Séraphine

In his new film about the untrained post-impressionist painter Séraphine de Senlis (Yolande Moreau), director Martin Provost crafted a beautiful, fair and beautifully restrained portrait of the poor, troubled woman. Though she worked most of her life as a maid, Séraphine's work is now in the collections of some of the most important museum collections in the world. Séraphine balances the familiar biopic inclination towards excessive drama and embellished heroism with terrific restrained and a very honest portrayal of the painter's problematic actions. Throughout, Moreau invests the awkward but determined spinster with such organic warmth that even in her worst moments we can't help but feel for her. Click here to read my whole review.

Drag Me to Hell: The Ultimate Eviction

In a recent edition of our weekly film discussion Blockbluster, Henry Stewart and I looked at Sam Raimi's recent return to the horror genre, Drag Me To Hell. Though we both enjoyed the film, its fairly offensive gender and racial politics were problematic. Meanwhile, it was an interesting, entertaining and supremely genre-literate exercise in class identity and anxiety, and seemed appropriate for a culture that seems paralized by the prospect of downward socio-economic mobility. Click here to read our whole discussion.

Bushwick Is (Not) the New Soho

Last week the collective Arts in Bushwick threw a massive party, open studios and weekend-long festival, and I took the opportunity to interview two of the organizers about the event and the Bushwick arts scene. The Bushwick Open Studios & Arts Festival showcased the work of what is considered the latest of New York City's artist communities, and I was curious to understand how this new area would differ from similar places like Soho, the Lower East Side, Chelsea and Williamsburg. Click here to read the whole feature.

Vieux Carré

Last month I reviewed a production of Tennessee Williams' rarely-produced Vieux Carré at the Pearl Theatre. The production was adequate if a little uninspired, and did more to shed light on a terrific play that ought to be performed more frequently than it held succeeded in its own right. Still, the stage and lighting design were terrifically unusual, and a couple of actors kept the proceedings interesting. Mostly, the production seemed to be creating a tableau of Williams's work rather than turning the text into something new. Click here to read the whole review.

Painful Pop

In an art review last month I took a critical eye to three artists with shows in Chelsea who seemed to be using the language, lingo and mode of address of pop culture to mount more or less successful critique of visual and mainstream art. And though I enjoyed Jonathan Monk's critique of Jeff Koons' inflated animals at Casey Kaplan (pictured) and Gosha Ostretsov's comic book-inspired installation at Claire Oliver, I felt that Phil Collins' participatory photography exhibition and pitch-perfect Mexican soap opera at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery was the most successful. Click here to read the whole review.

Night at the Museum II: Stay Out of Washington

A few weeks back Henry Stewart and I reviewed Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian for our weekly feature Blockbluster at The L Magazine's website. It turned out to be much worse than either of us had expected because it not only lacked any decent action sequences, but also squandered its ridiculous cast of comedian superstars (Hank Azaria, Robin Williams, Luke Wilson, Steve Coogan, Christopher Guest, Ricky Gervais, etc.). The stubbornly unfunny movie at least featured some cool effects (a Jeff Koons balloon animal brought to life, for instance), and a terrific performance by Amy Adams as Amelia Earhart – though she was offensively recuperated by a kind of infantilist patriarchal substitution in the final scene. Read all of Henry and I's discussion here.

Lower East Psychedelic

In an article last month I discussed solo exhibitions by four artists at galleries on the Lower East Side whose work deploys psychedelic color palettes and alternately abstract or surreal forms to unveil completely mesmerizing visions for viewers. I enjoyed Marilyn Minter's surreal and brilliant photographs, paintings and videos of beauty and baking projects seen from so close that they become ugly (as seen in Green Pink Caviar above) at Salon 94 Freemans and David Shaw's strange rainbow sculptures extrapolated from branches and tree trunks at Feature Inc.

The delightfully colorful and creative cut-out sculptures, totems and masks of Michael Velliquette at DCKT Contemporary were a little less interesting, as they seemed caught up in their own cuteness. My favorite of the four, though, was Jen Stark's mesmirizing show of abstract sculptures and drawings at LMAKprojects. Click here to read the whole article.

Goodbye 20th Century

Last month, four marquee rappers who were huge around the turn of the millennium dropped hugely anticipated albums on the same day. In my feature on the new albums from Eminem, Busta Rhymes and Method Man and Redman, I discuss how each is trying to adapt to a rap industry they don't really understand and haven't been competitive in for between five and ten years. While Eminem's Relapse comes off mostly as an empty parody of his former work, and Busta seems lost, over-the-hill cause on Back on My B.S. (making the album's title deeply ironic), Meth and Red manage to recreate the amazing chemistry that made their original Blackout! (1999) such a thrilling record. Blackout 2 comes off as the best of the lot, and though Eminem sold plenty well, it seems pretty clear that he, like Busta, are completely disconnected from their former audiences, unlike Meth and Red. Click here to read the whole feature.

Clowns Art Us

In a recent edition of my art column Wicked Artsy for The L Magazine, I wrote about two exhibitions that use clown-like figures to elicit sympathy and a kind of melancholic pity from viewers, rather than banking on their potential for creepiness. For Marnie Weber at Marc Jancou Contemporary, her ghost clowns are part of a feminist narrative about body politics and performance. With Nigel Cooke's exhibition at Andrea Rosen Gallery, we peer into an uneasy vision of the future where, after an apocalypse of sorts, the only remaining humans are gnomish clowns (as seen at right) who offer their artifacts in a nearly direct address to viewers. Read the whole article here.

The Merchant of Venice

Recently I reviewed Propeller's production of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice at the Brooklyn Institute of Music. Re-cast in a prison at an indeterminate historical moment, the production hit all the right notes with the difficult play's uneasy comedy, fostering a terrific ensemble dynamic tinged with dance, singing, fight choreography and a touch of burlesque. Still, there was something lacking in Propeller's handling of the play's weighty dramatic plot – about the Jew Shylock demanding the return on his bond with Antonio, one pound of the Venetian's flesh. The production seemed literally trapped by the prison setting it had created. Read the whole review here.