A few detectives in the drug unit are sitting around chatting in the 2002 pilot of “The Wire,” when one offers his thoughts on the war on drugs: “You can’t even call this (expletive) a war. … Wars end.” That “war” still rages 20 years later, and its destruction is evident across the country – […]

VENICE — The Venice Biennale – art’s forever fraught answer to the Olympics – provides a precious opportunity to take the culture’s temperature and speculate on where things are headed. It’s where the art world announces new talent, revives becalmed careers and, just as often, submerges dreams of stardom in lagoons of indifference. This year’s […]

Burdened by mountains of debt, Nicolas Cage spent much of the last 15 years saying yes to just about any offer. He appeared in some 50 films, at least half of which were low-budget, direct-to-video schlock that typically vanished into the single digits of Rotten Tomatoes reviews. Yet Cage remained Cage, outrageous and outsize, strutting […]