Tuesday, July 31, 2007
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An interview with David Edelstein
Paul Morton, Bookslut
Interview with journalist David Edelstein.Q: That brings us back to Natural Born Killers and why you hate that movie so deeply. A: Because Oliver Stone turns serial killers into existential heroes. Because he raises them to a mythic plain where we’re supposed to see these Ayn Randian exalted individuals, rock and roll conquistadors. We’re supposed to rock out to the carnage. There’s a moral indifference in that movie.
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God-fearing people
Christopher Hitchens, Slate
“Why are we so scared of offending Muslims?”If I choose to spit on a copy of the writings of Ayn Rand or Karl Marx or James Joyce, that is entirely my business.
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Party Come Here
Frank Rizzo, Variety
Theater review.Story centers on nebbishy Jack ([Hunter] Foster) who, somewhat improbably, is about to marry beautiful, Ayn Rand-loving Kate ([Kate] Reinders).
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Angelina’s Chicago raid
Bill Zwecker, Chicago Sun-Times
Atlas Shrugged movie
Jolie is [...] providing voice talent for the upcoming ''Beowulf'' and ''Kung Fu Panda''; starring in ''The Changeling,'' and is expected soon to begin the long-delayed ''Atlas Shrugged,'' based on the Ayn Rand novel.
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Tom Snyder, one of a kind
Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times - calendarlive.com
On TV talk-show host Tom Snyder, who died recently.Guests [of the Tomorrow show] included John Lennon (his last TV interview), Muhammad Ali, Alfred Hitchcock, John "Johnny Rotten" Lydon, the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia, Steven Spielberg and Ayn Rand.
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Legendary talk-show host Tom Snyder dies
Mark Schoifet, Bloomberg
Notable guests [of The Tomorrow Show] included authors Ayn Rand and Harlan Ellison, and the last TV interview given by former Beatle Lennon, in 1975.
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Tom Snyder, TV talk host, dies at 71
Bill Carter, New York Times
(Subscription required.)The [Tomorrow] show’s guest list included names like Spiro Agnew, Jimmy Hoffa, the Watergate prosecutor Leon Jaworski, Marlon Brando, the author Ayn Rand and Alfred Hitchcock.
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Hearts and souls dissected, in 12 minutes or less
Dave Itzkoff, New York Times
(Subscription required.) On television talk-show host Tom Snyder, who died recently.The [Tomorrow] show could vary wildly in its guest selection from bleary-eyed night to night: one episode might feature a cerebral interview with the author Ayn Rand, another a freewheeling chat with the rock band Kiss.
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Report portrays former top executives at Motive as willing to cut corners
Robert Elder, American-Statesman (Austin, TX)
[Scott Harmon] co-founded Motive in 1997 and became known for a hard-driving style — encouraging his employees to take martial arts classes — and a devotion to writer Ayn Rand, a champion of individualism and unfettered capitalism. "We're not warm and fuzzy, there's not a lot of cheerleading, and we don't give back rubs on Fridays," he told Forbes magazine in 2003.
Monday, July 30, 2007
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Whittaker Chambers: Journalist
Ron Capshaw, FrontPage Magazine
Atlas Shrugged
[Chambers'] sense of mission entailed cleansing conservatism of its more soulless elements such as Ayn Rand. Chambers’ review of Atlas Shrugged compared her atheistic capitalism to Karl Marx: “He too admired naked self interest …and for much the same reasons as Miss Rand: because, he believed, it cleansed away the cobwebs of religion and led to prodigies of industrial and cognate accomplishments.”
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Johnny Depp as Hunter S. Thompson again!
Josh Tyler, Cinema Blend
The way some people form cults and devote themselves to worshipping the works of Ayn Rand or that guy Jesus, that’s how I feel about Hunter S. Thompson’s story of rum guzzling and raving insanity. The first time I read it, “The Rum Diary” literally changed my life.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
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Sex, love and the scolding psychotherapist
Mary Jo Murphy, New York Times
Capitalism
Excerpts from the books of psychotherapist Albert Ellis, who died recently.From “Is Objectivism a Religion?,” in which [Ellis] takes on Ayn Rand: [....] “[Objectivism] remains in a world of ‘rational’ fictions and it invents innumerable fantasies about capitalism and refuses to admit its fantasizing.”
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Taking a cultural odyssey with Homer
Tim Swift, Baltimore Sun
It was [The Simpsons] that introduced me to HMS Pinafore, Citizen Kane, A Streetcar Named Desire and even the works of Ayn Rand.
Saturday, July 28, 2007
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Architects vie for Parker Project
James LaRue, YourHub.com Castle Rock (CO)
The Fountainhead
When I was in high school, I read a book that changed my life. It was Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead."
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Box-office heroes
Biswadeep Ghosh, Pune Times (India)
Authors have always had loyal fans. But nowadays, reading certain authors has become more of a status symbol. Ankit Tandon, manager in an engineering company, says, “Yes, there are such authors. Today, everybody is supposed to have read Paulo Coelho, Ayn Rand, John Grisham, Deepak Chopra and even J K Rowling!”