AltWeeklies Wire
'Gentlemen Broncos' is a Personal, Daring Film That Captures Eccentric Americananew
Treading that thin line between empathy and pity that also distinguished Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre, Hess deals with the oddball aspirations frequently felt by teenage loners who escape into the fantasy worlds of sci-fi.
New York Press |
Armond White |
10-29-2009 |
Reviews
Tags: Gentlemen Broncos, Jared Hess
Michael Jackson's Genius is Brought Closer and Clarified in 'This Is It'new
Behind the tabloid image, Jackson's seen thinking, devising, improvising -- and performing masterfully. At age 50, Jackson was still a prodigy; possessed of protean talent and when in the company of collaborators he is inspired.
New York Press |
Armond White |
10-29-2009 |
Reviews
Smack Time: Is There Really a New Heroin Epidemic?new
A spate of recent media reports have claimed that America -- and especially the New York metro area -- is suffering from a terrifying new heroin epidemic. Curious, I decided to revisit a world that had once held me in its clutches for so long. This time around, I brought along a notebook and a clear head.
New York Press |
Matt Harvey |
10-22-2009 |
Drugs
Spike Jonze Turns Maurice Sendak's Classic Children's Book into an Adult Work of Artnew
Jonze's sensibility is an authentic development of the music-video era's generational split -- which is also an aesthetic split. He doesn't exploit pop rebellion but has a counter-intuitive slant on what's funny, sad, universal.
New York Press |
Armond White |
10-15-2009 |
Reviews
Brooklyn's Grooms Have a New Album and a Distinctive Take on Today's Soundnew
The band doesn't quite fit in with the current, decidedly '60s and '70s signifiers of indie rock cool. "Sometimes people will listen to our music and say, 'It’s kind of '90s, and it reminds me of Pavement,' and I really don't think it does. We sometimes worry that we're out of step with the trend."
New York Press |
Adam Rathe |
10-15-2009 |
Profiles & Interviews
Chris Rock Never Embraces the Nap in His Doc About African-American Hairnew
Good Hair is a mockumentary by accident because Rock pretends to explore the cultural phenomenon of how black women truly feel about their hair. Yet he relentlessly falls back on easy jokes and juvenile asides that mock the subject.
New York Press |
Armond White |
10-08-2009 |
Reviews
Ricky Gervais Lands in Cloudcuckooland With 'Invention of Lying'new
Ricky Gervais, the film's star and co-writer/co-director, doesn't do philosophical scrutiny or hermeneutic analysis; he merely undermines religion using the glib condescension of Hollywood leftists who assume the only people who still believe in God live in fly-over America. A hostile new trend has begun.
New York Press |
Armond White |
10-01-2009 |
Reviews
The Coen Brothers Clarify Their Jewishness -- Without Guiltnew
The Coens admit their own Jewishness the way their best recent films admit Americanness: with genuine feeling for the complexities, abundance and absurd conventions that give us our identity.
New York Press |
Armond White |
10-01-2009 |
Reviews
Harmony Korine Talks About Creating a World of 'Killing, Fucking and Burning'new
When I sat down with Korine last week before the world premiere of Trash Humpers, he hadn't done any interviews about it yet, and admitted that he wasn't quite sure how to express his intentions. So we hammered it out together.
New York Press |
Eric Kohn |
10-01-2009 |
Profiles & Interviews
Tags: Trash Humpers, Harmony Korine
Tucker Max Wants You to Like Him for Being an Unapologetic Dickheadnew
The film adaptation of Max's notoriously infantile and incredibly popular tell-all memoir about his fratboy sexcapades is not immediately repugnant. I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell only becomes truly insipid when it makes a cloying, half-hearted attempt to show that Max and his buddies have learned the error of their ways and now have greater respect for women and themselves.
New York Press |
Simon Abrams |
09-24-2009 |
Reviews
Mumblecore King Henry Jaglom Returns With 'Irene in Time'new
If Jaglom was a trustfunded neophyte, he'd be acclaimed the King of Mumblecore -- a genre that, it turns out, he pioneered several decades ago.
New York Press |
Armond White |
09-24-2009 |
Reviews
A Night Inside NYC's Amateur Music Scenenew
For the most part, the acts playing every night at venues like The Red Lion, Pianos and Arlene's Grocery aren't doing this just for fun. But does this bar scene offer a step up the ladder, or is it just a way for the management to make money?
New York Press |
James Mulcahy |
09-24-2009 |
Music
New Push for Labor Rights for Domestic Workers Gives Nannies Hopenew
Domestic workers are guaranteed the federal minimum wage, but there are no guidelines for working conditions and rights, and few avenues to complain.
New York Press |
Dan Rivoli |
09-24-2009 |
Business & Labor
Doc About Chevron's Eco Destruction, While Better Than Most, Still Doesn't Measure Up as Artnew
Crude touches all manifestations of oil greed which P.T. Anderson avoided when making his contemptuous anti-American pseudo-epic There Will Be Blood. Anderson kowtowed to trite anti-Bush cynicism, not even doing justice to the muckraking source novel, Oil!, by Upton Sinclair. Blood was trendy, Crude is aggrieved.
New York Press |
Armond White |
09-10-2009 |
Reviews
Hunter S. Thompson's Widow Speaks About Her Husband and Her Booknew
Anita Thompson was taking a semester off from college when she met Hunter through a mutual friend in 1999. Soon after, she began organizing the unpublished manuscripts and photographs from his archive, which consisted of about 1,000 boxes in their basement.
New York Press |
Gerry Visco |
09-10-2009 |
Author Profiles & Interviews
