After a career of forty years, you’re going to know a thing or two about charming a crowd and at the Blender Theater last night Loudon Wainwright III got his game on from the get-go.
Recession, turmoil and hitting rock bottom? Wainwright didn’t sugarcoat things and his impeccably catchy opener "Times is Hard" put a smile on everyone’s face. He covered everything from Bernie Madoff, losing everything and praying for your stocks and bonds—with the hilarious refrain “All I can do is play this song” the punch line to every type of disaster that is characterizing our times.
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Variety reports that the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp (LAEDC) is predicting that 1,000 new jobs will be created in Hollywood this year, and, for the hell of it, 2,000 more should arrive in 2010.
Thanks to the installation of 3-D equipment in cinemas, growth in domestic and foreign box office, as well as expansion in cable TV production, a little extra coin is floating around them hills—so if you're jobless and can afford a plane trip, bus ride or bicycle, perhaps it's time to head West?
LAEDC chief economist Jack Kyser even upgraded the entertainment industry's prosperity from a C- in 2008 to a B this year. And with new Californian tax incentives for film currently under review, Hollywood may just continue the likely expansion.
The film industry has often seen itself as recession-proof but Newsweek did point out that videogames happen to be the real onscreen love affair of late. They also note that lipstick, ice cream and liquor are repeatedly super-safe industries when the economy suffers.
No doubt Hollywood scribes are combining these very subjects (again) as we speak
We’ve all felt the need to sit in front of a big screen after (or during) a night out so why not take advantage of the Lower East Side’s Sunshine Cinema and its $9.99 midnight movie deal for the next six weeks? Starting Feb. 27, the cinema launches its new series with Christmas on Mars: The Flaming Lips Movie.
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Jazz artist Lisa Hearns hit the National Arts Club last night, delivering a robust performance of material from her new album, I Got it Bad & That Ain’t Good.
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Vacuous commercialism? Mass manipulation? Bright lights?
Times Square always says yes, yes and yes to all three—but all of a sudden, the neon oasis has developed a bit of a heart.
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R.E.M. is coming to Carnegie Hall! Well, not exactly Michael Stipe and his band of merry middle-aged music makers, but the tunes at least!
Yes, The Music of R.E.M. concert takes place March 11 and some of music’s biggest (and smallest) names will be taking part.
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“I will not go crazy. I will not disappear. I will not talk about myself.”
Such were the utterances of Mike Disfarmer, renowned American portrait photographer, hermit and ice cream lover as portrayed in a new production at St. Ann’s Warehouse.
By all accounts Disfarmer was a strange man. Particularly appropriate therefore that the eccentric Arkansas photographer was embodied onstage as a 3-foot puppet – complete with non-existent expression, omnipresent spectacles and a blandness of dress.
Life moved around Disfarmer rather than within him. He was an observer and chronicler of life at its most basic, unrepentant level – certainly the eye of any storm. In fact, tornados are central to the Disfarmer narrative and the performance opened with just that. A model town emerged from behind a fence of photographs, only to be swept away by a twister: straw hats, vintage cars and barnyard animals all caught up in the chaos.
Relevant of course, for Disfarmer believed it was a tornado that took him from his birth parents as a child and delivered him to another family, which formed part of a reinvention of his own persona. Born Mike Meyer, he changed his name to Disfarmer as a renunciation of his rural life and family (“meyer” means “farmer” in German and “dis” means “not”). He would eventually emerge as one of the country’s most intriguing talents, photographing the working class community of Heber Springs, Arkansas over a period of forty years.
A team of five puppeteers enlivened Disfarmer’s world of isolated artistry in quite remarkable fashion as his daily life of buying beer, enduring the taunts of neighborhood children and overseeing the processes of portraiture was captured with skill, humor and enduring detail.
The coordination of movements between the puppeteers was itself an exercise in fluidity and frequently it seemed as though the audience was encountering some form of theatrical surgery. One puppeteer would move Disfarmer’s feet, another would control his head and arms, whilst further team members would manipulate sets and props around the “man in miniature” in befitting tornado-like fashion.
A Heber Springs street for instance would continually unfold before him – a “road-on-wheels” that repeatedly rotated so as to give him some place to go.
So too, the puppeteers’ dexterity allowed Disfarmer to play a banjo, write a letter and get into bed, with all such actions accompanied by a score which captured the isolation and fears which defined his waking hours. Banjo, fiddle and accordion combined for the often wintry soundtrack, characterizing an artist whose work was filled with people, his life with none.
It was a strange and sorrowful tale. But one couldn’t help but marvel in the telling…
Soft red and lavender lighting gave the Brooklyn Masonic Temple a decidedly sensual feel last night as the Brooklyn Philharmonic kicked off its Nuevo Latino Festival in salsational style.
Amidst the candlelit tables, a troupe of white-shirted musicians emerged in the forefront to the sounds of wood blocks and the thuds of a conga drum. Then, rattles from a chekeré echoed, a wandering guitarist joined the throng and a lone trumpeter appeared on the Temple’s second tier.
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