Author: NY TIMES

This rom-com brings futuristic absurdity and nimble timing to a comfort-food story line of friends turned soul mates. Source link

Less than two weeks after bombs began raining down on the Gaza Strip, Ghada al-Kurd arrived in the southern city of Khan Younis. She had already been displaced three times, and hoped it would be her final journey to safety.But three months later, Israeli forces advanced south. Ms. al-Kurd, 37, speaking by telephone, said she, her sister, brother-in-law, and four nieces and nephews abandoned the tent they had been sharing “without taking anything with us,” and headed to Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city.Many of the roughly 1.7 million Gazans that U.N. agencies say have been displaced by Israel’s relentless bombardment and…

Long before Donald J. Trump threatened over the weekend that he was willing to let Russia “do whatever the hell they want” against NATO allies that do not contribute sufficiently to collective defense, European leaders were quietly discussing how they might prepare for a world in which America removes itself as the centerpiece of the 75-year-old alliance.Even allowing for the usual bombast of one of his campaign rallies, where he made his declaration on Saturday, Mr. Trump may now force Europe’s debate into a far more public phase.So far the discussion in the European media has focused on whether the…

True-crime doc watchers who are in committed relationships may see “Lover, Stalker, Killer,” a bracing account of a lurid series of misdeeds directed by Sam Hobkinson, and breathe a sigh of relief over being out of the dating pool.It begins in 2012, when Dave Kroupa, an auto mechanic in Omaha, was rebounding from a breakup. He finds himself at 35, single and ready to mingle. On a dating app he meets Liz Golyar (likes bowling, enjoys giving the finger to video cameras, as per the archival footage) and then, believing their relationship to be nonexclusive, also takes up with one…

Soon after former President Donald J. Trump took office, his staff explained how NATO’s mutual defense obligations worked.“You mean, if Russia attacked Lithuania, we would go to war with Russia?” he responded. “That’s crazy.”Mr. Trump has never believed in the fundamental one-for-all-and-all-for-one concept of the Atlantic alliance. Indeed, he spent much of his four-year presidency undermining it while strong-arming members into keeping their commitments to spend more on their own militaries with the threat that he would not come to their aid otherwise.But he took it to a whole new level over the weekend, declaring at a rally in South…

Steve Ostrow, the founder of the Continental Baths — an extravagant gay men’s sex club and performance space that flourished at the turn of the 1970s in the basement of the Ansonia Hotel, a Beaux-Arts landmark on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, and launched the careers of Bette Midler and Barry Manilow — died on Feb. 3 at his home in Sydney, Australia. He was 91.His death was announced by Toby Usnik, a friend. Mr. Ostrow’s business plan in 1968 was to create a gay fantasia, a palace devoted to hedonism. The Ansonia, built at the turn of the century by…

Joe Keery plays a seeming dupe in a crime movie that plays dumb, then tries to play smart, but only becomes dumber. Source link

Israeli leaders have framed an invasion of the southern Gaza city of Rafah as an imperative to achieve its goal of eliminating Hamas. But it’s a strategy that is fraught with complexity and is generating criticism over the potentially catastrophic impact such an operation would have on the more than 1 million Gazans sheltering there.The planning will likely take Israel’s military some time, Israeli officials and analysts said on Sunday. A major challenge for Israeli forces will be how to move civilians who have crowded into the city out of harm’s way. Many Gazans fled to Rafah on the instructions…

At Completedworks, a jewelry studio in London, hand-threaded seed pearls and candy-colored globs of bio resins united by knots, ties and weaves have become recurring creations.“Our beadwork definitely allows for expressiveness,” said Anna Jewsbury, the studio’s artistic director and founder, “because you can compose and arrange in a freehand way, but it’s also time- and labor-intensive work that can only be achieved by hand, and requires a huge amount of patience.” A choker-length necklace called Cove (685 pounds, or $870), combining baroque pearls with twisted threads of tiny freshwater pearls, can take at least a day to make, she noted.Jennifer…

Lilly Calman is not in the mood this Valentine’s Day for the flowers, chocolates or a romantic dinner for two, especially after a recent breakup.“I’m very angry,” said Ms. Calman, 26, adding that it had been painful to see all the holiday paraphernalia in store aisles.She found a more fitting outlet for her mood this year: a fund-raiser for the San Antonio zoo that will symbolically name a roach or rodent after an ex and feed it to one of the zoo’s animals.“The visual image of him getting eaten by a Komodo dragon is pretty satisfying,” said Ms. Calman, who…