Mon. February 18
The Daily Scene
Is Rihanna the New Princess Diana?–Camilla Paglia/Sunday Times Mag
Like Diana, Rihanna has worryingly drifted into using photo ops to send messages of allure, defiance, or revenge in a turbulent relationship with an errant partner. Rihanna, another victim of a festering romantic triangle, has bounced dizzyingly back and forth in her checkered affair with rapper Chris Brown, who was convicted of a felony in 2009 for abusing her.
The Art and Politics of Zero Dark Thirty–WSJ
Mr. Boal describes the movie’s final scene to illustrate the blending of fact and imagination. After identifying bin Laden’s corpse, Maya boards a C-130 transport plane to head back home. “The film at the end asks—the pilot at the end asks—’Where do you want to go?’ ” he says. “I think that’s a pretty good question. That’s why I wrote it.”
Brooke Shields on How to Manage Childhood Fame–Us
Brooke Shield’s trajectory from child star to full-fledged movie siren was one littered with plenty of controversy, but the veteran actress, who is mother to two young daughters of her own now, said she had a trick to keep from walking down the path of Hollywood destruction. ”I would get invited to Studio 54, but I’d leave before all the craziness and drugs happened.”
Why Do We Love Beautiful Things?–NYT
Great design, the management expert Gary Hamel once said, is like Justice Potter Stewart’s famous definition of pornography — you know it when you see it. You want it, too: brain scan studies reveal that the sight of an attractive product can trigger the part of the motor cerebellum that governs hand movement. Instinctively, we reach out for attractive things; beauty literally moves us.
The Culture of Violence–LA Times
It’s about revelation, not nihilism. Disturbing actions can awake an audience’s empathy, but lines blur if events tip into a mere celebration of destruction.
