Tonight at X-Initiative, filmmakers Emily and Sarah Kunstler will be screening their recently completed documentary on their father, radical lawyer and political activist William Kunstler. As an activist, Kunstler dircted the ACLU from 1964 to 1972 and co-founded the Center for Constitutional Rights. As a lawyer, he took on many historically significant civil rights and [...]
Monthly Archives: May 2009
Since Forever Is Gone (is nearly gone)
May 13, 2009 – 2:36 pm
Some of you may remember back to February 11th, when Ruvan Wijesooriya‘s Since Forever Is Gone opened to rave reviews and much excitement. With people spilling out of the entrance of the Soho Grand Hotel at 310 West Broadway and literally queuing around the block, the place was packed; the show a total success, to [...]
Ro Agents
May 12, 2009 – 7:51 pm
Ro Agents’ new album is frighteningly good. Listen to track five, “T.R.A.” Notice how it begins rather gloomily, a sort of co-opted field holler (“I say whoa, lil’ child/ Heaven is watching you”). This, you think, will be a somber affair. Then, midway through, without warning, the song lifts into pop balladry. Pay attention to [...]
The Museum of Broken Relationships
May 11, 2009 – 2:39 pm
For all but the celibate, fizzled romances are a simple fact of life. When a relationship dies, it casts a pall on everything, even the belongings we cherish. What were once the gifts of a mate—a teddy bear, a favorite T-shirt, a set of apartment keys—quickly become memento mori, grim reminders of the relationship’s fate. [...]
Perfvigvm Makes the Blues
May 11, 2009 – 2:09 pm
In 1933, musicologist John Lomax traveled through the American South in search of an exotic breed of musician. He visited prisons and back alleys and occluded little towns. He followed rumors through Louisiana backcountry and toured Texas farms that spread like enormous khaki quilts. Lomax was looking for bluesmen. A decade or two earlier, blues [...]
The Story of Stuff
May 11, 2009 – 10:16 am
Annie Leonard, a former Greenpeace employee and independent lecturer, made this very straightforward video about the cycle of human consumption. I read about it and wanted to watch it but at first was turned off by her teacherly tone. Just give it a minute or two. Her presentation is simple, but the information she’s compiled [...]
Fashion & The First Lady at Sunday with The Magazine
May 9, 2009 – 6:02 pm
Last weekend, The New York Times hosted its fourth annual Sunday with The Magazine, a series of conversations led by the editors and writers of The New York Times Magazine. The participants in the conversations–political and cultural newsmakers including Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman and special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke–were asked to give [...]
Look at this Fucking Love Connection
May 8, 2009 – 4:10 pm
Happy Friday! For suffering through a long, sunless and grey, humid and gross, frizzy and shiny two weeks, I present to you (unless you already know about it and are obsessed with it) this amazing gem of entertainment: Look at This Fucking Hipster Have a great weekend and hope we don’t find you on there Monday [...]
Andrew Gilchrist’s ‘James V’ Showing May 13th
May 7, 2009 – 5:55 pm
Much has been written on the theater’s relation to cinema. Not long ago, André Bazin suggested that the connection is far older and closer than is generally admitted, and that if we hope to understand one form, we ought to understand the other. But today it is the divergence between theater and cinema that seems [...]
