CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT

Photo Emmanuelle Devos via The Paris Review.

“If you saw American Hustle with your parents, as I did last Christmas, you will have noticed something that set it apart from pretty much every Hollywood movie of the last few years. I refer to the sex appeal of Amy Adams. Her hotness was a blast from the past, and not just because of the disco décolleté. For some reason, Hollywood doesn’t really do sexy these days, at least not in female roles—and certainly not compared to the French.” Intrigued? Have a look at this week’s staff picks readings in The Paris Review. E.T.P. 5'

 

Photo via NPR.

"Have you ever had a sentence stop you in your tracks? Editors at The American Scholar magazine have put out their list of the "" in fiction and nonfiction. Associate editor Margaret Foster says the inspiration came from water cooler talk around the office." Read full article in NPR. E.T.P. 3'

Still of the short via Slate.

The new Muppets movie centers around a showdown between Kermit and his evil doppelganger, and so of course there was one place the comedy was destined to go: the Mirror Routine. Muppets Most Wanted is only the latest in more than a century of movies to include the gag, in which two characters stand on opposite sides of an empty mirror frame and one pretends to be the other’s reflection. Almost every great comedian, from Charlie Chaplin to the Marx Brothers to Adam Sandler to Bugs Bunny, has at some point in their career performed their own variation of the bit. Watch a nice super cut of the evolution of the Mirror Routine in Slate Magazine. E.T.P. 2' 30''