The Randolph Houses in Harlem are disappearing. For half a dozen years now, I have walked past them on my way to Frederick Douglass Academy II, where I work as a Spanish teacher. Neighbors sitting on the stoops of their brownstones across 114th Street used to cheer my daily commute. I...
The skies in Martin Scorsese’s new film
Shutter Island are one of the most remarkable special effects I’ve ever seen at the cinema: lowering and grey, impenetrably thick, and wholly impassive to human suffering, they’re a perfect doubling, visually and symbolically, of the claustrophobic atmosphere that pervades the film from start to finish.
In the final sequence of Jacques Audiard’s engrossing crime drama, A Prophet, the attentive viewer will notice a deft choice of soundtrack. The tune is a familiar one, Brecht and Weill’s ubiquitous classic “Mack the Knife,” but the rendition is obscure: a droll country...
When the reviews for the Broadway iteration of Fela! hit the stands (or, more accurately in my case, the RSS feeds), I couldn’t help but wonder what was going on. Normally staid critics were breaking out the superlatives and the exclamation points by the bushel. The New York Times’...
When walking into the Brooklyn Museum’s recent Kiki Smith exhibit, a large panel presents this brief statement about the exhibit: “The idea of how women found space for creative inspiration in the past is the point of departure for Sojourn, this exhibition by Kiki Smith.” It...
