If mid-century pulp and noir gave us the cynical, quippy hardboiled detective, then Peak TV has given birth to its successor: the charbroiled cop, a bitter, corrupt, philandering, violent, addicted, nihilistic or just psychotic contemporary crime fighter. The supposed irony of this figure is that he (almost always a he)…
Thursday, June 2 For most of us, the phrase “social networking” is pretty outdated. Almost everything we do online via Snapchat, Twitter, and Facebook is social networking. Why would we do that out in public, where we might have the opportunity to have a real conversation and maybe even meet…
When artist Daniel Pontet paints, he really feels his materials. In fact, his feet function as his paintbrushes. “As an artist, I found something I couldn’t do with brushes,” says the Uruguay-born Pontet, who is based in Hallandale. He calls his technique “impulse painting” and likens it to the action-painting…
“Did I want to shoot comedies?” asks Brandon Trost, director of photography on two of this summer’s funniest films, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping and Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising. “It’s funny — not at all.” But then came MacGruber, Jorma Taccone’s 2010 SNL film.“The director wanted me because I wasn’t…
It’s a feat to out-idiot TMZ culture. In achieving that, the fake-doc white-rapper satire Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping is a breakthrough for studio comedies, which here at last catch up to the metabolism and meaninglessness of the internet age. In its generous, frenetic first hour, Popstar’s jokes and parodies…
“It’s the fire in your belly that drives you to do anything,” says Zimmerman. “And we’ll see if I have it.” Gayle Zimmerman was perusing the cookie selection at Two Fat Cookies in Delray Beach for a Passover Seder when she noticed a flyer for a PBC Writers Workshop. She went…
Fairy tales were meant to be oral stories. Translating the tangents of old women in far-flung villages (whose chips on their shoulders about, say, their brother’s failed shipping business might inspire long asides about the shipping industry) into written texts doesn’t always make for the most linear, easy read. In…
Not much has been heard from Jacques Audiard’s Dheepan since it won the Palme d’Or at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, beating out pictures like Todd Haynes’ Carol, László Nemes’ Son of Saul and Hou Hsiao-hsien’s The Assassin. But going into this understated film cold isn’t a bad way to…
In 2013, a 22-year-old Palestinian named Mohammed Assaf won the second edition of the Middle Eastern singing competition Arab Idol, a spinoff of the same popular British Pop Idol franchise that also gave us American Idol. Mohammed had snuck out of Gaza and crashed the auditions in Egypt before making…
Writing is a solitary endeavor – except, of course, for all the voices in your own head. Whether you write in the privacy of your bedroom or in a coffeeshop surrounded by the hustle and bustle of caffeinated humanity, the task itself requires a drawing in, an exclusion of the…
Thursday, May 26 Glenn and Donna have been running one form of fetish party or another on or around Memorial Day weekend for 20 years, and the Fetish Factory’s 21st-Anniversary Fetish Weekend is sure to outdo them all. This year, the Fetish Factory moguls are riding the whole whip with…
There was a time when the summer movie season was a season, sandwiched between Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends. By the 21st century, the start date drifted back to the first weekend in May. This year, the superhero flicks started arriving with Deadpool’s release on February 12. Only two…
Every morning at sunrise, artist Susie Q. Wood walks the coastline outside her ocean-facing Galt Mile Beach condo and cleans up after other people. She collects stomped cigarette butts, misplaced shoes, discarded plastic, and forgotten dolls. Much of it she trashes. Some she recycles. A lot, she washes and uses…
There’s a scene during the first half of Bryan Singer’s X-Men: Apocalypse that is so emotionally resonant, so well-put-together and so quiet that you might briefly forget you’re watching a superhero film. It involves a raid by some Polish officers in the remote forest where Erik Lehnsherr, aka Magneto (Michael…
Even by the standards of Yorgos Lanthimos, The Lobster’s premise is a doozy: Colin Farrell plays a recently single schlub forced to report to the Hotel, where he has 45 days to form a romantic relationship lest he be turned into an animal of his choosing. This is the plight…
In his archly empathetic comedies, Whit Stillman has long chronicled the uncertain ways in which young people of privilege launch themselves into worlds too in decline to offer them much. The debutante-ball life of Metropolitan or the nightclub and publishing circles of The Last Days of Disco are already dying before…
At long last, Whit Stillman has adapted a Jane Austen book. To be sure, he has touched on her work numerous times — particularly in his 1990 directorial debut Metropolitan, in which an argument about Mansfield Park gave us the immortal line “I don’t read novels. I prefer good literary…
The first time I saw the documentary Weiner, at Missouri’s True/False Festival this past March, Donald Trump was boasting about the size of his cock during a presidential debate. Given the recent direction of our electoral politics, you might think that a film about former New York Representative Anthony Weiner…
The guiding principle of Lewis Carroll’s classics Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass is that logic does not exist. You tumble down rabbit holes and into mirrors willy-nilly, and you try to survive, feeling what you feel, having fun when you can — oh, and try not to drown…
Something troubling is afoot in Westeros: The heroes are beginning to outnumber the villains. The sixth season of Game of Thrones has already seen Jon Snow’s return from the dead, Arya Stark’s vision restored and — courtesy of two Stark children’s long-awaited reunion — the show’s first-ever tears of joy…
Ed King was a pop artist for 13 years, having made a name for himself in the art world with his bright and vibrant pieces. King has years of experience including stints as a design and video editing instructor at the Miami Ad School, Art Director at Transmission Graphic Design,…
Let’s break the bad news this way. Maria Bamford’s new Netflix series isn’t a disaster. It’s sometimes funny — it’s got comic genius Maria Bamford in almost every scene! — but only its finest moments bear the stamp of sensibility. Too often, this fitful, clamorous show feels Bamford-flavored rather than…
