New York
Matt Wolf
On screen, Philip Seymour Hoffman will be forever immortalised as the Oscar-winning star of Capote who was both a darling of the indie film world (think Todd Solondz and the Coen Brothers) and an invaluable supporting player in such mainstream fare as Moneyball, Charlie Wilson's War, and the Hunger Games franchise. But the shock waves currently being felt at the news of his death are likely to be intensified in New York, the city where he was found dead and where Hoffman first came to attention as the formidable theatre talent that he remained through to his last Broadway stage role - as Read more ...
fisun.guner
Helen Frankenthaler is often presented as being both a stepping stone between art movements and as an artist who fell – because such things matter in the tidy narratives of art history – between the cracks of various American isms. Frankenthaler, who made her name in the fertile New York art scene of the early Fifties and who died in 2011, found success and fame early, but then had the possible misfortune to be seen as a “transitional figure”. Since she created a bridge between Abstract Expressionism (specifically Pollock, with his drip technique) and later Color Field Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Who'd have thought that buried deep within the bromance antics of That Awkward Moment, the latest essay in celluloid dude-dom to confirm the notion that guys will be guys, would lurk a Shakespeare comedy? But forsooth, writer-director Tom Gormican's feel-good essay in three lads larking about in New York takes as its inspiration none other than Love's Labour's Lost, that Bardic study in the limits of celibacy and high spirits dampened down near the final curtain by death.Not that it will make a farthing of difference if you don't know your Shakespeare comedies and just want some frat-house, Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Assuming you care at all, your favourite incarnation of Tom Clancy's industrious CIA agent Jack Ryan is probably Harrison Ford (Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger). Before him came Alec Baldwin in The Hunt for Red October, and afterwards there was Ben Affleck in The Sum of All Fears.But Affleck's Ryan was a dozen years ago, enough of a gap to give fresh-faced new boy Chris Pine (who has also rebooted Star Trek's Captain James T Kirk) some space to put his personal stamp on the role. This new episode is a kind of Ryan prequel, a story created by screenwriters Adam Cozad and David Koepp Read more ...
David Nice
The dishonourable parents call each other "fucking headcase" and "asshole" in front of the child rather than "nasty horrid pig" and "your beastly papa", but the essence remains of Henry James’s social comedy with queasy undertones. As transplanted by directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel from late Victorian London to contemporary New York, six-year-old Maisie – she doesn’t age, as she does in the novel, for obvious reasons – is still the shuttlecock rebounding from one careless divorcee’s racket to the other’s.Since the fragments of dissolution and dishonour are seen entirely through Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
There’s a wealth of stories in Exposed: Beyond Burlesque, a highly articulate, visually flamboyant and finally moving documentary journey around the wilder edges of the performance genre. Director Beth B, a veteran of New York’s experimental film world, followed her eight subjects over the course of some years, and allows each of them to speak for themselves with full honesty and considerable humour, while at the same time creating a fluid picture of this “immediate, honest and sometimes brutal art form,” as British artist Mat Fraser describes it.They come from a range of backgrounds, but Read more ...
Aimee Cliff
Angel Haze learnt the art of crafting an identity from gigantic pop icons. Raised in what she describes as a cult, she was unable to hear pop music until the age of 14, when she discovered - and devoured - everything at once. Her backstory, involving repeated abuse, sheds light on the rapper and singer’s major label debut Dirty Gold, an album that weaves together the scathing confessionalism of Eminem, the bombastic fire of the EDM boom, syrupy R&B choruses and a series of self-mythologising field recordings that mirror those all over Beyoncé’s recent opus.Everything comes to a head in Read more ...
fisun.guner
Frances Ha has been likened most obviously to Woody Allen’s Manhattan, but the influence of French New Wave cinema, with films such as Godard’s Breathless, can also be seen. This very likeable and stylish film certainly captures the look and texture of both.But while Sam Levy’s black and white cinematography may not be a match for Gordon Willis’s stunning photography on Manhattan, the film’s New York location is just as key: as a wry study in aspiration and real estate, the film’s episodic narrative follows the impecunious Frances as she drifts through various apartments, her living Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Despite his nickname and habit of doing a bunk, George “Shadow” Morton was one of America’s highest-profile and most distinctive producers and songwriters. He was responsible for shaping the sound and style of The Shangri-Las, Janis Ian, Vanilla Fudge and The New York Dolls. Until the release of Sophisticated Boom Boom!! – The Shadow Morton Story, the musical side of his story had not been told. A consummate collection, this significant release was pulled off with style. The packaging was superb, as was the annotation. Its music was amazing too.Morton’s vision brought filmic drama to pop. Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Queer as Pop (****) was as much about social as musical history, and Nick Vaughan-Smith’s film told its story with a combination of outstanding archive material and some incisive interviewees, the archive taking fractionally more of the weight. Subtitled “From the Gay Scene to the Mainstream”, it started loosely in the Sixties, then jumped back and forth across the Atlantic until the present day as the story demanded.It started from the premise that gay clubs were the places that played the best music, and that it was gay artists who were pushing the stylistic boundaries, which were then duly Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
Walk up Central Park West, past the Dakota building and all those plush-looking podiatrists’ offices with their gold plaques, and just before you get to the Museum of Natural History you’ll find the New-York Historical Society and Museum at 77th Street (it also houses a great research library, open to all). Descending its steps is a life-size replica of Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase (pictured below), and on the day I visited some school kids were yelling, "That’s a nude woman? What? Where? I don’t see it."Very similar to the reaction that many artists, critics and visitors had Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Velvet Underground: White Light/White HeatThe shadow cast over the reissue of The Velvet Underground’s second album White Light/White Heat by Lou Reed’s recent death is a poignant reminder that an awful lot of time has passed since this still-vital inspiration for much of today’s indie rock was first released. As a 45th anniversry edition, this does mark an unusual milestone but as seemingly the last word on the album it’s hard to imagine what could constitute a 50th anniverary edition. The Velvet Underground have been endlessly examined and re-examined. The vaults must now be bare. Read more ...