Rio de Janeiro: Samba, samba, 365! Insanely danceable, eminently exportable, the samba has become Rio’s infectious contribution to world dance and culture. The world’s obsession with Carnival only skims the surface of a dance and lifestyle that’s integral to lives in Rio all year long. Sibel Tinar of...

Updike: A mind at work For more than 50 years, in novels, poetry and short stories, John Updike plumbed the psyche of middle America with a body of work as passionate, perspicacious and voluminous as any writer in American history. It’s only natural that there must be a personal archives. Sam Tanenhaus...

Survivor: Sarah Palin TLC, the cable channel with a yen for reality programming pegged to women TV viewers, gets set to start work on an eight-episode Mark Burnett-produced series starring conservative lightning rod and political personality Sarah Palin. For TLC, it’s a decision that’s all of a piece...

‘Red,’ ‘Memphis’ lead a Tony affair ”Red” and “Memphis” paced the field at Sunday’s Tony Awards ceremony in New York, winning 10 Tonys between them for best play and best musical. Hollywood came to Broadway: Film stars Denzel Washington, Viola Davis, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Scarlet Johansson were winners...

U.K.: Big Brother bows out The British show, a guilty viewing pleasure that defined the U.K.'s take on reality television (spawning Jade Goody and the cult of citizen celebrity), ends its run 13 weeks from now, its producers have announced.                 ...

Los Angeles: Jazz lives! For author and longtime jazz aficionado Tom Nolan, Los Angeles is a hotbed of jazz, the same way it used to be decades ago, back when Central Avenue was the main artery of the city's jazz music scene: “You can still find it all over the Southland — you just may have to look...

Radio's indie darling National Public Radio, bastion of a scholarly, liberal, Birkenstocked brand of cool, has lately seen the benefits of its 2007 launch of NPR Music — among them, the imprimatur of various alt-music talents who use the site, bypassing iTunes and going straight for the original social...

Explaining America: Dennis Hopper  (1936-2010) The long goodbyes can be the worst. The one we’ve been enduring for Dennis Lee Hopper ended on Saturday, when the writer, actor, director, producer, visual artist, sculptor, photographer and hellraiser of a rare order died of advanced prostate cancer,...

Gary Coleman dies Gary Coleman, whose signature catchphrase “What you talkin’ about, Willis?” helped his catapult to fame in the late 1970s as the star of the hit sitcom "Diff'rent Strokes" and whose post “Strokes” life was colorful, controversial and sometimes punctuated with run-ins with the law,...