Telling an alternately funny and spooky story entirely through television commercials and fictional news programs, Buffet Infinity, written and directed by Simon Glassman, and performed by a cast of Canadian comic actors, had us marveling at its low-budget narrative and editorial mastery. A sly satire of overconsumption, machine-learning, and the horror genre, the film unfolds...
Few orchestral ensembles include three drum sets, three electric basses, three trombones, three French horns and three soprano voices. But Simon Hanes is not a typical composer. His new recording, Gargantua, a noisy, lyrical, haunting, humorous, and frequently sublime collection of clashing/complementary styles, consistently intrigues and satisfies. One can hear Rabelaisian giants stomping around the loosely...
“Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency. And the rule of law be damned.” – U.S. District Judge Fred Biery, ordering the release of a 5-year-old boy kidnapped and jailed...
Journalist and fledgling farmer Patrick Laurie’s Native: Life in a Vanishing Landscape is the most beautiful book we’ve read in years. Born and raised in Galloway, a mostly ignored region of southwestern Scotland now over-run with commercial timber forests, Laurie attempts to recapture his homeland’s fading vitality by starting a small cattle farm, despite having few bovine...
Adapted by writer-director Mike Flanagan from a Stephen King story, “The Life of Chuck” is one of those rare movies about which the less said the better. Absent prior knowledge of the work’s central question, the uninitiated viewer will discover a profoundly human film of stupendous emotional power. Once you catch your breath and dry...
“It’s Not You, It’s Capitalism,” by journalist, lawyer, and activist Malaika Jabali, is one of those rare books that makes a dense, murky subject clear enough for laypeople — for all of us — to understand. Deftly balancing humor with erudition, Jabali unpacks the myths, lies, and propaganda that allow capitalism, despite mountains of evidence...
Created with stop-motion animation — think “Wallace and Gromit” — Memoir of a Snail is simultaneously funny, heartbreaking, and uplifting. The eponymous snail is actually a lonely woman named Grace (voiced exquisitely by Sarah Snook), born with a cleft lip and touched by a series of horrible tragedies. The film follows Grace through childhood to adulthood, when...
Several years ago, two of the finest jazz musicians in Los Angeles, pianist Josh Nelson and vocalist Mon David, formed a partnership — an “agreement,” they called it. “DNA,” the duo album they produced, recalled the historic Bill Evans/Tony Bennett collaborations, and included some of the songs from that iconic pairing. On their latest creation,...
The subtitle of the third collection of music from Dharma Gypsys is “music for yoga, meditation and time travel.” Intriguingly, this aurally rich creation is more or less timeless: there’s no discernible beat to any of the tracks, an artistic departure for a band whose previous two releases featured propulsive rhythms driven by drums. Call...
Written, directed, edited, and starring Joanna Arnow, The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed, is a painfully funny, mildly disturbing deadpan comedy about Ann, a young Jewish woman in New York floating between an unsatisfying office career and intermittently satisfying submissive sexual relationships. Its honesty (and believability) left us dazzled. Arnow, who...
Domestic Terrorists“Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency. And the rule of law be damned.” – U.S. District Judge Fred Biery, ordering the release of a…
Telling an alternately funny and spooky story entirely through television commercials and fictional news programs, Buffet Infinity, written and directed by Simon Glassman, and performed by a cast of Canadian comic actors, had us marveling at its low-budget narrative and editorial mastery. A sly satire of overconsumption, machine-learning, and the horror genre, the film unfolds...
