Things you can do this weekend in NYC: Run to the East Village and hear Private Siren at Coney Island Baby tonight at 730, grab a pizza and be home in time to catch Wyeth on PBS by 10:00. With me so far? Then tomorrow night, go to IFC and see a double feature of the Hal Ashby doc and …
Susanne Bartsch: On Top
Whether Susanne Bartsch was anointed or appointed “Queen of the Night” and patron saint of LGBTQ advocacy and inclusion is no less important than her ability to throw a rockus party where the only criteria for entry is making the effort to be fabulous. Face it, we all want to feel special and no one wants to be turned away …
Graves – A Web Series to Die For
The web series that I’m into at the moment is Graves which is about a group of friends who are about to say goodbye to their twenties (yeah, my first thought was grow a pair, try saying goodbye to your forties, fuckers, but I’m trying to remain empathetic in the latter half of 2018) and are living in a small …
Ideal Home
Yo, it is 20-freaking-18 and I know one thing for sure. The Ideal Home if you believe in fairies, leprechauns and unicorns may indeed exist but no one is sure what that magical construct looks like. What kind of parents make an ideal home? No clue. What I do believe is that no one starts off thinking that they are …
Summer 1993-The Timelessness of Loss
Memory is unreliable, facts are not. Summer 1993 takes us back to a time when AIDS was a death sentence and children whose parent died of AIDS-related illnesses were orphans and bore the stigmata of a disease that was sexually transmitted. Feelings like memories are not visible yet both palpable and ephemeral. We think we remember how we felt, how …
Won’t You Be My Neighbor– I’m sorry, I just can’t but you should
I can’t do it. I just can’t bring myself to see Won’t You Be My Neighbor. the documentary about Fred Rogers and his children’s show, “Mister Rogers’, Neighborhood.” The film is totally legit. It has Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Morgan Neville (20 Feet from Stardom) directing a documentary about a subject audiences think they know everything about but evidently, do not. The …
To A More Perfect Union: U.S. V. Windsor – Another Year, Another Decision
From the moment you decide to have a wedding and not elope it can be a shit show of details. The wedding industrial complex includes shelves devoted to magazines at newsstands, television shows like, Say Yes to the Dress, themed weddings, destination weddings, religious, civil and skydiving ceremonies, and an entire jewelry racket to navigate. Weddings rank right up there …
Coming to My Senses- Transforming Limitations into Possibilities
Aaron Baker was barely out of diapers when he learned how to ride a motorcycle at the age of three. At the age of 20, he was no longer able to feed himself after a crash, breaking C4-5,6 vertebrae, rendering him a quadriplegic, paralyzed from the chin down. Aaron who had been highly capable could no longer do anything for …
Sara Driver: For Real
Sara Driver is one of the most relevant and underappreciated filmmakers of a generation. Take Boom For Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat, her documentary piecing together the life of an artist and friend before he became famous. Driver who has witnessed decay and regrowth in New York City since being a grad student at NYU circa Jim …
Tribeca: It Wasn’t only a Film Festival
Driver Ed (the first three episodes now streaming on Vimeo – less than a ten-minute commitment) is a woke variation on witty web programming in the age of content overload. Ed is an all but agoraphobic introvert borderline recluse who has been in an online relationship for two years with the girl of his dreams who he’s about to meet …
Tribeca Documentary Review: Blowin’ Up
View PostTribeca Film Festival: Docs to Watch
Tribeca is probably one of the most curated film festivals in the best of ways for everyone but cinephiles who have to make a decision about how to be two places at once. For documentary junkies, you might as well put a blindfold on, spin around three times and pin a tail on the schedule. There are too many stand-outs …
Don’t Pass Over Pass Over
What do you get when you combine Waiting for Godot, current American race issues, and Biblical lore into a narrative that’s at times hilarious, suspenseful and quirky? You get Antoinette Nwandu’s Pass Over, produced in 2017 by Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre and directed by Spike Lee. The direction delivers the intensity of Nwandu’s play—given life by actors Julian Parker and Jon …
Top SXSW Docs: The Cook, a Music Icon, his DJ and Six Documentaries
Some SXSW Highlights The 2018 Tribeca Film Festival is a few weeks away from beginning on April 18 with a slate of over 550 films and talks to navigate and expected attendance over 150K people. It follows a hiccup after South by Southwest. SXSW or as actor/comedian Nick Offerman calls it, sexswa is a conference, exhibition and interactive, film, music and …
The Case for The Neurotic Quest for Serenity
Imagine you’re a “medium-pretty” actress who is always worried about losing her role to another actress, not hard, right? Turn that worry into a full-blown, post-apocalyptic, Mad Max- like reoccurring nightmare complete with costumes and stunt people and you begin to understand the depth of Kika’s anxiety. In her non-dream life, she is being stalked by a super-fan, Filipão. She’s …
Ali & Cavett: The Tale of the Tapes- A Knockout Documentary Premiered @ SXSW
“One of the best shows you ever had, boy.” Muhammad Ali If anyone on the planet could have handled Dick Cavett, it was his longtime friend Muhammad Ali. The three-time heavyweight champion of the world appeared on the Dick Cavett Show more than a dozen times and hosted it once because of mutual love and respect. At the opening of one …
Leaning into the Wind
There are more than a few ways to go about making a documentary about an artist. There’s the dead artist documentary, the living artist documentary and what he (and maybe every once in a while, she) has done thus far with his life—either pre-success or post and then there’s the slice-of-life look. The beauty of the latter is that context …
Vieno James | Artist of the Black Sun
New York-based artist Vieno James exudes a raw sensuality that mirrors the art he makes and the materials he utilizes in his work. Juxtaposing stucco framing against the silks and other fabrics Vieno procured from his travels to Italy, Kuwait, and Egypt, he blurs the line between painting and sculpture. There’s a calmness, physicality, and hint of theater to James’ …
The Party, Not So Black and White | Film Review
Unpack this: You do look slightly ministerial in that pinny—in a 21st century, post-modern, post, post, feminist sort of way. Says Patricia Clarkson’s character, April to her BFF, Janet, albeit the woman who is about to prove that you can still get your ephemeral feelings in a world of hurt when you find out that your husband has been keeping secrets …
The Big Picture | Faces Places (Review)
Faces Places is the little documentary that could. Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, the filmmakers transform the quotidian into objects of fascination. There’s an inherent narcissism about making a film about the process of making art yet the subjects are so lacking in ego yet charming that it’s a delight to watch. JR and Agnès Varda …
I, Tonya, Indie Film …..Big Love
Any movie that leads with the title card, “Based on irony-free, wildly contradictory, totally true interviews with Tonya Harding and Jeff Gillooly” has me at irony-free. I, Tonya is a satire both uninhibited and direct, a club and a shotgun. The film tickles the collective American memory of the biggest 90s tabloid story pre-OJ and delights rather than disgusts us …
I’m Afraid of Dying.
I’m afraid of dying I’m afraid of living too long I’m afraid of getting cancer I’m afraid of heights ladders balconies ledges fire escapes bridges scaffolding (except the metaphorical kind) and long escalators (in both directions) I’m afraid of flying but fly all the time I’m afraid of needles I’m afraid of being in a car accident a plane crash …