Bong Joon-Ho is a fantastic filmmaker. His greedy revelry in icky and tense moments gives his movies a moody, panicky pace rendering them utterly enchanting. Add to that his almost slapstick sense of physical comedy–usually intruding into said tense moments–and you get this wonderful shimmering life that makes his characters human and his world entirely [...]
Category Archives: Reviews
New York Fall Fashion Week 2010
February 10, 2010 – 11:06 am
Photo by Jenni Avins
Check out our STYLE section in the days to come to keep in step with live tweets from the front row, backstage interviews, party coverage and show reviews.
Kairos by White Hinterland
January 27, 2010 – 9:41 pm
The most striking element of White Hinterland’s latest album, Kairos (Dead Oceans), is its focus on the human voice, the strongest and most unique instrument that any on person can utilize. White Hinterland’s (Casey Dienel and Shawn Creeden) instrumentation is light and carefully inserted into each song, and not utilized as a means of overcompensateing for a [...]
Mendes, Shakespeare, BAM!
January 22, 2010 – 1:42 pm
Oscar and Tony winner Sam Mendes has arrived in Brooklyn with a pair of plays by the grand old bard as part of the second annual Bridge Project, a cross-Atlantic production between The West End’s Old Vic Theatre and the Brooklyn Academy of Music (his street team seems to have arrived well in advance with [...]
Begging to be Black: Antjie Krog
November 23, 2009 – 8:13 am
Chapter one
A gunshot cracks. The man lunges forward, his hands groping towards a stationary taxi nearby.
Somebody yells.
Bystanders scramble in all directions. Waiting taxi drivers duck behind their steering wheels. Another shot and the man falls on the tar, his attaché case flung sideways. Blood streams from his shattered shoulder blade as he crawls towards the vehicle. He would reach it, but a figure wearing a balaclava closes in on him. Light-footed, as if with sprung ankles, his pursuer stands astride him as he comes to a stop.
The wounded man turns on his side to look up.
From the planted stance of the heels, the perfect balance of the pelvis, the way the arms in red sleeves reach down, with strange grace, to point the pistol at his forehead, the wounded man knows: this is the end.
A final shot. But because the wounded man moves his head at the last moment, the bullet that kills him does not leave his body: it penetrates the frontal skull bone two centimetres above the eye and exits four centimetres behind the left ear, where it is caught between the skull and the black skin in a small swelling.
Quickly, the killer pulls off the balaclava, rolls the pistol in it and, with elated energy, runs off – accompanied by another man – away from the body and towards the station, sidestepping taxis and terrified spectators.
The Quietest Tyrant: Sokurov’s The Sun
November 18, 2009 – 12:26 pm
Alexander Sokurov’s The Sun envisions the Japanese Emperor Hirohito, a putative descendant of the Sun God who renounced his divinity in the wake of nuclear devastation, as an obscure man of captivatingly delicate temperament. As bombs rain down on Tokyo, he dissects a hermit crab, composes mediocre haiku, and paces his lab-turned-bunker with the fumbling [...]
Review: And Then You Really Get Into It @ Freies Museum Berlin
November 16, 2009 – 11:10 am
Clemens Wilhelm’s art really does come a long way. Especially his newest photo-installations Der Weg nach Venedig (The Road to Venice) and The Meaning of Life. For the first installation the artist hiked all the way from Munich to the Venice Biennale, taking a photo every 15 minutes for the whole of his journey. Thus he [...]
Review: David Ellis / Prefuse 73 @ (Le) Poisson Rouge
November 11, 2009 – 6:53 pm
David Ellis’ exhibition at (Le) Poisson Rouge is a misnomer. It consists of a handful of sculptures wrought from records (and their sleeves) that are neat bits of ornamental design but that don’t invite any kind of reflection. The same is true of his “movement sculpture”, which comes off like a sneaker commercial. [...]
Review: The New Electric Ballroom at St. Ann’s Warehouse
November 9, 2009 – 2:56 pm
If it is true, as the women in Enda Walsh’s The New Electric Ballroom recite, that “no man is an island,” then why does it seem as if we are too often drowning in a sea of gobshite*?
Walsh, who now resides in London, is a bit of a rogue amongst his playwriting peers, eschewing the [...]
Review: Girls and Real Estate at Bowery Ballroom
November 9, 2009 – 12:00 pm
Rare are the nights you can catch two first-rate bands, each still in their ascendancy, sharing the same stage in one of Lower Manhattan’s most revered venues. On Friday night at Bowery Ballroom, Jersey upstarts Real Estate worked in support of Girls, a much-buzzed-about foursome from San Francisco that traffics in lovesick ‘60s pop. [...]
