We still remember when riding a bicycle in the city seemed like a death wish— best reserved for crazed bike messengers or deliverymen with a mission. When the bike lane renaissance began a few years ago, we weren’t sure if it would stick. more

We’ve all been there: You walk into a gleaming white-box gallery where an elegant gallerina sits behind a designer table. She doesn’t seem to notice your entrance, doesn’t even deign to look up from her glowing computer screen as you walk through the hallowed rooms to see the art on the walls. If you ask her for a list of the works, she’s curt, dismissive. And you try to whisk by the expensive creations as efficiently and unobtrusively as possible. You arrive back on the sidewalk feeling beat up, befuddled and a little… guilty. more

The early 20th century’s Russian Avant-Garde was one of the most exceptional moments in Modern art creation, producing such stellar artists as Chagall, Kandinsky, Rodchenko, Malevich and many more. The documentary The Desert of Forbidden Art, which opens March 11 at Cinema Village, seeks to add a forgotten chapter to the overriding narrative in the art-history books, with an entire trove of banned art that for decades had remained in obscurity. Unfortunately, filmmakers Amanda Pope and Tchavdar Georgiev take a fascinating subject and reduce it to a shallow, uncritical depiction of the unions between art and politics. Their compulsion toward myth building and to promoting an art propaganda agenda trumps the prospects for a more nuanced film. more

Spend some time in the city’s crummy basements, sitting in uncomfortable seats (or no seats at all), and you may start to weary of the land of experimental theater and performance. So it’s simple to understand the appeal of having a curated experience of emerging talent presented by one of the country’s premier cultural institutions. Now in its seventh year, the Public Theater’s Under the Radar festival promises the exhilaration of a new theater fix without having to creep through the city’s underbelly. Think of it as a way for a little old lady to have drugs delivered to her door. more

Nick Jones spent years developing, workshopping and fine-tuning Jollyship the Whiz-Bang, his wacky Off-Off Broadway puppet rock musical that had a strong run at Ars Nova. He follows it up with the kooky and confusing The Coward, an ironic period comedy set in 18th-century England. Produced by LCT3, Lincoln Center Theater's "edgy" offshoot, Jones is being prepared for big things. more

You probably know artist Eric Drooker’s work even though you may not recognize his name. He’s produced artwork for over a dozen covers of The New Yorker, several depicting books stacked to resemble skyscrapers. Now his art has been adapted as animated sequences in Howl, the film about the landmark 1957 obscenity trial on the publication of Allen Ginsberg’s epic poem Howl, starring James Franco. As Drooker explained, documentary filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, known for their film The Celluloid Closet, were going to make a doc, but they ended up going in a completely different direction. “They are in San Francisco, and I’m in Berkeley these days. They visited and looked at some of my other work. That’s when lightbulbs went off over their heads, when they saw these illustrations I did with Allen’s poems.” Now the 90-minute film contains approximately 20 minutes of animation woven throughout. An illustrated book of the poem is also out now, containing Drooker’s artwork. more

JUNKO HAS SCARS marring both arms. Curious why such a beautiful woman in her line of work would choose to openly show off such an apparent defect, I ask her what they are from. “Oh,” she says, lifting her delicate eyebrows and nodding her head. “I had tattoos removed.” She smiles as she almost looks me in the eye. I stroke the raised area, the first time I’ve touched her since she sat down close on my left, her bare thigh rubbing against my jeans, and nod. These scars are jagged and mean. They aren’t from any sort of tattoo removal I’ve ever seen, and I should probably just drop the subject, but I continue. more

The Dominican Republic has stood in for many a film set in Cuba, but rarely has a film been set in the Caribbean island that tells a story about the culture and people of DR itself. La Soga, written by and starring Manny Perez, a Dominican-American who has a lot he wants to say about the country where he was born. more

Little did Art Spiegelman know he didn't really have much of a choice when asked to collaborate on a dance: He'd been Pilobolized. more

Oliver Stone’s documentary South of the Border sells itself as a “road trip” across five countries in South America, but the contentious director spends most of it stuck on Hugo Chávez and the current state of Venezuela. In fact, the film should have been subtitled: “My Love Affair with Hugo.” The final result of this ode to Chavez proves that, just because you can make a blockbuster film, doesn’t mean you may grasp the fundamentals of crafting an intelligent documentary. more