If we’re honest, most of us who relish a good horror film don’t actually hope to feel something like horror. Instead, the appeal is that of shock and surprise, all candied up, the crowd-pleasing bits staged with the kind of extended setup/payoff patience that the makers of comedies have long…
Quick: Name the most expensive housing market in America. If you said New York, Los Angeles or San Francisco, you couldn’t be farther from the truth — literally. Each is more than 1,500 miles away from Williston, North Dakota. In four years, the population has doubled as newcomers gold-rush to…
Ann Hamilton and Jae Ko et al. For Ann Hamilton: Selected Works, the initial enfilade of spaces at Robischon Gallery is taken over by works on paper by this noted conceptualist. The first group is from her “visite” series, the name of which is taken from the term “carte de…
Editor’s Note: Sony has officially canceled the theatrical release of The Interview following terrorist threats against theaters and the announcement that several major theater chains had opted not to exhibit the film. The following review was written before Sony pulled The Interview– and stands as a reminder that world-shaking art…
TV continued to unmoor from its origins and transform into something else this year. No longer tethered to a specific appliance, a particular kind of storytelling, or even commercial concerns, “television” now feels like an increasingly obsolete word. But that’s a discussion for another time, for we’ve come to celebrate…
The world of film has its auteurs and icons, and loyal viewers will line up to see a movie based on a director’s name alone. But the name of Mike Nichols guaranteed a film experience above almost all others, with a script that was top-notch and impeccable acting. Nichols had…
Christmas is a shared experience around many parts of the world. There are different traditions and celebrations, but whether it’s Joyeux Noël or Meri Kurisumasu, Christmas has central themes that we can relate to wherever we are. This year, put away the tired classics and opt for something with a…
Hard to believe that it’s been 25 years since audiences first met a frumpy, bespectacled young filmmaker named Michael Moore in his debut feature, Roger & Me, following him on his quest to find and talk to the CEO of General Motors, Roger Smith, about scores of factory layoffs that…
In a half-dozen years, Justin Nordine has gone from art teacher to tattoo artist to television star. Now working at The Raw Canvas Tattoo Studio, he’s also part of a team of artists and therapists on Spike TV’s new television show, Ink Shrinks. The pilot episode will air on Tuesday,…
A new documentary called Jingle Bell Rocks! hopes to tear away the wrapping on a unique underground scene: alternative Christmas music junkies. This is a label not to be worn with the shame of an ugly holiday sweater, as discovering or even producing an alternative to the well-worn jingles of…
Fans of Japanese animation had their hearts broken last February when director Hayao Miyazaki announced that his film The Wind Rises would be his last and that Studio Ghibli, the animation house that has yet to produce a film that didn’t resonate with or steal the hearts of millions of…
The heavens dance. From the bottom of the world, where your eyes might freeze in your face, we see stars pulse against seams of luminous dust, all in slow and dizzying rotation. Then come the lights: Ribbons of green unspool and shimmer and whip across the sky, suggesting angels and…
For reasons that are perhaps understandable, stories about women finding themselves — or their voices, or their inner courage, or any number of things that are apparently very easy to mislay — are big business. But even if Cheryl Strayed’s hugely successful 2012 memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on…
Flip open your Bibles to Numbers 12:3 to find the first inaccuracy in Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings. “Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth,” sayeth the Good Book of our hero, played by Christian Bale, an…
Despite its sumptuous displays of feudal opulence — cavalries, silk gowns, all the naked female extras money can buy — Netflix’s Marco Polo feels distinctly like scraps. Turgid, fatuous, and humorless, the streaming site’s newest series is a grave miscalculation of what has made Game of Thrones, its obvious model,…
The biggest laugh I heard from the audience at my screening of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies came from seven words in the end credits: “Based on the novel by J.R.R. Tolkien.” Just picture that tweedy Oxford philologist nodding in pleased approval at this adaptation of his…
Whatever it is that Americans want out of life — and it’s not even something we can precisely define ourselves — it was nowhere in evidence on December 3, when a grand jury failed to indict the police officer whose chokehold killed Eric Garner in July. We all know we…
We begin this week’s Voice Film Club podcast with a Thomas Pynchon story, before hosts Alan Scherstuhl and Stephanie Zacharek of the Village Voice, and Amy Nicholson of LA Weekly, move onto Paul Thomas Anderson’s movie adaption of his novel, Inherent Vice. It’s “in some ways a godawful mess, indulgent…
No matter the time or place, even in deep space or the far future, war is hell, and the little guy always gets the worst of it. But when that little guy is the hero of director Alex Cox’s adaptation of Harry Harrison’s Bill, the Galactic Hero, at least you…
People prefer to ignore the seedy underbelly of Christmas, but to be honest, the holiday is inherently creepy. Think about it: a fat, old guy breaks into your house and leaves you presents that he mysteriously knows you want. We bring trees inside of our houses and decorate them with…
Bob Knox and Michael Clapper. The William Havu Gallery is presenting simultaneous solos: Bob Knox: Real Abstract, which is made up of paintings, and Michael Clapper: Portals, which comprises sculptures. Knox is a New York artist; Clapper lives in Denver. The paintings mark various points of progression in Knox’s self-appointed…
Hospitals are depressing. Until recently, medical shows glossed over this basic fact of life by focusing on the most glamorous clique within them: doctors. For the past two decades, the upwardly mobile audience identification integral to most TV shows taught us to look away from the bedpans and sheaves of…
