Celebrating Community
UFOs are much in the news lately, rebranded by the Pentagon as UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena), but I learned all about them early in life, thanks to Hollywood…and a rather odd neighbor. In the Flatbush of my youth, a movie theater sat across the street from our house, The Farragut. On many a Saturday morning, equipped with a quarter for […]
The Gowanus Expressway may not be a part of everyone’s commutes, but, for Kelvin Diaz, walking adjacent to and underneath it is part of his routine. The Sunset Park resident walks approximately three miles between 65th Street and 12th Street under the expressway (a total of six miles), “patrolling the area intensively” for pigeons in need of help. “I’m a […]
The new books of Liturgy. Haela Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix has long fronted a powerful band. The first three Liturgy releases were impressive, intelligent, calculated and well-executed albums fairly entrenched in black metal. The group (of which, at this point, Hunt-Hendrix is the only constant) has since released a second three discs, and it’s with these—2019’s H.A.Q.Q., 2020’s Origin of the Alimonies […]
Bad things are just as valuable as good things, at least for a critic. Bad work (art, music, writing) is often a lesson in missed opportunities, the mistakes and missteps that, if corrected, would turn the bad thing into a good thing. It was a bad book I read recently that led to this column, a book about improvisation and […]
The golden age of Hollywood — lasting from the mid-1920s until the mid-1960s — was dominated by five studios: RKO, MGM, Fox, Paramount, and Warner Bros. RKO went belly up in 1957; now a faint whimper of its former roaring lion, MGM is part of the Amazon empire; and Fox has been absorbed into the Disney collective (for its Marvel and […]
Review of War Diary, by Yevgenia Belorusets, translated by Greg Nissan Right now, as you read this, there’s a war going on. Maybe you know every detail. Maybe you’ve skimmed the headlines. Maybe it feels like it has nothing to do with you. But what if the war was happening where you lived? You might think, This can’t be happening. […]