Bad Tour Reviews
Houston’s Glorious Voice:
Perhaps Gone Forever?

NEW YORK--In her prime, nobody could touch Whitney Houston’s towering gospelized mezzo-soprano. [Read full story]  

Grier!
New Book Is Collection of Lessons Learned by Actress

Pam Grier, who manages to exude toughness and sensuality in equal measure, has also managed to embody many of the cultural shifts of the last 40 years. [Read full story]

Books Bind

As a child in an all-Black Philadelphia neighborhood, Jerry Pinkney loved to draw and paint.  But, he said, “I didn’t have the slightest clue that anyone could make a living doing that.”
[Read full story]

 

Khaki, Man!
A Leaner, Sexier Look, but Decidedly More Dressed Up Than Jeans

NEW YORK--The country may not be in the midst of a great color conciliation, what with Red and Blue paint balls flying as furiously as ever, but fashion is. [Read full story]

Men Who Share a Name Take Different Paths in Life

On a glorious spring afternoon, sunshine glitters off the bales of silver barbed wire at Maryland’s vast Jessup Correctional Institution prison complex. [Read full story

‘Memphis Beat’
The Blues, Southern
Charm, Crime Blended

LOS ANGELES--A new sound arrived for the summer on Tuesday, and it stars Alfre Woodard. [Read full story]

A Group Exhales
Harlem Stage, a Multidisciplinary Performing Arts Center, Gets Temporary Break

Artistic success has never been Harlem Stage’s problem. 
[Read full story]

Entertainment

A Documentary
For Lee, a New Requiem Produced for New Orleans

 

 

NEW YORK--Four years ago Spike Lee took his cameras to New Orleans to document the disaster wrought by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, as told by the people still dealing with its calamitous effects. 
The film Mr. Lee returned with was “When the Levees Broke:  A Requiem in Four Acts,” a four-hour HBO documentary that won a Peabody Award and three Emmys.
As the fifth anniversary of Katrina approached, Mr. Lee went back to New Orleans this year, hoping to tell the story of that city’s recovery and rejuvenation.
Instead, his new documentary, “If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise” ended up with a predecessor. 
As the new movie revisits many people seen in “Levees,” who are still grappling with the fallout from Katrina, they are dealt a second disaster:  the explosion of a BP drilling rig that flooded the Gulf Coast with oil--and sent Mr. Lee and his team scrambling to rework what they thought was a finished film.