Word: alan
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...only thing messier than death, Alan Ball's drama taught us, is life. The story of the Fisher family, who ran a funeral parlor in Los Angeles, began as a trenchant, slightly preachy story about façades--how people put up false fronts, the way an undertaker paints makeup on a corpse. It grew into one of TV's best family dramas ever, embracing the Fishers in all their unruly contradictions: artistic, egocentric Claire; repressed, brave David; idealistic, obnoxious Nate; and straitlaced, adventure-seeking Ruth (above, from left, Lauren Ambrose, Michael C. Hall, Peter Krause and Frances Conroy...
...this sitcom had time to be many shows. It was a political satire, a searing medical drama, a Marx Brothers--like comedy, a tense war comedy, a sex farce and a liberal soapbox. But from its acerbic early years to its earnest latter seasons (starring--above, from left--Alan Alda, Harry Morgan and Mike Farrell), it was a tour de force of TV writing. This 36-disc set offers it all, plus documentaries, a trivia game and the 1970 movie by the late Robert Altman. (The spin-off AfterM*A*S*H is thankfully omitted.) Fire up the still...
...obvious conflict in The History Boys, which Alan Bennett has adapted from his well-received play, is between two pedagogical methods. Hector is a man who believes simply in learning for learning's sake. At one point he quotes the poet, A.E, Housman thus: "All Human Knowledge is precious whether or not it serves the slightest human use." In his classes the boys sing classic show tunes, for example, or act out scenes from sentimental films like Now, Voyager or Brief Encounter. French is taught by having some of the lads act out an encounter between a prostitute...
...designed lighting for the original Woodstock rock festival, for the Boston Ballet and for the New England Aquarium. And then there were 30 to 40 student shows a year at Harvard. Yesterday his friends and family remembered Alan P, Symonds ’69-76 with, among other things, an original composition commemorating the notorious fire safety speech with which he preceded performances. “There was as much crying as there was laughing,” said Matt J. Corriel ’05 who performed “The Fire Speech Song...
...action at Christie's and at Sotheby's the night before, where sales of Impressionist and modern art totaled $238 million, seemed to confirm that the market has reached another bubble phase. It's reminiscent of the bubble that inflated in the '80s, when dealmakers such as Australia's Alan Bond and yen jillionaires like Ryoei Saito chased Van Goghs to the stratosphere. (Saito paid $82.5 million for Portrait of Dr. Gachet.) Dotcom entrepreneurs with Internet funny money bought Impressionists and Pop Art. Today a new generation of hedge-fund billionaires and Chinese and Russian kleptocrats is part...