Krzysztof Kieslowski's A Short Film About Love opens with a close up of hands, wrists bandaged. Another hand attempts to caress them but they in turn are stopped by a third party. The scene's significance will become apparent later. The film proper begins: we witness 19-year-old Tomek (Olaf Lubaszenko) break into what appears to be a school and steal a small telescope. He sets the small scope up in the bedroom he rents from a friend's mother and spies on Magda (Grazyna Szapolowska), an artist living in an apartment on the opposite side of the courtyard. Tomek is clearly obsessed with Magda. An employee of the post office, he leaves her forged pick-up notices just so that he can see her up close. He takes a second job an a milk deliveryman for the same reason; he hides her empty bottles so that he can have a reason to know at her door early in the morning. He even tries to sabotage her romantic liaisons, calling in a false gas leak just as she and her lover are getting undressed. (Peeping Tom)ek eventually confesses his feelings (and his mischief) to Magda. She is understandably very angry, but at the same...
Going out to eat and drink in New York City, especially if you're a bit of food reviews junkie like myself, there is always this lingering feeling that there's someplace hotter and hipper than where you are. But as I stood in the upstairs bar area at Spice Market in the Meatpacking District last Saturday night, after Amanda Hesser published a rave review in Wednesday's New York Times, I realized I was at the epicenter of the buzz. And a word to the wise, at the epicenter of the buzz, everyone is staring at everyone else trying to determine if they might be at all famous. I sort of felt a little bad that I wasn't Courtney Love, minus the incoherent ramblings and the boob flashing. I ate at 66 last spring, another Jean-Georges Vongrichten restaurant in TriBeCa often compared to Spice Market because of their similar Asian inspired cuisines. However, the two places are wildly different -- where 66 is sleek, sparse, cool and Chinese; Spice Market is textured, warm and Pan-Asian in the decor and the food. Housed in a renovated warehouse, the restaurant fills two floors -- a ground floor with a bar/waiting area and tables and...
I just saw this great Rosecrans Baldwin/Danny Gregory piece in The Morning News about Baldwin's Brooklyn neighbors. It's a true cliche about New York that despite its size, it's quite insular, particularly within neighborhoods. You end up seeing a lot of the same people over and over again -- sometimes acknowledging each other's presence, sometimes not. If I had any artistic talent, these are the neighbors I'd draw: 1. The aging punk-rocker in a similarly-aging Ramones t-shirt, fine shoulder-length curly yellow hair, and a limp, from my old neighborhood in Chelsea. I always saw him (from my balcony) crossing 23rd Street on 7th Ave. Wonder where he was going? 2. The wiry-gray-haired woman in her mid-fifties who lived in our Chelsea building; I think her name was Dottie (although I may have imagined that because she looked like a Dottie). When I'd see her in the building, she would speak to me briefly in an abrupt yet strangely monotone manner, but she never acknowledged me when I passed her on the street. One day when I met her coming out of the elevator, she blurted out, "I'm dying of cancer," as if she'd just found out but it hadn't...
I will never buy lighter fluid again! Sunday I went to a cookout and was introduced to fatwood -- a more effective and environmentally friendly way to start up a charcoal grill, camp fire, or fireplace. Fatwood Sticks vs. Lighter Fluid: made from renewable resouce:resin filled pinewood stumps made from non-renewable petroleum smells pleasantly of burning wood smells of old garages and gas stations burns easily and steadily,leaving coals hot creates a brief fireball,leaving coals unaffected $4 per box:enough to start at least six fires $2 per bottle:enough to start at most two fires as harmless as a stick(except more flammable) toxic if swallowed, carcinogenic if breathed, pollutant if spilled comes in recyclable cardboard box comes in non-biodegradable plastic bottle...
It's said that Europeans typically ask "Why?" while Americans ask "Why not?" Maybe that's why they wind up with classy icons like the Eiffel Tower, which was originally called "useless and monstrous," and we end up with a 305-foot fiberglass statue of Abraham Lincoln. The city fathers of Lincoln, Illinois want the statue to lord over their town like a mutant prairie dog, visible for 20 miles and costing $40 million. They're still looking for funding. Some might say a colorful collossus of the assassinated emancipator spilling watermelon juice onto the town might be in poor taste. At least this sculpture lacks the "rock of ages" pretentions of Mount Rushmore, which is a crime against nature enshrined as a national monument. My tip for settling the argument of taste is for the statue to describe a different scene from Lincoln's life. The 16th president was fond of relating a story from his days as a young boy. From Herndon's Life of Lincoln: His father had at home a little yellow housedog, which invariably gave the alarm if the boys undertook to slip away unobserved after night had set in -- as they often-times did -- to go coon hunting. One...
I'm quite excited. Today is my big court appearance. Not as a defendant (they'll never catch me!) but as a juror. What's got me really excited is the hope that my experience will be something like Pauly Shore's in the 1995 movie "Jury Duty." You've got to watch the trailer and get excited about "lifestyles of the rich and sequestered."...
Gawker speculates that author Amy Bloom is responsible for an anonymous piece in Salon lamenting the state of publishing today. The unnamed literary sourpuss complains that being an even moderately successful fiction writer doesn't pay the bills or guarantee a future. While we sympathize with the plight of the semi-successful writer forced to shill for Weight Watchers, maybe it's time to put all this in perspective. Since my illustrious and more literary co-editor is away visiting country mice, I thought I'd post a letter she brought to my attention. In 1803, Jane Austen sold the manuscript of Northanger Abbey, then called Susan, to a publisher for £10. Six years later, Austen was still waiting for the book to come out and hadn't heard from the publisher. So she did what all angered ladies of good breeding do: she wrote a letter that whistles like a teapot at full boil. Wednesday 5 April 1809 Gentlemen In the Spring of the year 1803 a MS Novel in 2 vol. Entitled Susan [Northanger Abbey] was sold to you by a Gentleman of the name Seymour [Henry Austen's lawyer] & the purchase money £10 Rec/d at the same time. Six years have since passed,...
No one likes to be teased and taunted. Especially apes. Yeah, not even apes can take two teenagers throwing rocks and ice at them. That's why Jabari, a gorilla living at the Dallas Zoo, escaped from his cage last week and attacked three people before getting a taste of zookeeper justice. Wouldn't it be great if there were a news service that only ran stories about monkeys? Well get those opposable thumbs ready, because there is! Monkeywire delivers monkey news once a week. If you've never sympathized with Homer Simpson's desire for a helper monkey ("PRAY FOR MOJO..."), then watch this wonderful video for an introduction to the human-capuchin relationship....
Oh no! One of my favorite Indian dishes, chicken tikka masala, frequently contains "excessive levels of three chemicals linked to hyperactivity in children, allergies, asthma, migraine and even cancer." And here I thought that glowing atomic red color was just a symbol of its yummyness, like the appealing pink of Hostess Snoballs. Wait a minute... could they be bad for you too?...
19-year-old Jacek (Miroslaw Baka) wanders aimlessly about Warsaw. He cares nothing about those around him, pushing a man down in a public restroom, dropping a rock off an overpass into traffic. Having coffee in a cafe, he works on cutting a piece of rope down to a suitable length for use as a garrote. A middle aged taxi driver (Jan Tesarz) cleans his cab outside his apartment building. He ogles a young woman working a produce truck and denies a fare to a married couple looking for a ride. He honks his car horn to frighten two passing dogs being taken for a walk and possibly poisons another. Piotr Balicki (Krzysztof Globisz), an idealistic man in his thirties, after a combined eight years of studies and apprenticeship, has been admitted to the defense council of lawyers. Adamantly against capital punishment, he hopes to be a just voice of reason in Poland's legal machine. These three men will find their paths crossing as one senseless murder leads to another, state sanctioned killing. Krzysztof Kieslowski's 1988 film A Short Film About Killing ( a feature length expansion of the fifth Decalogue episode) establishes its grim tone, look, and subject matter right...
In August of 1996, presidential hopeful John Kerry wasn’t making national headlines. He was, however, busy spearheading a damning investigation into one of our government’s dirtiest secrets....
A veteran anti-terrorism official who served under Bush accuses his former boss of ignoring the threat of terrorism until September 11, 2001. Reagan appointee Richard Clarke described asking Condoleeza Rice on January 24, 2001, to call for a Cabinet-level meeting "to deal with the impending al-Qaida attack." Yet in nearly 100 formal national security meetings before 9/11, terrorism was only the topic twice. And there was also the Hart-Rudman commission's warning in January 2001. And Newsweek has a story on Ashcroft's Justice Department's curtailing a program to monitor al-Qaida suspects in the United States in order to battle drug trafficking. Condoleeza Rice gives a very different picture of the administration's activity in an op-ed piece today. Josh Marshall gives a good comparison of Rice versus Clarke and discusses the administration's disingenuity. Two weeks after Clarke says he called for high-level meetings to deal with the al-Qaida threat and the Hart-Rudman report called for the creation of a Homeland Security Department, George W. Bush said, "My job is to lead. A President should not wait on events. He must try to shape them. And the warning signs are clear." Unfortunately, he wasn't talking about fighting al-Qaida or terrorism; he was talking...
Walking a fine line between narratively abstract art movie and genre filmmaking, Olivier Assayas's demonlover occasionally wanders a bit too far in one direction at the sake of the other. Sheer directorial verve keeps the project from falling apart; the movie may be a bit messy at times, but so are the the themes and ideas it explores. Paris-based media conglomerate Volf Group is in the process of buying out Tokyo Anime, a company already producing successful animated porn and looking to expand in to a 3-D video game style variation that will revolutionize the industry. Two competing companies are looking for exclusive web licensing rights to Volf Group's new acquisition: the Japanese Magnatronics and the U.S. run Demonlover. Volf's personal assistant Diane (Connie Nielsen) has, though devious means, landed a new position at the company as part of the team responsible for the Tokyo Anime licensing. Covertly also working for Magnatronics in order to undermine Demonlover's efforts, Diane discovers a connection between the American company and the Hellfire Club, a hard to access underground website specializing in interactive torture that looks uncomfortably realistic. As things get murkier and more disturbing, Diane realizes that she is alone with no one...
First, everyone (including me) and her parakeet is going to be seeing Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind this weekend. Here's a smattering of reviews: Over at Slate, David Edlestein calls ESotSM "the best movie I've seen in a decade." Salon's Stephanie Zacharek is slightly less enthusiastic. Although she too liked the film, she's frustrated by its "bag of ironic tricks." Also in the "enjoyed, with reservations" camp is The Times' Elvis Mitchell, who found that "this angular and intelligent romantic comedy isn't entirely consistent. Even as you laugh, it's a movie you admire more than love." The New Yorker's Anthony Lane weighs in with a somewhat inscrutable review of the film's "unlovely elegance." p.s. I love you, Kate Winslet. In the rep houses and elsewhere around town this weekend: Landmark Loew's Theater in Jersey City - "Wilder Laughter," three films of Billy Wilder, including Sabrina, One, Two, Three, and Some Like It Hot. The Sunshine Theater - Catch Mel Brooks's Blazing Saddles at midnight Friday and Saturday nights. AMMI - Get your woman-torturing freak on Saturday and Sunday with Lars Von Trier's Epidemic, The Kingdom (I and II), and Medea. Film Forum - The Welles Festival continues with The...
Elizabeth Peyton is a conceptual artist masquerading as a painter. She is most famous for painting images of Kurt Cobain and Leonardo DiCaprio and other pop icons. Peter Schejdahl, reviewing the current show at the Whitney for the New Yorker, describes Peyton as "the moral center of the Biennial." Peyton's work is charming and very likeable. Its small scale (her paintings are usually less than 20 inches tall or wide) and recognizable subject matter make the work inviting. She has certain skills as a colorist and decorative designer in the tradition of Matisse and David Hockney, with whom she shares a room at the Whitney. But in a more sane art world, Peyton would not be in the Biennial yet. There are no surprises in her work. There's no sense of her confronting a formal problem and finding an innovative solution. In one of Hockney's paintings at the Biennial, he renders a living room couch with huge stripes of orange and white that curve over at the top. It's simple, gutsy, and unexpectedly pleasurable to look at. And it sticks with you long after you've seen the painting. Meanwhile, Elizabeth Peyton has a bored, scratchy drawing of a photograph of...
A Hollywood legend has fallen. Oscar-winning actress and clenched-fist fireball Mercedes McCambridge has died at age 87. Although she's famous for being the demonic voice of Linda Blair in "The Exorcist," my favorite role for McCambridge was as the repressed coil of lust, greed, and envy that she played in "Johnny Guitar." The role required her to match the assured power of Joan Crawford, and McCambridge was more than up to the task. Her frenzied voice, frantic movements, and revenge-fueled righteousness was the perfect compliment to Crawford's steady solitude. McCambridge began in the days of radio, and appeared in at least three of the great movies ever made (Touch of Evil, Giant). Of course, great actresses never die -- they're just neglected during their lifetimes and leave behind great DVDs to watch over, and over, and over....
Donald Rumsfeld says it's "folklore" that the administration ever said Iraq was an imminent threat. Luckily, Thomas Friedman was on hand to remind the Secretary of Defense about the record. MoveOn.org wants congress to censure President Bush for deceiving the public about Iraq's WMD. For those with any doubt about the administration's statements on the "imminent threat," here's a handy little compilation, and a more exhaustive summation....
Via ScaryNY, a press release from Westminster, UK, that warns about the Three Filths that threaten our streets: The equivalent of two million pints of urine is collected from the streets of London every year. That's just the amount that makes it to the ever increasing number of urinals installed by Westminster City Council to combat the problem of street urination. Westminster City Council has launched its Three Filths campaign to address the problem on our streets. Everyday our street cleaners face the scourge of urine, vomit and excreta, cleaning up 300 pools of vomit every weekend and 6 deposits of excrement every night....
Slate has an optimistic story about the changing fads of New York apartment architecture. Author Alex Marshall notes: "Meier's Perry Street and Pasqarelli's Porter House buildings have sold out at prices per square foot considerably higher than average. This may prompt more developers to realize that adding creative, original architecture can mean more money in their pockets, and this may eventually improve the skyline and streets of this city and others." Yes, and this will lead to a golden age of New York architecture where everyone pays a reasonable rent. And no neighbors will ever catch a rat on a sticky trap and throw it out their back window into my flower pots. Tour an apartment at the new Perry Street towers and wonder how $12 million penthouses will make our living rooms better....
Movern Callar (Samantha Morton) awakens Christmas morning to find her writer boyfriend dead in a pool of blood, lying in the doorway from the living room to the kitchen. He has committed suicide because, as his note to Morvern on his computer indicates, "it just felt like the right thing to do." Morvern doesn't call the police, she doesn't freak out (at least not in a traditional sense). She opens her presents: a leather jacket, a cigarette lighter, and a mix tape that will provide much of the accompanying soundtrack for the rest of the film. Then she goes out partying with her best friend Lanna (Kathleen McDermott), telling no one about what has happened. Morvern's boyfriend has also left behind the manuscript for a novel on his computer along with a list of prospective publishers. Morvern substitutes her own name and mails it off. She never does call tell anyone about her boyfriend's suicide, choosing instead to dismember his body and bury it on the island on which her foster mother is also laid to rest. She then cleans out his bank account, using the funds to book a holiday in Spain for herself and Lanna. No explicit...
Adam Gopnik reviews a few histories of Times Square in the latest New Yorker. Definitely a must-read. The myth they want to dispel is that the cleanup of Times Square in the nineties was an expression of Mayor Giuliani’s campaign against crime and vice, and of his companion tendency to accept a sterilized environment if they could be removed, and that his key corporate partner in this was the mighty Disney, which led the remaking of West Forty-second Street as a theme park instead of an authentic urban street. As Traub and Sagalyn show, this is nearly the reverse of the truth. It was Mayor Koch who shaped the new Times Square, if anyone did, while the important private profit-makers and players were almost all purely local: the Old Oligarchs, the handful of rich, and mostly Jewish, real-estate families—the Rudins, Dursts, Roses, Resnicks, Fishers, Speyers, and Tishmans, as Sagalyn crisply enumerates them. Mayor Giuliani, basically, was there to cut the ribbon, and Disney to briefly lend its name....
Isn't it great when architecture and food collide? No, not the towers of food at Gramercy Tavern. On the way to lunch today I took a look at the models for New York's 2012 Olympic bid. Several people wondered who has won the bid for 2008, and what their village will look like. Wonder no further! Take a look at the upcoming Athens 2004 Olympic Village before checking out San Francisco's Sasaki Associates plan for Beijing 2008. There's no clear victor in the battle to transform Queens in eight years. Henning Larsens Tegnestue has some nice touches (windmills!) and their twisting hourglass skyscrapers would be a great addition to the skyline. But the pattern of buildings isolates the community in a way that might facilitate a great Olympic experience, but leave behind an alienated mass of buildings disconnected from the surrounding communities (like Battery Park City). Morphosis' plan includes short buildings that seductively curve along the waterfront, with a boardwalk through 43 acres of restored (re-invented) wetlands and a nice promenade. But the skyscrapers look like a psychologist's experiment and again, the community is cut off from the surrounding neigborhoods. What's the point of building a beach only a handful...
Just because the NY Times describes this year's Whitney Biennial as "easily the best in some time," don't expect big changes in the kinds of work that are shown. The Biennial is always about the art world, and the art world has been astray for a long, long time. But since there's so much wrong about the show, I'd like to point out what's right. I'll be returning to look at many of these artists again, and probably revise my opinions. But here are my highlights. Amy Cutler uses surrealistic imagery (like women's torsos on bicycle wheels) and trees in a sparse, patterned way that keeps her canvases full of intensity but still very quiet. Barnaby Furnas is the Quentin Tarantino of the show, using the subject of violence as a tool for dazzling formal experimentation. Some painters quietly go to abstraction when they want to squeeze, squirt, and spray on their canvases. Furnas paints bodies disintigrating, bullets whizzing, and heads exploding on the Civil War battlefield. My favorite work in the show may have been Amy Sillman, whose palette pits warm and cool temperatures against each other, oranges and reds against purples and blues. She refers to landscapes in...
Even though this is a useless rant--as John McCain's chief of staff has said, "Senator McCain will not be a candidate for vice president in 2004"--a Kerry-McCain ticket is an especially wonderful flight of fancy. Consider first the symbolic meaning of a Kerry-McCain ticket: a coalition of Democrats and Republicans fighting together to heal a scarred system. The policy would be, of necessity, centrist; McCain would tactfully remind Kerry that he's for free trade and wants a free Iraq, and together, this super duo would run on balancing the budget and finishing McCain's work on campaign finance reform. In addition, Congressional leaders would have to work with them on the reforms we sorely need, from health care to Social Security. They would fully fund No Child Left Behind and re-train those left jobless by outsourcing. Kerry-McCain would spell the end of partisan politics on Capitol Hill and the beginning of a new era of voter enfranchisement. And best yet, McCain would trounce Bush in South Carolina, like he should have four years ago. It's a thought, anyway....
Very quick little story. I was just returning a car to the Hertz on E. 24th, and this guy (apparently a regular) was exclaiming to the Hertz lady about how the customers at the 24th St. Hertz are so much nicer than the ones at the 76th St. Hertz. To prove his point, he told the lady about a time he was there when Joan Rivers was waiting for a car. Apparently, Joan had a major fit about the service (quelle surprise!) and threw a pen at a Hertz employee, hitting him in the eye, screaming, "I'm Joan Rivers! I shouldn't have to wait for a goddamn car." Everybody in the Hertz shared a chuckle, as if to say, "That crazy bitch Joan." Made my day, for some reason. p.s. I originally titled this with a pun on hurts/Hertz, but I decided you deserve better....
Now that I'm recovered from inadvertently poisoning my body with one deadly toxin, it's time to pour another one in. For those in NYC, there will be a "live-online" Islay scotch whisky tasting at d.b.a., 41 First Avenue, this Sunday (3/14) at 4pm. Editors from Slate, the New York Times, and NPR will be there for commentary and insight. A bunch of reporters drunk at a bar and calling it work? Yeah, that's never happened. Be sure to read Slate's introduction to the wonders of peat before you go....
Funny fuck Todd Levin thinks he's fucking funny translating the arty film descriptions for the New York Underground Film Festival into advice for the everyday filmgoer. Isn't mocking the humorless kind of like beating up a cripple? "…an ode to lights and color" "Even my closest friends and family will have second thoughts about attending this film." "…exaggerates the clichés of femininity and men in power." Get ready for 75 minutes of women throwing up and the men who constantly try to rape them. And isn't a cliché – if presented without sufficient context – already something of an exaggeration of the truth, anyway? If not by definition, then by implication? Aw forget it. If watching an extended, unedited monologue from a woman with poorly applied black eye makeup is your idea of a good time, have at it. Additionally, there is a 70% chance of unenthusiastic sex in this film. "…a freeform documentary…" If this film has an "editor" in its credits, it is probably a lie. My parents' home movies of me riding the caterpillar at Hoffman's Play Land are technically "freeform documentary." "a movie poem…" Almost as promising as a "whisky enema." "Nutria are a large, odd...
The folks over at Flak just reviewed "100 Suns," a photography book featuring nuclear blasts. Over at Metro Pictures gallery in Chelsea, Robert Longo is showing his charcoal drawings of Nagasaki, the Marshall Islands, and other atomic detonations. And Pakistan just tested its first missile that's capable of carrying nuclear warheads to all corners of India. Is London burning? If you're ready to go into Cold War mode, watch footage of nuclear blasts at the Office of Science and Technical Information. Sing along to "Duck and Cover" and learn how energy is released from "A is for Atoms" at the Prelinger Collection of vintage ephemera. And of course we can't forget about Atomic Tourism, can we?...
CIA Director George Tenet says that he's privately corrected Dick Cheney on three occasions after the VP misstated intelligence conclusions. I guess if there's one thing you can say about the Bush team, it's that they have such good manners to keep things like reasons for war private. Tenet, who was appointed by Clinton in 1997, has to be thankful that he even still has a job. When asked whether he thinks the administration deliberately skewed the facts in order to go to war in Iraq, Tenet replied "That's a private matter I'll take up at our next picnic of evil."...
Based on Michael Lesy's 1973 book of the same name, James Marsh's Wisconsin Death Trip feeds off of that innate curiosity many of us have with odd facts, people, and crimes. Both book and film are concerned with the town of Black River Falls and the strange events that occurred there in the late 1890s. Lesy collected vintage newspaper clippings and photographs to compose a portait of this turn of the century town. Marsh in turn took select items from the book and recreated them for his film to make, in his words, a visual essay. Opening with beautiful, gliding black and white footage of a lake and the surrounding cliff faces, the film immediately establishes one of its strongest traits: a feel for landscape and the beauty inherent in it. Filmed over the course of the four season, Marsh's film also manages to convey a sense of concentrated time, aided by the relatively brief running time. Despite the fact that the events took place 100 years ago, the vignettes Marsh has filmed have a timeless quality to them in ways both sad (a lovesick young woman drowns herself) and disturbing (a 13-year-old boy steals a gun and kills...
If you're coming to New York for dirty pictures, don't bother going to Ninth Avenue. Right now the lewdest show here is at the Met. "Playing with Fire: European Terracotta Models, 1740–1840" features small clay sculpture. Among these are neo-classical pieces modeled on Greek and Roman myths, and a common theme was the grappling/embracing of the man-beast Centaur and a fiesty lass. One sculpture features the Centaur spreading the woman's ass while the two struggle, and his fingers going into regions Hugh Hefner would find a tad shocking. Perhaps Camille Paglia's right about the high porn of classical antiquity. If you go, be sure to catch "Poets, Lovers, and Heroes" for more old-school nasty....
So not only is the Bush White House manipulating the Israeli peace process for political gain, now the Republican National Committee is trying to bully the media into submission with legalism. The RNC is telling television stations that they're breaking the law by running Moveon.org's ads criticizing the enormous Bush deficit that will weigh on future generations. Remember when Republicans claimed to be against this kind of legalistic tort bureaucracy?...
Every once and a while, you decide to watch a film you haven't seen in years, one you know is great but has somehow faded in memory. Then, after seeing it again, you wonder why you don't watch it at least once a year. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Red Shoes was a movie I had seen over ten years ago, had appreciated at the time, yet I now felt ready to see it again with fresh eyes (especially after having recently seen Black Narcissus for the first time). Here is a film that truly represents everything that cinema can do so well. The performances of Anton Walbrook, Marius Goring, and Moira Shearer are full of emotion and charisma. The script is complex yet speaks to the viewer in a near-universal way (even if art is not a major part of your life, everyone must deal with that tug of war between work and personal life). The editing of the "Red Shoes" ballet sequence achieves on film what would be impossible on the stage. This is all clothed in Brian Easdale's wonderful score and Jack Cardiff's remarkable cinematography. Cardiff's work here is some of the most astonishing color...
Manhattan User's Guide asked some of their favorite NYC bloggers to describe their ten favorite things about the city. My server's been having problems, so I think my questionnaire got lost somewhere along the way. Without further ado, then, my 10 Favorite Things about NYC. 1. Faces How many faces does the average New Yorker see each day? My non-scientific estimate is about 1,247. In the street, I've seen ruddy CEOs leaving their sleek black cars and blinged-out hip-hoppers smiling through the windows of their stretch Hummers. On the subway, I once saw a sickly strung-out heroin addict's drool falling down to his chest as he nodded out, the drool bobbing with the movements of the train, and the face of a drunk man laughing his ass off as the druggie's head kept rising... and falling... and rising... and falling. And I've seen the face of Soupy Sales. New York exposes you to every variety of human expression, and every moment has a story. 2. Curry Row There's something charming about walking down 6th Street between 1st and 2nd Avenues. Maybe it's seeing the thousands of blinking red hot pepper party lights strung inside the Indian restaurants. Maybe it's hearing...
The Nineteenth Century Introvert’s Guide to Friendship
1. Letters. Write them. Receive them. 2. Attend balls with your wildly attractive older sister (and pray you don't get snubbed by a tall, taciturn out-of-towner and his friend’s obnoxious sisters). 3. Learn to pine without seeming melancholy. 4. Taking up a hobby or two (painting, sewing, writing charades, playing the pianoforte) provides plenty of fodder for conversation. 5. Visits. Stay no longer than a fortnight, as extended visits can become tiresome. 6. Ensure that close friends marry tolerable men, so as not to spoil your acquaintance. 7. A turn around the garden affords just enough time to catch up without being awkward....
The Twenty-First Century Introvert's Guide to Friendship
1. Keep in touch through your web stats! Nothing shows you care like a random link for your friend to find buried in the “Referrers” section. 2. Invite people to movies or shows as often as possible. That way, scary conversation is minimal, and afterward you have a topic! Shows with multiple sets, extra-long movies, or double features are an especially effective way to say “I both enjoy and fear your company!” 3. Blame substances for your awkwardness. Addiction is far more socially acceptable than an embarrassing deficit of social grace. (“Oh, my hands are shaking? Those pesky DTs! Hahahaha....”) 4. IM is clearly the best forum for serious personal discussions. Avoid misunderstandings with a liberal sprinkling of emoticons! 5. Reach out through song! Make your friend a mix filled with songs that you love and hope she can “read between the lines” to hear how much you really care....
Film Forum is following the sold-out success of their January run of Hitchcock's "Dial M for Murder" with a month of stereoscopic mania every Thursday -- beginning tonight with Raoul Walsh's "Gun Fury" (and the Three Stooges' "Pardon My Backfire"). Where Hitchcock's use of 3-D was subtle, unexpected, and domestic, my guess is that "Gun Fury" will leave people needing neckbraces from all the surprise action bursting from the screen. Adventure, violence, and swagger are the order of the night. But Walsh has a soft touch and amazing sensitivity, too. He's been called the only director who could get away with filming James Cagney sitting on his mother's lap (in "White Heat"). Here's a prize Manny Farber bit on Walsh: If hardwares sold a house paint called Gusto [ed. - Don't they?], the number one customer would be Walsh: six decades in film using a jabbing, forthright crispness to occasionally vitalize the crudest hack fiction. "Gun Fury" stars Rock Hudson as a fatigued soldier coming home from the Civil War, sick of violence. But when an ex-Confederate steals his fiance (Donna Reed), Hudson's raw masculine taste for blood comes back as he searches for his girl and the Rebel who...
And away we go. The new DG (or Gusto2 as its friends call it after a long night of whiskey) is born. May its life be as vital and robust as Gusto1 and, if the time ever comes, its death more dignified. And speaking of vital and robust, my former senator John Kerry will be the Democratic nominee to oppose GWB in the fall. Bush is scared. John Kerry on the Issues A list of Kerry-sponsored bills TPM swoons over Kerry's non-Vietnam fighting credentials And, for the doubtful Dems out there, Kaus indulges in doubts not just about Kerry the candidate, but Kerry the president....
