From the early days of film, America turned to the cowboy, that stoic dust-covered hero in leather and denim, to create a origin myth about ourselves, to define ourselves as we trotted out of our isolationist past into a global future. Now that bronco-ridin’ figure, so much as he ever existed in true life, is in his sunset years—the ... Read More »
In the early 1990s, Swiss-American Manhattan-based artist Ernst Aebi, a distinctively New York eccentric, decided to invest a good amount of his fortune, acquired through selling converted lofts in the then-hot downtown housing market on some less-than-prime real estate. Araouane, an ancient oasis city in Mali’s Sahara desert, was being swallowed by the dunes, its centuries of multi-cultural history ... Read More »
The already controversial, and very successful, Indian film “My Name is Khan”, is facing a new round of raging protests after one of its stars made comments seen as “pro-Pakistani” by the opposition. When was the last time you found yourself picketing a Joel Silver film, hunh? [Guardian UK] Why is your hotel bar so crowded? Januted explains ... Read More »
National Geographic Entertainment has decided to pull “City of Life and Death” (above, courtesy of National Geographic Entertainment), a dramatization of Japanese “Rape of Nanking” from a coming screening at Film Forum due to ongoing skirmishes with the Chinese ministry of foreign affairs. [NYT] DreamTours is offering a 46-day cycle tour across India in 2011. It’s 2,050 miles ... Read More »
Those outside of the New York sphere may not know the scrappy institution known as Film Forum—a small three-screen theater on a lonely section of Houston Street dedicated to running on the best and most important of what cinema has to offer. Despite—or perhaps even in part because of—its “only in New York” awkward layout, Film Forum has become ... Read More »
Woah! Well our weekend viewing schedule just got a little more jam-packed. The folks over at Pitchfork.TV are hosting rock doc (or should we say rock-you-mentry) ‘Wesley Willis’ Joy Ride’ for ONE WEEK ONLY, and we’ve got it here, too. The film tells the story of a Willis, the obese and schizophrenic “savant-garde” musician, and frontman of the Wesley Willis ... Read More »
What do you do when your passion and your religion are at odds with one another? That’s the question behind the new doc ‘Deen Tight‘ from Mustafa Davis. More and more Muslims living in the West are turning to music, and hip-hop in particular, to express their faith, despite the fact that many traditional Muslims consider music taboo. ‘Deen Tight’ ... Read More »
The recipe for a rock ‘n’ roll explosion is simple: Take a bunch of frustrated teenagers. Mix equal parts isolation and desolation. Stir in a lot of boredom and add a conservative society for good measure. That’s exactly what gave birth to Brisbane, Australia’s mid-’70s art rock revolution. From the moment The Saints released their genre-defining “(I’m) Stranded” — ... Read More »
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