Arts & Life

FBI special agent Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) reunites with agent Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) in Fox's new X-Files series, which premieres Sunday night.

Arts

'X-Files' Reboot Brings Back Mulder, Scully And The Search For Truth

1:26pm January 22, 2016

by David Bianculli

David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson reunite in Fox's six-episode revival of its famous science fiction series. TV critic David Bianculli says the new X-Files is worth investigating.

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The Big Bite Burger from Guy's American Kitchen and Bar in New York's Times Square. In 2012, New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells penned an infamous takedown of the restaurant.

'Times' Restaurant Critic Dishes On Guy Fieri And The Art Of Reviewing

11:44am January 22, 2016

Restaurant critic Pete Wells tries to keep the customer in mind with all of his reviews. "We show awful lot of deference to chefs in our culture and maybe not enough deference to customers," he says.

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Danny Bowien says Sichuanese cuisine is "really about balance and restraint and not having things be over-the-top spicy." Bowien's Chongqing Chicken Wings, featured in The Mission Chinese Cookbook, are pictured above.

Books
Arts

The Audacious Korean-American Chef Who Mastered 'Mission Chinese Food'

9:45am January 22, 2016

Born in South Korea, raised in Oklahoma, Danny Bowien was an adult when he taught himself to make Chinese food. That DIY vibe to his cooking has made him a rising star. Now he's written a cookbook.

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Steven Avery in the Netflix series Making A Murderer.

Arts

Pop Culture Happy Hour: 'Making A Murderer,' True Crime, Alan Rickman

7:34am January 22, 2016

by Linda Holmes

On this week's show, we talk a little about Netflix's high-profile true crime project and a little about the genre in general, then we touch on a fine acting career that has sadly ended.

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Strange science is afoot in Synchronicity.

Arts

'Synchronicity': Sci-Fi That Smells Like More Than It Is

7:53pm January 21, 2016

by Scott Tobias

It wants to be a Blade Runner-inflected noir, but Synchronicity does nothing with its femme fatale and is disappointingly repetitive of other, better films.

Is Netflix Chill? Kenyan Authorities Threaten To Ban The Streaming Site

7:33pm January 21, 2016

by Gregory Warner

Two weeks ago, Kenyans finally got access to Netflix. But we still don't know if they'll binge happily every after.

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In Lynn Nottage's play Sweat, Jason (Stephen Michael Spencer, left) and Chris (Tramell Tillman) are workers at a steel tubing plant in Reading, Pa. Nottage says she wanted to write about "how poverty and economic stagnation were shifting the American nar

Arts

In 'Sweat,' Adapting To Change Is The Hardest Work Of All

7:13pm January 21, 2016

by Elizabeth Blair

Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage spent two years visiting Reading, Pa., to research her new play. Sweat explores how industrial decline affected workers in the former steel and textile town.

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Books
Arts

A Nightmare Artist Adrift In 'Deep Sea'

7:08pm January 21, 2016

by Genevieve Valentine

Serge Brussolo's hallucinatory 1992 novel The Deep Sea Diver's Syndrome follows a group of lucid dreamers whose slumbers produce a strange ectoplasm that can soothe and even heal people who see it.

London Spy, Season 1, Episode 1, Danny (Ben Whishaw).

Arts

'London Spy' Begins With A Romance Between A Clubber And MI6 Agent

7:01pm January 21, 2016

by NPR Staff

The new BBC America show, written by author Tom Rob Smith, opens with a gay couple falling in love. Then one of them mysteriously disappears.

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Oscar Isaac plays a drifter named Jack in the new film Mojave.

Arts

'Mojave': At Least The Desert Is Good-Looking

5:00pm January 21, 2016

by Ella Taylor

Mojave wastes a hirsute Oscar Isaac and a nice twangy guitar on an insufferable neo-noir about a Hollywood director followed a little too closely by a stranger.