Twenty-five years after his cult TV series, Kir Royal, director Helmut Dietl has now come released a sort of ?sequel? for the big screen. Zettl focuses on the high-flying career of a ruthless media man in Berlin. As satire, however, the frigid figures in Zettl fail to warm up to viewers. ...
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Berliner Zeitung lauds Tranströmer as Nobel Prize laureate while bemoaning the general state of poetry and cheap romantics. Neue Zürcher Zeitung wonders how remote Iceland could have developed such a flourishing early book culture. Magyar Narancs is hopeful that Hungary's recent political disasters are helping to sharpen the slogans of reform. In L'Espresso, Umberto Eco continues to barb Berlusconi with thinly veiled references to Napoleon. Philsopher Javier Goma Lanzon prefers pious lies to misanthropic honesty in Babelia. And La Regle du Jeu sings the praises of the Coucou de Rennes.
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We are pleased to announce the return of our weekly Magazine Roundup! Le Monde complains that the left is anything but. Hedonistic and unemployed, Polish youth are becoming like their western counterparts, says Polityka. Eurozine asserts that Gulag literature is not only the territory of the author-eyewitness. In L'Espresso, Umberto Eco takes a stand for Italian universities, which annoy Berlusconi. Berliner Zeitung actually sat quite comfortably through the new stage production of Jonathan Littel's Holocast novel "The Kindly Ones" in Berlin. And Telerama reviews the atheist documentary of Tunisian filmmaker Nadia El Fani.
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The Chronicle claims that when Wagner deployed melodic combinations he was actually summoning up sexual positions. Polityka wonders how to get the Polish film industry back on its feet. Segregation existed before multiculturalism, Nepszabadsag reminds us. The New Republic explains why French is new Ancient Greek. Wikileaks is dictatorial, declares La regle du jeu. The book is becoming a community in time for Christmas, according to the Guardian. And Science Fiction is still alive, Salon says, as yesterday's tomorrow rolls to a close.
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The Nation reminds us that whistleblowers are hated when they are right. El Espectador favourably compares gringo diplomats with Alvaro Uribe. Salon.com reviews a history of information industries. In the LRB, John Lancaster tells the newspapers what and whom we want to read online. Europe is going mestizo announces French philosopher Sami Nair in Lettre. In OpenDemocracy the writer Uladzimier Arlou outlines Belarussian fears. In Salon.eu.sk, Andrey Dynko prepares for Lukashenko 4.0.
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In Eurozine, Tomas Kavaliauskas and Ivaylo Ditchev search for the Lithuanian and Bulgarian identities. The Economist observes the universe going round in circles in the mind of Roger Penrose. Elet es Irodalom explains why its front page was blank last week. OpenDemocracy explains how personality rights are being used in Russia to stop historians doing their job.
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Russian TV doesn't broadcast news but state PR, proclaims journalist Leonid Parfyonov, live on Russian TV (and OpenDemocracy). In the Hungarian HVG, Agnes Heller calls conservative liberals to the barricades. The Guardian reads Vasily Grossman and Houellebecq's poetry. In Rue89, Emmanuel Todd fears the onset of senile democracy. In Literaturen, theologian Gerd Lüdemann outs Jesus as a exorcist. The New Yorker has its eye on the latest status symbols.
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What constitutes good literary sex? asks the Independent. Al Ahram feels strangely at home in Michael Haneke's "White Ribbon". The New York Review of Books finds out how to flog more nappies to grannies. In Clarin, Horacio Bilbao finds out why the songs of Mercedes Sosa were retroactively re-privatised. Newsweek listens to Chinese love songs with the singer Zhu Zhequin. Polityka divides Poland down the middle. Rue89 watches "The Wire" in Marseilles. Tim Berners-Lee makes a stand for the free Internet.
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In Walrus, Dave Cameron recounts the time travels of his cancer-afflicted father. The Nation reads Gal Beckerman's engaging history of Soviet Jewry. Tehelka explains why India's elderly poor live in fear of their own children. What can we expect of a translation, asks Julian Barnes in the LRB. Prospect discovers that Rupert Murdoch has been distracting Iranians from revolution with his trashy soap. John Updike tells Guernica how to steal.
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Wired explains how to break through China's great Firewall. In El Pais Semanal, Felipe Gonzales explains how power functions - except in the Vatican. In Outlook India, Amartya Sen calls for sanctions against Burma. The Economist recommends buying shares on the pirate stock exchange. What European culture are immigrants supposed to integrate into, asks Elet es Irodalom. Is it okay to film the breasts of your teenage daughters, asks Vanity Fair. And in the New York Review of Books, Zadie Smith looks at Facebook and shrinks.
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Tehelka and Outlook defend Arundhati Roy against against acccusations of sedition. In the Paris Review, Michel Houellebecq explains what scandalous sex is. La vie des idees wonders whether Noam Chomsky is really a Manichean leftist. The Nation smells incurable romanticism in Lewis Hyde. The NZZ Folio knows why big brains are so often broke. The Guardian celebrates former East German writer Jenny Erpenbeck.
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Digitalisation will not kill the publishing industry but it will turn it on its head, according to Prospect. Esprit asks why it was the burqa of all things that has united Flemish and Walloons. Outlook feels the pulse of an ailing press. In Slate, Anne Applebaum is impressed that the French and British have stayed true to stereotype as axes fall. The New York Times portrays the Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Salon.com visits a Ghanaian witch camp.
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How much differentiation can Islamism take, asks Foreign Affairs. Mitterrand was responsible for 45 beheadings in Algeria, Le Point informs us. In Eurozine, Michael Azar explains why Albert Camus believed, nevertheless, that France was the best possible future for Algeria. In Elet es Irodalom, Zsolt Lang admires Mario Vargas Llosa's Dulcineas of flesh and blood. Atlantic Monthly longs for the thoroughly unhappy love story.
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In the New Yorker, Gawker founder Nick Denton hopes to strike gold online. In Elet and Irodalom Peter Nadas is convinced that a bourgeoisie is forming in Hungary. Prospect boards the jolly trolleyology. France's Sarrazin has been born in the form of Hugues Lagrange, who defends his corner in Telerama. The TLS introduces the cricket-bat wielding Allahakbarries. Remi Brague and Jerome di Costanzo insist in Open Democracy, that secularism is a Catholic invention. And in the NYRB, Alma Guillermoprieto deplores the Mexican catastrophe.
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In Al Ahram, Egyptian authors ask why their books have been banned from the Kuwait Book Fair. Lawrence Lessig carves up the Facebook film for the New Republic. In Salon.eu.sk, author Drago Jancar remembers the murder of thousands of Slovenian soldiers by the communists. Rue89 reports on the advertising boycott that was the death of the Moroccan magazine Nichane. In Nepszabadsag, Agnes Heller is not remotely surprised about the decline of democracy in Hungary. In Granta, four Pakistani writers explain how to write about Pakistan.
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Must we be modern? Alain Finkielkraut asks in Sinn und Form. The Boston Review watches blood fill the heads of Sonya and Leo Tolstoy. In Prospect, the children of immigrant families throw multiculturalism into the bin. Polityka discovers how the author Slawomir Mrozek wrestled with his Polishness and those wet Polish hens. MicroMega celebrates the democratic astuteness of Mario martone's film "Noi credevamo". Eurozine reads the correspondence between Hannah Arendt and Leni Yahil. The New York Times finds out why a cat sat on Kafka's unpublished legacy is as good as burning.
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