Few Blacks Followed Anderson's Lead

Chris Rock shines as interviewer, but social issues get lost in the weave

(NEWSER) - Chris Rock is a natural and hilarious interviewer, critics agree. But watchers are split on whether the substance of a rather complicated debate shines through in Big Hair, his documentary on black women and their coifs. A sampling:

• Rock has helped craft a film with "much good feeling and instinctive sympathy for our desire to look as good as we can," Roger Ebert writes in the Chicago Sun-Times. Still, the doc is "misleading" about certain things, like the ingredients in hair relaxer, prompting Ebert to wonder: "Why do I know more about this subject than Chris Rock?"

Project a 'weird dream come true' for fans of 2 seminal American composers

(NEWSER) - Beach Boys songster Brian Wilson will put a gloss on unfinished tunes by revered Jazz Age composer George Gershwin. Gershwin’s estate tells the Los Angeles Times that dozens of fragments, from “a few bars to some almost finished songs and everything in between,” have been in limbo since Gershwin’s death more than 70 years ago. The estate had been casting about for artists to complete them, but the pick is a surprise. More»

(NEWSER) - Naomi Sims, the first black model to grace the cover of Ladies Home Journal—and arguably the first black supermodel—has died at 61, the New York Times reports. Her family says the cause was cancer. Sims burst onto the scene in the late 1960s, but chose in the ‘70s to focus on a successful line of beauty products for black women. “There is nothing sadder than an old, broke model,” she once said. More»

New work opening at Guggenheim blasts 23 scents at audience

(NEWSER) - A new opera premiering at the Guggenheim Museum in New York later this month will be a feast for the ears, the eyes—and the nose. Green Aria, a 30-minute "scent opera" years in the making, pairs music with 23 distinct odors blasted at the audience via individual microphone-like emitters. "Perfumery should be the same kind of discipline as music or visual art," the opera's fragrance master tells the Wall Street Journal. More»

(NEWSER) - Most operas weave pretty far-fetched tales, but that isn't license for directors to retell them in ironic or mocking ways, Alex Ross writes in the New Yorker. Reviewing two recent productions at the Met, Ross hails a faithful staging of Verdi's Il Trovatore—but dismisses a high-concept version of Bellini's La Sonnambula that ignores the naturally "languid, trancelike aura of the early arias and duets." More»