Today's Liberal News

The Darkest Movie of the Year

Cinematic history has long been lousy with Draculas: Dozens of remakes, sequels, and spin-offs of Bram Stoker’s seminal gothic novel have graced the screen over the years. But F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu is a rarer breed. The 1922 German expressionist film cribbed the plot of Stoker’s Dracula (with some alterations) and created the first horror-movie masterpiece, conjuring a unique take on one of the genre’s hoariest texts.

The Most Haunting—And Most Inspiring—Moment in A Christmas Carol

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Around the world, authoritarians seem to be regaining their strength and daring. In the United States, a political coalition—one that includes people for whom, as my colleague Adam Serwer has memorably written, “the cruelty is the point”—is returning to power.

Kurds Under Threat in Syria as Turkey Launches Attacks and Kills Journalists After Assad Regime Falls

As foreign powers look to shape Syria’s political landscape after the toppling of the Assad regime, the country’s Kurdish population is in the spotlight. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan continues to threaten the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, which Turkey regards as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party militants who have fought an insurgency against the Turkish state for 40 years.

Gaetz-Gate: House Ethics Report on Former Florida Rep. Details Statutory Rape, Drug Use, Corruption

The U.S. House Ethics Committee has released its damning report on former Republican Representative Matt Gaetz, whom Trump had picked to be his attorney general before the Florida politician was forced to withdraw from consideration. The bipartisan committee’s report found Gaetz “regularly paid women for engaging in sexual activity with him” and possessed illegal drugs, including cocaine and ecstasy, on “multiple different occasions.

A Tribute to Blacklisted Lyricist Yip Harburg: The Man Who Put the Rainbow in The Wizard of Oz

His name might not be familiar to many, but his songs are sung by millions around the world. Today, we take a journey through the life and work of Yip Harburg, the Broadway lyricist who wrote such hits as “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” and who put the music into The Wizard of Oz, the movie that inspired the hit Broadway musical and now Hollywood blockbuster, Wicked.

Bob Dylan Broke Rules. A Complete Unknown Follows Them.

The gift of Bob Dylan’s music is to make the world seem weirder, or rather to reveal the world to be as strange as it really is. He sings of life as a flow of jumbled-up signs and sensations, some real and some not, carrying meaning beyond words. Even at his most strident, he wheezes out an anti-narrative: Thou shalt not simplify, classify, categorize.
A Complete Unknown, James Mangold’s biopic focused on the bard’s early career, understands this—and betrays it.

The Most Distant Known Galaxy

NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, J. Olmsted, S. Carniani, JADES Collaboration
Day 25 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: the most distant known galaxy. Using the James Webb Space Telescope, scientists have found a record-breaking distant galaxy observed just 290 million years after the Big Bang.

What ‘Silent Night’ Misunderstands About Christmas

“Silent Night” is one of the most popular Christmas hymns, often sung in churches lit only by candles. The song describes a “tender and mild” infant Christ slumbering undisturbed in “heavenly peace.” Another beloved hymn, “Away in a Manger,” also focuses on the theme of divine serenity: It speaks of animals making noises but the child Christ being different. “The cattle are lowing,” goes one verse. “The baby awakes / But little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes.