
Obama administration admits to killing four Americans in drone strikes.
The president also renews his commitment to closing Guantanamo.
Richard Linklater and Francis Ford Coppola line up their next films.
Presumptuous talking head meets lovely atheist.
Helen Mirren helps grant dying boy's last wish.
Sean Hackett on fighting bullying with movies.

Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive arrived at an opportune moment. Coming off a decade where the American genre film devolved into lowest-common-denominator investments and blockbusters ballooned skyward on the backs of sequels and franchises, Refn's modest exercise in crime pastiche and car-chase nostalgia parlayed both the exhaustion of Hollywood's narrative resources and—perhaps more importantly—the gathering mainstream curiosity in independent music's preoccupation with the sound and feel of the 1980s (the film's soundtrack has become one of the most popular word-of-mouth successes of the decade).

Disgraced ex-congressman Anthony Weiner is running for mayor of New York City.
Meanwhile, crack-smoking Toronto mayor Rob Ford has "ruined [his] city's reputation for good."
The third annual Critics' Choice TV Award nominations have been announced.
Time's new cover story explores "The Angelina Effect" and the impact of her choice.
Reporting from Cannes, our friend Keith Uhlich calls Behind the Candelabra a masterpiece.
Zach Galifianakis's red-carpet arm candy has been a woman he saved from homelessness.

Both Takashi Miike's muscular chase flick Shield of Straw and Johnnie To's wildly compounded romantic policier Blind Detective make an asset out of their respective pillaging of genre signifiers. That these individual films succeed to varying degrees—in some instances in spite of themselves—matters little in the grand scheme of their creators' narratives: Each have made more original films, more consistently compelling films, and flat-out better films. But there's something oddly compelling about their unique existences as notable entries in what now could be considered prestigious filmographies.

Violent tornado in Oklahoma leaves an unconfirmed number of people dead.
Unbelievable footage of the storm.
Republican Senator Tom Coburn seeks to offset emergency tornado aide.
Remembering the Doors' co-founder and keyboardist Ray Manzarek.
Thousands rallied against recent LGBT-related violence in New York City last night.
Listen to Beyoncé's new single, "Grown Woman."

Orphans has got some major daddy issues. Lyle Kessler's 30-year-old regional theater mainstay is the Field of Dreams of plays: Men go to laugh, whoop it up, and cry, wishing they could get a hug from Papa. The plot, as simple and primal as a fable, serves as a delivery system for sensations: Phillip and Treat have made it out of adolescence all on their own; Mom died and Dad ran off early on, and perhaps as a result, the brothers are mentally and emotionally stunted, respectively. Treat kidnaps Harold, a shady businessman, for ransom; after wriggling free, he stays on to domesticate the wild boys, but trouble follows him to his new home.

"I'm not one of them storybook characters," a charismatic young man assures his girl of the moment. As the plot develops, we watch the girl be seduced and then disillusioned by the man she thought was one-of-a-kind. Her hard lesson captures in microcosm the appeal of adapting John Cassavetes's 1959 film Shadows to the stage, a project taken on two years ago by the ensemble company Hoi Polloi and now in revival at the company's new theatrical home, Jack in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. Cassavetes's film, his first, is a barely plotted, hyper-naturalized slice of life in the "shadows" of New York City's jazz scene. The film's credits call it an "improvisation," a typically coy claim by Cassavetes to make his audience feel they've witnessed an authentic experience rather than a carefully crafted representation. (The film was made without a script, and most of the characters were given the same names as their actors, but that doesn't mean the scenes were unplanned.) Bringing the film to theatrical life—scene by scene, line by line, gesture by gesture—is to be wiser than the girl. It is to be charmed but never tricked by those who claim to be "real," but are, in fact, characters from a human imagination.

It's been a long haul since the seventh season premiere almost nine months ago, but showrunner Steven Moffat has finally delivered a tremendous resolution to the mystery of Clara Oswald (Jenna-Louise Coleman), the "impossible girl" who the Doctor (Matt Smith) has encountered multiple times, living apparently unconnected lives in different times and places. "The Name of the Doctor" is a superb finale, providing a satisfying payoff for the season plot arc while still ending with a huge twist to lead into Doctor Who's 50th anniversary special in November.

Car bomb attacks sweep across Baghdad, killing at least 70.
Beyoncé is expecting baby number two...or is she?
Chinese hackers resume their attacks on U.S. targets.
The 59th annual Drama Desk Awards were announced yesterday.
Joel and Ethan Coen's Inside Llewyn Davis makes its Cannes debut.
Can gay New Yorker Marc Carson's murder have as big an impact as Matthew Shepard's?

The Coen brothers switch gears so often and with such gleeful finesse that their restlessness can no longer qualify as genre-hopping pastiche, if it ever did. At this point they're simply a style unto themselves, a self-sufficient duo with a built in audience, art-house cred, and, when they want to indulge, box-office potential. Inside Llewyn Davis, then, isn't a curveball so much as another stopover on a now-two-decade-plus journey that's taken on noir, slapstick, thriller, western, and everything in between. It's also one of their strongest recent efforts, an alternately world-weary and hilarious ode to a period of relatively recent vintage that's nonetheless cherished as an era of new ideas, free-thinking, and artistic progression.
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