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If someone on the street offered you an all-expense paid trip to Egypt would you take them up on the offer? Entrepreneur Tarek Mounib, a Canadian Egyptian and practicing Muslim, had an epiphany one day while riding the rails in Switzerland.
In the ’70s, fashion designer Halston was a force to be reckoned with. Born Roy Halston Frowick in Des Moines, Iowa, he began his career making hats, eventually becoming the head milliner at Bergdorf Goodman.
Let us dispense with the argument up front. Top 5 or Top 10 lists are very subjective — especially when you are talking all-time lists.
Thomas R. Martinez
Digital Editor
Imagine if one of your favorite artists passed away, doesn’t matter what medium, and all their work was bought up by one individual and sealed away. Let’s use Prince as an example. If someone purchased his archives, songs, notes, guitars, etc., and sealed it all away from fans and family it …
“Ghost Fleet” sounds like it could be the latest release from Blumhouse Productions, but the documentary from filmmakers Shannon Service and Jeffrey Waldron is more frightening than any fabricated specter. Next time you head to the supermarket to pick up the catch of the day you may want to …
In previous posts, I have mentioned the signs of civic success from the book “Our Towns” by Deborah and James Fallows. The first sign of civic success was that “people work together on practical local possibilities rather than allowing bitter disagreements about national politics to keep the…
John Lithgow and Blythe Danner are a pleasure to watch in Noble Jones’ charming film about two seniors who find love as Lithgow’s character would say, “on the wrong side of 60.” At a time when monsters, maniacs and Marvel rule the box office, “The Tomorrow Man” is a refreshing film that move…
The American legal profession has a huge problem — it fails address that the most corrupted of its flock remain licensed and can label themselves “lawyer” and/or “attorney.”
To take a cue from Paul Mazursky’s 1969 film, writer-director Olivier Assayas’ French film could have easily been titled “Léonard & Valerie & Alain & Selena” as infidelity in the literary world becomes the matter at hand for this talk-heavy feature from the director behind “Perso…
We’re home, back in our own bed and in our “somewhat regular” routine. It’s always fun to travel but it’s also very good to get back home.
If I had any doubts about posting an open letter to Greg Abbott, his tweet this morning erased those doubts. He posted something that is, essentially, saying Texas isn't part of the United States. It borders on treason. Here's what he tweeted, "Texas tells Nancy Pelosi & her Congressiona…
If you want peace, prepare for war — or as they say in Latin, “Si vis pacem, para bellum.” That phrase sums up the third installment of the John Wick series featuring Keanu Reeves as the excommunicated assassin with a $14 million bounty on his head.
Two solid performances drive Edward Zwick’s “Trial by Fire” with Jack O’Connell as Cameron Todd Willingham, a Corsicana, Texas, man who was wrongly executed in 2004 for murdering his three young children by arson, and Laura Dern as poet and schoolteacher Elizabeth Gilbert who met Willingham …
Writer Shirley Jackson is best known for her fifth novel “The Haunting of Hill House” which was turned into a feature film by Robert Wise in 1963 and then again in 1999 with Jan de Bont at the helm. “We Have Always Lived in the Castle” is based on Jackson’s 1962 novel and final work which ma…
At times, the bleak seaside village in “Dogman” resembles a post-apocalyptic wasteland from George Miller’s world, but instead of a rugged former cop named Max, we’re stuck with a scrawny dog groomer named Marcello (Marcello Fonte) in what could be alternatively titled, “Mad Marcello: Furbal…
The title of African writer-director Wanuri Kahiu’s sixth film “Rafiki” is Swahili for “Friend” but in her native Kenya, the word is also used to describe or introduce the partner of someone in a same-sex relationship because of the state’s strict anti-gay stance. The LGBTQ community has no …
Writer-director Bi Gan follows his enthralling debut, 2015’s “Kaili Blues,” with a mesmerizing film-noir that uses color and the shroud of nightfall to guide the audience down a path filled with mystery and romance. “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” is both a cinematic and technological achiev…
Two posts on Facebook summarized the war on women and children by the misogynistic Republicans who seem to have overrun southern politics — again.
Some of the funniest scenes in “Wine Country” happen during the Napa Valley wine tasting tour as six friends, played by SNL alumnae Rachel Dratch, Maya Rudolph, Ana Gasteyer, Paula Pell, Emily Spivey, and Amy Poehler, reunite to celebrate a 50th birthday. These ladies could care less about C…
Julie Kavanagh’s 2011 biography, “Rudolf Nureyev: The Life,” serves as the basis for Ralph Fiennes third film as director, “The White Crow,” featuring the acting debut of 22-year-old Ukrainian-born Oleg Ivenko as the original Lord of the Dance.
Interesting Election Day for sure.
Dame Judi Dench goes from playing 007’s boss M to a former spy named Joan Stanley whose past catches up with her during the retirement stage of her life in Trevor Nunn’s “Red Joan,” based on the novel by Jennie Rooney. The film is loosely based on a true story but if you’re expecting a rivet…
An open letter to Michael Cloud
“What’s a Juggalo?” I get that question a lot from people unfamiliar with the band Insane Clown Posse. It’s a term given to the group’s enthusiastic fans, many of whom feel misunderstood or looked down upon by society for being true to themselves like 11-year old Maddie (Bryn Vale), a bullie…
In 1972 at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in South Central Los Angeles, 29-year old Aretha Franklin spent two nights in January recording what would become the best-selling Gospel album of all time. Those magical sessions documented by Oscar-winning director Sydney Pollack are noth…
The weather has been beautiful and I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter holiday with their family and friends. We celebrated the holiday with our son, Todd and wife, Danny, and grandkids. It was a shared holiday of both Easter and Passover. I don’t know how these two parents manage to have…
Like many people in South Texas, I grew up hearing stories of The Weeping Woman aka La Llorona who drowned her kids and now haunted the Guadalupe River. The body of water was modified depending on where you lived when you heard the story, but the essence of the Mexican folktale remained the…
Elisabeth Moss imbues the spirit of Courtney Love as a ’90s punk rocker on the bottom end of a downward spiral in Alex Ross Perry’s tale of self-destruction. “Her Smell” echoes the days when female rock bands Elastica and The Breeders ruled the airwaves in this unflinching behind-the-scenes …
I recently was searching through a website about quotes, and I came across a section about the subject of being busy. I encountered many expected quotes. Quotes about the difference between being “busy” and being “productive.” Quotes about not being so wrapped up in being busy that we lose s…
Forget what you know about poet Emily Dickinson. She was not a lonely recluse confined to her bedroom. Yes, she never married but that was only because she was in love with her brother’s wife Susan (the two were lovers since their youth) and while only 11 of her 1,800 poems were published du…
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