What Show Could Be Even Bigger And More Complex Than Spider-Man? Cirque Du Soleil, Of Course

Just as the tempest-tossed Spider-Man is set to formally open on Broadway, Zarkana, Cirque’s “own high-flying blend of circus and rock opera,” begins a four-month run at Radio City Music Hall. Both shows feature “a character soaring over the audience, a hard-driving rock score, a villainous spider lady and gravity-defying acrobats.”

Novelist Terry Pratchett Begins Process Of Assisted Suicide

“Sir Terry Pratchett, the fantasy writer who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2008, said yesterday he had started the formal process that could lead to his own assisted suicide at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland.” He says he has received the consent forms: “The only thing stopping me [signing them] is that I have made this film and I have a bloody book to finish.”

Rene Magritte, Art Forger

“One is an original. The other, evidently, a copy. But René Magritte was a Surrealist, and the truth behind The Flavour of Tears suggests he was enjoying a huge – and probably lucrative – joke” by forging and selling his own painting. (But then, he had “made a living during the Nazi occupation of Belgium by forging Picassos and Renoirs.”)

The Bright Indian Summer Of Errol Morris

“At the age of 63, and with an Academy Award in his pocket for The Fog of War, America’s most obsessive nonfiction filmmaker … has found himself at a peak of activity, with a new documentary coming out next month, a feature film in the works, and … most notably – after 40 long years of writer’s block – Morris has suddenly become a prolific writer.”