Marwa Arsanios and Vartan Avakian are still young. They belong to a generation of artists who grew up during the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990), and their unique experience with artistic research in Lebanon is revealing new narratives for a catastrophic historical episode. …more
Wonderful World taps the fretful zeitgeist, but trips along with freshness and humor and pleasant darkness, like Broken Flowers or Happy-Go-Lucky. …more
When Scorsese makes a new film, the question is less whether it’s good than whether the decision to make it in the first place was good.
A meticulous and gripping eyewitness account of the events that culminated in the 1973 CIA-backed military coup and assassination of Salvador Allende.
…more
On June 13th, 1971, in the midst of the Vietnam War, the New York Times began to publish excerpts of an internal Pentagon document that detailed the top-secret history of US-Vietnam relations from 1945 to 1967. …more
Science fiction of the best sort, in which technology exists as a means of peering into the soul, and where even the darkest problems can be overcome by human ingenuity and the inexplicable compassion and perseverance of the human spirit.
On New Year’s Day this year I removed all the bookmarks from my Firefox bookmarks bar. When I mentioned to a couple friends that my resolution was to lay off the political blogs, I got variations on the same response: Yeah, that’s a pretty popular resolution right now. My resolution hasn’t worked out all that well; instead of clicking links I simply type andrewsullivan.com into my browser window to maintain my daily outrage level. I worry that I’m addicted to incredulity, that for some twisted reason I need to seek out the tawdriest filth erupting from the mouths of the Limbaughs and Becks and Palins of the world in order to define myself in opposition. …more
There’s a moment in For All Mankind when a couple of astronauts are wandering around the surface of the moon, collecting rock samples and staring in amazement at the black horizon. They’re giddy with excitement, jumping around like toddlers on M&Ms and acid. …more
Movies often build to that one moment of revelation or a final showdown. Police, Adjective builds up to a sit-down between three men engaged in a debate. A confrontation that is solved not by a shootout but rather with a dictionary. …more
Haneke breathes an unholy life into the generation of children who would grow up to become the obedient soldiers and members of the Nazi party, indirectly asking: What was the genesis of, and who is accountable for, this morally corrupt generation? …more
I think French film entices me because I know so little about French language and culture; it suggests an as-yet-unexplored world of magical, incomprehensible people.
AVATAR
★★★★★ (3 out of 5)
Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of everything in the world. Today I am reviewing Avatar. …more
He picked me up at the Cold Spring train station: a tall, lone and gawky, slightly bent, grizzled, yet still unmistakable figure at the other end of the platform shading his blue eyes from the rain. …more
Possibly the most humanistic character study from director Claire Denis: thoughtful, endearing, and rendered with exemplary tact. …more
Up in the Air is sentimental, but that doesn’t mean it’s simplistic. In fact, the movie plays at some interesting contradictions. It is a genuinely funny movie about genuinely depressing times. …more
In Herzog’s non-remake of Bad Lieutenant, Nic Cage tumbles into the farthest reaches of drugged, lawless mania, resembling a coked-up Willy Wonka. …more
The plot reveals an intricate maze, in which all of the characters find themselves intimately connected, but no one in the story emerges from this labyrinth unscathed.
When your lover has gone — leaving only darkness as a companion — where in this world can you find some consolation? …more
I’ve written about watching movies with my children in this column, about introducing my son Miles to the films of Ray Harryhausen and watching him vomit during a viewing of E.T.. Having an amateur’s enthusiasm for films that span the history of cinema, I’m determined to provide my kids with a young cinephile’s education, steering them to Miyazaki and Melies and away from, say, The Backyardigans. …more
On November 9, 2009, four days before the release of Fantastic Mr. Fox, an animated film by Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach, I attended a live “conversation” between the two directors at the New York Public Library. …more
In setting up Open Source Cinema, I was inspired by the open source software process – software that people can contribute to and change and collectively build. And I thought that idea applied really well to documentary film. I thought, why not set up something for collaboratively-produced truth? …more
Paranormal Activity (movie, dir. Oren Peli, 2009)
Above-average scary. Neat pacing. Best with a full house in big cities. Overheard: “This is dumb good,” “We’re gonna have to get the bootleg.”
The September Issue (movie, dir. R.J. Cutler, 2009) …more
Friday October 16, the New Yorker opened its annual weekend festival of readings, conversations, art tours and musical performances. This is my account of the events I attended, which included among others a talk with Malcolm Gladwell, readings by George Saunders, Gary Shteyngart and Jonathan Franzen, a musical performance by Neko Case and a conversation with James Franco. …more
Abel Ferrara has attempted, with mixed success, to capture a little bit of the legend and a little bit of the sordid actuality of the Hotel Chelsea in his new documentary feature, Chelsea on the Rocks. …more
What is it with the Coen brothers, technical masters who tend to use their skills for no meaningful purpose? …more
My boyfriend insisted I read Brief Interviews with Hideous Men when we started dating. “It will help you understand the way men think!” he exclaimed. Secrets of those bearing a Y chromosome would be revealed, he promised; David Foster Wallace had explored the shadows of the psyche of his generation and had rendered them on the page in all of their dark, desperate beauty. As a woman who came of age alongside these men, who has a brother, a father, a lover, and friends, I was intrigued. …more
If you haven’t yet watched Showtime’s hit series Californication, here’s a quick tagline: Down-and-out novelist Hank Moody – played by David Duchovny – tries to get his life back on track after his partner/muse leaves him and he succumbs to the dreaded writer’s block. …more
It’s funny, the word choice in the title of Jennifer’s Body, the gory horror-comedy from, improbably enough, the writer and producers of Juno, 2007’s teen pregnancy comedy. …more
Let the Right One In (the movie) (Tomas Alfredson, 2008)
Somehow makes vampires feel fresh. Fascinating aesthetic: colorless cinematography, minimal dialogue, affectless acting. Touching, scary, tender. An astonishing little girl. Also? Swedes are freaky-looking. …more
I recently read “The Invention of Hugo Cabret,” a sort of hybrid graphic-young adult novel by Brian Selznik that tells a fictionalized story revolving around Georges Méliès, the frenchman who was the first filmmaker to employ cinematic tricks in narrative. …more
For his role in Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant! as corporate executive turned whistleblower Mark Whitacre, Matt Damon gained something like thirty pounds. He didn’t need do it to look like the real Whitacre because none of us know what the real Mark Whitacre looks like. He did it because The Informant! is a rather crafty satire of whistleblower movies and that’s what actors are expected to do in whistleblower movies; put on a whole mess of weight to let us know how “serious” they are. …more
Though its final act revolves around a thoroughly aggravating plot contrivance (“Just tell him Deborah Kerr! TELL HIM!”) and there’s two dopey musical numbers by children’s choirs for no reasons whatsoever, An Affair to Remember is, without question, one of the most romantic movies I’ve ever seen. If that last scene doesn’t bring a tear to your eye, it’s time to get the ducts checked by your optometrist. …more
When people claim Casino Royale is a “realistic” Bond movie, they don’t mean it’s realistic in any sense that relates to the real world, because it’s not and it doesn’t.
They mean it’s more realistic than 1983’s Octopussy, which makes Casino Royale look like it was directed by D.A. Pennebaker. All Bond movies are, to varying degrees male fantasies. Octopussy is, by far, the most fantastic. …more
This week, the San Francisco Asian American Film Festival is in full swing, catch Paul Madonna at Sketch Tuesday, assuage the pain of your own coyote-ugly experiences at Bawdy Storytelling’s Too Close For Comfort reading, and celebrate your favorite ephemera on international Obscura Day!
Monday 3/15: Head down to Viz Cinema tonight for a screening of Yang Fudong’s Seven Intellectuals in a Bamboo Forest as a part of the 2010 San Francisco Asian American Film Festival. The festival, which began last Thursday, runs through the end of the week and features films from Asian and Asian-American artists that span the globe. Tickets $12, 9pm at 1746 Post Street. …more
This week in New York Keith Gessen and Elif Batuman talk, Guernica has a reading, Joanna Newsom sings and plays harp, Marcel Dzama appears, talks and signs books, The Moth has a Story Slam, Christopher Walken loses a hand and Zoe Kazan gives him one, and Atlas Obscura presents an international celebration of curious and obscure things.
MONDAY 3/15: Elif Batuman and Keith Gessen in conversation. Batuman’s pieces—for n+1, The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, and the London Review of Books— have made her one of the most sought-after and admired writers of her generation. In The Possessed, her latest work of non-fiction, Batuman investigates a possible murder at Tolstoy’s ancestral estate, retraces Pushkin’s wanderings in the Caucasus, and shows us why Old Uzbek has one hundred different words for crying. McNally Jackson. 7:00pm. …more
What a pleasure to find an old Hollywood movie whose primary conflict is the battle of its two leads to get laid.
I don’t mean it in the lovey-dovey romantic ideal sort of way, I mean I Was A War Bride is about the impossible logistics of two people knocking boots in the middle of an armed conflict. In 1949 this was certainly a cheeky topic. Nowadays, it’s downright scandalous. …more
The Rumpus: What’s wrong with hip hop?
Natasha Leggero: My brother (aka Nickname) is actually a talented rapper. I wrote that joke after hearing 9 different songs where they steal the entire chorus from another song and just yell over it. There are a lot of heated, misspelled arguments on the comment section of that video if you are interested. But essentially it’s just a joke. Some comics are able to just spout one liners off the top of their head but for me to write a joke something really terrible has to happen …more
Soon after finishing Dr. Strangelove in 1964, Stanley Kubrick became fascinated with alien life forms and decided that he wanted to make a sci-fi movie. Not knowing much about it, he needed a co-writer, or rather, a co-creator. He knew roughly what he wanted to do, but he needed scientific expertise. Someone suggested Arthur C. Clarke, but Kubrick had heard he was a recluse, and a crazy one at that. Nonetheless, he sent a telegram to Ceylon—where Clarke was writing at the time. …more
The South by Southwest Conferences and Festivals begin this Friday, 3/12, in Austin, Texas, and continue through 3/21. If you happen to be attending the festival, be sure to make it out to some of the presentations by Monofonus, the Austin-based multimedia organization, which has a full-schedule of film and video screenings, concerts and parties.
The schedule includes a screening of Lovers of Hate, a 2010 Sundance Film Festival Selection, which Monofonus helped produce. (Monofonus also provided the video installation for One Year Later: The Rumpus Anniversary Party).
Following SXSW, on 3/30, Monofonus will host the third installment of its Teleportal series, Teleportal 3: McSweeney’s, featuring Bill Cotter and Annie La Ganga, a Teleportal reading by Dean Young, video from Wholphin, and a special musical guest.
This week, it’s Monthly Rumpus time again, Ilisa Barbash’s Sweetgrass takes over at the Landmark Lumiere, learn about the San Francisco Panorama at San Francisco State University, and maybe go see some clowns.
Monday 3/8: Come down to The Makeout Room for Sleeping With Friends, the love child of The Rumpus and McSweeney’s, featuring Jesse Nathan, Jami Attenberg (who you can see later this week at Modern Times), Mark Morford, Gerard Jones, Chicken John, Nato Green, and K. Flay. $10 cheap as always, or buy a $15 ticket and get a copy of Panorama (that’s a ticket to the baddest party in town and a copy of Panorama for a dollar less than the newsstand price, for all of you mathematicians out there.) 21+, 7pm @ 3225 22nd Street. …more
This week in New York Sam Lipsyte reads from The Ask, David Shields reads from Reality Hunger, the Magnetic Fields perform, playwright Suzan-Lori Parks reads, Lore Segal and Tao Lin engage in a panel discussion about the novella, Stephen Elliott holds a writing class, Philip Gourevitch, Francine Prose and Lewis Lapham explore natural and man-made calamities and Light Industry presents the films of Jon Moritsugu.
MONDAY: Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, Topdog/Underdog, will be in conversation at 92Y. Her new play, The Book of Grace, premiers at the Public Theater this March. 92Y. Lexington Ave. @92nd St. 8:00pm. …more
I’ve been regularly attending events and film screenings at Artists’ Television Access on Valencia Street in San Francisco for almost a year now.
I’ve gone as both volunteer and audience member, in the company of wily friends or in my own, often more obtuse company. …more
With today’s opening of the Armory Show in New York, and with the various art fairs concurrently being presented such as the Whitney Biennial and Armory Arts Week, the city is paying homage in all its corners to persons who make art and make it well. In response, we’ll be paying particular attention to one location in the city that has for over a hundred years served as a center of artistic and bohemian activity—the Chelsea Hotel—and the various artists who took up residence there. …more
“Name of head of household
How many free white males age 16 and older
How many free white males under age 16
How many free white females
How many of all other free persons
How many slaves”
From “Census 2010: What’s new?” (via @wkamaubell)
This week in New York, it’s Armory Arts Week, Justin Taylor and Porochista Khakpour tell your literary fortune at Canteen Magazine’s Second Annual Benefit Gala, The PooL Art Fair opens, Old Hat performs, Happy Ending Reading Series presents Extreme Situations with Benjamin Anastas, Liev Schreiber talks to Jordan Roth, and Krista Tippett and Andrew Solomon talk science at NYPL.
MONDAY 3/1: Opening reception for Empire State of Mind: A Group Exhibition At The Chelsea Hotel. The Chelsea Hotel, in collaboration with Beez and Honey, presents Exhibitions, Performances, Video Art and Films. Building on the Chelsea Hotel’s historical and artistic significance in NYC, Beez and Honey will create an experience of art that combines all art forms for the entire week. Chelsea Hotel. 222 West 23rd Street. 6:00pm – 9:00pm. …more
“This isn’t the most fun to listen to and some viewers don’t find it to much fun to watch, but the 1982 film is without question the best of all serious fiction films devoted to rock.”
Roger Ebert takes a look back at Pink Floyd’s The Wall.
“It was a sound person’s nightmare/fantasy: squawking peacocks, refrigerator motors, thunderstorms, bug zappers, ice machines, phone calls from people in prison, seemingly random bloodcurdling screams, and the general din of vice.”
In September 2002 Michael Wiese spent “a night at Hunter S. Thompson’s cabin in Woody Creek, Colorado, recording commentary tracks for the DVD release of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” The email he sent back to Criterion the next day is now available online: “A Pig in the Wilderness.” (via @quailty)
In honor of the True/False Film Fest, the Criterion Collection is making available for free online viewing six films that previously showed at the festival. They will be available through February 28th. The titles are Son of a Gun, Someday My Prince Will Come, The Mother, The Order of Myths, Running Stumbled, and The Mosquito Problem and Other Stories.
“Why do I keep running away from Mikhail Bulgakov? I’ve been on the run for years now. From the first time I was encouraged to read The Master and Margarita, I have been pursued by keen film producers trying to convince me I am the guy to put Bulgakov’s masterpiece on the big screen. Each time they almost manage to corner me, but each time I manage to escape. Why? What is it that frightens me away from trying to render his work on film?”
Director Terry Gilliam explains how he learned to love Mikhail Bulgakov in an excerpt from his introduction to Bulgakov’s Black Snow. (via The Book Bench)
I’m not a big fan of the moment early in the film where Barry Newman’s Kowalski drives past himself in a different car and disappears into thin air (“Holy crap! He just vanished! THAT MUST BE THE VANISHING POINT!”) and in 2010 it’s hard to consider Cleavon Little’s telepathic disc jockey as anything other than a magical negro character. But otherwise, Vanishing Point is damn near perfect, an ideal blend of badass car chases and existential angst. …more
This week in New York 2010: Whitney Biennial opens, Gigantic holds a launch party for Issue 2: Gigantic America, Anderbo Reading at KGB, Mary Karr talks with Philip Gourevitch, MOMA premieres documentary about Mikhail Khodorkovsky–Russia’s wealthiest man and one if its most controversial figures, Ted Conover reads, André Aciman talks to Paul Leclerc, and Sam Mendes directs The Tempest at BAM.
MONDAY 2/22: Author Mary Karr talks with Paris Review editor Philip Gourevitch about her process as part of the magazine’s Art of Memoir interview series. Mary Karr is the author of several books, including The Liars’ Club, Cherry and, most recently, Lit, which made The New York Times best books of 2009. Joe’s Pub. 425 Lafayette St. $20. 7:00pm. …more
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