Places & Travel

Film critic David Edelstein reviews Diary of a Mad Black Woman, starring Tyler Perry and Cicely Tyson.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves by Adam Hochschild. It's about the 18th century anti-slavery movement in the British Empire.

Novelist Mary Gordon's new book, Pearl, is about a mother's struggle to understand her daughter's public act of martyrdom. Gordon is the author of seven novels, including Final Payments and The Company of Women), and four nonfiction works.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Downtown: My Manhattan, by Pete Hamill.

Director Jean Pierre Jeunet's new film A Very Long Engagement is set during the end of World War I and is based on the novel by Sebastien Japrisot. It stars Audrey Tautou, who also played the title role in Jeunet's previous film, Amelie.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Rammer Jammer Yellowhammer: A Journey into the Heart of Fan Mania, by Warren St. John, a reporter for The New York Times. The book is about sports mania and the fan mania surrounding the University of Alabama's football team, The Crimson Tide.

The first season of the HBO TV series The Wire is now out on DVD. Critic John Powers has a review.

Suketu Mehta's new book is Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found. It's an exploration of Mehta's hometown, where he returned after a 21-year absence. Born in Bombay, one of the world's most populous areas, Mehta still believes it's the city of the future.

Mehta now lives in New York. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Harper's, Conde Nast Traveler and The Village Voice. He co-wrote a Bollywood movie called Mission Kashmir.

Film critic David Edelstein reviews Closer, starring Jude Law and Natalie Portman, and directed by Mike Nichols.

The latest book by Israeli author Amos Oz is A Tale Of Love And Darkness, a memoir of growing up in Jerusalem in the turbulent 1940s and '50s, when a war-torn Israel was achieving statehood. Oz's home life was as intense as the world outside.

The book follows Oz through his mother's suicide to a growing interest in politics and writing. Along the way, he chooses a new name for himself — Oz, the Hebrew word for strength — over his family's name, Klausner.

James Bennet is the former Jerusalem Bureau chief for The New York Times. He recently returned to the Middle East to cover the death of Arafat and the jockeying for power among the Palestinian factions.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age by Kevin Boyle.

Leigh's social-realist comedies depict British working class life. He begins work on his films without a script, piecing them together from improvisations with his cast. His latest film is Vera Drake about a working class woman in Britain in the 1950s who secretly performs abortions.

Music critic Milo Miles reviews new collections of Bollywood film music: Bollywood for Beginners, The Best of Bollywood, 15 Classic Hits from the Indian Cinema, and The Very Best of Bollywood Songs II.

The Los Angeles theatre improv group The Groundlings celebrates its 30th anniversary. Groundlings launched the careers of the actors and comics including Phil Hartman, Lisa Kudrow and Will Ferrell. We talk with the group's founder, Gary Austin, and former member, Cheryl Hines, who now co-stars in HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Mark Bowden's article about the 25th anniversary of the Iranian Hostage crisis will be featured in the December issue The Atlantic Monthly. On Nov. 4, 1979 a group of Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took hostage the entire American diplomatic team — which resulted in a 15-month international crisis that still has reverberations today. Bowden interviewed the former hostage-takers for his article.

David Margolick, contributing editor at Vanity Fair, co-authored the investigative article in the October issue of the magazine, "The Path to Florida: What Really Happened in the 2000 Election. And What's Going On Right Now." For the article, Margolick talked to some of the Supreme Court law clerks working at the time of the decision in the 2000 presidential election.

The 'Philadelphia Inquirer' is running a 21-day endorsement of Sen. John Kerry, outlining 21 reasons why voters should elect him president. Editorial page editor Chris Satullo and commentary page editor John Timpane talk about the endorsement. On the paper's op-ed page, they've invited guest commentators to write about the reasons why voters should elect Bush instead.

Film critic David Edelstein reviews "sideways".

The acclaimed HBO series begins its third season. Simon is the show's creator and executive producer. Simon was a police reporter for The Baltimore Sun who moved to television and wrote for the show Homicide: Life on the Street. Pelecanos is a D.C.-based crime novelist who now writes for TV and film. Esquire magazine calls him "the poet laureate of the D.C. crime world."