Film
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Listen to Metal on Metal and Everything Will Be Okay
Just because you don’t succeed the way others define success, you’re not a failure. You just chose to take a different path. And who’s to say that’s wrong? I just finished watching Anvil! The Story of Anvil.
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David Lynch Thinks About Ed Ruscha
Ed Ruscha, photographer of twenty-six affectless Standard gas stations in LA, Every Building on the Sunset Strip, and painter of words floating in space, with or without a setting, is the subject of a retrospective at London’s Hayward gallery, and…
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Notable San Francisco, This Week 10/26 – 11/1
In San Francisco this week, David Sedaris, a night with Kevin Smith, the SF Jewish BookFest, and a Haunted Laundromat. Monday 10/26: Learn more about one of the cornerstones of civilization as we know it: water. An official Sundance Selection,…
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Notable New York, This Week 10/26 – 11/1
In New York this week, James Frey and Maira Kalman at the CLMP Spelling Bee, members of The National collaborate with visual artist Matthew Ritchie in The Long Count at BAM, Sherman Alexie and Chuck Klosterman read, Guernica Magazine turns…
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James Franco’s Face: A Subjective Account of the New Yorker Festival
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…
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By the Seventies We Were Living in the Future
Synth Britannia is a documentary about the emergence of British synth pop (trailer here), from the “sinister” 1971 Moog score for A Clockwork Orange to Depeche Mode, and the Telegraph has published an interesting review of the film. First key…
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Chelsea on the Rocks: Twilight of the Hotel Chelsea
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.
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Manny Farber on Sunset Boulevard
Recently I bought a copy of Farber on Film, and I’ve been flipping through it, sporadically reading here and there; last week I happened across his famous piece on Sunset Boulevard (1950). These lines and observations are fairly well-known, but…
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Still Bored to Death?
Jonathan Ames has a great blog about his HBO TV series Bored to Death. In this post he talks about the irony of engaging in an S&M session with his former student and then the very next evening being part…
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Notable New York, This Week 10/19-10/25
This week, Chinua Achebe speaks, n+1 in conversation with Reihan Salam and Ross Douthat, Jonathan Lethem reads, composer/drummer Bobby Previte with Psychedelic Furs’ Knox Chandler, photographer Jeff Wall presents more urban decay, “junkyard bohos” Huggabroomstik play, CMJ Music Marathon begins…
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Wild Spike Jonze
How exactly did Maurice Sendak’s beloved children’s story become a feature length film for the inner children of an entire generation? It took a lot of tinkering, and nearly a decade, but Where The Wild Things Are has finally made…
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The Rumpus Review of A Serious Man
What is it with the Coen brothers, technical masters who tend to use their skills for no meaningful purpose?