Téa Obreht’s former student reviews her long-awaited followup Téa Obreht’s new novel Inland is a triumphant sweeping epic that sets out across the American West following two narrators: Lurie, a stateless orphan turned outlaw trying to claim his place in the world, and Nora, a frontierswoman clinging to the community she helped build as her husband and oldest sons go missing. Thrown together by […]
Arts
Getting Lost in the “Wildernesses” at Peninsula Art Space
Peninsula Art Space’s current show, “Wildernesses”, marks the 5th collaboration between gallery owner/director Eric Fallen and curator Johnny Mullen, formerly director of Chelsea’s Edward Thorp Gallery. The group show, exploring fragmentation and disorder, features paintings and sculptures in a variety of media from eight artists residing in New York and the surrounding area. See it now until August 18! […]
July Arts & Entertainment Calendar
Comedy Every Tuesday in Williamsburg enjoy some free beer from 8-8:30pm as Ambush Comedy (hosted by Lucas Connolly and David Piccolomini) performs in the back of a Two Boots Pizza joint. Free. 558 Driggs Ave. The Bell House hosts “Oh, Such a Huge Show, Oh!” The Comedy/Variety show returns July 6 for a benefit performance for The Young Center for […]
Montagues, Capulets, Fords, and Chevys: Shakespeare in the Parking Lot celebrates its 25th season on the Lower East Side
The plays are some of the greatest ever written in the English language. The venue is a product of necessity, opportunism, and the quirks of New York real estate. This July marks the 25th anniversary of Shakespeare in the Parking Lot, the annual production of the Bard’s plays that is exactly what it sounds like. Produced by local theater group […]
“Booksmart”: Coming of Age with Matching Jumpsuits and Alanis Morissette Karaoke
We’re all familiar with the “One Crazy Night” format immortalized by classics such as “Dazed and Confused” and “American Graffiti.” The teen movie canon welcomed the newest member of the Class of 2019 this summer, “Booksmart.” Olivia Wilde’s (you know her from “The O.C.”, “Tron,” or a number of semi-forgettable romcom-adjacent films of the 2000s) directorial debut kicks into gear […]
Imagine There’s No Beatles: Review of ‘Yesterday’
Did somebody say High Concept? After a conk on the head (during a mysterious global blackout, no less), Jack Malik, played by th talented Himesh Patel, awakens to a world that never knew The Beatles. He alone, it seems, is aware of their very existence. He even Googles them. Nothing! Jack’s a musician, can play a few Beatles numbers, and […]
Art Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass
It was a beautiful New York early summer day, not too hot with a refreshing light breeze. You know, the kind we have before it gets unbearably hot and sticky. Having finished a quick bite with a friend, we decided to take the long way from Wall Street to check out a new gallery opening in Brooklyn. Crossing the Brooklyn […]
Arthur Miller’s Red Hook excavated at Waterfront Barge Museum
If one could go back in time and visit Red Hook in the 1940s, one would, at about 4:30 am, find a scene of desperation on its crowded waterfront. Days began with “longshoremen huddling in doorways in rain and snow on Columbia Street facing the piers, waiting for the hiring boss, on whose arrival they surged forward and formed up […]
‘Dead to Me’ is dead to me
Great TV shows not only reflect the current culture, but also offers a subtle critique of it — avoiding heavy-handed, simplistic moralism in favor of deeply comic and profound reflections on the nuanced power structures and characters that create what issues the show critiques. Others are wholesome depictions of society as we wish it would be. There is not a […]
Pack a Picnic Basket and Your Dancing Shoes for the Jazz Age Lawn Party
Almost a Century Later, the Allure of the Roaring 20s Lives On: 14th Annual Jazz Age Lawn Party If you, like Daisy Buchanan, find large parties intimate, consider the 14th Annual Jazz Age Lawn Party. Celebrate the zeitgeist of the 1920s in all its glistening grandeur on Governors Island June 15-16 and August 24-25. The event is escapism twice over: […]