‘Playing the field’ helps to decode the dating game

Vidya Rao

Valentine’s Day.

To some, the mere mention of the day triggers romantic images of couples running together in slow motion through fields of wheat, as orchestral swells and whispers of sweet nothings provide the soundtrack. Full story


Jazz legend Coleman still searching for new sounds

Charles J. Gans

NEW YORK — Ornette Coleman has always kept ahead of the curve, even as a teenager back in Fort Worth, Texas, when he’d play hot jazz licks on the saxophone and get a scolding from his church bandleader. Full story

‘24’ actor finds playing Mandela a ‘daunting’ task

Mike Collett-White

BERLIN — Ask a black actor which person he would be most nervous about playing, and he may well say Nelson Mandela.

That was the task facing actor Dennis Haysbert, best known for portraying President David Palmer on the hit FOX TV series “24,” when he accepted the role in “Goodbye Bafana,” a film describing the effect Mandela had on a prison warden who guarded him for over 20 years.

The movie, which premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival last Sunday, is based on the memoirs of James Gregory, posted to watch over Mandela from the late 1960s to Mandela’s release in 1990 after 27 years in jail. Full story

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