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A New York Times star columnist has lashed Barack Obama for axing people who helped him to the top from his lavish 60th birthday guest list in favor of A-list stars. Maureen Dowd branded Obama 'Barack Antoinette' - a reference to the out-of-touch renaissance queen - and likened him to Jay Gatsby, the shallow people-pleaser from F Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby in her scathing piece, published Saturday. She highlighted how the former president cut his ex-chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and former campaign strategist David Axelrod from the original 600-person guest list, despite both helping him secure his...

The classics are classics for a reason and offer valuable, time-worn lessons about humanity itself.We were excited to see the sign at the Lansing Mall: Barnes and Noble Booksellers. My roommate and I, on our spring break excursions, were shopping in another city when we spotted the national bookselling chain. We envisioned a long hour of perusing the great books — from Cicero to Tolstoy, Shakespeare to Dickens, Plato to Faulkner. My roommate joked she never made it out of a bookstore without purchasing at least one volume.After walking through a maze of board games, Harry Potter paraphernalia, and $10...

Robert Evans passed away on Saturday night at the age of 89. The Hollywood legend made his mark on the industry starting in the 1967 when he became the head of Paramount Pictures. The Godfather, Chinatown, The Godfather Part II, Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple, Rosemary's baby, Harold and Maude, Serpico, True Grit, The Italian Job and The Great Gatsby were just a few of the films released during his tenure. At the same time, Evans was thrust into the spotlight when his third of seven wives, Ali McGraw, left him for Steven McQueen. Evans later fell on...

In 1976, 16-year-old model Babi Christina Engelhardt embarked on a hidden eight-year affair with the 41–year-old filmmaker that mirrors one of his most famous movies. Now, amid the #MeToo reckoning and Allen’s personal scandals, she looks back with mixed emotions on their relationship and its unequal dynamic. Sixteen, emerald-eyed, blond, an aspiring model with a confident streak and a painful past: Babi Christina Engelhardt had just caught Woody Allen's gaze at legendary New York City power restaurant Elaine's. It was October 1976, and when Engelhardt returned from the ladies' room, she dropped a note on his table with her phone...

If you haven't already, you're going to hear a whole bunch of gripes about "The Great Gatsby" movie out this weekend. And the biggest of them all will likely have something to do with how faithful it was to the classic F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. Needless to say, there are some significant changes. But there are significant changes in "Iron Man" when put up against the comic books -- sometimes change is necessary, and even good. Then again, sometimes they're not.

The best advice I ever got about reading came from the critic and scholar Louis Menand. Back in 2005, I spent six months in Boston and, for the fun of it, sat in on a lit seminar he was teaching at Harvard. The week we were to read Gertrude Stein’s notoriously challenging Tender Buttons, one student raised her hand and asked—bravely, I thought—if Menand had any advice about how best to approach it. In response, he offered up the closest thing to a beatific smile I have ever seen on the face of a book critic. “With pleasure,” he replied....

“The Great Gatsby” has united generations of American readers with its crash-and-burn tale of empty elegance and impossible love on Long Island in the 1920s. Now the novel is dividing the nation’s booksellers with dueling paperback editions: the enigmatic blue cover of the original and the movie tie-in book that went on sale Tuesday, a brash, flashy version with Leonardo DiCaprio front and center. The new edition is timed with the 3-D film adaptation, directed by Baz Luhrmann and starring Mr. DiCaprio, that will arrive in theaters on May 10. So far this year, sales of the paperback with the...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2jh6XkjrHU&list=PL9pRcaYn5SdyILL3bVgSfwDcTJYlRujfV&index=1&feature=plpp_video Today's feature is the 2nd film version and 1st talking one of F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel about the mysterious Jay Gatsby and the decadent rich Long Islanders of the Jazz Age. This version has been harder to find. I don't believe it's ever been officially released on home video and it's rarely if ever aired on TV. I suppose Paramount may have limited exposure of it in favor of its better known lavish 1974 remake with Robert Redford. Not a perfect film(the death of Myrtle is unintentionally hilarious) but worth watching for fans of the novel. Alan Ladd...

Maybe F. Scott Fitzgerald is rolling in his grave. Then again, maybe not. All I know is, entrepreneurial 'N Sync singer Lance Bass is getting ready to produce a big-screen take on "The Great Gatsby" with Paris Hilton as an updated Daisy Buchanan. Maybe someone will ask Paris tonight at her, uh, book party if she's even read "The Great Gatsby." Perhaps Merle Ginsberg, the ghostwriter of "Confessions of an Heiress: A Tongue-in-Chic Peek Behind the Pose," will read it to her tonight at Lot 61. Anyway, if Bass and his partners get their way, the Jay Gatsby character will...