […]

Yesterday I participated in a “plotbreak” session, in which I and some other writers got together to help plot another writer’s book— or in this case, series. This is one of the tools that our local writers’ group uses to, well, make our books so damn good. We had six creative minds contributing in the […]

The world’s oldest oil paintings have been discovered in Asia, dating from the 5th to 9th centuries, well before the technique was imported (or independently rediscovered) by Europeans. The most heartening aspect of this news is that the oil paintings are at the Buddhist site in Bamyan in Afghanistan, where the Taliban, with encouragement from […]