Elvis Costello has kept his fans on their toes by zig-zagging musically over the last twenty-five years, taking detours into chamber music, jazz and creamy pop. For his latest recording, My Flame Burns Blue, Costello teams up with a Dutch big band called Metropole Orkest. They play ...

The movie Crash, by writer-director Paul Haggis, is one of the big contenders for Best Picture at this weekend's Academy Awards. Crash follows a diverse group of strangers in Los Angeles who literally and figuratively crash into one another, altering their lives forever. That premise will sound ...

The main character in Roger Rosenblatt's new novel lives in the Hamptons -- the summer playground for New York's insultingly rich. There is no shortage of annoyances to fuel Harry March's rants, but his anger overloads when his neighbor Lapham air conditions the lawn of his super-sized ...

Michael Chorost was born with a severe hearing impairment, the result of a rubella epidemic in the 1960s. He used hearing aids, learned to speak, went to regular schools and got his Ph.D. in English. Then, a few years ago, Michael's residual hearing abruptly gave out. His ...

Once again, audiences on Broadway are attending the tale of Sweeney Todd, Stephen Sondheim's musical masterpiece, which first shocked audiences back in 1979. This innovative revival shifts the setting of the musical from the streets of Victorian London to an insane asylum. Another strange thing: there is no orchestra. As ...