SpaceX’s reusable rockets already have a few tricks up their metal sleeves, but it looks like they’re getting at least a couple more. Elon Musk has revealed that his company is testing new technologies that will assist future Falcon 9 launches,…
Hugh Jackman is a big Broadway draw. Even though his current drama The River at Circle in the Square drowns in insignificance. Ticket prices exceed the most expensive musical; it’s a lot to pay to watch Wolverine gut a fish, though no one can dispute the man does it with finesse.
Despite the considerable talents of the song-and-dance performer, what you get is 85 minutes of a rambling, nonlinear story of a fisherman (an understated Jackman) who brings various girlfriends (Cush Jumbo and Laura Donnelly) to his rustic cabin. The women, like his dialogue, are interchangeable. There, he feigns romance — or does he? — while waxing poetic about fly-fishing.
There’s no hint of menace, though the various women suggest the hunky fisherman regularly casts his reel — but can’t haul in an emotional commitment. He’s got a trick to catching fish; and he uses similar wiles to lure lovers.
Given his celebrity status, Jackman can choose from any number of scripts to showcase his considerable range. The mystery is why he tapped this one. Jez Butterworth brought his convoluted, over-the-top rant Jerusalem to Broadway a few years ago. The River, his latest UK import, is less energetic, but equally confusing and unsatisfying.
At one point, Jackman likens the sensation of catching sea trout to “a million sunsets rolled into a ball and shot straight into your veins.” If only The River had that much splash.
Happily, It’s Only A Play does. It is an acerbic love letter to the theater — and no one can outdo Terrence McNally when it comes to delicious digs. In a snappy comedy now at the Gerald Schoenfeld, he sends up Broadway producers, directors and actors, zinging their narcissism and self-obsession with targeted glee.
McNally has updated his 1986 comedy — savaging everything from celebrity-larded shows — “theater is the new Statue of Liberty for movie actors” — to Matilda to New York Times reviews. The vicissitudes of the theater and its habitués are rendered with a series of sassy one-liners, delivered at super-sonic speed. Nothing escapes McNally’s wrath.
The play opens in the elegant Upper East Side bedroom of a silly blonde producer (Megan Mullally) awaiting reviews of her first production, The Golden Egg. Nathan Lane plays a TV actor who turned down the lead; he secretly hopes his playwright/friend’s (Matthew Broderick) work is a flop. A pitch-perfect Stockard Channing is Virginia Noyes, a one-time star hoping Egg secures her much-needed comeback. She drips with venom, sashaying across the set with righteous indignation. Like the irrepressible Lane, she is one of the show’s high points.
Throw in Rupert Grint, of Harry Potter fame, making a solid Broadway debut as a kleptomaniac wunderkind director, F. Murray Abraham as a vitriolic critic and a wonderful Micah Stock as the naive coat-check boy, and It’s Only A Play promises a hugely entertaining romp.
The only crack in this Egg is Broderick, whose monotone whines are grating. Whatever the line, it’s rendered in a wimpy, nasal drone.
Fortunately, the terrifically funny cast, led by the always-cheeky Lane and tightly directed by Jack O’Brien, more than compensates. For anyone who loves theater and all its crazy trappings, this Play is for you.
Photo: Richard Termine
NEW YORK (AP) — Stunned relatives of an unarmed man killed by a rookie police officer in a dark public housing stairwell looked on as the Rev. Al Sharpton and public officials demanded a full investigation Saturday into what law enforcement officials have termed an apparent accident.
“We’re not demonizing the police,” Sharpton said, but “this young man should not be dead.”
Police said the fatal shooting Thursday night of Akai Gurley in Brooklyn’s gritty East New York neighborhood appears accidental. But “how do we know until there is a thorough investigation of all that happened?” Sharpton asked.
He spoke at a rally in Harlem, standing alongside Gurley’s 2-year-old daughter, her mother and several elected officials. Gurley’s relatives remained silent during and after the rally.
Gurley’s death comes at a sensitive time, with a grand jury weighing whether to bring criminal charges against another officer in the chokehold death of a man on Staten Island, and the nation bracing for a potential announcement soon on whether an indictment will be handed up in the police shooting of an unarmed 18-year-old in Ferguson, Missouri.
“Until we address the issue of police killing people of color, we’re going to always have the problem; we’re deaf on the issue,” Alex Mallory, 64, a Bronx resident who once lived in public housing, said after the rally. “I could have easily been this guy, walking down the stairs.”
City police often conduct “vertical patrols” inside public housing by going from roofs down staircases that sometimes are havens for crime. Police Commissioner William Bratton has said the patrols are needed, and the development where Gurley was shot had recently seen a shooting, robberies and assaults.
Officer Peter Liang and his partner, also new to the force, were patrolling a pitch-dark stairwell with flashlights late Thursday, police said. Gurley, 28, was leaving his girlfriend’s apartment after she had braided his hair, according to the girlfriend, who is not his daughter’s mother.
Police said the officers walked down the stairs onto an eighth-floor landing when Gurley and his girlfriend opened a stairwell door one floor down, after giving up on waiting for an elevator. Police said Liang, patrolling with his gun drawn, fired without a word and apparently by accident, hitting Gurley from a distance of about 10 feet.
Mallory, the former public housing resident, said an officer should never patrol a building with a gun drawn.
“What are you saying, people who live in developments are animals, or something?” he asked.
Bratton said officers generally have discretion on whether to draw their weapons based on what they are encountering or believe they may encounter. He called Gurley’s death a tragedy that befell someone “totally innocent.”
It was unclear how long the stairway’s lights had been out or whether there had been complaints. The New York City Housing Authority did not answer those questions Saturday, saying only that the shooting was tragic and that housing officials would “continue to work with the NYPD and our residents to make our properties as safe as possible.”
The fatal shooting came a decade after 19-year-old Timothy Stansbury was shot dead by a startled officer on a Brooklyn rooftop of a housing complex. His family got a $2 million settlement with the city.
Liang, 26, has been placed on modified duty. Under standard policy, police internal affairs investigators won’t be able to question him until prosecutors have decided whether to file criminal charges. Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson has called the shooting “deeply troubling” and said it warrants “an immediate, fair and thorough investigation.”
New York Assemblyman-elect Charles Barron organized a protest march on Saturday evening from the shooting scene to the police department office that patrols housing developments.
In a statement, march organizers said there was nothing accidental about Gurley’s shooting.
“This is the deadly consequence of the increasing militarization of the police, from New York City to Ferguson — and beyond.”
Fortune cookies are something that everyone looks forward to at the end of a meal of Chinese food. It is not so much for the cookie itself as for the message inside. While these can be a lot of fun — especially if you add the words “in bed” to the end, sometimes they can also fall flat. You can make your own fortune cookies, complete with fortune, with the nifty Fortune Cookie Maker.
Philips’ line of wake-up lights have been incredibly popular among our readers, and it’s no wonder why; they can change your life .
A couple days ago, you might’ve come across this video of a guy on a bike doing an awesome loop-the-loop for a slightly cringe-worthy promo for Microsoft’s Cortana. BUt before he was shilling for #Brands, Danny Macaskill was making far better videos with his friends, and setting them to Band of Horses’ breakthrough single, The Funeral.
As Greg Kumparak noted in the TechCrunch review of the Nexus 6, the phone is very large. Too large, in fact, for most humans. Back when it was just a rumor that Google would be picking Motorola to provide the Nexus 6 hardware, and that it would indeed be a monster with a 6-inch display, I lamented the phabletization of the Nexus line before it was even a real thing. Now, I’ve had some… Read More
WASHINGTON — On Friday, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioner Mignon Clyburn took to Reddit to do an “Ask Me Anything” session and answer questions about her job. But she soon found herself on the defensive against Reddit users angry about how the FCC has handled net neutrality rulemaking.
The FCC is currently weighing whether to classify the Internet like a utility and restrict Internet service providers from charging content providers for faster Internet access. This month, President Barack Obama announced his support for that approach, known as “Title II.” But net neutrality advocates are concerned that the FCC might go with a different proposal, which would allow for some degree of paid prioritization. Opponents of this plan say that it would threaten the openness of the Internet by making it harder for smaller sites to compete.
When asked about her position on net neutrality, Clyburn, who is one of five FCC commissioners appointed by the president, said that she supports “a free and open Internet.” She pointed out that in 2010, she supported Title II and a ban on paid prioritization, which is what Obama is asking for now. But she did not explicitly say that she still supports this plan. Instead, she wrote that she has “many of the same concerns I did four years ago, but have vowed to keep an open mind.” Clyburn did not go into detail about what those concerns are.
Later, she said that “if we think the right policy goal is to ban paid prioritization, we should determine the appropriate legal authority to do so,” contending that “Title II on its own does not automatically ban paid prioritization.” A commenter dismissed her statement as a “talking point.”
Over the summer, the FCC accepted nearly 4 million public comments about net neutrality — an overwhelming number of which opposed allowing Internet service providers to charge for faster Internet access. One commenter asked Clyburn if the FCC listens to the public. She responded, “Public comments absolutely influence the FCC deliberations, including rule makings.”
Another user asked: “How can we (the Internet!) make ourselves heard in this process? Because it begins to seem like the e-mail campaigns and the phone calls do not have a large effect on convincing the FCC to reclassify ISPs under Title II?”
Clyburn responded: “I disagree completely. Your voices are being heard and your comments are being read.”
But many Redditors didn’t agree, complaining about the number of Clyburn’s answers and their substance. For their responses, check out the full discussion here.
Clyburn’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Igor Bobic contributed reporting.
Ariana Grande and Big Sean are not afraid to show a little PDA. In a new picture posted by Sean on Saturday, the couple is seen kissing. “Me n my Ari,” he wrote. See the photo at right and a larger version of it below.
The sexual assault allegations that recently resurfaced against Bill Cosby first became public in 2005 when a former employee of his alma mater, Temple University, claimed he had drugged and abused her a year earlier at his suburban Philadelphia home. Here’s how the controversy over the allegations, some dating to the 1960s, has unfolded since then:
___ Andrea Constand tells police in her native Ontario, Canada, on Jan. 13, 2005, that Cosby assaulted her a year earlier at his mansion in Cheltenham, Pennsylvania. She said he invited her home after a restaurant dinner, gave her pills for stress and tension, then helped her to a sofa when she became dizzy and sick. She recalled him touching her breast and placing her hand on his penis, and said she awoke with her clothing in disarray and bra undone. She said she drove herself home and decided not to report to police what happened due to Cosby’s fame and her position as a Temple women’s basketball administrator. Instead, she said she contacted a lawyer who deals with sexual assaults.
Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce L. Castor Jr. decides after a monthlong investigation that there’s not enough “credible and admissible evidence,” a year after the alleged crime, to prove any charges. Castor adds that he won’t divulge details to avoid tainting a possible civil action by Constand, and says “Much exists in this investigation that could be used to portray persons on both sides of the issue in a less than flattering light.”
Cosby’s lawyer says the comedian “looks forward to moving on with his life,” and Cosby makes his only published comments to date about these allegations, telling the National Enquirer that “I am not going to give in to people who try to exploit me because of my celebrity status.”
Constand then sues Cosby alleging battery, assault, infliction of emotional distress, defamation and invasion of privacy. She makes the same allegations cited in the summary of her complaint to Canadian police, but also alleges that he “digitally penetrated her.” Her suit eventually names nine women — Tamara Green and eight Jane Does — as witnesses who would testify about prior sexual assaults.
___
Tamara Green appears on NBC’s “Today” show on Feb. 10, 2005, saying that Constand’s allegation about being drugged and assaulted compelled her to speak publicly about an encounter she said she had with Cosby in the 1970s. She says Cosby groped and fondled her at her Los Angeles apartment after immobilizing her with what he said was cold medicine. Cosby’s lawyer calls the allegations “absolutely false,” and says Cosby did not even recognize her name.
___
Beth Ferrier, identified as Jane Doe No. 5, goes public on June 23, 2005, alleging that as a model in New York in 1984, she met Cosby and they had a brief affair. She claims Cosby drugged her coffee during an encounter in Denver and she woke up hours later in the backseat of her car with her clothes disheveled.
___
Janice Dickinson, in a June 6, 2006, radio interview with Howard Stern, describes Cosby as a “bad guy” and says he “preys on women.” She says her publishing company forced her to downplay passages in a 2002 memoir about an alleged encounter the model and comedian had 20 years earlier. The book says Cosby was upset when she declined to go to his hotel room, saying “After all I’ve done for you, that’s what I get?”
___
Barbara Bowman is named in a June 9, 2006, Philadelphia magazine report as one of the Jane Does giving depositions or statements in support of Constand’s lawsuit. Constand and Cosby settle their claims out of court for an undisclosed sum that November, but it doesn’t stop People magazine from publishing a detailed account of Bowman’s allegations a month later. Bowman tells People that Cosby won her trust as an 18-year-old aspiring actress in 1985 and drugged and assaulted her multiple times in Reno, Nevada and Atlantic City, New Jersey.
___
Eight years pass.
___
In January 2014, The New York Times publishes an open letter by Dylan Farrow accusing another celebrity — her stepfather, Woody Allen — of abusing her as a child. Newsweek magazine follows in February, reviving the allegations from the one-time “Jane Does,” publishing interviews in February with Green and Bowman.
Comedian Hannibal Buress makes “you rape women, Bill Cosby” a laugh line in his standup routine. Cosby’s planned return to television begins to implode.
Bowman then writes in The Washington Post that “Cosby had drugged and raped me, too.” Her Nov. 13 essay questions why it took a male comedian’s comments to create the public outcry.
___
Joan Tarshis comes forward on Nov. 16, alleging that Cosby drugged and assaulted her in 1969, when she was 19. She says Cosby forced her to perform oral sex on him during one encounter, and then drugged and raped her in another. Cosby’s lawyer issues a blanket denial of “decade-old, discredited allegations,” stating that “the fact that they are being repeated does not make them true.” The next day, Cosby’s lawyer clarifies that his statement does not apply to Constand.
Dickinson then reappears, telling “Entertainment Tonight” on Nov. 18 that Cosby sexually assaulted her in 1982. She says Cosby gave her red wine and a pill in a Lake Tahoe, California, hotel room. Dickinson says she wrote about the alleged assault in a draft of her 2002 autobiography, “No Lifeguard on Duty: The Accidental Life of the World’s First Supermodel,” but that Cosby and his lawyers pressured her and the publisher to remove the claim.
Netflix indefinitely postpones the Nov. 27 premiere of a Cosby comedy special, “Bill Cosby 77.” NBC then scraps a Cosby comedy series under development, and TV Land stops airing reruns of “The Cosby Show.”
Castor — the prosecutor who decided not to bring charges in 2005 — reveals that Cosby had been evasive during his investigation. “I think when he said that he didn’t do anything improper or illegal, I thought then he was lying and I still do,” he tells The Associated Press. But Castor says there was not enough evidence to prove anything.
___
Therese Serignese, named in documents as a “Jane Doe,” comes forward as Cosby’s 7th named accuser, alleging that he drugged and assaulted her in 1976 when she was 19. The same day, Nov. 20, the AP releases video from a Nov. 6 interview with Cosby and his wife, Camille, when they were being asked about their decision to loan paintings and other artworks to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C. When asked about the sex allegations resurfacing, Cosby refuses to discuss them. Later, with a microphone still attached and the camera rolling, he questions the news organization’s integrity for raising the issue and says, “I would appreciate if it was scuttled.”
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