What do Christian Louboutin and Solomon Northrup have in common? On the surface, it would seem very little. Louboutin is the designer of high-priced women’s footwear with a trademarked red sole. Northrup is the author of a harrowing 1852 memoir—now a movie—which tells of his kidnapping, brutal enslavement and eventual escape to freedom in “12…
In a charming new spot introducing the Nexus 7 tablet, Google shows what’s right—and wrong—with search as we know it. The commercial features a tween confronted with a public speaking assignment and a bad case of “glossophobia” who turns to his tablet for instruction and inspiration. He finds “The King’s Speech” and Colin Firth, FDR’s…
The most notable thing about Alfonso Cuarón’s “Gravity” is what the film is not. It is not a romance (despite a “til death do us part” moment). It is a space-age adventure, but there are no distracting scenes of Mission Control. (Houston is not only “in the blind,” but also deaf and mostly mute.) Three…
Along with putting the people’s business on hold and the nation’s credit rating at risk, the government shutdown has closed the door on some of this town’s other, more appealing monuments—the museums and galleries that offer free entrée to the world’s greatest art. So how can the poor, tired and furloughed escape the bickering, name-calling…