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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...words strike more fear into my theatergoer's heart than these two: star vehicle. Usually they mean either that some old warhorse has been revived merely to service the career needs of a Hollywood ego, or that a flimsy new construction has been trundled onstage just to see how much of the scenery can be chewed up. A Steady Rain,a new Broadway play by Keith Huff starring Hugh Jackman and Daniel (James Bond) Craig, raises another warning flag the minute the lights go up. The two actors are the only people on stage, talking directly to the audience...
...play, in its understated way, is just as impressive. Huff has done two hard things. He has taken very familiar subject matter - the morally ambiguous life of cops working the mean streets - and made it seem fresh, authentic, brutally uncompromising yet not sensationalized. And he has done it using a device - actors talking directly to the audience - that is too often the resort of lazy playwrights who don't have the patience to write a fully fleshed-out play. (Read "Who'll Win the Tonys...
Well-informed Pakistanis say this dismal performance is all too typical. Worse, they insist, it hints at the structural problems that are plaguing America's aid programs. "I don't mean to be unnecessarily harsh on [US] AID, but I have spent the last eight years on the ground there in Pakistan and feel very disillusioned and extremely bitter that when American taxpayers and the public thought they were helping, their money was not put to good use. It did not reach the people - I saw it with my own eyes," says Nasim Ashraf, a Pakistani American who directs...
Unlike some of his political allies, Berlusconi has never seemed to suffer from mean-spirited racism. Still, his eagerness to continue cracking racial jokes shows how outdated he and a big chunk of Italian society are. The lack of outrage from ordinary Italians compounds the crime. (Read "The Berlusconi Tapes: 5 Ways to Evade the Scandal...
Does that mean it's up to the White House to tell Berlusconi basta? During the 2008 campaign, Republican political consultant Grover Norquist was lambasted by Obama supporters for describing the candidate as "John Kerry with a tan." But when it comes to Silvio, the Administration seems to want to play it cool. The U.S. embassy in Rome declined this week to comment on the latest quip. Asked Wednesday by TIME about the remarks, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said, "There are far bigger issues in the world than this...