PJ Grisar is a Forward culture reporter. He can be reached at [email protected] and @pjgrisar on Twitter.
PJ Grisar
By PJ Grisar
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Music What You Need To Know About R. Kelly’s Lawyer, Steve Greenberg
R. Kelly’s latest legal case was never going to be a low profile affair. The “Trapped in the Closet” singer, whose real name is Robert Kelly, was arrested in Chicago Friday, February 22, on charges of aggravated sexual abuse spanning over a decade and involving four women, three of whom were minors at the time,…
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Culture At 95, the heroes of the Ghost Army relive the battles of WWII
The 603rd Camouflage Engineers used inflatable tanks, planes and more to dupe the Germans
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Culture ‘Porgy And Bess,’ ‘Akhnaten’ To Lead Met Opera’s 2019-2020 Season
After almost three decades, the Charleston-set “Porgy and Bess” is coming back to the Upper West Side. The Metropolitan Opera’s 2019-2020 season, announced on February 20, will open on September 23 with a new production of Ira and George Gershwin’s folk opera, the first since 1990. The staging, brought over by director James Robinson after…
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Film & TV ‘Curb’ Director Larry Charles Feared Getting Comfortable, Now He’s Swapping Jokes With ISIS
In many ways, Larry Charles has stuck quite close to his creative associate Larry David. They met as writers on the show “Fridays” in the 1980s, collaborated as writer-producers on “Seinfeld” through the ‘90s and continued their partnership well into the new millennium with Charles’ directing on “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” But while David, at least…
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Books Ottessa Moshfegh Fangirled Out At Whoopi Goldberg’s House
Author Ottessa Moshfegh has defied the old warning, “never meet your heroes.” She wasn’t disappointed. Those who’ve read Moshfegh’s second novel, 2018’s “My Year of Rest and Relaxation,” won’t have much trouble guessing who that hero is. Like her book’s unnamed protagonist, who spends a year fettered to her bed self-prescribing medication and binging films…
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Theater A ‘Lolita’ Musical Flopped 50 Years Ago. After #MeToo, Does It Have A Future?
Almost no one wanted to publish Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita.” After multiple rejections, the Russian writer finally managed to place the novel at Olympia Press, a publisher with a reputation for accepting borderline pornographic work, in 1955. While many might have applied those terms to “Lolita,” the narrator of which, Humbert Humbert, is a pedophile, Nabokov…
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Film & TV 30 Years Ago, A Fatwa Against Salman Rushdie Shook The World — And Inspired Larry David
In 2007, on the occasion of his first day teaching literature at Emory University, Salman Rushdie told reporters he receives a “sort of Valentine’s Day card” from the Iranian government each year reminding him the country hasn’t forgotten the bounty it placed on his head in 1989. Today marks the 30th anniversary of Iranian cleric…
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Culture The Secret Jewish History Of ‘Russian Doll’
Netflix’s “Russian Doll” is a Rorschach of a show. The early press has been hot with takes crowing that the dark and funny series is inseparable from star and co-creator Natasha Lyonne’s history of addiction and AA’s signature 12 steps. Others have posited that the constant respawning of the game-programmer protagonist in the same location,…
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