Arts

This is the third New York Film Festival I’ve attended as a critic, and increasingly I’ve found myself foregoing the marquee titles — this year represented by the likes of Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt and Bradley Cooper’s Is This Thing On? (and, for some reason, Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere) — for the more […]

Hi ya’ Manhattan-ites, Medea Hoar here with all things fun and festive in the Village. In spite of a love of line dancing and live country music, Manhattan has seen so many honky-tonk venues close or dial back the live music in recent years, Rodeo Bar, Hill Country BBQ, the list goes on and on.

New York City painter Roberto Azank always surprises. Having been called the “chromatic Mozart,” as he can and has harmonized the seemingly most incongruent hues at the pictorial horizon line, he now turns to abstraction to paint waves of chroma, firstly sampling his own still life and pastoral scenes of lotus flowers upon lily pads

In July I set out to discover what exactly is the state of poetry in downtown Manhattan. NY Poetry Fest was taking place, and several interesting invitations to book launch events landed in my inbox. It appeared I was in for a total immersion. The first event that caught my attention was a book launch

Before there was a city, there was a crooked path. Today, we call it the Bowery—one of New York’s oldest streets and most fiercely contested strips of cultural real estate. Winding from Chatham Square to Cooper Square, it predates the city’s grid and bears the weight of centuries: from Lenape footpath to Dutch wagon trail to

Living downtown, one must be open to a steady stream of surprising new events, people, spaces, energy, vibrations, delights, and possibilities. For example, last month I learned that Washington Square Park, a block from my front door, has an official artist in residence. Also, I was introduced to a tiny room in the upper reaches

Private Life opens on the lower half of Rachel’s body, expectant. She’s clothed in only underwear, supine in dim lighting, and a male voice asks from behind, “Are you ready?” A needle appears out of thin air, confirming that she’s not about to have sex, as the film’s positioning would have you believe; she’s about

It’s a carnival of performance art. It’s wilder than any drug-induced hallucinations. It surpasses any cinematic version of Carnival in Venice you may have seen, and it live. It’s been called the “Burning Man of galas.” It is the annual Chashama Gala, brainchild of Anita Durst, beloved as the Chashama Mama, and this is its

The rolling hills and mountains of Southern California, the biosphere, the range of climates from desert to snow covered peaks roamed by mountain goats in one cable car ride the soaring mountains over the sea, the vertigo of a place prone to earthquakes, fire, floods, mudslides, a virtual sim city in real time, life on

\ Sultry haze of balmy nights. The Egypt-born, Quebec-based singer/composer/producer Nadah El Shazly has built a following in recent years with a blend of club music experimentation and Arabic tradition. She’s been a big part of the rich and exciting music coming out of the Beirut / Cairo / Istanbul triangle (Karkhana, Praed Orchestra!) as