The challenges of bipartisanship are easy to spot. It’s casting a die for cooperation, a hope that with your differing neighbor you can find not just common cause but common decency.
16.06.2021 - 00:53 / theplaylist.net
Using Leonard Bernstein’s own voice, collected from his myriad interviews throughout his life, as well as personal letters, many of which were published in the 2013 book “The Leonard Bernstein Letters,” Douglas Tirola’s “Bernstein’s Wall” works as both a broad overview of the famous conductor’s life, as well as a deep dive into his political activism.
Framed around Bernstein’s famous 1989 “Ode to Freedom” concert that coincided with the Fall of Berlin Wall – and saw Bernstein change Schiller’s
.The challenges of bipartisanship are easy to spot. It’s casting a die for cooperation, a hope that with your differing neighbor you can find not just common cause but common decency.
When you’re driving down one of Alabama’s main interstates, it’s not hard to see gaudy Confederate flags flying atop a hill, a memorial site, gravesites, or basically, anywhere else. Growing up in the South brings gradual understanding to just how deep the permeation of Dixie is in the culture — “The Dukes of Hazard“ proudly had the flag on the hood of the General Lee car, a symbol for ’70s Southern pride.
When attempting a biopic about a rock ‘n roll icon, there’s an inherent conflict of style and substance. Biopics are traditionally dramatic, yet glossy affairs that bring an air of prestige to every story, whether it’s the tale of a stuttering king, a cagey criminal, or the man who made McDonald’s an international chain.
Much can be said about Megan Mylan’s latest documentary “Simple As Water.” Yet, as its title insinuates, the film succeeds in its calculated minimalism. Cataloging the plight of four Syrian families in the aftermath of war, Mylan’s heartfelt exploration of human strife infuses informative insight with harrowing revelations.
Acclaimed photojournalist Gordon Parks was something of a renaissance man. A photographer, writer, composer, film director, and activist—he imbued the American Black experience with a sense of gravitas, esteem, and pathos through his Black gaze.
It is tempting and totally incorrect to put Jamie Adams’ “Love Spreads” on a shelf next to Alex Ross Perry’s “Her Smell”: Both films center on petty, personal rifts expanding between members of all-women rock bands, and the former at first appears, like the latter, concerned with toxic lead singers cursed with too much ego after tasting success.
The vaccine-mandatory world premiere of Dave Chappelle: This Time This Place reopened Radio City Music Hall Saturday night for the first time since Covid hit.
Easing back into moviemaking after the months-long covid shutdown seems like a mighty stressful proposition, and from the looks of the cast and crew credits for “No Sudden Move,” Steven Soderbergh decided to alleviate that stress by surrounding himself with people he knew.
What would it be like to see your childhood friends rise to fame, scratch at fortune, then die tragically young, only to become googled curiosities and cautionary tales? This was the journey of Hamilton Chango Harris, who appeared alongside his real-life skater pals in Larry Clark’s 1995 hit, “Kids.” Now, Harris aims to rewrite the narrative of the late Justin Pierce and Harold Hunter with “The Kids,” a documentary that reveals disturbing behind-the-scenes secrets and their aftermath.
Given the amount of nervousness, fear, and uncertainty many women face with the unpredictability of pregnancy—not to mention the strange-to-reckon-with fact that a small, separate being in a liquid sack is slowly incubating inside you—it’s a wonder there aren’t dozens of horror pregnancy films conceived every year. Ilana Glazer’s riff on this genre, “False Positive,” from A24 and Hulu, is born from the emotional turmoil that often accompanies pregnancy.
Like any other global event, there will come a time when COVID becomes a contextual landmark for art. It has a great deal of potential as a narrative shortcut for cinema in particular.
Based, in part, on Father James Martin’s bestselling book “Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and LGBT Community Can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity,” Evan Mascagni and Shannon Post’s compassionate documentary “Building a Bridge” use Martin as an entry point into a larger discourse surrounding the relationship between the Catholic Church and the LGBTQ+ community.
Reclaiming Beach Boys co-founder Brian Wilson’s voice and personal narrative, “Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road,” is an insightful but breezy introduction to the musical mastermind. Touching on everything from his early career to Beach Boys success and his drug use and mental illness, Brent Wilson and Jason Fine’s film may not reveal much about Wilson that isn’t covered in a Wikipedia article but still allows the musician to reclaim his own narrative.
There is a particular type of mind-bending genre pulp that seems to arise from the wounded psyche of a freshman filmmaker. Often, these transfixing head-trips feel constructed to play better on repeat viewings by design — one thinks of Christopher Nolan’s “Following,” or Shane Carruth’s close to impenetrable “Primer.” Screening as part of Tribeca’s Midnight Movie selection, Rob Schroeder’s hypnotic debut “Ultrasound,” falls into this category.
Reflective and stoic, sometimes to a fault, Levan Koguashvili’s film “Brighton 4th” explores the hyper-masculine world of Georgian wrestlers and gamblers in Brooklyn.
With its signature liveliness, unapologetic attitude, and visual splendor, New York City has so long been a set of romantic comedies that this location has become a cliché. So, how does Jonah Feingold, the writer/director of “Dating & New York,” aim to make his mark on this sparkling skyline? By creating a postmodern rom-com that blatantly snatches from iconic influences to deliver an irreverent commentary on the genre and modern romance.
You might know him best from Cameron Crowe’s seminal teenage road trip movie “Almost Famous.” Dressed replete in John Lennon glasses, long ink-black shaggy hair, and loud-open collar shirt, he is the editor from Rolling Stone Magazine who sends the intrepid Will on the road with the fictional band Stillwater. That man is Ben Fong-Torres.
A man dressed as a Viking goes into a convenience store to trade furs for groceries; a trio of smugglers is on the verge of an escape across the border when a moose totals their car; a cop calls for a tracker dog, only to be told that it, “isn’t working today.” When asked what the hound could be doing, the other cop responds honestly, “No idea.
Using the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic as a backdrop for a quarantine-style romantic comedy, Roshan Sethi’s directorial debut, “7 Days,” which pushes two ideologically opposed young Indian-American characters together during shelter-in-place, is a compact, empathetic wonder that only occasionally dips into overtly broad comedy.
Indie anxiety auteur Jim Cummings’ work is always trembling nervously with the hum or uneasy apprehension. His brilliant debut, “Thunder Road” throbbed with the cringe-y tension of a grieving divorcee policeman on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and his follow-up, “The Wolf of Snow Hollow” layered murder mystery genre elements and the idea of the “toxic male beast within” on top of his signature jittery agitation.