Places & Travel

When it came out in 1961, Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad perplexed and excited audiences with its surrealistic storytelling. John Powers has a review of the film's Criterion Collection re-release.

Author and activist Roya Hakakian offers her take on political upheaval in her native Iran. Hakakian emigrated from Iran to the United States in 1985, seeking political asylum.

Journalist Christopher Dickey provides a European perspective on the continuing crackdown on protesters in Iran following the recent election.

Bloody protests in the streets of Iran following that nation's June 12 presidential election have captivated the world's attention, but what does it all mean? Political analyst Karim Sadjadpour weighs in on the unprecedented events — and who holds the power.

Allison Silverman, the executive producer and head writer of The Colbert Report, discusses the show's recent broadcasts from the combat zone in Iraq.

Ta-Nehisi Coates' pays tribute to his father in his Memoir.

Wall Street Journal columnist Scott McCartney says summer travel will be cheaper this year. McCartney pens the Journal's weekly column "The Middle Seat."

He's not referred to as a Terminator anymore, but back in 1984, a sci-fi thriller made a star out of a cyborg assassin from the future. Film critic David Edelstein reviews the franchise's fourth film.

Gay rights activist Rodger McFarlane was involved in the earliest efforts to combat the transmission of AIDS during the 1980s. McFarlane, who was 54, died May 15. According to his bother, the cause of death was suicide.

The rise of the San Francisco rock scene in the mid-1960s is a well-known story, but one which might have taken an entirely different direction if Frank Werber's fortunes had played out differently.

Journalist Gretchen Peters argues the U.S. should focus on the opium trade in Afghanistan as a way of combating Taliban. Her new book is Seeds of Terror.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan says the most remarkable aspect of Colm Toibin's new novel is its heroine, a "plain Jane" Irish immigrant with limited options.

Rock historian Ed Ward remembers the Detroit label Westbound Records, which recorded early funk, disco and gospel in the 1970s.

Music critic Milo Miles reviews two new albums: Booker T. Jones's Potato Hole, and Allen Toussaint's The Bright Mississippi.

Hans Fallada's 1947 novel, Every Man Dies Alone, presents a memorable portrait of ordinary resistance to Nazism in wartime Germany.

A book about the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay has led to an investigation by the Spanish court. In Torture Team, Philippe Sands alleges that high-ranking members of the Bush administration were responsible for instituting harsh interrogation tactics.

Rock historian Ed Ward explains how New York City's Tin Pan Alley songwriters coped with changing times in the 1960s.

In Let the Right One In, Eli and Oskar are both lonely 12-year-olds — but one of them happens to be a vampire. Critic-at-large John Powers calls the Swedish film "the best vampire movie in the last 75 years."

When Henry Ford bought up a Connecticut-sized chunk of land in the Amazon River basin in 1927, he wasn't just planning to build his own vertically-integrated rubber plantation — he also envisioned the small-town America of his youth, reborn in the jungle.

Movie critic David Edelstein reviews Greg Mottola's new film Adventureland coming-of-age tale that's "quiet and forlorn, yet still somehow light on its feet."