Heidi, Nina, Tim, and Michael—together for the first time since they moved to Lifetime. Will the show still make it work?

I never knew that a person could actually be bored to tears until I read Josh Neufeld’s new graphic book about Hurricane Katrina. follows five real-life storylines in the lead-up to, and immediate aftermath of, the storm. The illustrations are acceptable, the narrative structure is unimaginative, the characters merit only the briefest (often reductive) treatment, and I whipped through it in an hour. And yet I wept. Twice.

We TV is rolling out the fifth batch of its docuseries , which rummages through the dirty laundry of the fairer sex. Munchausen moms, phone-sex operators, and Wiccan priestesses reveal their unorthodox lives and the lengths to which they go to maintain them. There’s no equivalent show for men, and if there were, even the title would sound silly. Men, it seems, don’t have interesting secrets, and as TV fodder, they’re worthless.

They may be the two most terrifying words in publishing: Anna Wintour. Those dark glasses, that scowl, the fur coats that protect her like armor—even Meryl Streep was afraid to caricature her too much in So it’s surprising that in the new documentary , which chronicles ’s biggest month of the year, Wintour comes off as so likable. She’s hardworking, diligent, nurturing—the kind of boss you’d actually want, even if she didn’t wear Prada. Credit this fresh portrayal to R. J. Cutler, the film’s director and a documentary veteran (). We wondered: if he likes Wintour, what else does he like?

At the climax of Quentin Tarantino’s latest movie, , which is set during World War II and which is concerned, at least superficially, with Jews, you get to witness a horribly familiar Holocaust atrocity—with a deeply unfamiliar twist. A group of unsuspecting people is tricked into entering a large building; the doors of the building are locked and bolted from the outside; then the building is set on fire. The twist here is not that Tarantino, a director with a notorious penchant for explicit violence, shows you in loving detail what happens inside the burning building—the desperate banging on the doors, the bodies alight, the screams, confusion, the flames. The twist is that this time the people inside the building are Nazis and the people who are killing them are Jews. What you make of the movie—and what it says about contemporary culture—depends on whether that inversion will leave audiences cheering or horrified.

Stop being nostalgic for the 40-year-old concert. It was wet, crowded, and overhyped.

Julia Child, the world’s most-beloved chef, made it look so easy. But as I learned, it’s hard to master the art of French cooking.

Julia Child, the world’s most-beloved chef, made it look so easy. But as I learned, it’s hard to master the art of French cooking.

The famous blogger is now the title character of Julie & Julia. So why has the blogging community turned against her?

“Slipping away quietly in her sleep late last week may have been the only unspectacular thing Julia Child ever did,” I wrote in August 2004 in NEWSWEEK. But I was wrong. Julia Child is not dead. Not as long as Meryl Streep inhabits her big-boned, 6-foot-2 frame; fills her size 12 shoes; sets the corners of her eyes in a permanent crinkle; and causes her voice—that voice!—to bubble up from some sweet, deep place in her soul. In Nora Ephron’s film , which opens this week, you’re convinced that Julia Child is still here. This is reassuring stuff for those of us who learned to cook from . Watching the determined Julia slip a piece of carbon paper (carbon paper!) between two sheets of onionskin and roll them into her typewriter for the first time is quietly thrilling—like being there at the creation. “French people eat French food every single day! I can’t get over it,” Julia/Meryl says as she begins her midlife culinary adventure. Julia’s (and Meryl’s) diphthonging way of talking makes us laugh. Hell, her very laughter make us laugh.