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Don't-Miss List: David Bowie, Dick Cheney and More

See it! Hear it! Read it! Do it! The best of movies, TV, music, books and beyond

By Pamela Miller

MUSIC
 
The Next Day, David Bowie
 
A comeback is a triumph at any age. But this one is special. Ten years after falling off the radar after a backstage heart attack, the inimitable David Bowie, 66, is springing a surprise record — made in top secret, even his label didn’t know. The great news for fans: The Next Day is as musically satisfying as it is inspiring. "'The Stars (Are Out Tonight)' is one of the greatest songs the man has ever written," Rolling Stone raved, "soaring on guitar and strings and that uncanny voice.”

TELEVISION

The World According to Dick Cheney, March 15, Showtime

 

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Love or loathe him, this Showtime documentary is a revealing portrait of one of the world's most controversial and powerful politicos: Dick Cheney. It isn't likely to change your opinion of the man and, frankly, the former Veep doesn't give a damn -- "If you want to be loved, be a movie star," Cheney says. But when famed documentarian R.J. Cutler rakes through the muck of modern politics, you can bet he'll unearth some fascinating stuff.

 
MOVIES
 
Emperor
 
First Lincoln, then Argo, now EmperorHollywood keeps turning to history for inspiration. Based on the American occupation of Japan in the perilous days after Emperor Hirohito's surrender in World War II, the film focuses on Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s covert investigation of the question hanging over Japan: should the Emperor, worshiped by his people but accused of war crimes, be punished or saved? If the history lesson doesn’t intrigue you, the casting will. The swaggering general is played by the ever-swaggering Tommy Lee Jones.
 
BOOKS
 
Shouting Won't Help, Why I — and 50 Million Other Americans — Can’t Hear You, Katherine Bouton
 
Shouting won’t help and neither does denial. Those are just two of the conclusions reached by Katherine Bouton in this memoir recounting her struggle to cope with the debilitating hearing loss that struck in her 30s. Given the epidemic proportions of hearing impairment in the United States — two-thirds of those over 70 will suffer it — Bouton’s exploration of the psychology and science of the problem is an illuminating, important read.
 
WORTH THE TRIP
 
Garry Winogrand at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, opens March 9
 
Featuring 300 photographs from one of the top photojournalists of our generation, this exhibition is like time-traveling back to daily life in postwar America. For three decades, Garry Winogrand shot moguls, actors, athletes, hippies, politicians, soldiers, rodeos, car culture, antiwar demonstrators and the construction workers who beat them in view of the unmoved police. But he’s best known for the work he did on the streets of 1960s New York City, where curators say Winogrand perfectly captured the ethos of the era — "rich with new possibility and yet threatening to spin out of control."

Pamela Miller is a freelance writer who lives in Los Angeles.

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