Exclusive Comics Excerpt: ‘Amelia Rules’All week on the Comics Page, we’re excerpting a special Independence Day issue of Jimmy Gownley’s wonderful all-ages comic Amelia Rules, “The Things I Cannot Change,” a funny and touching story of duty to family, to country, and to friends.
ranters and ravers
‘New England White’: Mystery Plus the Kitchen SinkLike his 2002 smash The Emperor of Ocean Park, Stephen L. Carter’s New England White is a mystery plus. A mystery plus domestic melodrama. A mystery plus social satire. A mystery plus an examination of the black upper crust. Carter, also a law professor at Yale, borrows from the murder and legal-thriller genres, throws in a governmental conspiracy, and even (as the title hints) takes a few more literary cues from Hawthorne and his New England brethren. Some critics feel the result is a little too much; others think it’s just right.
overnights
The ‘Entourage’ Guilt/Pleasure Index: Turtle Gets a What?Remember how Vince selling his house and shuffling everyone out into the streets was going to shake up the foundations of this show? Yeah, not so much. It’s business as usual as the boys crowd into Drama’s condo and resume their familiar antics: Drama blusters, Turtle smirks, E frets, and Vince does whatever it is that defines his character, along with occasionally batting his eyelashes. No wonder this is the one show we can’t stop watching–slash–can’t stop hating ourselves for watching!
‘Yi Yi’ Director Edward Yang Dies at 59Taiwanese director Edward Yang, whose 2000 film Yi Yi won the Best Director award at Cannes and Best Film from the National Society of Film Critics, died Friday in Beverly Hills of colon cancer. He was 59.
the industry
Prince to Give It Away in the U.K.Prince’s new album, Planet Earth, will be given away for free in British newspapers this summer, angering British music retailers, who had hoped to sell the album in exchange for British money, which is called “pounds” instead of “dollars.”
