Arts & Life

In “The Hitman’s Bodyguard,” a buddy romp due out this month, he plays, alongside a square Ryan Reynolds, Darius Kincaid, an assassin with a soft heart. Like Mr. Jackson, Darius is equally relentless about work and pleasure. By this stage of his career, Mr. Jackson’s gestures are firmly ingrained in …

Photo James Van Der Beek in “What Would Diplo Do?” Credit Shane McCauley/Viceland James Van Der Beek plays a fictional version of the D.J. Diplo — squint to see the likeness — in Viceland’s first scripted series. And Greg Garcia uses outlandish tales to scare the daylights out of vacationers. …

The Times cover was widely regarded as the first by a major American fashion magazine with a racially mixed readership to feature a black model. Ms. Sims had been a 19-year-old student at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan when she cold-called Mr. Peterson at his Upper East Side …

But we are not meant to linger over such questions. Mr. Norris seems to acknowledge in the shagginess of his exposition that plays, existing so concretely in the world we know, are not always successful at delivering speculative alternatives. He wastes only enough energy on the setup to allow the …

Mr. Smith, the historian David Gilmour wrote in the British newspaper The Independent in 1997, “upset a well-defended orthodoxy that had been entrenched for almost a century.” Photo Credit University of Michigan Press In “Italy: A Modern History,” published in 1959, Mr. Smith caused further outrage by refusing to regard …

Hunt is a deceptively experimental writer. Her sentences flow, her people seem real, her plots more or less cohere. But she is nearly always playing with form on a cellular level. “All Hands,” as it starts, is narrated by a Coast Guard officer who falls off an oil tanker into …

Photo James Van Der Beek as the title character in “What Would Diplo Do?” Credit Shane McCauley/Viceland James Van Der Beek, who came to fame playing the heart-on-his-sleeve hero of “Dawson’s Creek,” is making a midcareer move into alt-comedy. It might seem counterintuitive, but it kind of works, because Mr. …

Photo Lou Wilson and Carly Jibson in “The Guest Book.” Credit Doug Hyun/TBS It is, apparently, the Summer of the Anthology Series About a Rental Property. Last week HBO rolled out “Room 104,” which builds each episode around someone who occupied a particular motel room. On Thursday TBS takes the …

Photo Jim Glancy and John Moore of the Bowery Presents have announced they will be parting ways with two clubs, the Mercury Lounge and Bowery Ballroom. Credit Sasha Maslov for The New York Times When the New York concert promoter the Bowery Presents was sold this year to AEG, the …

They live in an apartment in the city center and commute, in a borrowed Land Rover, to the factories where their clothes are made. They are learning to live without the 24/7 creature comforts of New York: little ethnic food, no takeout, hummus at only one grocery store across town. …