thursday, july 22, 2010 “ BOOK WORLD


A paean to the restorative powers


of a quiet drink at the end


of the working day.” — Michael Dirda in his review of “The Hour.” C2


Style ABCDE C S


THE RELIABLE SOURCE


Gift etiquette President Obama’s gifts to the British prime minister are more savvy than last year’s. C2


DANCE REVIEW


Dreamy works The Paul Taylor Dance Company’s “Phantasmagoria” and “Beloved Renegade” (left) were highlights at Wolf Trap. C10


3LIVE TODAY @ washingtonpost.com/discussions Got plans? Get great ideas from the Going Out Gurus 1 p.m. • Chat with the losing chef from Episode 6 of “Top Chef D.C.” 2 p.m. ART REVIEW


Influenced by photography, the normally colorful artist displays a black, white and gray side in MoMA exhibit


I, SPY JASON MERRITT/GETTY IMAGES; WASHINGTON POST PHOTO ILLUSTRATION


Lights! Camera! Action figure! Angelina Jolie is out to prove she’s an actress worth her ‘Salt’


by Ann Hornaday


Settled serenely on an overstuffed couch at the Ritz- Carlton in Georgetown, Angelina Jolie doesn’t look like a woman who’s set out to rock the world. Dressed in a short-skirted black suit, adorned only by a knockout of an emerald ring, matching ear bobs and a few inconspicuous tattoos, Jolie looks both un- attainably gorgeous and improbably of-this-world. The sculptural cheekbones and pillowy lips bear only the most scant dusting of makeup (although it’s difficult to fathom the reality of eyelashes that reach all the way to Arlington). The fingernails, however, are cut short, de- void of polish. The face may say Movie Star, but the hands say Mother of Six. That duality fits right in with “Salt,” the action spy thriller opening Friday, in which Jolie plays a would-be Russian sleeper spy of uncertain loyalties. In the course of what amounts to a pulse-pounding 90- minute chase from Washington to New York and back again, Jolie gets to do a lot of things: jump, shoot, kick the spit out of a cordon of broad-shouldered Secret Service agents, dye her hair, dress in full-on dude drag. But even in the midst of “Salt’s” most fantastical ac- tion, hints of practicality peek through. Jolie might be wearing towering nude heels in real life, but in the movie the first thing Salt does is take off her pumps to run. “There’s no way, running in heels,” Jolie says, laughing at how often women in movies sprint down streets in 41


⁄2 -inch Louboutins. “There was no way I


was going to do that!” If “Salt” makes anything clear, it’s that the most su- perhuman stunt Jolie performs in the movie can’t be found in the over-the-top set pieces, or in her decep-


jolie continued on C3 SUCCESSION H. MATISSE/ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY


SWIMMING IN DARKNESS:Henri Matisse’s “Goldfish and Palette,” from 1915, takes a cheerful subject and pours on black, then “retouches” certain objects in color amid the scratchy mess of grays.


we don’t know W


The Matisse


by Blake Gopnik in new york


e know Henri Matisse. He is our favorite poster artist. We love the pinks and blues of his “Dance I” and how it turns the world into a cheerful place. We love the joyous arabesques of his “Red Room”


and the brightly colored cutouts of his “Jazz.” We’ve put them in our nurseries. They are so bold and clear that we can grasp them at a single glance. A superb new exhibition at the Museum of Modern


Art, called “Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913-1917,” shows that the Matisse of our cliches is not the only one. Its 109 works give us a Matisse who, at least for a few years, made some of our toughest, most un- compromising, most nearly ungraspable pictures. They show us an artist of impenetrable blacks and dirty whites, and of spreading grays that soil any col-


ors they come near. They show us an artistic vision that cuts up the world, flips it backward, reveals it in negative, then puts it back together with its seams showing. Most surprising, they reveal Matisse — that free spirit who could imagine his way to any paradise he pleased — slogging his way through the mud of every- day photography. It’s not an argument the curators make, but I believe this exhibition — sure to go down as one of the greatest of our era — shows that this is where Matisse went to get his blacks and whites, his grayed-out colors, his reversals and revealed seams.


Even the brightest pictures in this show have a


murky underside. What better subject could there be for joyous Ma- tisse-ifying than a goldfish in a sparkling bowl, set


art review continued on C9


Ferreting out Fox’s role in firing scandal


Ousted U.S. official blames network, but others ran with story


by Howard Kurtz


The White House spokesman and the agriculture secretary weren’t the only ones offering re- grets Wednesday to the lower-level official abruptly fired over a videotape excerpt that turned out to be totally misleading. Bill O’Reilly apologized to Shirley Sherrod as well. But for all the chatter


— some of it from Sher- rod herself — that she was done in by Fox News, the network didn’t touch the story until her forced resigna- tion was made public Monday evening, with the exception of brief comments by O’Reilly. After a news meeting Monday after-


noon, an e-mail directive was sent to the news staff in which Fox Senior Vice President Michael Clemente said: “Let’s take our time and get the facts straight on this story. Can we get confirma- tion and comments from Sherrod before going on-air. Let’s make sure we do this right.” Sherrod may be the only official


Bill O’Reilly


ever dismissed because of the fear that Fox host Glenn Beck might go after her. As Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack tried to pressure her into resigning, Sherrod says Deputy Under Secretary Cheryl Cook called her Monday to say “do it, be- cause you’re going to be on ‘Glenn Beck’ tonight.” And for all the focus on Fox, much of the main- stream media ran with a


fragmentary story that painted an obscure 62-year-old Georgian as an unrepentant racist. On Monday night, O’Reilly had


media continued on C6


THE TV COLUMN Arrested


A man accused of issuing “warnings” to “South Park’s” creators was held on unrelated charges. C4


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