Arts and Culture

Le Carre Reels Chechen Drifter, Private Banker Into Tale of Terror Finance Meet Tommy Brue, a loquacious private banker in Hamburg. At 60, he's bored with the business, cuckolded and lonely, his heart in danger of hardening. The past is about to catch up with him. When it does, he'll find his freedom.

Coen Brothers Tell Tales of Scroungers, Slackers, Chiselers: Rainer File Joel and Ethan Coen are the bad boys of American film. Their black comedies are often cynical and heartless. And yet the best of them, teeming with scroungers and chiselers bucking for the big score, are also vibrant and full of life.

Babe Ruth Barfs, Boston Cops Strike in Lehane's Historical Novel: Review We start with Babe Ruth at age 23 vomiting off the back of a train heading to Boston for the 1918 World Series. His teammates gripe over their pay and mull the kind of strike that leads to a walkout. It's too much for the Babe.

Apotheke Replaces Gang-War Turf With $195 Cocktails, Absinthe: Food Buzz Albert Trummer works out of an old opium den, plays with fire, studies murderers and infuses his own absinthe. Don't call the cops just yet. Let him make you a drink; in fact, let him make you five.

Dancing Gargoyles Cause Mayhem; Glued Ants Pile Up in Drawing: Chelsea Art Nature is celebrated and changeable in London-based artist David Harrison's oil paintings at the Daniel Reich gallery, and it comes up against an even faster changing societal landscape.

Fontana `Egg' Picture May Fetch $21.8 Million in Record Christie's Auction A black egg-shaped canvas by Lucio Fontana is expected to fetch at least 12 million pounds ($21.8 million) in the most highly valued sale Christie's International in London has ever staged during the week of the Frieze Art Fair.

Litvinenko's Murder Left Polonium `Crawling Walls,' Muddled Clues: Books The lurid London murder of former Russian secret agent Alexander Litvinenko with polonium-210 looks set to equal the tale of Jack the Ripper as a generator of inconclusive theories that open the way for ever more books.

Billionaire Pinchuk Buys Hirst Works at Sotheby's, Names Museum Director Steel billionaire Victor Pinchuk said he was one of the buyers of Damien Hirst's works at a Sotheby's auction in London earlier this month.

Guangzhou Triennial Is One Art Festival Too Many for China: Julia Tanski ``The first thing I want to do when I get to Guangzhou, is leave,'' said Norman Ford, curator for the Hong Kong pavilion at the 2007 Venice Biennale, after visiting the southern Chinese city's biggest art festival.

Land Mines Turned Into Angels: Sculptor Melts Weapons to Make Art, Peace Sculptor Lin Evola-Smidt has a new take on Isaiah: Instead of swords into plowshares, she collects firearms, bombs and missile casings, melts them down and turns them into angels.

Newman Could Have Made It on Good Looks Alone, But Didn't: An Appreciation Paul Newman was a universally adored movie star. Even those people who didn't love his movies loved his food products.