‘Picture This’ Review: Five Dates Away From Love
‘Picture This’ Review: Five Dates Away From Love
Did the casting call for “Picture This” state that those without dimples needn’t apply? Most of the actors in this British rom-com — directed by Prarthana Mohan — have them. Especially the men orbiting Pia (Simone Ashley of “Bridgerton”), a talented photographer in London who is the hard-pressed business owner at the film’s center.
There’s Jay (Luke Fetherston), her “gay bestie,” he says by way of an introduction, the co-owner of the 9th Mandala portrait studio; cardigan-wearing Akshay (Nikesh Patel) who works for Pia’s mother (Sindhu Vee) and Pia’s ex, Charlie (Hero Fiennes Tiffin). The former couple meet again when Charlie is included in the wedding party of Pia’s sister, Sonal (Anoushka Chadha).
Written by the novelist Nikita Lalwani and based on the *********** movie “Five Blind Dates,” this twisty film finds Pia navigating her wish for independence and her business’ need for a cash infusion. Her mother promises a safety box of jewels for when she gets married, but Pia wasn’t planning on that possibility. The transactional and the traditional are wed when a jolly medium prophesies Pia will meet the love of her life in her next five dates.
The title asks us to consider the film’s visuals. The palette here is vivid. Screens split — sometimes vertically, other times horizontally — all in the spirit of playfulness, while the music is a mix of international pop grooves. For all the potentially crushing challenges Pia faces — losing her business, not living out her dream of being a photographer, alienating her beloved younger sister — “Picture This,” keeps it light, never letting the sharp edges of potential failure come into focus.
Picture This Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. Watch on Prime Video.
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Trump isn’t alone in his geopolitical aspirations. Some in Illinois and Oregon want change too
Trump isn’t alone in his geopolitical aspirations. Some in Illinois and Oregon want change too
As President Donald Trump floats grand ideas like reacquiring the Panama Canal and taking over Greenland, some rural residents of Illinois and Oregon are promoting geopolitical change of their own: They want to break away from their states, and perhaps unite with Indiana and Idaho.
Proponents say they have more in common with their rural brethren across state lines than they do with urbanites in Chicago and Portland, Oregon. And they contend the Democratic-led cities have so much clout in state government that rural, Republican voices get drowned out.
In the last five years, voters in 33 Illinois counties have been asked if they want to consider separating from Chicago’s Cook County to form a new state. Each time, a majority said yes.
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Some politicians in neighboring Indiana seem up for the idea. The state’s House of Representatives recently advanced legislation that would welcome Illinois counties into Indiana’s fold. Such a deal would mark the first major realignment of states since West Virginia separated from Virginia to stick with the Union during the Civil War. Despite a bit of local momentum, there are major obstacles to rejiggering state lines within the U.S. For starters, the states relinquishing counties would have to agree to it, which is a long shot. Congress would have to approve, too.
State boundaries have changed at least 50 times throughout U.S. history, according the National Center for Interstate Compacts at The Council of State Governments. Many changes have been relatively minor, accounting for shifting rivers or reestablishing markers from long-ago surveys.
But organizers in Illinois and Oregon hope to capitalize on the current political environment.
“With this polarization,” said G.H. Merritt, chair of the pro-breakaway group New Illinois. “I don’t know, man, it might just reach a tipping point.”
Why do some in Illinois want to separate?
At least three organizations are pushing for some reconfiguration of Illinois counties to separate from Chicago and its closest suburbs.
Cook County contains about 40% of the state’s population, including the majority of ******, Asian and Hispanic residents, and is known for its cultural treasures, deep pension debt and a history of crime. Democrats dominate Chicago-area legislative districts, while Republicans represent most other parts of the state.
To Merritt, the problem is that ever since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1964 that all legislative seats should be allocated based on population rather than counties, Chicago has had all the political clout.
“What we experience in Illinois is very similar to what the founders in Colonial times were complaining about,” she said. “We have taxation without representation.”
The ballot measures voters favored would allow officials in each county to work with those from other counties to form a new state. But the proposals stop short of declaring independence.
Indiana lawmakers responded to those votes by advancing a bill that could start state-level talks.
“Instead of seceding, we think we have something to offer over here,” Indiana House Speaker Todd Huston, a Republican who sponsored the measure, said in an interview. He noted that his state has lower taxes and higher economic growth than Illinois.
But don’t count on Illinois being receptive: Earlier this year, Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, called the Indiana legislation “a stunt” that would never amount to anything.
What’s going on in Oregon?
For several years, residents in rural, Republican-leaning eastern Oregon have been laying the groundwork to separate from the Democratic-dominated counties on the western side of the Cascade Mountains. Their goal is to join reliably red Idaho.
The Greater Idaho movement has won nonbinding elections in 13 counties. Supporters have been holding town halls, selling hats and T-shirts and erecting billboards with messages such as “Release Eastern Oregon.”
Idaho’s House passed a measure two years ago inviting Oregon to enter into discussions. But similar measures remain buried in committees in the Oregon Legislature, with scant prospects.
“At this point, the state of Oregon is holding us captive,” said Matt McCaw, executive director of Greater Idaho.
State boundaries do shift, but not often, or by much
It has been over 150 years since entire counties have shifted states. After Virginia seceded from the U.S. in 1861, union loyalists formed the new state of West Virginia. The fate of two counties remained in dispute until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1871 that they belonged to West Virginia.
Since then, there have been numerous failed attempts at realignment. Writer Norman Mailer ran for mayor of New York in 1969, calling for the city to become the 51st state; five southern New Jersey counties voted to secede in 1980; and California has withstood several proposals to split the state. Earlier this year, an Iowa lawmaker proposed buying nine southern Minnesota counties.
Geographer Garrett Dash Nelson once proposed redrawing all state lines to organize them around metro areas. But he acknowledges the challenges.
“I don’t see much evidence that there’s a lot of real political will or interest in redrawing state lines,” said Nelson, president and head curator of the Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library. “It would be such an enormous lift.”
___
Associated Press writer Claire Rush contributed to this report.
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Layoffs at Department of Veterans’ Affairs will begin early as June
Layoffs at Department of Veterans’ Affairs will begin early as June
A person walks past the Department of Veterans Affairs headquarters a block from the White House on March 06, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images News | Getty Images
The Department of Veterans Affairs will begin mass layoffs at the politically sensitive agency as early as June, according to a memo reviewed by Reuters.
The memo, which is dated March 6, directs the department’s human resources team to begin reviewing the agency’s operations with an eye toward firing civil servants. It said it expects the review to be done by June, after which “VA will initiate Department-wide RIF actions,” using an acronym for “reduction in force.”
In a response to a request for comment, the VA sent Reuters a link to VA Secretary Doug Collins’ recent opinion piece in The Hill in which he defended the cuts as “thorough and thoughtful.”
Veterans groups, Democrats, and some Republicans have already voiced concern over the planned reductions at the department, which is seeking to cut more than 80,000 workers from the agency.
The scale of the layoffs at the VA is greater than proposed cuts at other agencies and will hit a department that looks after a group that typically garners wide bipartisan support in the U.S., its military veterans.
Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said last week that the job cuts marked an escalation of a “full-scale, no-holds-barred assault on veterans” by President Donald Trump that would put veterans’ health benefits in “grave danger.”
Republican U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who said he learned of the cuts from the media, called it “political malpractice” not to consult Congress about the measures.
The cuts are part of Trump and billionaire adviser Elon Musk’s efforts to dramatically slash the size of the federal government.
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Texas May Rename the New York Strip
Texas May Rename the New York Strip
Nobody knows exactly how long ago a marbled and tender boneless short-loin steak came to be known across the United States as a New York strip. Everybody agrees, though, that the nomenclature wasn’t the least bit controversial until last Friday, when Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick of Texas proposed a new name: the Texas strip.
Noting that Texas leads the nation in heads of cattle, Mr. Patrick announced in a post on X that he was working with the State Senate on a resolution that would officially rebrand the cut.
Mr. Patrick was clear in his post that he hoped the Texas-centric name would give a boost to his state’s cattle ranchers. At the same time, the way he framed the issue carried more than a whiff of red-meat politics.
“Liberal New York shouldn’t get the credit for our hard-working ranchers,” he wrote.
Meatpackers and steakhouses in New York seem disinclined to follow Texas’s lead.
“Oh my God, its so ridiculous,” said Harry Sinanaj, president of Ben & Jack’s Steakhouse on East 44th Street. “Even if they change it, I’m going to leave it as the New York strip.”
The term’s exact origins are obscure, but it is often tied to Delmonico’s, which was founded in 1827 and claims to be “the first fine dining restaurant in America.” The cut known as a Delmonico steak may have once referred to a strip steak, although on the current menu it’s used to mean a rib-eye. In any case, the cut caught on around the city.
“I don’t think there’s room for politics in this,” said Dennis Turcinovic, the owner and managing partner of Delmonico’s Hospitality Group. “It’s American culinary history.”
Mr. Patrick is not the first politician to attempt a rebranding of a popular food item. Before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, cafeterias in the House of Representatives began selling “freedom fries” to protest France’s opposition to an attack. Anti-******* sentiment during World War I led to “liberty cabbage” for sauerkraut. Neither name outlasted its political moment.
The term New York strip is so well established that it is enshrined in “The Meat Buyer’s Guide,” a longstanding industry ****** put out by the Meat Institute, a trade group based on Washington. The book lists “Lomo, Strip Loin (New York), Deshuesado” as synonyms for the boneless strip loin.
“When restaurants call you on the phone and say, ‘Give me one New York strip,’ I know they mean the boneless strip loin,” said Mark Solasz, vice president of Master Purveyors, a wholesaler in the Bronx.
“Maybe the Texans will change it to the Texas strip, but I don’t think New York is going to change,” Mr. Solasz said. “I don’t think this one is going to cross the border.”
Marc and Greg Sherry, who own the longest-running steakhouse in the city, the Old Homestead on Ninth Avenue, are so proud of the cut that they call it “Sherry Brothers 16 oz. New York prime sirloin” on their menu.
“I guess the lieutenant governor is looking for some P.R., but a New York steak is a New York steak,” Greg Sherry said.
Mr. Sinanaj, who was raised in Montenegro when Yugoslavia was still under ********** rule, recalled his mother’s telling him about a man in their village who went to jail for criticizing the government after he complained that a loaf of bread he’d bought was stale. Putting a partisan spin on a steak’s name rubs him the wrong way, he said.
“In my personal opinion it’s ridiculous to call it liberal or conservative,” he said. “The people’s stomach has nothing to do with politics.”
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Rental crisis could worsen under foreign investment clampdown
Rental crisis could worsen under foreign investment clampdown
With both major parties set to slam the door on international purchases of established homes following the Federal Election, it’s time to ask what we might be giving up, along with what we hope to gain.
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Open: This is “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” March 9, 2025
Open: This is “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” March 9, 2025
Open: This is “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” March 9, 2025 – CBS News
Watch CBS News
This week on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” after a whiplash week of on-again, off-again tariff announcements, ********* ambassador to the U.S. Kirsten Hillman joins to discuss the costs and consequences of a trade war. Plus, former White House Russia expert Fiona Hill discusses President Trump’s diplomatic pivot on Ukraine.
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Clues and answer for Sunday, March 9
Clues and answer for Sunday, March 9
Hey, there! Happy Sunday. We hope you remembered to change your clocks if daylight savings started for you today. One downside of the change is that there’s one hour less to solve today’s Wordle. In case you’re in a rush, here’s our daily Wordle guide with some hints and the answer for Sunday’s puzzle (#1,359).
It may be that you’re a Wordle newcomer and you’re not completely sure how to play the game. We’re here to help with that too.
What is Wordle?
Wordle is a deceptively simple daily word game that first emerged in 2021. The gist is that there is one five-letter word to deduce every day by process of elimination. The daily word is the same for everyone.
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Wordle blew up in popularity in late 2021 after creator Josh Wardle made it easy for players to share an emoji-based grid with their friends and followers that detailed how they fared each day. The game’s success spurred dozens of clones across a swathe of categories and formats.
The New York Times purchased Wordle in early 2022 for an undisclosed sum. The publication said that players collectively played Wordle 5.3 billion times in 2024. So, it’s little surprise that Wordle is one of the best online games and puzzles you can play daily.
How to play Wordle
To start playing Wordle, you simply need to enter one five-letter word. The game will tell you how close you are to that day’s secret word by highlighting letters that are in the correct position in green. Letters that appear in the word but aren’t in the right spot will be highlighted in yellow. If you guess any letters that are not in the secret word, the game will gray those out on the virtual keyboard.
You’ll only have six guesses to find each day’s word, though you still can use grayed-out letters to help narrow things down. It’s also worth remembering that letters can appear in the secret word more than once.
Wordle is free to play on the NYT’s website and apps, as well as on Meta Quest headsets. The game refreshes at midnight local time. If you log into a New York Times account, you can track your stats, including the all-important win streak.
How to play Wordle more than once a day
If you have a NYT subscription that includes full access to the publication’s games, you don’t have to stop after a single round of Wordle. You’ll have access to an archive of more than 1,300 previous Wordle games. So if you’re a relative newcomer, you’ll be able to go back and catch up on previous editions.
In addition, paid NYT Games members have access to a tool called the Wordle Bot. This can tell you how well you performed at each day’s game.
Previous Wordle answers
Before today’s Wordle hints, here are the answers to recent puzzles that you may have missed:
Yesterday’s Wordle answer for Saturday, March 8 — NAVEL
Friday, March 7 — TROOP
Thursday, March 6 — ALERT
Wednesday, March 5 — SCRUM
Tuesday, March 4 — CHECK
Today’s Wordle hints explained
Every day, we’ll try to make Wordle a little easier for you. First, we’ll offer a hint that describes the meaning of the word or how it might be used in a phrase or sentence. We’ll also tell you if there are any double (or even triple) letters in the word.
In case you still haven’t quite figured it out by that point, we’ll then provide the first letter of the word. Those who are still stumped after that can continue on to find out the answer for today’s Wordle.
This should go without saying, but make sure to scroll slowly. Spoilers are ahead.
Today’s Wordle help
Here is a hint for today’s Wordle answer:
This is good, or so Michael Douglas’ character Gordon Gekko famously claimed in the movie Wall Street.
Are there any double letters in today’s Wordle?
There is a pair of repeated letters in today’s Wordle answer.
What’s the first letter of today’s Wordle?
The first letter of today’s Wordle answer is G.
The Wordle answer today
This is your final warning before we reveal today’s Wordle answer. No take-backs.
Don’t blame us if you happen to scroll too far and accidentally spoil the game for yourself.
What is today’s Wordle? Today’s Wordle answer is…
Today’s Wordle answer for Sunday, March 9 – GREED
GREED
Not to worry if you didn’t figure out today’s Wordle word. If you made it this far down the page, hopefully you at least kept your streak going. And, hey: there’s always another game tomorrow.
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Apple’s rumored smart home hub has reportedly been delayed
Apple’s rumored smart home hub has reportedly been delayed
It may be a while still before we see the smart home hub Apple is rumored to be working on. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the company has postponed the announcement of the upcoming product due to the issues it’s run into developing its “smarter” Siri. Gurman reported last month that the release of Apple’s upgraded Siri may be delayed, and Apple confirmed as much in a statement to Daring Fireball last week, saying it expects to roll out Siri’s more personalized features “in the coming year.” The smart home hub, according to Gurman, “to an extent, relies on the delayed Siri capabilities.”
Gurman previously reported that the first version of the smart home display could be revealed as soon as March. It would be a competitor to Amazon’s Echo line of devices and Google’s Nest Hub. While a March release is looking unlikely, Gurman reports that Apple is now allowing some employees to test it at home.
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TEFAF Turns From the Classic to the Contemporary
TEFAF Turns From the Classic to the Contemporary
The European Fine Art Fair in Maastricht describes itself as a fair that spans 7,000 years of art history. For a long time, those 7,000 years mainly encompassed pre-20th-century objects: Egyptian figurines, Roman busts, African masks and Rococo clocks.
In the last decade, responding to a major shift in collecting patterns, TEFAF has embraced contemporary art in a big way. This year, a quarter of its more than 270 exhibitors are galleries of 20th- and 21st-century art.
They include the first-time exhibitor Marianne Boesky, a New York-based contemporary-art gallerist whose roster of artists includes Frank Stella, who died last year at 87; the artist and filmmaker John Waters; the Egyptian-born artist Ghada Amer; and the American painter Suzanne McClelland.
Why TEFAF? “It’s a fair that I’ve always been really intrigued by and heard amazing things about and never attended, so it’s been on my bucket list to get there,” Boesky, the gallery’s founder, said in an interview. “It’s not as big a lift as Art Basel, for example, in terms of expense, and it’s an audience that we wouldn’t otherwise be able to present this work to.”
Boesky said TEFAF’s much broader collector base and its deeply European identity made it “scary for us,” but added, “I’m in my 29th year of the gallery, and every day has required bold moves to survive in this business.”
Her gallery’s maiden TEFAF booth will feature eight new paintings by the American artist Danielle McKinney. They will be paired with watercolors and etchings by another American painter of atmosphere: Edward Hopper.
Boesky said she chose 43-year-old McKinney — a ****** artist who started painting five years ago after beginning her artistic career as a photographer — because of her “reverence” for painting and for European painting.
Showing her alongside Hopper is not to compare the two, but to demonstrate that “these two artists are able to create a mood through color and light,” she said, adding that there were already more interested buyers than there were McKinney paintings headed for TEFAF (their price range: from $60,000 to $150,000).
Boesky grew up surrounded by art. Her father, Ivan Boesky — a Wall Street financier who served time in prison for insider trading in the late 1980s — was deeply interested in culture, she recalled: He collected the sculptors Alberto Giacometti (at one point acquiring an edition of the famous “Le Nez”) and Auguste Rodin, as well as the 19th-century painter Édouard Vuillard.
“He responded to very gutturally tough work, so he would come home with a really challenging Giacometti sculpture,” she recalled. “My mother would want to put it in the closet. And that was the only thing that I’d want to look at.”
She became a primary dealer in 1996, with a mission to represent and nurture emerging artists. Today, her clients are wealthy art lovers who will spend the equivalent of “what they might buy a watch for, or a fancy coat” on a work by an emerging artist, she explained.
While some of her artists have stayed with her, Boesky noted, others — such as Takashi Murakami, Yoshitomo Nara, and Lisa Yuskavage — have moved on to ******* galleries. A few of her current artists — including McKinney — were being courted by ******* galleries.
One modern and contemporary gallerist who is a TEFAF regular is the French dealer Kamel Mennour. He first exhibited at TEFAF Maastricht in 2019. “It’s the only fair in the world with such an exhaustive offering,” he said, adding that he enjoyed having his stand “positioned across from an exhibitor of antique statuary, or of Japanese porcelain.”
TEFAF collectors spend not just one afternoon, but three or four days at the fair, and have “a much wider spectrum,” he said. “They stroll around and dig into very, very different things.” He noted that Mennour’s sales at TEFAF had “crescendoed” over the years and that the 2023 booth — a face-off between artists Daniel Buren and Anish Kapoor — did very well.
This year at TEFAF, Mennour is showing a small bronze Giacometti figurine, a gouache on paper by the American painter Joan Mitchell, and a sculpture by the Kosovar contemporary artist Petrit Halilaj.
The question is whether TEFAF’s identity — as the only major international fair dedicated to antiquities, old masters and ******* furniture — is being eroded by its embrace of the contemporary.
Mennour said the transition to newer art was “necessary for the health and survival of the fair, because otherwise, it would have become much too niche.”
Alexander Dorey Flint, a director at the White Cube gallery, concurred.
“I don’t think that one damages the other,” said Dorey Flint, who is overseeing White Cube’s booth at TEFAF Maastricht for the second year in a row.
He said he did not believe that TEFAF’s scholarly profile and the “breadth of knowledge and expertise” of its exhibitors were “affected by the participation of further contemporary galleries.”
White Cube’s booth at TEFAF Maastricht this year will feature paintings by Georg Baselitz and Tracey Emin (priced at about $1 million each), and a work by the Vietnamese-born artist Danh Vo, which incorporates two fragments of ancient Roman marble statuary (priced at about $400,000).
TEFAF’s particular appeal is that “we meet a lot of new people,” said Dorey Flint: collectors from Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and other parts of Europe, but also “a large number of American collectors who travel in,” he said. Maastricht is “not geographically convenient for them to attend. The quality of what is there draws Americans to it.”
This is not a particularly prosperous time for the art market, which is in a two-year downturn. Sales at the world’s three biggest auction houses in New York in November were down 40 percent from 2023 and 60 percent from the market peak in 2022.
A number of prominent names have shut down, including the Marlborough Gallery, a postwar art dealer; Cheim & Read; and Simon Lee.
Soaring inflation and operating expenses are very much to blame. Boesky said the cost of crating and shipping artworks had risen 30 percent every year since the start of the pandemic, making participation in art fairs — which typically cost her gallery $150,000 to $200,000 each — exorbitant.
Still, statistics show that of the $65 billion in annual sales generated by the global art market each year, art dealers and galleries account for a 55 percent share. And they happen to do an increasing proportion of their business at art fairs.
Mennour described fairs as “a necessary evil,” because although his gallery was one of Paris’s most visited, there was less visitor traffic at the four physical spaces he runs in the French capital, which host a regular rotation of carefully curated exhibitions.
Boesky had a similar assessment. She explained that in the post-Covid era, travel had certainly resumed, but clients were remote-working and not living in cities full time — so there were fewer New Yorkers going on Saturday afternoon gallery crawls, for example.
At her peak, Boesky recalled, she was doing 12 fairs a year, meaning an average of one a month. Now, she’s doing half as many — including the three Art Basel fairs, and no longer including any of the Frieze fairs.
TEFAF is her newest addition to the mix. “We need to bring the art to people more than ever,” she said.
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Migrant who called for slaughter of all Jews arrives in *** on small boat
Migrant who called for slaughter of all Jews arrives in *** on small boat
Abu Wadei is a ************ who reportedly supports ******
A ************ migrant who previously called for all Jews to be killed has said he has arrived in Britain on a small boat.
The young man, who goes by the name of Abu Wadei – with various spellings – shared footage from what appeared to be an inflatable dinghy on social media platform TikTok on Friday.
Wearing a keffiyeh, a head covering, he showed dozens of lifejacket-clad asylum seekers with him on the small boat.
The video caption, written in Arabic, translates as: “Thank God, we arrived in Britain after a difficult journey.”
On the same day he posted on a Facebook account: “By the grace of ****** Almighty I reached Britain after a long and difficult journey at sea.”
Yet an investigation by Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) revealed the man had attended an event addressed by Yahya Sinwar, the former ****** leader and mastermind of the October 7 massacre.
He is also said to have told crowds he would die “for the sake of ******” and appears to have posed with guns on his Facebook page.
Abu Wadei shared footage from what appeared to be an inflatable dinghy – X
The revelation has led to calls for the migrant’s immediate arrest and deportation to Palestine.
Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, described reports of the man’s ******** entry into Britain as “deeply disturbing” and told The Telegraph he should be immediately deported.
It comes as Coastguard and Home Office workers are likely to be preparing for a seasonal increase in migrants attempting to cross the Channel over the summer months.
A total of 29 small boats carrying 1,664 migrants have already been recorded as attempting ******** crossings in the first seven days of March, according to Government figures.
Abu Wadei, who boasted of more than 172,000 followers on TikTok before his account was taken down on Saturday, describes himself as being a “digital creator” on his Facebook page and being from Gaza City.
Several of those commenting on the TikTok clip that appears to show his crossing, which has received more than 350 likes, expressed relief for his safety.
An image posted by Abu Wadei on social media – Facebook
Yet an investigation by the CAA found the migrant appeared to show support for the Gaza-ruling group ******, which has been proscribed as a terror organisation by the *** Government.
In one video – which appeared to date back to around 2018 – the man was seen telling crowds at a rally that his “loftiest aspiration” was to “die for the sake of ******”, according to a translation by the CAA.
Posting on Facebook on September 18 last year, the man filmed himself praying. A translation by the CAA of the prayer read: “Oh ******, punish the Jews and those who are in league with them.
“Oh ******, kill them all ,and do not leave a single one of them.
“Oh ******, destroy them completely, scatter them completely, and make the earth fall from under their feet.”
He added: “Oh ****** give us strength against the criminal Jews. Give us strength against them, Oh Lord of the worlds.”
Wadei has authored social media posts supporting ****** – Facebook
Speaking to The Telegraph, Mr Philp said: “If these reports are true, they are deeply concerning. The Home Office must investigate.
“Our country is our home, not a hotel. Those entering the *** illegally should not be able to stay here, least of all those suspected of espousing violent anti-Semitism.
“Under Keir Starmer we have become the soft touch of Europe on immigration. He must get a grip and back Conservative proposals to toughen up the borders Bill next week. This man should be immediately returned to Palestine.”
A spokesperson for CAA said: “We consider that this man poses a threat to public security and are asking the Home Office for urgent assurances that he is in secure custody pending further investigation.
“The fact is that he has brazenly posted not only these views, but also his involvement in a ******-endorsed unit in Gaza on social media accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “We are committed to ending small boat crossings which undermine our border security, and restoring order to the asylum system to ensure that the rules are respected and enforced.
“While it is a long-standing rule that we never comment on individual cases or operational matters, the British public can be reassured that we take all steps necessary at all times to protect the nation’s security.”
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A ‘Greatest Showman’ Musical Is Coming to the Stage, in Britain
A ‘Greatest Showman’ Musical Is Coming to the Stage, in Britain
“The Greatest Showman,” a hit 2017 film about the circus impresario P.T. Barnum, is being adapted for the stage by Disney Theatrical Group and will have an initial production in early 2026 in Bristol, England.
The project is Disney’s first stage adaptation of a 20th Century Fox film since the Walt Disney Company acquired Fox’s assets in 2019.
The musical has a credentialed creative team. The songs — a combination of those featured in the film and new ones written for the stage — are by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, the duo behind “Dear Evan Hansen” who last year became EGOT winners — meaning they have won Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards.
The director and choreographer is Casey Nicholaw, a prolific Broadway theatermaker who won Tony Awards for directing “The Book of *******” and for choreographing “Some Like It Hot.” Nicholaw has become a favorite Disney collaborator — he also directed and choreographed the long-running “Aladdin” as well as the company’s most recent show, “Hercules,” which will have a West End production in June.
The book is by Tim Federle, best known for television’s “High School Musical: The Musical: The Series.”
The film had a starry cast, led by Hugh Jackman; the stage musical does not yet have a cast, and Disney said it would hold open auditions in Britain and Ireland. The show will be staged at the Bristol Hippodrome in the spring of 2026; if all goes well, Disney will then determine whether to transfer it to London, and, eventually, New York.
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‘Chaos: The Manson Murders’ Review: All You Ever Knew is Suspect
‘Chaos: The Manson Murders’ Review: All You Ever Knew is Suspect
Most likely you know the outline of the case: Charles Manson, the failed musician and wild-eyed hippie, ordered his “family” — drug-addled runaways, mostly, who had been living with him at a ranch full of old movie sets — to carry out a series of gruesome murders on the evenings of Aug. 8 and 9, 1969. Among the victims was the actress Sharon Tate, then eight and a half months pregnant with her first child. Her husband, the director Roman Polanski, was out of town at the time.
The story includes all kinds of weird spiky bits, well-documented, from accidents and coincidences (who was there that night, who wasn’t) to Manson’s connections to Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys and his worship of the Beatles to the bizarre behavior he and his acolytes exhibited during the sensationalized trial. O’Neill, in his book, goes deeper, raising the specter of various conspiracy theories about potential covert government operations that seem, with the space of time and some well-placed Freedom of Information Act requests, to at least have the potential of maybe being linked to the case.
O’Neill, a dogged reporter who pursued the story for decades, is well aware in the book that he appears to be a bit deranged — but that’s because, he insists methodically, the whole thing is kind of deranged. There’s no strict evidence but the distinct possibility that Manson crossed paths, and maybe more, with United States covert operations that intersected eerily with the sort of mind control he was able to enact on his followers. The C.I.A., through initiatives like Project MK-Ultra and Operation CHAOS, for instance, spied on citizens and experimented with initiatives aimed at controlling minds and creating, as Morris puts it in cinematic terms, a Manchurian candidate. Similarly, the F.B.I.’s Cointelpro projects aimed to disrupt groups viewed as subversive, such as the antiwar movement, civil rights movement, ********** and socialist organizations, the women’s movement and in particular the ****** Panthers, on whom Manson’s family explicitly tried to pin the murders. These covert operations on citizens are familiar territory for Morris, including his 2017 six-part series “Wormwood,” of which he inserts a tiny clip into “Chaos,” with little explanation. It’s seemingly a way to remind his more dedicated viewers this isn’t his first go-round on this topic.
“Chaos: The Manson Murders” features O’Neill, who says much the same thing onscreen — look, I’m not saying it did happen this way, we just can’t say it didn’t — but brings in other voices, too. The most notable is Bobby Beausoleil, a young musician whose path intersected with Manson’s in unfortunate and grim ways, and who insists that Manson’s motives in conducting the murders were much more pedestrian than people like O’Neill made them out to be. There’s also archival footage of Manson himself, both during the trial and in several later interviews, and of several of his followers decades after their convictions.
Yet the most significant other voice in the film is Morris’s, both stylistically and literally — in typical style, we see and hear him interviewing O’Neill (on camera) and Beausoleil (on the phone). There are remnants of the now-established Netflix true crime style in “Chaos,” most notably the irritating little introduction to what’s about to happen in this documentary, a kind of mini-trailer for itself, that starts the film, perhaps the most visible indication that streaming has altered the way we not only watch but structure movies. But Morris has clout that exceeds most documentary directors, and this is mostly his movie: curious, skeptical, dependent on interviews conducted by the director. And it’s obsessed with that single question: Why do we keep returning to this story?
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Garcia cleans up in LIV Hong Kong as Herbert flourishes
Garcia cleans up in LIV Hong Kong as Herbert flourishes
Sergio Garcia has carded a seven-under 63 to capture a double victory at LIV Golf Hong Kong, winning both the individual and team titles.
Australia’s Lucas Herbert also enjoyed an excellent final day at the Hong Kong Golf Club on Sunday as his 64 enabled him to grab fourth place, five shots behind the winner.
In a three-way tie for the lead entering the final round, Garcia started fast with an eagle on the 551-yard third, before recording four consecutive birdies between the eighth and 11th holes and adding a birdie on 16 to finish the tournament on 18-under 192.
His co-leaders couldn’t keep pace with England’s Paul Casey shooting a 69 to finish in fifth place at 12 under while Peter Uihlein’s 70 left him in a tie for sixth, seven strokes adrift.
South Africa’s Dean Burmeister had the round of the day, firing a 62 to move into second place at 15 under, while Phil Mickelson shot a 64 to finish in third and stand on his first LIV podium.
Approaching the 18th green, Garcia had a big individual lead but needed to par the hole for the Fireballs to stave off a playoff with Stinger GC in the team competition.
Staring down what he called an “easy 55-footer down the hill,” he left his putt close to the hole, tapping in for a birdie and the team win at 37 under.
It was the sixth LIV Golf team title ever for the Fireballs, who also won last week in Adelaide.
Herbert’s stirring effort, along with 12th-placed Marc Leishman’s 65, 20th-placed Cameron Smith’s 66 and 35th-placed Matt Jones’ 67 ensured the all-*********** Ripper GC finished third in the team event on 34 under.
“It was nice to see not only that I was doing well and leading the tournament, but my teammates were playing great,” said Garcia, whose teammate, Abraham Ancer, took the individual championship in Adelaide.
“They were keeping us there with a chance to win. Obviously when you can pull the double, it’s a lot sweeter than if it’s just one of them. Very proud of them.”
Garcia seemed to cherish the latest win with his team — fellow Spaniards David Puig and Luis Masaveu, as well as ******** Ancer.
At 45, Garcia has assumed the role as elder statesman of golf in Spain, serving as a mentor the way Seve Ballesteros and Jose Maria Olazabal were for him as a youngster.
“It’s fun,” Garcia said. “I really love this format. I really love the team aspect of it and trying to put my arm around them and give them advice if they need it or if they want it and try to help them be the best version of themselves on another golf course.”
Another veteran, the 54-year-old Mickelson, said he feels good about his game heading into the Masters Tournament, set for April 10-13.
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Peter Sichel, Wine Merchant With a Cloak-and-Dagger Past, Dies at 102
Peter Sichel, Wine Merchant With a Cloak-and-Dagger Past, Dies at 102
Refugee, prisoner, wine merchant, spy: Peter Sichel was many things in his long, colorful life, but he was probably most often identified as the man who made Blue Nun one of the most popular wines in the world in the 1970s and ’80s. At its peak, in 1985, 30 million bottles of this slightly sweet ******* white wine — its label featuring smiling nuns holding baskets of grapes in a vineyard — were sold.
By the time Mr. Sichel (pronounced sea-SHELL) took charge of his family’s wine business in 1960, he had lived a long, clandestine life. For 17 years, first in the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, and then in the Central Intelligence Agency — from its formation in 1947 until he resigned in 1959 — he played a crucial role in gathering intelligence for the United States.
He died on Feb. 24 at his home in Manhattan, his daughter Bettina Sichel said. He was 102.
As a 19-year-old ******* émigré to the United States who volunteered for the U.S. Army the day after Pearl Harbor, Mr. Sichel was recruited to join the O.S.S. as part of an effort to build an American intelligence-gathering force where none existed.
He served in Algiers in 1942 and ’43, and then as head of the O.S.S. unit attached to Gen. George S. Patton’s Third Army as it drove from Southern France toward Alsace in late 1944. Among his jobs were interrogating ******* prisoners of war and recruiting volunteers to infiltrate the ******* lines and report back to him.
One of Mr. Sichel’s O.S.S. colleagues, George L. Howe, wrote a novel about one such case, made into the highly regarded 1951 film “Decision Before Dawn,” directed by Anatole Litvak, with a screenplay by another of Mr. Sichel’s colleagues, Peter Viertel.
After Germany surrendered, Mr. Sichel became the O.S.S. station chief in postwar Berlin. He was 23 and known as “the wunderkind.” As the O.S.S. evolved into the C.I.A., and the Allies’ wartime united front deteriorated into the international standoff that became the Cold War, he oversaw espionage operations.
The Allies had divided Germany into four zones, each administered by one of the four occupying powers: the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain and France. Berlin, the ******* capital, which was in the middle of the Soviet Zone, was likewise divided among the four powers.
It was Mr. Sichel who synthesized the intelligence that revealed that the Soviet Union had no intention of permitting the residents of their zones to determine their own political future, as the Allies had agreed to do. As tensions rose, culminating in 1948 with the Soviet Union’s blockade of all rail, road and water access to Allied-controlled areas in Berlin — a crisis that was relieved only by what became known as the Berlin Airlift — it was Mr. Sichel who determined that the Soviets were not planning to invade western Germany, as many in the West had feared.
He returned to the United States in 1952, posted to Washington to take charge of the C.I.A.’s Eastern Europe operations. There he worked in rickety temporary quarters, erected alongside the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, while the C.I.A. awaited a permanent home.
In 1956, Mr. Sichel was sent to Hong Kong to be the agency’s station chief there, monitoring what was then called Red China as well as other Asian countries. Hong Kong, then administered by Britain, was the Asian counterpart to Berlin, a sliver of democracy on the vast ********** mainland. He remained in Hong Kong until he resigned from the C.I.A. in 1959.
A ‘Quiet American’
Mr. Sichel’s espionage exploits were recounted in a number of books, including “The Quiet Americans: Four C.I.A. Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War — a Tragedy in Three Acts” (2020), by Scott Anderson, and Mr. Sichel’s 2016 memoir, “The Secrets of My Life: Vintner, Prisoner, Soldier, Spy.” He is the subject of a documentary film, “The Last Spy,” directed by Katharina Otto-Bernstein, which is to be released this year.
In gathering intelligence, Mr. Sichel’s job was to detect any shifts in the leanings of nonaligned countries and to figure out whether perceived disagreements between the Soviets and the ******** were real or fictitious. Both in Hong Kong and in overseeing intelligence-gathering in Eastern Europe, he ran into a conflict that ultimately caused him to resign.
The C.I.A. had two significant parts: One included intelligence gatherers like Mr. Sichel; the other planned and executed covert operations, like the coup in Iran in 1953 that overthrew the elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, and reinstalled the Shah of Iran, who had abdicated during World War II.
Mr. Sichel encountered these covert operators directly, as efforts to parachute so-called freedom fighters into Albania and later China, aimed at fomenting resistance to the ********** regimes, failed dismally. He was especially dismayed, he said, because the intelligence he had collected showed that these operations had no chance of success.
“If the intelligence doesn’t fit, they don’t believe the intelligence,” he said in “The Last Spy.” Covert actions like the Iran coup, he added, were “not only ********, but ill-advised,” with long-term consequences, including the rise of the Islamic theocracy in Iran, that ran counter to American interests.
Such covert efforts were repeated in 1954 in Guatemala, when the Guatemalan president Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán was deposed in a C.I.A.-backed coup, and again in 1961 with the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba.
“There’s no attempt to learn from the past,” he said. “It’s an institutional mistake of this country.”
Mr. Sichel spoke openly about his opinions in the film, though he was less candid in his memoir, which was subject to C.I.A. censorship. He recalled asking C.I.A. officials why he could not discuss subjects that had been well documented.
“When journalists say it, it’s speculation,” he was told. “When you say it, it’s confirmation.”
Son of a Wine Merchant
Peter Max Ferdinand Sichel was born on Sept. 12, 1922, in Mainz, Germany, a commercial hub southwest of Frankfurt, near the leading ******* wine regions. His father, Eugen Sichel, was a third-generation wine merchant. His mother, Franziska (Loeb) Sichel, oversaw the home.
The Sichels were members of a large and prosperous secular Jewish family. They owned vineyards and made wine, but the bulk of their business was as négociants, merchants who bought wine from farmers, blended it to meet their specifications, and then bottled and sold it.
The family company, H. Sichel Söhne, sold wine throughout Germany and exported it, as well as importing wine from France. Outposts of the Sichel company were established by members of the extended family in the late 19th century in London, New York and Bordeaux, France.
World War I destroyed those businesses, and it separated the extended family. The businesses were rebuilt, but the family came together again only after World War II, Mr. Sichel said.
Soon after the Nazis came to power, Franziska Sichel saw what was to come and urged her husband to prepare to leave Germany while they could. He was not alarmed until the Nuremberg Laws were passed in 1935, depriving Jews of their civil rights. At that point, 12-year-old Peter and his older sister, Ruth, were sent to England. They didn’t speak English, but learned the language quickly, and at 14 Peter was able to enroll at Stowe, a private boarding school, on the condition, the headmaster said, that he change the pronunciation of his surname from “seashell” to “sitchel” so he would fit in better. Mr. Sichel continued to use that pronunciation until he left the C.I.A.
His parents were not initially permitted to leave Germany, as the government needed the foreign currency that their wine business brought in. But they managed to flee in 1938 and settled in Bordeaux, in southwest France, where Mr. Sichel took over that branch of the family enterprise.
Peter and his sister were visiting their parents in Bordeaux during the summer of 1939 when Germany invaded Poland and war was declared. Considered enemy aliens by the French, they were not allowed to leave France, and when Germany invaded the country in May 1940, the Sichels were sent to French internment camps. Peter would not return to school.
With the Germans meeting little resistance, his father was able to talk a camp administrator into releasing the family, pointing out that as Jews, they were not disposed to aid the Nazis and were most likely to be sent back to Germany, given that the parents had fled illegally.
The Sichels, along with refugees from Nazi-occupied areas of northern France, found shelter at a château in the Pyrenees. A relative in New York managed to get visas for the family, as well as transit visas through Spain and Portugal, and in March 1941 they left for Lisbon, where they boarded the steamer S.S. Siboney. They arrived in New York in April 1941.
Inheriting a Business
The family eventually settled in Kew Gardens, Queens. Peter was working at a shoe supply company when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
While working for the C.I.A. in Berlin, Mr. Sichel met and married a ******* art student, Cuy Höttler; they later divorced. In 1961, he married Stella Spanoudaki, a financial analyst and real estate broker; she died in 2022. In addition to their daughter Bettina, an owner of Laurel Glen Vineyard in Glen Ellen, Calif., Mr. Sichel is survived by another daughter, Sylvia Sichel, a director and screenwriter, and five grandchildren. Their daughter Alexandra Sichel died in 2014.
When Mr. Sichel took over his family wine business in New York in 1960, he found it antiquated and disorganized. He streamlined it, partly by merging with Schieffelin & Company, an alcohol and pharmaceutical company that could handle importing and distribution, allowing him to concentrate on promoting the company’s brands.
The focus, he decided, would be Blue Nun, a wine that blended riesling and other white grapes, including Müller-Thurgau, silvaner and gewürztraminer. It was called liebfraumilch, meaning the milk of the Holy Mother, a generic term for Rhine wine.
Mr. Sichel traveled around the world promoting the wine and arranged print, radio and TV advertising. A particularly memorable series of radio ads in the 1970s employed a young comedy team, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, touting Blue Nun as “the wine that’s correct with any dish.”
Mr. Sichel tried to repeat his success with other branded wines. Wan Fu was a slightly sweet wine intended to go with ******** food: “To eat ******** without Wan Fu is to eat with but one chopstick,” the slogan went. It was moderately successful, Mr. Sichel said. Others, like My Cousin’s Claret, a basic Bordeaux, and Après Ski, a mulled wine, were not.
By the late 1980s, as the world’s appetite for wine increased, interest in branded wines like Blue Nun waned. To an aspirational audience, varietal wines like chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon seemed more sophisticated. Mr. Sichel sold off the American company in 1995.
In 1971, he used his contacts in Bordeaux, including his cousin Peter Allan Sichel, an owner of several chateaus, to put together a group of investors to buy Château Fourcas Hosten, an underperforming Bordeaux producer in Listrac. By the 1980s, Fourcas was in financial trouble, and Mr. Sichel invested personally, taking charge of the company; soon he was improving and modernizing equipment and renovating the château. He sold the company in 2006, as his children were not interested in the wine business.
When he left the C.I.A., his colleagues there had insisted that as a wine merchant he would never find the passion for the work that he had experienced in intelligence, and that sooner or later he would be back.
In “The Last Spy,’’ his wife, Stella, recalled how high-ranking C.I.A. officials would ask her, “When is Peter coming back?”
“They didn’t think he would survive outside,” she said. “He might not have survived if he had not fallen immediately into his new passion, which was the wine business.”
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French research groups urged to welcome scientists fleeing US
French research groups urged to welcome scientists fleeing US
French officials are urging their country’s research institutions to consider welcoming scientists abandoning the United States due to President Donald Trump’s funding cuts, AFP learned on Sunday.
Since Trump returned to the White House in January, his government has cut federal research funding and sought to dismiss hundreds of federal workers working on health and climate research.
“Many well-known researchers are already questioning their future in the United States,” France’s minister for higher education and research, Philippe Baptiste, wrote in a letter to the country’s institutions.
“We would naturally wish to welcome a certain number of them.”
Baptiste urged research leaders to send him “concrete proposals on the topic, both on priority technologies and scientific fields”.
The government is “committed, and will rise to the occasion”, he added, in a statement sent to AFP on Sunday.
This week, Aix-Marseille University in the south of France announced it was setting up a programme dedicated to welcoming US researchers, notably those working on climate change.
It announced a new programme to welcome scientists who “may feel threatened or hindered” in the United States and want “to continue their work in an environment conducive to innovation, excellence and academic freedom”.
Besides the cuts overseen by Trump’s billionaire tech tycoon ally Elon Musk, the US leader has withdrawn Washington from the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Agreement.
In protest, scientists rallied in cities across the United States on Friday, with many of their French counterparts in the southwestern city of Toulouse attending a demonstration in solidarity.
– ‘Opportunity’ for French research –
In an editorial published in Le Monde newspaper, French academics including Nobel Prize winners Esther Duflo, an economist, and Anne L’Huillier, a physicist, denounced “unprecedented attacks” on US science, saying they undermined “one of the pillars of democracy”.
The director of France’s Pasteur public health institute, Yasmine Belkaid, told French newspaper La Tribune in an interview published Sunday that she received “calls every day” from US-based European and American scientists looking for jobs.
For French research, “you might call it a sad opportunity, but it is an opportunity all the same,” Belkaid, who once worked as an immunology researcher in the United States, was quoted as saying.
“It is time for us to position ourselves as central players in this research ecosystem, which is necessary for our economic independence.”
The suspension of some grants has led some US universities to reduce the number of students accepted into doctoral programs or research positions.
Other targets for cuts include the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) — the leading US agency responsible for weather forecasting, climate analysis and marine conservation — with hundreds of scientists and experts already let go.
The United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization said NOAA and the United States were essential for providing life-saving data to monitor weather and the climate globally.
Trump’s appointment of noted vaccine sceptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr as the head of the Department of Health and Human Services has also angered many scientists.
bur-vac-lby/rlp/rmb
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Piglets Left to Die in Art Exhibition Are Stolen in Denmark
Piglets Left to Die in Art Exhibition Are Stolen in Denmark
Three piglets were stolen from an art exhibition in Copenhagen over the weekend after a provocative artist said they would be allowed to starve to death in a commentary about animal ******** in Denmark, one of the world’s largest pork exporters.
The artist, Marco Evaristti, said in an interview on Monday that his exhibition, “And Now You Care?,” was meant to “wake up the Danish society” to the mistreatment of pigs, pointing to statistics that tens of thousands of pigs die each day because of poor conditions.
“I have some kind of voice as an artist to talk about the issue,” Evaristti, 62, said. “So I will share my thoughts about what I think about the treatment of the animals in Denmark.”
The exhibition, which opened on Friday inside a former butcher’s warehouse in the Meatpacking District of Copenhagen, included three live piglets that were caged by two shopping carts on a pile of straw. Large-scale paintings of the Danish flag and slaughtered pigs hung on the walls.
The pigs, which were given water but no food, were expected to live up to five days. Evaristti said he also would not eat or drink until the exhibition came to an end.
But the pigs did not die. They disappeared.
Evaristti, who was born in Chile, said that while the exhibition space was being cleaned on Saturday morning, members of an animal rights organization came to check on the piglets. Shortly after they left, the theft occurred.
“They closed the door while the cleaning people were cleaning the toilet,” he said, adding that the door was unlocked. “After four minutes, they come out and it was no pigs.”
A spokesman for the Copenhagen Police said that it was notified about the theft just before noon on Saturday and that nobody had been charged. Evaristti, who said he and his family had received numerous threats, does not expect the piglets to be returned.
Animal rights groups were divided over Evaristti’s latest exhibition, with some agreeing with his message but not his method and presentation. A review from a Danish newspaper slammed the exhibition as “old-fashioned avant-garde.”
Mathias Madsen, a campaign manager for Anima International Denmark, said in a statement that the organization had reported Evaristti to the police when he announced his plans to starve the piglets to death.
“This would violate multiple sections of the Danish Animal ******** Act, and we wanted authorities prepared to intervene,” Madsen said, adding that the strong public reaction to the exhibition was a reminder that people find animal suffering unacceptable.
There are about 5,000 pig farms in Denmark that produce approximately 28 million pigs annually, according to the Danish Agriculture and Food Council. Many are slaughtered, with more than 70 percent of the pig meat exported to countries within the European Union.
Birgitte Damm, the chief consultant for farm animals and mink for Animal Protection Denmark, said about 25,000 piglets die each day in Danish stables, some from starvation, because the country’s sows are bred to birth 20 piglets but have only 14 teats.
“We completely understand the indignation, frustration and even anger over the continued abuse of millions of pigs in the Danish pig industry,” Damm said about Evaristti’s exhibition. “This has been going on for decades, and it is completely unacceptable. However, we cannot allow three individual piglets to suffer in order to make our point.”
Evaristti said his idea for the exhibition came from reading a newspaper article about the topic around October. “I knew that something was wrong in Denmark, but I didn’t know that it was so bad,” he said.
On Monday night, he faced a critical question: What now? He said that an exhibition without the piglets would be “boring” and “plastic,” before he shut it down altogether on Tuesday.
“If you take your heart from your body, you cannot exist, only as the body without soul,” he said. “My exhibition doesn’t have a soul anymore. It’s only a body and I’m not interested in representing a body. I want the soul with the body.”
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Bethesda Nintendo *****: lowest prices ever for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Doom (2016), more
Bethesda Nintendo *****: lowest prices ever for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Doom (2016), more
Limbrick135d ago (Edited 135d ago )
FO3 an my Phat and slim, 2009, worked well compared to what I read about that game on other platforms. The crashing was random, some times happening twice in the first hour of play, while other times I could play for 8-10 hours without crashing, The frame rates were OK and only nosedived drastically at the Wheaton Armory.
FO3 Goty: purchased week of release and it flat out was broken. It crashed often and tanked the frame rates. Dlc’s were unplayable. I returned that game for full credit towards Borderlands. Later in 2011 I downloaded the dlc and all were playable except Broken Steel. The problem was more than the frame rates and crashing at the airbase, the problem was how adding that dlc affected the game and other dlc with erratic frames, longer loading times, and crashes. So my future replays were without Broken Steel downloaded. Broken Steel first came to the 360 and had to be recalled and replaced Like the FO4 Far Harbor dlc on PS4. However Broken Steel never was fixed, at least on my PS3.
New Vegas and dlc worked less well than FO3. A big culprit was memory management and save file size. The more played the larger the files became and then frame rates tanked, frame hitching and stuttering, and crashes increased. Then too to avoid crashing when loading into the airbase or outer Vegas I would save quit and restart and reload the save which would refresh the memory pool. Patches somewhat fixed that issue but not the save file size issue.
There was a strange early bug at least on PS3 where when loading into the strip from outer Vegas the player would enter an infinite loading cycle and have to reload the last save. That was patched quickly, but until patched the work around was to wear the item ‘Old Cowboy Hat’ that was sold at the vender in outer Vegas.
Skyrim; I image only those few with a magic PS3 enjoyed that mess on a PS3. After playing FO3, and New Vegas on a PS3 and then reading the reports of Skyrim I decided to pass on playing it on a PS3. Now on my PS4 Pro with some basic make the game look better mods it plays and looks great. I wish FO3 and New Vegas had received updates for PS4 like the excellent update Skyrim received.
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Porcini Ragù, Shrimp and Grits, Jambon Beurre and Pecan Pie
Porcini Ragù, Shrimp and Grits, Jambon Beurre and Pecan Pie
Good morning. Lent began on Wednesday, the start of a commemoration of the 40 days Jesus spent in the Judean Desert, fasting and avoiding the temptations of Satan. It’s a ******* of prayer, abstention and almsgiving for many Christians, solemn preparation for the miracle of Easter. And, for many, it means avoiding meat on Fridays.
For them, then, though really for anyone with a taste for the delicious (it wouldn’t be a bad call for an iftar meal if you’re observing Ramadan, or for Shabbat dinner): this lovely porcini ragù that Ligaya Mishan adapted from a recipe the cookbook writer Ixta Belfrage ate as a child growing up in Tuscany.
It comes together far more quickly than a ragù you’d make with ground pork or beef, with dried porcinis plumped in hot water, which are then chopped and fried with tomato paste, garlic, crushed red pepper and parsley. Hit that with a lot of freshly ground ****** pepper, some of the water you used for the mushrooms, a little cream and a shower of Parmesan. Toss with tagliatelle and finish with olive oil and a little more cheese. Then give thanks, for this is a fantastic meal.
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Porcini Ragù
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So, too, is a breakfast of Saturday pancakes, and in particular these light, fluffy and rich pancakes that Mark Bittman brought to The Times years ago, with whipped egg whites in the batter and ricotta to boot. Those under maple syrup, with a scattering of coined bananas, are a weekend joy, just the breakfast to consume before an adventure outside the house, experiencing the world.
For New Yorkers, maybe that’s a drive up the Hudson to hike Popolopen Torne. For others, it’s a Nordic ski around a reservoir, or a walk on salt flats or a bicycle ride down a road near the Pacific. (For me, this weekend, I’m hoping it’s a run out through Turkey Basin in the Florida Keys, in search of tarpon and permit.) You’ll make your own call, but let’s all of us eat jambon beurre for lunch.
And then, for dinner, Julia Reed’s impeccable recipe for shrimp and grits, adapted from one she discovered in landlocked Sewanee, Tenn. Follow it with pecan pie if you have the time to bake one, or with bananas Foster if you don’t.
Keep it up with the Big Breakfasts on Sunday. You can eat muesli all week. Say, perhaps, some morning glory muffins alongside a few slices of oven bacon and a big glass of whipped coffee?
Have some leftover ragù for lunch and then fight off the Sunday scaries with a warm kale, coconut and tomato salad for dinner. New York Times Cooking provides.
And please write for help, should you run into problems with your account: *****@*****.tld. (You do have an account, yes? If you don’t, would you consider subscribing today?) Or you can write to me, if you want to cheer or complain: *****@*****.tld. I can’t respond to every letter. There’s a lot of mail. But I do read each one I get.
Now, it’s nothing to do with barley or veal, but I liked Lizzy Caplan in “Zero Day” on Netflix, starring Robert De Niro.
Likewise, Helen Mirren in the insane second episode of the insane second season of Taylor Sheridan’s “1923” on Paramount+, “The ******* Is Winter.”
A one-two punch from The New York Times Book Review sent me crashing into the bookstore the other day: Elisabeth Egan’s silky profile of the novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on the cusp of releasing “Dream Count,” her first novel in a dozen years, followed by Alexandra Jacobs’s ace review of the book.
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An Irish Designer Blends Materials and Cultures at World Expo
An Irish Designer Blends Materials and Cultures at World Expo
This article is part of our Design special section about the reverence for handmade objects.
One of the first things visitors will encounter as they enter the east gate of the World Expo in Osaka, Japan, opening on April 13, is a 20-foot-high balletic, ring-shape sculpture poised outside the Ireland pavilion.
“It’s quite a complex piece in some ways, but I was trying to create one simple gesture that would have this sense of harmony,” said its creator, Joseph Walsh, a 45-year-old Irish designer known for wood furnishings and sculptures with dynamic, serpentine shapes. At a 150-acre farm near Kinsale, on Ireland’s southern coast, he oversees a multinational team of two dozen people at his Joseph Walsh Studio.
“Magnus Rinn,” as the sculpture is titled, is his first work to use bronze and his first designed for the outdoors. It was also the product of several years of research. Mr. Walsh engaged in extensive studies with the engineering firm Arup, as well as materials testing with university labs in Dublin and in Stuttgart, Germany. The challenge, he said, was creating a form with his signature lightness and movement that could withstand the weather and seismic conditions in Osaka.
“Japan was actually the most extreme environment we identified on the planet,” he said, noting the threat of earthquakes.
The result was a hybrid form in which a bronze lower portion serves as an anchor and laminated oak torques with a single twist above it. To make the wood more durable, Mr. Walsh and his team used a high-pressure autoclave chamber, a strategy inspired by a visit to the Italian studio of the automobile designer Horacio Pagani, who has used a similar technology for his carbon fiber hypercars. Increasing the atmospheric pressure 600 percent bonded the wood laminates, making them stronger and more weather resistant and producing a “hyper-performing wood,” Mr. Walsh said.
The bronze components, which were cast at a foundry in Italy, are embellished with details that Mr. Walsh hand molded in wax, working intuitively. “I ended up staying at the foundry for a few weeks, undoing and doing and just getting lost in the process,” he said. “Each imprint is time passing with a different thought, conscious or subconscious, each a slightly different shape.”
To observers, the pattern suggests leaf forms, tree bark and even dragon scales.
Mr. Walsh said the idea of gilding the sculpture arose during a visit to Chatsworth House, the home in Derbyshire, England, of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, who are regular clients.
“The team at Chatsworth were talking about the fact that the gilded oak windows were the originals from 1700 and that they only regild them every 90 years,” Mr. Walsh said. “I decided to put gilding through the advanced aging test. It doesn’t rust, it doesn’t patinate.”
Outside the Irish pavilion, the shimmering sculpture will stand amid rocks and plantings by Hiroyuki Tsujii, a Japanese landscape designer.
The theme of cultural connectivity, which is central to the pavilion, will continue in a show of contemporary Irish and Japanese craft that Mr. Walsh helped organize for the new Irish Embassy and cultural center in Tokyo, scheduled to open a few days after the expo.
It is also a spirit Mr. Walsh sought to capture with the title of “Magnus Rinn.” The word “rinn,” he said, has meanings in both Gaelic and Japanese that relate to place, circularity and the flow of ideas across cultures.
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‘The White Lotus’ Season 3, Episode 3: The Snake Show
‘The White Lotus’ Season 3, Episode 3: The Snake Show
White goes hard with the sound design and editing during the energy healing session. As Valentin holds his hands just above Laurie’s body, the soundtrack is filled with eruptive moans and sighs, woven through the percussive, chiming musical score. When the ladies reunite, Laurie jokes, “I haven’t been not-touched by a man like that in a long time.”
That’s when Kate makes a surprising confession: She finds all this new age healing stuff “goofy,” “spooky” and “kind of witchy.” When Jaclyn suggests that eastern spiritual practices are superior to Christianity because they are more empowering to women, Kate defends the church she has been attending since moving to Texas. This leads to several probing questions. Is this, like, a “real Texan church, with ******-thumpers?” (Kate, noncommittal: “They’re nice people, really good families.”) Does talking politics ever get awkward? (“Why would it?”) Is Kate a conservative now? (“I’m an independent.”) Did Kate vote for Trump? (Long pause, and then, “Are we really gonna talk about Trump tonight?”)
In one of those sharp, funny, “Mike White Touch” moments, Laurie and Jaclyn try to defuse the mounting tension by lying, saying, “Can’t wait to get down there,” and “I really want to come.” Then later, as the day ends, after Kate retreats to her bedroom she can see — and almost hear — the other two talking about her. Unlike the previous snipe sessions, only a line or two of this one is shared with the TV audience. But we can guess what is being said. And if we can, Kate can. She looks stricken.
Elsewhere at the resort on Day 3, momentum starts to build in the season’s major story lines. Rick makes his move with Sritala, posing as a showbiz power-player who wants to connect her with a director in Bangkok. Rick comes across differently with Sritala, unlike how he is with anyone else. He is enthusiastic and open, gushing over her performance at the previous night’s dinner. The upbeat energy feels unsettlingly phony.
This is all part of his plan to get close to Sritala’s husband, Jim, who Rick already knows is convalescing in Bangkok — and who, I assume, may be responsible in some way for the ******* of Rick’s father. Rick mentions his dad again in another of his stress-management sessions, during which Dr. Amrita suggests that the root cause of his stress is anger, and that, “Underneath anger there is always a sadness, something we are grieving.” Rick then brings up the *******, adding ominously, “I can’t get my life back, but maybe I can still get some satisfaction.”
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Slimming World boss’s weight loss legacy with 700k members
Slimming World boss’s weight loss legacy with 700k members
Samantha Noble
BBC News, Derby
Steve Beech
BBC News, Derby
Slimming World
Margaret Miles-Bramwell’s ******** will take place on Monday
“I bet we are reaching way into the millions now for the reach of the people’s lives she has affected in a positive way.”
Slimming World boss Margaret Miles-Bramwell OBE, 76, died surrounded by her family on 2 February.
Her journey started in a church hall in Alfreton, Derbyshire, in 1969 – but her business expanded and became a network of more than 3,500 consultants and about 700,000 members.
Ahead of her ******** on Monday, we look at the life and legacy of the entrepreneur, who colleagues have said was “revolutionary” with “a massive heart”.
Slimming World
Her friends and colleagues said her work has changed people’s lives
Born in April 1948, Mrs Miles-Bramwell was adopted by Emma-Selina and Samuel Birch, and grew up in South Normanton – a mining village in Derbyshire.
Aged 15, she fell pregnant with daughter, Claire, and made a home with her baby’s father, Roy Miles, whom she married in 1964.
In 1977, they had their second child together, Dominic, and three years later their son Ben was born.
After she and Mr Miles separated, the businesswoman married her late husband Tony Whittaker in 1996, who died in 2021 after being diagnosed with ******* and Alzheimer’s disease.
Last month, Mrs Miles-Bramwell died at her home in Mallorca, Spain.
Mrs Miles-Bramwell’s ******** will take place on Monday at Derby Cathedral and ahead of the service, her cortege will leave her home in Mansfield Woodhouse, Nottinghamshire, and head to Slimming World’s offices in Alfreton.
Building a legacy
Professionally, Mrs Miles-Bramwell started small, in a church hall in Alfreton where she had her first slimming group in 1969.
In 1988, it opened its 1000th group – and had 5,000 groups eight years later.
The entrepreneur funded research on macronutrients 1996 – in relation to weight management, their energy density and satiety for Slimming World’s food optimising eating plan.
While shortly after a health scare and major surgery in 1997, Mrs Miles-Bramwell founded the charity Slimmers Making It A Little Easier For Someone (SMILES) which raised more than £30m for charities.
PA Media
In 2009, Mrs Miles-Bramwell received an OBE for services to the health of the nation and to charity
In 2000, Slimming World pioneered the first-ever NHS weight management referral scheme, and opened its first groups in the Republic of Ireland nine years later.
Mrs Miles-Bramwell received an OBE for services to the health of the nation and charity, and in 2010 the University of Derby awarded her an honorary master’s degree.
When the pandemic hit in 2020, she released emergency financial reserves to Slimming World and its consultant franchisees to save the company during lockdown.
Mrs Miles-Bramwell was named Business Woman of the Year at the National Business Women’s Awards in 2023, and had been honoured in the Top 100 Influential People 2025.
Marie Gregory, a planning and inventory manager, said there was “this feeling of love and support” that came from Mrs Miles-Bramwell
In the words of those who knew her, Mrs Miles-Bramwell wanted to “put an end to the shame, guilt, judgement and humiliation faced by those struggling with their weight in 1960s England”.
Marie Gregory said the businesswoman had “made a huge difference to so many lives”.
“You can look at member figures, the people at head office – it’s their families, people who have had children who couldn’t have had children before,” the 43-year-old said.
“I bet we are reaching way into the millions now just for the reach of the people’s lives she has affected in a positive way.”
Ms Gregory, who has been with the company nearly 14 years, said: “I am not looking forward to Monday because it will be a really hard day.”
‘The wickedest smile’
Debbie Lockwood has worked for Slimming World for 31 years.
The 61-year-old training and development manager described the late entrepreneur as “just gorgeous” and “so much fun”.
“Whenever I think of Margaret, the word laughter is the first thing that comes into my head,” she said.
“She had the wickedest laugh and she was always so much fun to be around.
“Margaret was so passionate about members – that was her first love, making sure our members get the service they deserve.”
Slimming World
Margaret Miles-Bramwell, pictured here with Slimming World head office staff in 1989
But above all, Mrs Miles-Bramwell had “built communities”, said Ms Lockwood.
“Margaret knew – she was so clever in 1969 – that’s what people needed, a community of slimmers who never judged you, you were never going to be humiliated, never going to be told what to do.
“You were absolutely empowered to figure yourself out and do your own thinking, and that was revolutionary.”
Debbie Lockwood said “from a business point of view, from a personal point of view, she was just gorgeous – so much fun”
Rebecca Robinson, a 50-year-old director of communications, said Mrs Miles-Bramwell left a huge legacy.
Ms Robinson, who has been with the company for more than 20 years, added: “She was a larger than life character, with a fantastic sense of humour, incredibly intelligent and knowledgeable.
“She was full of integrity, a massive heart, and she really would light up the room when she came in.
“There are still moments when we expect her to walk through the doors, and we realise what a special person we have lost.
“But Margaret’s left a huge legacy.
“Margaret created a legacy in Slimming World that runs through everything we do so Margaret will still be with us in everything we do going forward.”
Slimming World
Mrs Miles-Bramwell was named Business Woman of the Year at the National Business Women’s Awards in 2023
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Apple’s rumored smart home hub has reportedly been delayed
Apple’s rumored smart home hub has reportedly been delayed
It may be a while still before we see the smart home hub Apple is rumored to be working on. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the company has postponed the announcement of the upcoming product due to the . Gurman last month that the release of Apple’s upgraded Siri may be delayed, and Apple confirmed as much in a statement to last week, saying it expects to roll out Siri’s more personalized features “in the coming year.” The smart home hub, according to Gurman, “to an extent, relies on the delayed Siri capabilities.”
previously reported that the first version of the as soon as March. It would be a competitor to Amazon’s Echo line of devices and Google’s Nest Hub. While a March release is looking unlikely, Gurman reports that Apple is now allowing some employees to test it at home.
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Anne Imhof’s ‘Doom’ at the Armory Has Everything, and Nothing
Anne Imhof’s ‘Doom’ at the Armory Has Everything, and Nothing
A Berlin nightclub habitué of my acquaintance has admonished me, more than once, not to go to concerts or parties without earplugs; too many D.J.s now crank to dangerous decibels, so have your fun and save your hearing. I forgot his advice ahead of “Doom: House of Hope,” an evening-length spectacle of attitude and abjection by the ******* artist and choreographer Anne Imhof, and may have developed tinnitus as a result.
Your ears are not the only organs that may suffer if you come to the Park Avenue Armory, where Imhof’s massive performance work has been one of the most anticipated events of the winter season, and (thanks to its performers as well as its public) is already one of the most Instagrammed. You’ll start out in a corral with a thousand other spectators, prevented from moving forward by crowd control barriers. Expressionless, glassy-eyed performers will soon move toward you as a droning electronic score blares. You’ll be released to explore the whole 55,500-square-foot Drill Hall soon, but ticket holders should, like sensible Germans, opt for comfortable shoes: You’re on your feet throughout.
Around the large hall are two dozen brand-new Cadillac Escalades, the preferred conveyance of the American oligarchy, whose roofs will become stages for limber dancers and mournful singers, and whose trunks will serve variously as pop-up bar, chess competition venue, vape break area and makeshift tattoo parlor. To follow the action of “Doom” you’ll have to chase the performers around the S.U.V.s, onto several stages, and even into the dressing rooms, while above you, on a Jumbotron scoreboard, the evening’s duration ticks down: three hours to go.
The experience of “Doom” is indeed not unlike a night at the club — wending your way through a converted warehouse, losing your friends in the darkness, oscillating from moments of excessive emotion to total boredom. If you get bored, you can always look at your phone; to Imhof, your phone, and your boredom, are integral.
This is a night of harsh contradictions, and I just can’t girdle my judgment into cheer-or-jeer format. “Doom” is narcissistic, frivolous, sometimes naïve — and still, despite all this, feels more important than a hundred cash-and-carry exhibitions in Chelsea. Its roughly 40 performers, who mutter in monotone when they aren’t just staring into space, indulge a youthful nihilism that is obvious and tiresome — until an extraordinary shift in the third hour (by which time much of the opening night’s audience had bailed), when they find grand, even Romantic purpose.
That “Doom” can feel so pointless and so potent, that I disliked well more than half of this evening on my feet and still left gratified and even moved, is testament to Imhof’s rare attunement to contemporary conditions of spectatorship: above all, to how we look at both art and life through screens driving us to derangement. She is struggling, a lot, with how to make something meaningful and powerful in 2025. But by God, she’s trying.
This is the first New York presentation in a decade from Imhof, whose lugubrious performances dramatize the effects of digital technologies on bodies, psyches, societies. New York audiences last encountered her at MoMA PS1 in 2015, where her reedy performers cuddled live bunnies and spat troughs of buttermilk in a performance and exhibition called “Deal.” She hit international prominence with “Faust,” at the 2017 Venice Biennale, where Imhof’s impassive, streetwear-clad dancers stared down audiences at the ******* Pavilion who waited two hours to get in. With “Faust,” Imhof clocked early that a major shift had come to the experience of art with the introduction of the cameraphone, wielded by spectators who (unlike at the theater, ballet or opera) reflexively record what they see. She favored young performers whose willowy bodies belied their training and toughness, and who viscerally knew that their movements were being reduced to digital images for transmission and consumption.
In the wake of the first Trump election and the Brexit referendum, Imhof’s club-kid hauteur and play with totalitarian imagery — her ******* pavilion equated the Nazi show palace to an Apple store — resulted in an uneasy blend of antagonism and exclusivity, one she shared notably with the Georgian fashion designer Demna Gvasalia. But anyone who sees “Doom” will clock quite quickly that it is far less fashionable: For better or worse, Balenciaga is out and “Euphoria” is in.
The youths of this new performance hew closer to European fantasies of American high school, and the Armory has been overlaid with gymnasium flooring for good measure. Its performers, some of whom wear basketball and cheerleader uniforms, include ******* and American models, rappers, writers, actors and randoms (Kim Gordon’s daughter, for crying out loud), as well as dancers from American Ballet Theater, who will swap their school-spirit outfits for Balanchine-approved leotards in the third hour. Throughout the night they preen, stare, cuddle and mope, but only some — above all Toon Lobach and Vinson Fraley, two dancers with very different bodies who circle and shadow each other — display the intense self-focus that Imhof has elicited in the past.
Instead, and very quickly, “Doom” settles into an episodic format that is less an Armory-filling Gesamtkunstwerk than a revue: a series of frequently sloppy numbers, often around five minutes (a pop song length), that you can see up close if you’re standing in the right spot or must crane to catch if you’re not. Some of these numbers display real passion and intelligence, above all a trio of rap performances by Arthur Tendeng, in French and *******, which electrifies “Doom” at the halfway mark.
More are just cliché — such as the wannabe Velvet Underground songs of Eliza Douglas, Imhof’s ex-girlfriend and frequent collaborator — and some are outright humiliating. Over the night you will endure recitations of jejune poetry cribbed from anime scripts (“For heroes there are trials”), a white-girl mumblecore cover of the third-tier R&B singer Jeremih, and a deafening band whose baby-punk singer would get booed off the stage at a suburban bar mitzvah, let alone Park Avenue.
Truly, there’s a cynical intelligence to the variety-show structure of “Doom”: If nothing quite coheres, if everything feels like a pose, if you find yourself looking at sexy 10-second video clips of a slack three-hour performance … well, that’s culture in 2025 for you! An ambient bath. A perpetual ooze. This smooth, streaming, unstructured approach — a condition that the literary scholar Anna Kornbluh has called “immediacy,” in evidence everywhere from no-style autofiction to POV TikToks — is the cultural reflection of our technological and economic disorder, and as you pull out your phone you become one with the defeatism.
And yet still, glistening within the gloom of “Doom,” are the hints of a major artist on the cusp of a breakthrough. You can first detect them in small passages, barely suturing the evening together, from “Romeo and Juliet” — the original star-crossed slackers. Imhof arranges them in reverse order, starting with the double suicide in the tomb and leading back to the first encounter at the ball. The balcony scene is performed on the top of one of those Escalades, livestreamed to the Jumbotron from a performer’s iPhone. (Much later on comes a witty quotation of another “Romeo and Juliet” adaptation: the Jets-versus-Sharks opening number of “West Side Story,” all thrusting arms and kick turns.)
These gobbets of Shakespeare, familiar from American school days, are the first signs of leaving behind style for structure. Like “Doom,” “Romeo and Juliet” is a play in which love drowns in violence — specifically, the violence of social polarization, which bleeds from an older aristocracy’s “ancient grudge” into the lives of their brawling children and manservants. It’s a play about a failed ruling class, which neither church (the Friar) nor state (the Prince) can control. And if the love of Romeo and Juliet is doomed, the play also insists that young love itself remains rough, disruptive, dangerous. “These violent delights have violent ends,” the Friar warns Romeo. So it is not youth, for Shakespeare or for Imhof, that offers hope for the future. Youth comes and goes, and Imhof is now 46.
The hope lies instead in art — which emerges late in “Doom,” when the action thrillingly shifts from disaffection to the hard work of dance. Around the two-hour mark, the audience clusters beneath the Jumbotron for a virtuosic solo by the ballerina Devon Teuscher, whose unhurried arabesques have all the melancholy rigor that “Doom” needed in hours one and two. Soon after, on a stage at the back of the Armory, a whole corps de ballet emerges. There are snatches of Bach, snatches of Balanchine, even a snatch of dance criticism (in the form of Arlene Croce’s notorious non-review of Bill T. Jones from 1994). The poses and pessimism recede, and we are finally, exhaustedly, facing what art can and cannot do.
What brought Imhof fame was how her performances showed humans turning (or turning themselves) into objects, into pictures, into digital commodities: first by power structures more bitter than the Montagues and Capulets, and then by the spectators shoving phones in their faces. That’s a good enough start for a young artist, and “Doom” at first doubles down on that pose — look at me, my life is over, I’m texting through Armageddon, LOL. Yet by the end, through the precision of ballet, Imhof seems at last to be finding the courage to push past fashion, art and music that just mimics our networked commodification. She is finding her way out of immediacy and back to form. In other words, she’s growing up.
“This little screen has all the power,” goes one lyric in one of the night’s many wan ballads, but it doesn’t — not yet — and art’s most important role today is to fight back against the media zombification that Imhof first located in “Deal” and “Faust.” There are obvious predecessors for this task: it was the work of the Cubists, who used collage to disrupt newspapers, and of Nam June Paik, who turned video into an arm against television.
Is Imhof up for the same task, and ready now to drop the as-shapeless-as-the-internet attitude and commit to art? Maybe it was the exhaustion, and the heightened emotional reactions you can have in the last hour in a nightclub. But after three hours on my feet I left the Armory with a funny hope that her art is not yet doomed.
Doom: House of Hope Through March 12. Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Avenue, 212-616-3930; *****@*****.tld. All tickets are general admission.
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