Mean Girls dir. Waters Opens Fri April 30 Various Theaters That girls can be terribly cruel to each other shouldn’t be startling, at least to those of us who once were, or still are, girls. And yet when a handful of books on this topic came out a few years ago you would have thought […]
Emily Hall
Posted inMovies & TV
Guts and Guts
Passionada, Barfarama
Passionada dir. Ireland Opens Fri Sept 12 Various Theaters You know this movie is in trouble when the phrase “a bit of Portugal in America” flashes across the scene before the action starts, as if the movie were a restaurant menu. And just in case you didn’t catch that, Passionada begins with a scene that […]
Posted inMovies & TV
They. Were. Oppressed. Got it?
No Subtlety in Magdalene Sisters
The Magdalene Sisters dir. Mullan Opens Fri Aug 22 Various Theaters Is there a time when it’s appropriate for a film to bludgeon you about the head with anger and horror and outrage? Much is sacrificed (narrative continuity, character, plot) in The Magdalene Sisters to the terrible injustice wreaked upon the girls virtually imprisoned in […]
Posted inMovies & TV
How To Watch The Cremaster Cycle
Your Guide to Viewing Matthew Barney’s Monumental Five-Part Epic
The Cremaster Cycle July 18-24 Cinema 21 See Movie Times, page 47 [EDITOR’S NOTE: Called “ultimately the most important American artist of his generation,” Matthew Barney is the creator of The Cremaster Cycle–a five-part cinematic epic that doubles as an art installation. Funny, strange, and often visually overwhelming, this rare showing of Barney’s avant-garde work […]
Posted inBooks
The Art of Life
Book Review
Dan Eldon: The Art of Life Jennifer New (Chronicle Books) The publication of Eldon’s journals–after he was killed at the tender age of 22, while photographing the war in Somalia–vaulted him into a kind of cult Valhalla. The journals themselves are a wonder: a vibrant blast of photography, writing, art, and collage. A coming-of-age story, […]
Posted inArt
In Stitches
Traditional Techniques, Novel Approaches
YOU CAN’T TALK about artists who sew without mentioning women’s work. It’s an art-historical reference, with political overtones that tend to make people assume they already know what the art is going to be like. This doesn’t mean, happily, that all such work comes with an ideology embedded in it, or that it’s all the […]