Christmas in Tehran During the 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis
In 1979, as Christmas approached, the United States Embassy in Tehran held more than fifty American hostages, who had been seized when revolutionaries stormed the embassy. No one from the U.S. had bee...
24 Dec 202429min
Willem Dafoe on “Nosferatu”
Willem Dafoe has one of the most distinctive faces and most distinctive voices in movies, deployed to great effect in blockbuster genre movies as well as smaller indie darlings; he’s played everyone f...
20 Dec 202420min
From the Archive: James Taylor Will Teach you Guitar
James Taylor’s songs are so familiar that they seem to have always existed. Onstage at the New Yorker Festival, in 2010, Taylor peeled back some of his influences—the Beatles, Bach, show tunes, and An...
18 Dec 202432min
From the Archive: St. Vincent’s Seduction
Annie Clark, known as St. Vincent, launched her career as a guitar virtuoso—a real shredder—in indie rock, playing alongside artists like Sufjan Stevens. As a bandleader, she’s moved away from the exp...
18 Dec 202426min
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
Elvis Costello’s thirty-first studio album, “Hey Clockface,” will be released this month. Recorded largely before the pandemic, it features an unusual combination of winds, cello, piano, and drums. Da...
18 Dec 202418min
From Critics at Large: After “Wicked,” What Do We Want from the Musical?
The American musical is in a state of flux. Today’s Broadway offerings are mostly jukebox musicals and blatant I.P. grabs; original ideas are few and far between. Meanwhile, one of the biggest films o...
17 Dec 202448min
Rashid Khalidi on the Palestinian Cause in a Volatile Middle East, and the Meaning of Settler Colonialism
Power dynamics in the Middle East shifted dramatically this year. In Lebanon, Israel dealt a severe blow toHezbollah, and another crucial ally of Iran—Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria—was toppled by ...
13 Dec 202449min
Audra McDonald on Stephen Sondheim, “Gypsy,” and Being Black on Broadway
“Gypsy,” a work by Stephen Sondheim, Jule Styne, and Arthur Laurents, is often called the greatest of American musicals; a new production on Broadway is a noteworthy event, especially when a star like...
9 Dec 202420min
