recent posts
- Wagner Moura in The Secret Agent: A Cool Brazilian Gets an Oscar Nod
- Now on Oscar’s Short List: Holding Liat, a Documentary about the Harrowing Wait for a Hostage Freed from Gaza
- Paul Thomas Anderson’s Best Film at the 91st NYFCC at TAO Downtown
- Mariska Hargitay, Ken Burns, Alan Berliner: Non-Fiction Filmmakers Award Season
- David Amram: The First 95 Years at Dizzy’s Club
Category: Events
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Director/ Producer/ Co-writer/ Star Bradley Cooper introduced a special concert at the newly refurbished Geffen Hall, featuring the NY Philharmonic performing Leonard Bernstein’s music for his film MAESTRO. That his subject Leonard Bernstein had begun his career in this very place, conducting the Philharmonic at age 25, gave the evening extra resonance. Fervidly researching, Cooper…
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When the new Broadway musical, Days of Wine and Roses, was announced, Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer’s voluptuous classic song from the movie swelled in my mind’s ear. That was a lot to let go, as the new show at Studio 54 drew near. Featuring Kelli O’Hara and Brian D’Arcy James as the lovers in…
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After Oscar nominations, pundits weigh in on the snubs. What exactly does it mean? In the case of BARBIE, the highest grossing film of the year: laughing all the way to the proverbial, eh, literal, bank. Team BARBIE has a prominent place at the party, with nods for Best Picture, Original Song, Production Design, Costume…
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One pleasure of the swank New York Film Critics Circle dinner at Tao Downtown: the awards are announced well ahead of the early January date. This means that speeches are prepared; presenters get to, well, speak critically—and, at length. When MAY DECEMBER director Todd Haynes awarded scriptwriter Samy Burch, he went far to explain her…
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If you see a plantation, the ghosts of slaves must be haunting. That’s the complicated plot of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ play Appropriate at the Hayes Theater in a nutshell. As Toni, the eldest sibling preparing the property for sale, Sarah Paulson is perfection, plucked from her mean-as-can-be role in Steve McQueen’s award-winning movie, 12 Years a…
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A sure path to a hit documentary is a subject as brilliant, dynamic and charismatic as musician extraordinaire, Jon Batiste. Filmmaker Matthew Heineman, accepting the Pennebaker Career Achievement Award at Hamptons DocFest this week, told a rapt audience in Sag Harbor how he made his latest film, AMERICAN SYMPHONY, about Batiste on a musical, emotional…
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If you ask Robert De Niro to speak, be prepared for his tirade on the former president who seeks office again. That omission seemed odd to the guests seated at Cipriani Wall Street this week for the annual Gotham Awards. Then, the actor paused realizing the words he was reading from the teleprompter were not…
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As the DOCNYC festival illustrated, the genre of non-fiction films remains a vibrant frontier. Asmae El Moudir’s THE MOTHER OF ALL LIES, awarded Best Documentary in Cannes and Morocco’s entry for the Best International Feature Oscar, tells a hidden history through clay figurines. The “Bread Wars” in Morocco in the early 1980’s garnered little attention…
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The international superstar, Yoshiki, celebrated a 10th anniversary “World Tour with Orchestra 2023 ‘Requiem,’” its final leg at Carnegie Hall this week. Displaying awesome musical chops at piano and drums in the separate genres of classical and rock, Yoshiki, clad in red lame coat, dedicated the tour to the passing of his beloved mother who…
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The roar of engines and strain of race cars careening around a sharp curve make for the panache of the New York Film Festival’s final picture, but the real drama of Ferrari takes place within walls. As Enzo Ferrari, a brooding charismatic silver-haired Adam Driver is haunted by loss—of father, brother, son, friends–, he speaks…
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Interviewed for Purist Magazine, the Oscar winning documentarian Alex Gibney was asked, how significant was it that his epic film on Paul Simon, IN RESTLESS DREAMS: THE MUSIC OF PAUL SIMON, would screen at this year’s HIFF. “Very, he’s coming home.” At a “Conversation With Paul Simon,” Simon spoke about his inspirations in music—doo wop…
