monday, october 11, 2010


BOOK WORLD ‘Our Kind of


Traitor’ John le Carré’s latest spy thriller deals with an Oxford tutor; his girlfriend, a lawyer; and a Russian who is trying to defect. C2


TV PREVIEW


Church and state issues: 4 centuries old


by Hank Stuever “God in America,” a three-night joint pro-


duction from “Frontline” and “American Ex- perience” that begins Monday night, blends two subjects that most folks avoid in polite company — religion and politics. It compel- lingly presents an American history that has been alternately ruined and elevated by faith. Even though the title


Michael


Emerson plays John Winthrop.


suggests a subject that is far too broad, the series is commendably evenhanded and sober, as one would ex- pect. If there were urgent- care centers for people who’ve flipped their lids watching too much Fox News or MSNBC, the nurs- es there would strap these frantic citizens to gurneys and administer “God in America” via a nice, slow IV drip, like a powerful


PBS antibiotic. (As a side effect, “God in Amer- ica” can also make the viewer a little drowsy.) The calming baritone narration of actor Campbell Scott sends us back four centuries, where producers have wisely chosen to start the story in New Mexico instead of Plymouth Rock, with the arrival of Spanish monks, con- quistadors and Catholicism, which led to the eventual brutalization of the Pueblo Indians. We get to the Puritans soon enough in Part 1, where Michael Emerson (the nefarious Benja- min Linus from “Lost”) plays pious Massachu- setts Bay Colony governor John Winthrop (of


tv preview continued on C6


Style ABCDE C S


Online voting begins for the winner of Jessica Dawson’s Real Art D.C. contest. Voting ends on Oct. 22. Go to washingtonpost.com/RealArtDC.


ONLINE OPERA REVIEW


A stale-bread ‘Rheingold’ The Met simulcast may have sounded great, but in the opera house . . . C3


MUSIC REVIEW


Southern fried boogie rock Hank Williams Jr. brought plenty of hats and his signature sound to Patriot Center. C10


MUSIC REVIEW Mavis Staples,


soaring again The gospel and soul singer raised her powerful voice at Lisner. C4


by Paul Farhi in new york


“Carlos,” a sprawling, 51 -hour movie-cum- T


HOWARD KURTZ Media Notes


Rahm Emanuel’s branded image:


Which label sticks?


“He’s a guy who stabbed a steak knife into the table at Doe’s restaurant after Bill Clinton’s election,” his former colleague Paul Begala recalls. “He was screaming about people screwing us in the campaign.” The media portrait of the man dubbed Rahmbo — the foul-mouthed, take-no- prisoners, twist-your-arm-out-of-its-socket operative — is grounded in reality. But it isn’t the whole picture. Most journalists, to some degree, are


R


caricaturists. We may be interested in nuance and context, but the compression of reporting often reduces people to a couple of attributes at best. You know the shorthand: “tough-talking” and “aggressive,” or “soft- spoken” and “mild-mannered.” Guess which sells better at the box office? When you read an account of a closed-door meeting, isn’t it more vivid if a politician


media notes continued on C7


ahm Emanuel’s candidate may have won the presidency, but that didn’t dull Emanuel’s serrated edge.


PLAYINGTHE JACKAL


For Edgar Ramirez, the challenge of terrorist role was making him human


IF LOOKS COULD KILL: Edgar Ramirez stars in the Sundance Channel miniseries.


HELAYNE SEIDMAN FOR THE WASHINGTON POST


A HILARIOUS COMEDY EVENT. ”‘


MEGAMIND’ BOXOFFICE MAGAZINE, PETE HAMMOND SOARS! “


Ramirez portrays the title character in ⁄2


miniseries that debuts with the first of three parts Monday night on cable’s Sundance Channel. Told in a half-dozen languages and set in dozens of countries, the film is a meticu- lously researched, though broadly drama- tized, story of Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, a.k.a. “Carlos the Jackal,” the Marxist revolutionary who visited much mayhem on Western Eu- rope and the Middle East during the 1970s and ’80s.


Carlos was an international pariah — a kid- napper and killer who was convicted of mur- dering two French policemen. In his heyday, he claimed responsibility for car and train bombings, attempted assassinations and two unsuccessful grenade assaults on Israeli com- mercial jets. His most infamous attack — the storming of an OPEC ministers’ meeting in 1975 — left three more dead. Until Osama bin Laden came along, Carlos was the leading brand name in blood-soaked terror. But perhaps that’s just our little value judg-


ment. As portrayed commandingly by Ramirez


(no relation to the original, though both share a family name and country of birth, Ven- ezuela), evil is just one part of the picture. In Ramirez’s skillful depiction, Carlos becomes a complex, multi-dimensional human being. He’s vain, hotheaded, philosophical, brutish, charming and charismatic. He’s even an irre- sistible ladies’ man. Yes, a sexy terrorist.


Ramirez, thoughtful and soft-spoken,


doesn’t find this odd or jarring. “He’s a human being at the end,” he says with an accent light- ly dusted with his native Spanish. The actor is sitting at a table in a deserted backroom of a posh New York restaurant. It’s a gray, cold day in midtown Manhattan. The washed-out col- ors almost suggest the faded stock on which “Carlos” was shot, as if the whole town were part of some 1970s blandscape. “He had a life, a family,” Ramirez continues. “I’m sure they wouldn’t call him a murderer.


ramirez continued on C4


he question for Edgar Ramirez — polyglot, all-around smart guy, possibly the best actor you’ve nev- er heard of — isn’t just how you humanize a vicious, amoral ter- rorist but why.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64