Does Having Options Make Us Happier?
Part 1 of the TED Radio Hour episode The Pursuit of Happiness. Watch Barry Schwartz’s full Talk — The Paradox of Choice — on TED.com About Barry Schwartz’s TEDTalk Psychologist Barry Schwartz takes aim at a central tenet of western societies: freedom of choice. In Schwartz’s estimation, choice has made us not freer but more [...]
Kathyrn Schulz: Why Should We Embrace Regret?
Part 2 of the TED Radio Hour episode The Pursuit of Happiness. Watch Kathryn Schulz’s full Talk — Don’t Regret Regret — on TED.com About Kathryn Schulz’s TEDTalk We’re taught to try to live life without regret. But why? Using her own tattoo as an example, Kathryn Schulz makes a powerful and moving case for [...]
‘Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’: Retirement, Outsourced
Outsourcing gets a new twist in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, a likable if market-driven ensemble comedy about a pack of cash-poor British elders who ship out for India, hoping for one last stab at self-renewal in a supposedly glam hotel. The lonely seniors have two things in common: the usual big-screen bucket-list array of [...]
For Americans’ Water, It’s ‘Last Call At The Oasis’
Eco-aware filmgoers won’t learn much from Last Call at the Oasis, which follows the paths of such well-known water activists as Erin Brockovich. But writer-director Jessica Yu’s documentary may be slick enough to reach people who aren’t already familiar with such substances as “new water,” atrazine and hexavalent chromium. Inspired by Alex Prud’homme’s book The [...]
A ‘Superhero’ At The End Of His Powers
There are no three words less likely to inspire a fun time at the movies than “kid with cancer.” And yet here is Death of a Superhero, the second film in less than a year with that log line — and the second one that manages to turn the grimmest of grim subjects into something [...]
Seven Dancers, Chasing Big Dreams At The Barre
One of the most striking moments early in the documentary First Position comes when a talented ballet student, an 11-year-old boy named Aran, inserts his foot into a sort of clamp that holds it in a mercilessly pointed position. “This is a foot stretcher,” he says. “Hurts a lot.” It’s curious that an entire genre [...]
Implausibles, Assemble!: Other Hollywood Character Pile-Ups We’d Like To See
The Avengers is getting a lot of mileage out of uniting the stars of several different films for one big, knock-down-drag-out superfilm in which there are so many people floating in from hither and yon that you would be forgiven for expecting a cameo from Plastic Man. (There isn’t one.) But it doesn’t seem like [...]
‘The Avengers’: Superheroic Popcorn Fun At Its Best
That crashing sound you’ll hear emanating from cineplexes this weekend will be the sound of comic-book superheroes smashing box-office records. Actually, the smashing started last weekend, when Marvel’s The Avengers opened in 39 territories around the world, scooping up a cool $178 million in three days. And with legions of fans having already bought advance [...]
Julia Louis-Dreyfus: From ‘Seinfeld’ To ‘Veep’
Julia Louis-Dreyfus will forever be known to millions as Elaine Benes, the character she played for nine seasons on Seinfeld. But she was also an early cast member of Saturday Night Live, and she won the Emmy for Best Comedy Actress while starring in the CBS series The New Adventures of Old Christine, which ran [...]
‘The Avengers’: A Marvel-Ous Whedonesque Ride
Two spheres merge in The Avengers: the Marvel Comics universe and the Whedonverse, fans’ name for the nerdy wisecracking existentialist superhero world of writer-director Joss Whedon. The Whedon cult is smaller but maybe more fervent, inspiring academic conferences on such subjects as free will vs. determinism in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I find a lot [...]
programs
events
audio
