We, the Living

Colson Whitehead’s new novel Zone One pits humans against zombies in a harrowing future New York City. With its wry perspective and beautifully-wrought prose, it’s also Whitehead's love letter to the city of his birth, a place beloved “even with her eyes blackened and her teeth knocked out.” Paul Constant of The Stranger reviews the author's latest. See Word

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Photo: Erin Patrice O'Brien

Spielberg on the high dive

The three-time Oscar-winning director who once observed that “I was born a nervous wreck” is at the helm of not one but two big holiday films. Writing in The New York Times, Michael Cieply finds they're  movies whose creator and characters have at least one thing in common: Fear. See Movies

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Photo: Andrew Cooper/DreamWorks Pictures

Fear & loathing with HST

Johnny Depp recalls his first encounter with Hunter S. Thompson: “...I see the door spring open, and I see sparks! I realized there was a large-ish, three-foot cattle prod and a Taser gun, and the sea began to part — people were leaping and hurling themselves out of the path of the mayhem that was approaching ...” The actor stars in the film of Thompson’s The Rum Diary, opening Friday. Writing in The Daily Beast, he opens up about his time with the Gonzo firebrand, “the very definition of a Southern gentleman.” See Word

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Photo: Hunter Thompson, June 2003: Getty Images via Yahoo! Sports

UK: Bard wars

The Roland Emmerich film Anonymous (starring Rhys Ifans and Vanessa Redgrave) opens on Friday; it’s sure to further the long debate over whether William Shakespeare ever really wrote the plays he’s credited for. In England, towns and Bard scholars have been protesting the film’s revisionist storyline in various ways. More at BBC News

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Have we all been played?

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Anonymous opens in theaters Friday

Moscow: An American in Russia

Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov famously went in the other direction, of course — from Russia to the West. But on Nov. 4, South Dakota native and most recently New Yorker David Hallberg, breaks in with the celebrated Bolshoi Ballet as its first foreign principal dancer. More in Stage

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Photo: Still from BBC News video

Pardon the disappearance

When in the course of human events it’s necessary to take a break … you take one. A long one. To tend to family business. To recharge the batteries. To think about how to make this thing better. We’re back, and hoping you will be too.

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