National Post

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After decades of excess, Rod Stewart is finally ready to settle down: Despite Rod Stewart’s well-known love of hard living, fast cars, and obliging blonds, his new album, Time, offers a picture of domestic bliss. On the song Beautiful Morning, he even croons about the joys of pulling off the road with one’s sweetheart and “into Starbucks for a doughnut and a coffee.” READ MORE: natpo.st/10mTscq

Illustration by Kagan McLeod

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Legendary film critic Roger Ebert dead at 70
Roger Ebert, the most famous and most popular film reviewer of his time who become the first journalist to win a Pulitzer Prize for movie criticism and, on his long-running TV program, wielded the nation’s most influential thumb, died Thursday, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. He was 70.

Ebert had been a film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times since 1967. He had announced on his blog Wednesday that he was undergoing radiation treatment after a recurrence of cancer.

He had no grand theories or special agendas, but millions recognized the chatty, heavy-set man with wavy hair and horn-rimmed glasses. Above all, they followed the thumb — pointing up or down. It was the main logo of the televised shows Ebert co-hosted, first with the late Gene Siskel of the rival Chicago Tribune and — after Siskel’s death in 1999 — with his Sun-Times colleague, Richard Roeper. Although criticized as gimmicky and simplistic, a “two thumbs up” accolade was sure to find its way into the advertising for the movie in question. (Illustration: Kagan McLeod/National Post)

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David Bowie appears practically back from the dead today with The Next Day, his 24th album — first in a decade — and latest release since suffering a heart attack in 2004. Mostly retired to New York and London with Iman, his supermodel wife, and Alexandria, his 12-year-old daughter, Bowie, 66, has kept a low profile and his rocking new album arrives with a buzz. Ben Kaplan asks a coterie of experts to explain the Space Oddity star’s enduring appeal: natpo.st/12Mep70

[Illustration by Kagan McLeod]

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Scenes from a Life: k.d. lang

A four-time Grammy Award winner and Officer of the Order of Canada, Alberta’s k.d. lang will be inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame this April at the 2013 Juno Awards. Outspoken, iconic and a post-punk queer icon with a near-perfect mezzo-soprano voice, the 51-year-old has sang alongside everyone from Tony Bennett to Roy Orbison and, with Hallelujah, introduced Leonard Cohen to a new generation of fans. Here, the activist, one-time Vanity Fair cover model and proud alumni of Glee breaks her monumental life down into a series of game-changing scenes: natpo.st/Xz6ohb

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Tegan and Sara look to surpass their idols with Heartthrob

Pop music plays a large and deliberate role on Heartthrob, a record that was designed to catapult the Calgary-born duo into a stadium-headlining act. After touring with The Black Keys and The Killers, and feeling frustrated with teetering record sales, they decided to go big on their new record with soaring choruses, singalong anthems and four different lifts on the same tune. Read more here: natpo.st/X9IQwv

Illustration by Kagan McLeod

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Record of the Month Club: Brian Eno, Lux

Hey, Eno.

Once, you and Tom Phillips, the painter, found some pianos. No one knows where they came from. Maybe you stole them. Maybe you conjured them. Maybe they were left in disgust by some rogue classicists fed up with diner food and the high price of what they called “petrol,” at least in Ipswich, England. You hauled these great wooden vessels up the dusty staircase of the school and you set them on their edge. You stared at them through the day, pondering. You stared at them through the evening, pondering some more. Then, you thought: “No, that’s not it.” READ MORE: natpo.st/YjxH06

Blood, sex & greed: Canadian history is more interesting than you think
Ask Trent University history professor John Milloy, and he will tell you Canadians have been “much too polite” about their history.

While the FLQ was blowing up mailboxes in Quebec in the 1960s, Canada became so bent on selling an uncontroversial national narrative that it neglected all the meaty details: The hard-drinking Prime Minister who lied and cheated his way towards a cross-continental railway; anti-government rebels shot dead on Yonge Street in Toronto; voyageurs who slept their way across the frontier; and the hundreds of 1940s Vancouverites who looked the other way when authorities came for the Nakumura family next door.

“Blood, sex, greed,” he said. “That’s the good stuff, that’s what brings people into the movie theatres.” (Illustration: Kagan McLeod/National Post)

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Zadie Smith is homeward bound for NW
Zadie Smith’s new novel, NW, is about four people stuck in different circumstances despite starting out from the exact same place on the map. (Illustration by Kagan McLeod)

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The new Beach Boys’ album, That’s Why God Made the Radio, (a name that suggests Satan made the Internet, which may well be true) has been called lots of things in many corners: a return to form; the best Beach Boys’ album in 40 years; a California classic; and the sound of America past. All of these things may be true, but none of them address whether the album is actually good or not. Illustration by Kagan McLeod

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R.I.P. Ray Bradbury

Artist Kagan McLeod’s beautiful portrait of the late author.

Part three of the Queen poster — the handbag!
To celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, the National Post is offering this six-part, life-sized, full-colour painting of the Queen to our readers. Collect part 3 in Wednesday’s paper. Why? Why not?

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Cinematic Summer Style

We bet you’ve never seen a fashion spread like this one, brought to you by Style editor Nathalie Atkinson and illustrator Kagan Macleod.

In today’s National Post: Build your own Queen, Part 1. No, really
To celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, the National Post is offering this six-part, life-sized, full-colour painting of the Queen to our readers.

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With Heroes, Willie Nelson is still a rebel rebel
“We had a couple of pots over there at the Bulldog and then at The Grey Area and then hit two or three good spots after that,” Nelson says, adding, “you probably wouldn’t remember it,” when asked what a night on the town is like in Amsterdam with him and Snoop Dogg. However, Nelson takes his advocacy seriously and is not only the president of the 26-year-old Farm Aid, which has raised US$39-million to help the American family farmer, but is outspoken on everything from the war in Afghanistan to ending the marijuana laws that have imprisoned about 20 million Americans since 1965.

“Most people who know anything at all know that marijuana is a good medicine for stress and a nice recreational drug for responsible adults and it should not be criminalized,” he says. “If we legalize it and bring our folks home from around the world fighting wars over oil, we’d all be a lot better off.” (Illustration by Kagan McLeod/National Post)