Arts

Arts

MUSIC: Tits Up Brooklyn, by Medea Hoar

Hey there Brooklyn! Welcome to “Tits Up Brooklyn!”, the first column about the musical mayhem that is happenin’ in our borough. I am musical maven Medea Hoar, your local music slut. Why music slut you may ask? Well, because, musically speaking, I’ll try anything once, and if I like it, you betcha I’ll be back for more. Summer in the […]

Arts

Red Hook Community Cinema Expands to Multi-Day Film Festival, by Dante A. Ciampaglia

Red Hook is long overdue for its close-up. And this month, it gets one. Running November 1-10, the 2nd Annual Red Hook Community Cinema film festival showcases 25 films made in, about, or that feature the neighborhood. The series opens Friday, November 1 with Isaac Dell’s Boys at Twenty at 7 p.m., followed by a costume party at 9. Like […]

Arts

Art is all around us, especially this fall, by Roger Bell

This morning I enjoyed a special benefit of my impersonation of an art critic when I attended the press opening of the Brooklyn Museum’s 200 Anniversary Celebration exhibitions, “The Brooklyn Artists Exhibition” and the extensive reimagining of the museum’s ” American Art” collection. The “Brooklyn Artists Exhibition” includes over 200 artists and  occupies the ground floor galleries which once held the magnificent  American Indian collections. […]

Arts

Wiggly Air, by Kurt Gottschalk

Who says a jazz band can’t play rock music? George Clinton didn’t quite ask that question on the 1978 Funkadelic track “Who Says a Funk Band Can’t Play Rock?” but it’s a logical implication of the various permutations of the lyric, which questioned genre divisions at a time when radio and television were still segregated, even if schools weren’t. These […]

Arts

The Perpetual Library of Powell, by George Grella

By the time you read this, Bud Powell’s 100th birthday (September 27) will have passed, with a 24-hour broadcast from WKCR and a 25% discount promotion from Blue Note records on the two Powell LPs on their label currently in print. So after blowing out the candles, let’s take a look at how that is a tragedy. Powell was the […]

Arts

Dispatch from the New York Film Festival: A Disorienting Trip Into Portugal’s Past a Highlight of Currents Lineup, by Dante A. Ciampaglia

The 62nd New York Film Festival kicked off September 27 with Nickel Boys, RaMell Ross’ adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2019 novel. What followed on the main slate was one heavy hitter after another: U.S. premieres of The Room Next Door, Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar’s latest, Brady Corbet’s Oscar frontrunner The Brutalist, Paul Schrader’s Oh, Canada, and Hard Truths, […]

Arts

Red Hook Author’s New Novel Explores the Dark Side of Artistic Ambition

Review of “Static,” by Brendan Gillen Review by Michael Quinn New York has always been a magnet for ambitious creative types. Making it in this city rewards you with a unique badge of honor—though success here often comes at a high price. How much are you willing to pay? This question lies at the heart of “Static,” the well-paced debut […]