My oldest friend Lan comes into New York City about once a year nowadays. He’s lived in Orlando, Florida, for the past 20 years. One night, three years ago, he insists that we go out. “It’s late. I’m tired,” I say, feeling lame. But it’s a cool summer night in Brooklyn. He didn’t come all the way from swamp Orlando […]
Day: September 4, 2019
Mama D’s perfect night out is a perfect night in
There are a ton of parties that spring up (and disappear) throughout the city. In New York, plenty of weekends are a tug-of-war between your FOMO (fear of missing out) and pestering indecisiveness. There are so many options – your bed, takeout and Netflix usually being a staple and comfortable one. If you’re too lazy to go out clubbing or […]
Notes on ‘Loro’: an iconic portrayal of Silvio Berlusconi anchors a reckoning with Italian (and American) culture by Dante A. Ciampaglia
Orson Welles once described Harry Lime, his character in The Third Man (1949), as the greatest star part ever written. “It’s where they talk about you for an hour and then you appear,” he explained to friend and filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich. It took 70 years, but Welles’s Lime has a challenge for star-part supremacy in Toni Servillo’s Silvio Berlusconi — […]
Lasers and Lace at the Knitting Factory
Wednesday, September 11, sees Brooklyn’s Knitting Factory host a night of original international synth acts. Co-headliners Parallels (Canada) and Nina (UK) are joined by New York artists Czarina and Bunny X, all of whom are leading female artists in the burgeoning synthwave scene. The term ‘synthwave’ broadly defines several styles of music heavily influenced by 1980s culture, from music to […]
Fall Television Preview: Are TV Reboots Here to Save Us From a Dystopian Future Both On and Off the Screen? By Anna Ben Yehuda Rahmanan
It is said that art imitates life, and if TV trends of the past few seasons are of any indication, more accurate words have never been uttered. As political views drench into cultural spheres, rendering the world around us an overcrowded bundle of arguments and screaming matches that involve much more than politics; as “feel good journalism” becomes a relic […]
Movie review: ‘Cold Case Hammarskjöld’ by Caleb Drickey
Dag Hammarskjöld was a Secretary General of the United Nations, a Nobel laureate, a staunch anti-imperialist, and, according to a certain Jack Kennedy, “the greatest statesman of our century.” On September 18, 1961, while en route to a small Rhodesian airport, his plane crashed, killing all on board. In his newest film, Cold Case Hammarskjöld, Danish documentarian and provocateur Mads […]
Busk and Grind by Jody Callahan
I set out to write a story on busking, the hip word for performing in the streets, in hopes of meeting crazy characters and hearing spectacular stories the likes of which could only happen in the chaotic streets and underground train stations of New York City. However, I got no such tales from the dozen or so musicians I spoke […]