Cicero's

Al Pacino did not simply become a film star. He became temperate. From the cold, watchful stillness of Michael Corleone in The Godfather to the sweating desperation of Sonny Wortzik in Dog Day Afternoon, Pacino helped define the golden age of American cinema. He was not the biggest man in Continue Reading

Properly called Canon and Gigue in D Major, was written by the German Baroque composer Johann Pachelbel, who lived from 1653 to 1706. Pachelbel was an organist, teacher and composer. In his own lifetime he was better known for church music, organ works and teaching than for the Canon, which Continue Reading

The Oreshnik is Russia’s new hypersonic intermediate-range ballistic missile. The name means “hazel tree” in Russian, which is grimly poetic for something built to fall from the sky like metal lightning. Reuters says it is designed for conventional or nuclear warheads, and Russia claims it can travel at around Mach Continue Reading

Long before electronic music became the dominant language of popular culture, Kraftwerk had already begun rewriting its rules. Formed in Düsseldorf in 1970 by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider, the German duo — later quartet — transformed the precise, impersonal sounds of machines into something strangely poetic and profoundly influential. Continue Reading