GOINGS ON NOVEMBER 15 - 21, 2023

What we're watching, listening to, and doing this week.

IN FRONT OF THEIR FACES

Does facial-recognition technology lead police to ignore contradictory evidence?

INFINITE ART

The artist Holly Herndon prepares for a world shaped by ALL.

THE WAR ON CHAPLIN

Why the Tramp had to be brought low.

WILD REEDS

James Austin Smith proves that an oboist can have an adventurous solo career.

THE THEATRE THE HUMAN COMEDY

Off Of Broadway serves up FOOD,” Redwood,” and Faust.”

REALITY BITES

“The Curse,” on Showtime.

Annals of Crime – Desert Captives

An Eritrean started a trafficking business. Then he began kidnapping his clients for ransom.

Letter from Israel – In the Cities of Killing

The Hamas massacre, the air strikes in Gaza, and what comes after

A Dangerous Man

Why Congo's independence leader Patrice Lumumba had to die

COPING MECHANISMS

Philip Roth's \"Sabbath's Theater\" adapted for the stage, and \"I Need That.\"

TRYSTS TROPIQUES

The nested narratives of Tan Twan Eng's \"The House of Doors.\"

MAKE ME

Is free will an illusion? You decide.

THE CURRENT CINEMA MAN DOWN

\"Priscilla\" and \"Dream Scenario.\"

Our Time Is Up Clare Sestanovich

The mirrors reveal when it’s time to clean again. A thin layer of dust on the one in the bed room, toothpaste and fingerprints on the one in the bathroom, which doubles as a cabinet door. All the windows become mirrors at the end of the day, when it takes a subtle adjustment of the eyes to look through yourself instead of at yourself. But the windows will never be cleaned; the most that can be hoped for is a hard, purifying rain. There’s a yellow streak of bird shit on the glass in the living room, crusted over now, and the kitchen window still bears the ghostly pattern that Angela once traced on the fogged-up surface while waiting for something on the stove, she can no longer remember what: a pot to boil, a formless egg to acquire edges and turn opaque, a single drop of oil to escape its pan and scald her out of her thoughts.

NAPOLEON COMPLEX

Does Ridley Scott see himself in the hero of his epic new film?

CARLOS GOFFMÁN, (EL GUAPO) FACT CHECKER

During a period of incarceration scheduled to last fifty years to life, Carlos (El Guapo) Goffmán, the former drug lord, has started a new career as a fact checker and researcher to earn cigarette money in prison. Authorities have looked the other way at Goffmán’s nonobservance of the rule against inmate cell-phone use, but have recorded his end of the calls.

DEPT. OF SCIENCE REINVENTING THE DINOSAUR

A documentary renews our fascination with our feared and loved precursors.

THE ORGANIZER

How Bayard Rustin managed the civil-rights movement.

The Critics – Books– Trapped

The life and death of Tupac Shakur

LOOSE LIPS

Clandestine affairs in Fellow Travelers.”

MASTERING

“The Killer” and The Holdovers.”

THE BRUNCH BUNCH

Stephen Sondheim’ last musical, Here We Are,” at the Shed.

THE BELIEVER

Did Mitt Romney save his soul?

BOXED OUT

The passing of prestige TV

ON THE LINE

The future of American labor politics

The Ghosts of Gloria Lara

Before that year, I knew nothing about Colombia—nothing real. I was eleven and too focussed on the Dominican Republic I’d left behind and on my own immigrant bullshit to worry about anywhere else

LAST WATCH

In a technological age, lighthouse devotees renew an ancient tradition

THROUGH THE SMOKE

The aftermath of the Maui wildfires

"My Name is Barbra," Excerpted

With her long-awaited memoir, Barbra Streisand offers a funny and frank look at her career, six decades in