If nineteen sixty-seven was ground zero for a tidal shift in American cinema, thanks to the French stepping up their own New Wave game and hailing the movies as a vital and distinct art form, then 1969 took eccentric, elliptical, and experimental narrative and injected it into the veins of mainstream Hollywood filmmaking. That first… continue
In fourth grade, I borrowed from one of my classmates a series of books rumored to be banned from teachers’ reading lists: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (1981), More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (1984), and Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones (1991). To this day, I sometimes have trouble eating a meal if I think of this collection of intestine-churning folktales,… continue
In 2015, Morgan Parker published “if you are over staying woke” with Poetry magazine. I was taking a contemporary poetry seminar the summer of that year, and this was one of the poems in a stapled stack of her work we were assigned to discuss in two days. I ended up skipping class because I knew I couldn’t talk about “If you are over staying woke” without… continue
Ancient and alien, artist Huma Bhabha’s sculpted and drawn figures are currently on view through May 27th in her They Live exhibit at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art. Cumbrous, god-like prisoners of their own isolation, they loom over wasted industrial cities, openly regard their denizens and worshippers, and stare out at the lost and wandering. It’s a… continue
This month at Regis College, the famed English tale of Robin Hood and his loyal gang of thieves is set for the stage. As Marian, Or The True Tale of Robin Hood will maintain the core of the original narrative, playwright Adam Szymkowicz presents a new version. According to Director Jennifer Potts of Regis’ Fine Arts Center, “The beauty of this play is that we take the mythological story of Robin Hood and completely… continue
“Every show is different, you never know what to expect.” Those were the words of Warner Hiatt, known by his moniker, Worn-Tin, after playing an album release party at The Echo in Los Angeles for his sophomore record, Cycles. Hiatt is eccentric live, electrifying, at one point lying flat on his back on stage shredding his… continue
Film noir’s opaque shadows will fall on Boston this June when the traveling film festival Noir City slinks onto the screen of Harvard Square’s Brattle Theatre. For those who believe Billy Wilder’s nasty, lusty Double Indemnity was, in 1944, the jolt that brought noir’s patchwork monster to life (a debatable take, to be sure, especially when you… continue
