Word: best
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...career-making role two seasons ago as Coalhouse Walker in Ragtime. His crystal-clear baritone brings out all the graceful intricacy of Porter's lyrics, and he moves from Shakespearean verse to comic pratfalls with ease. It would be demeaning to point out that Mitchell has the best posture on Broadway, but there's something about that lean, ramrod-straight bearing that manages to both poke fun at itself and radiate real stage charisma. This new Kiss Me, Kate (Broadway's first since the 1948 original), smashingly directed by Michael Blakemore and choreographed by Kathleen Marshall, proves what Ragtime should...
...look at the other side. As every Middle East hand knows, Arab (or Turkish) coffee, especially when spiced with cardamom, is among the best in the world. But when did Arabs last win a war? Or the Italians, who have given the world the Gaggia and the macchiato? Indeed, the Muslim states are the best case in point. Arab power was done in for good when Ferdinand and Isabella demolished the last Moorish stronghold on Iberian soil in 1492. This was no accident, comrades, as the Soviets used to say. It so happens that qahwa came into widespread use throughout...
...just 'cause its supposed to be good for you--this ain't broccoli. The Philadelphia-based group the Roots is worth listening to not just because of the message--the members are fierce champions of artistic expression--but precisely because of the music. This is not just the best band in hip-hop, it's also one of the best bands in rap or rock, and the group's new concert album, The Roots Come Alive (MCA), proves...
When it comes to Norman Rockwell, we all know what we're supposed to think. Rockwell is to modern art what Robert Mapplethorpe is to family values--a slap in the face to all serious standards. So much the worse that for decades he was the best-loved American artist, at least until he was usurped by an even shrewder judge of the national disposition, Andy Warhol. To the art world Rockwell was an exasperating holdout, the man who didn't care that in the 20th century it was simply uncalled for to paint sweet-tempered vignettes in a representational...
...paint do its dead-on imitations of other stuff. In short, what it might have been like if it valued more what Rockwell did. Given the essential places where painting had to go, places where Rockwell couldn't follow, maybe art had to put those things aside. But his best pictures remind you of the powers it gave up as a consequence. It may be true that Rockwell did nothing to advance art history. But what he did, in his humble way, was humble...