The Mint Theater’s latest production, Phyl, reminds us that while large Broadway shows can be spectacles, they can never provide the intimacy, immediacy and experience of a well-crafted drama designed for a 100-seat playhouse, that happens to sit not far from Times Square.
This month we will be reading Ira Levin’s 1972 classic of satirical, feminist horror, The Stepford Wives, as well as showing the 1975 film adaptation, starring Katharine Ross.
The Whitney Museum, with 369 employees, is a large complex of many departments, missions and roles. It mounts an annual exhibit of its employees’ work at Westbeth Gallery, its neighbor in the far West Village.
There is a postcard on the table in my Bank Street studio. The Detroit Publishing Company printed it in 1912 and it shows a sea horse at the New York Aquarium ─ back when it was at Castle Garden. Walk south along the Hudson River Greenway from the end of this street and you arrive at the spot. The building is still standing, back under its older name, Castle Clinton. You can buy Statue of Liberty ferry tickets inside it now. I also have a 1920s postcard of the Statue. That one became a scarf.
As a film columnist who does not generally use ratings, I can only say that Best of the Best: Jazz from Detroit comes as close to a perfect score as any documentary can. The film was a joy to watch, this comprehensive dive into the history of jazz in Detroit.
For Kenny Aronoff, greatness is not a destination. It is a daily obligation. “I’ll never be as great as I want to be,” Aronoff said recently. “But I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to be as great as I can be.”
A leading authority on the Jefferson Market Courthouse design and construction is Francis R. Kowsky, who wrote the book The Architecture of Frederick Clarke Withers and the Progress of the Gothic Revival in America After 1850.
In late July I saw The Odyssey. I didn’t see it in IMAX but that didn’t impact my experience in a negative way — I really enjoyed its intensity.
Few guitarists have traveled as boldly between musical worlds as Alex Skolnick, the Testament veteran who transformed himself from a teenage thrash-metal prodigy into an accomplished jazz guitarist without ever abandoning the music that made him famous.
The making of independent documentaries is in flux: on the one hand, the public continues to have a large appetite for documentary film content; on the other hand, funding and exhibition venues have diminished.
