“I’m a good person,” Ellen DeGeneres says in her standup special “Relatable,” which came out on Netflix at the end of 2018. “I know I am. But I’m a human being, and I have bad days.” This wasn’t an apology for some perceived offense but a mild pushback against her genial public persona, epitomized by DeGeneres’s sign-off on her daytime talk show: “Be kind to one another.” In “Relatable,” she says of the catchphrase, “It’s a wonderful thing, it is. But here’s the downside: I can never do anything unkind ever now. Ever. I’m the ‘be kind’ girl.”In the year and a half since, DeGeneres’s be-kind...…“I’m a good person,” Ellen DeGeneres says in her standup special “Relatable,” which came out on Netflix at the end of 2018. “I know I am. But I’m a human being, and I have bad days.” This wasn’t an apology for some perceived offense but a mild pushback against her genial public persona, epitomized by DeGeneres’s sign-off on her daytime talk show: “Be kind to one another.” In “Relatable,” she says of the catchphrase, “It’s a wonderful thing, it is. But here’s the downside: I can never do anything unkind ever now. Ever. I’m the ‘be kind’ girl.”In the year and a half since, DeGeneres’s be-kind...WW…

At the first Academy Awards, in 1929, there were two top prizes. The award for Outstanding Picture went to “,” William Wellman’s dazzling airborne First World War epic, while the prize for Unique and Artistic Picture went to “,” a warped domestic thriller from the German Expressionist director F. W. Murnau. Ninety-one years later, the Oscars still echo the same tensions: between the spectacular and the intimate, between roaring technical achievements and quieter innovations in style. This year’s front-runners for Best Picture, after all, are a technologically ambitious First World War epic...…At the first Academy Awards, in 1929, there were two top prizes. The award for Outstanding Picture went to “,” William Wellman’s dazzling airborne First World War epic, while the prize for Unique and Artistic Picture went to “,” a warped domestic thriller from the German Expressionist director F. W. Murnau. Ninety-one years later, the Oscars still echo the same tensions: between the spectacular and the intimate, between roaring technical achievements and quieter innovations in style. This year’s front-runners for Best Picture, after all, are a technologically ambitious First World War epic...WW…

Samuel and his friends found the apartment in 2014. They were all in their twenties, mostly Bard graduates, living in a Victorian house in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Brooklyn, which held ten people. But the owner was selling, so six of them found a place in Bushwick, where they could keep living together as a big, happy postgraduate commune. It was a duplex on the top two floors of a small building, part of a row of new residences across the street from a Baptist church. “It looked like any new construction: bare white walls, wood floor,” Samuel recalled. “It had almost no character at...…Samuel and his friends found the apartment in 2014. They were all in their twenties, mostly Bard graduates, living in a Victorian house in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Brooklyn, which held ten people. But the owner was selling, so six of them found a place in Bushwick, where they could keep living together as a big, happy postgraduate commune. It was a duplex on the top two floors of a small building, part of a row of new residences across the street from a Baptist church. “It looked like any new construction: bare white walls, wood floor,” Samuel recalled. “It had almost no character at...WW…