Visit These Sights Before Tourists Descend

The Rink at Rockefeller Center
Ice-skating before winter officially arrives may seem silly, but there is a benefit to heading out early: This iconic rink offers lower prices until November 3, and the ice—which accommodates only 150 people at a time—is slightly less crowded. Thus, you’ll have a wider berth while attempting your best shoot-the-duck spin. 30 Rockefeller Plaza between 49th and 50th Sts (therinkatrockcenter.com). Times vary; visit website for details. Through Nov 3: $10–$14, seniors and children under 11 $8–$8.50; skate rental $8. Nov 4–17 $15.50–$19, seniors and children under 11 $9.50–$10.50. Nov 18–Jan 6: $15.50–$21, seniors and children under11 $9.50–$12.50; skate rental $10.

Click through to read the rest of the article at Time Out New York. 

 

Photograph: Courtesy the Holiday Shops at Bryant Park

'Dirty Girl': The Edgy Misfit

“'No one likes a dirty girl,' a high school principal tells Danielle (Juno Temple), the firecracker at the center of Dirty Girl. He’s wrong, of course. Plenty of people love a dirty girl, this film’s writer and director Abe Sylvia first and foremost. Danielle, growing up in Norman, Oklahoma in 1987, is the very picture of fun feistiness. She wears high espadrilles, piles on the makeup, smokes cigarettes, goes too far with boys in her Mustang convertible, and mouths off to people in an adorable Southern drawl. She sounds like a cliché, but Temple’s performance makes this dirty girl is a formidable heroine in high-waisted short shorts."

Click through to read the rest of the review at PopMatters.

'Love, Wedding, Marriage': We Recommend Therapy

"Yet it’s not the premise to Love, Wedding, Marriage—and its strict romantic view that equates divorce with failure—that is the movie’s biggest flaw. Instead, it’s the way the film uses its premise to indulge the worst romantic-comedy tropes, scenes featuring zany speed-dating, bad karaoke, soap-opera-style revelations, a fake suicide attempt, schmaltzy third-act toasts, multiple uses of the phrase 'once upon a time', dramatic revelations, and wacky marriage therapies, plural. Did I mention that Ava has a three-week deadline to save her parents marriage before their big, surprise 30th anniversary party that she refuses to cancel?

Love, Wedding, Marriage goes for broad, just-shy-of-slapstick humor. Only Mulroney doesn’t have a feel for the right tone, rhythm, or look of a romantic comedy. In one scene, the marriage therapist that Ava sends her parents to—played by Christopher Lloyd in the most disappointing cameo of his ever put to film—has them run through some pre-therapy exercises that includes them hopping around and snorting air through their noses. Surely, this was supposed to be played for comedy.

In reality, there’s nothing really all that funny about watching Jane Seymour and James Brolin flopping around on screen. It’s almost more sad than funny. When Mulroney tries for some more directorial flourishes, he favors the more dramatic series of extreme close-ups, lingering ponderously on Mandy Moore’s face.

Then again, there isn’t much in the material to elevate with better direction. Much of the dialogue, written by Anouska Chydzik and Caprice Crane of the recent 90210 and Melrose Place reboots, is therapy-speak. People often say exactly what they feel. They talk about fulfillment, prioritizing, and validation. If there is a single least-funny word in the English language, it just might be 'prioritizing'."

 

Click through to read the full review at PopMatters.

"Terra Nova Offers a World of Possibilities

 

In recent years—certainly since Lost, if not earlier—new dramas have announced their arrivals with splashy, cinematic pilots. Terra Nova‘s premiere certainly delivers on spectacle. The shots swoop and zoom, whooshing their way across CGIed planets, through dystopian cities, and over unspoiled hills. And, yes, there are dinosaurs. There’s the majestic brachiosaurus that looks like a graceful precursor to the giraffe, and there’s the gnashing, barbed-tail acceraptor, also known as “the Slasher.” The dinosaurs look great; the most stunning image in the premiere occurs when a child tries to feed a brachiosaurus a tree branch, only to be lifted up by the beast when she doesn’t let go. It’s a fun, playful moment that doesn’t make you look for the seams in the special effects.

Yet, for all of its visual flourishes and two-hour running time (with commercials), the Terra Nova premiere doesn’t feel like it belongs on the big screen at the multiplex, like the best drama pilots do. It doesn’t feel like a movie; it feels like a really, really long TV pilot. There’s a lot of clunky setup, a lot of piece-moving to send the main characters back to Terra Nova, and a lot of explaining of rules once they get there."

Click through to read the rest of the review at PopMatters.

'Whitney' Feels Like a Step Backwards for Women in TV

"Cummings’ background notwithstanding, ideally, Whitney might be a step forward for women in television, both on-screen and behind the scenes. It would follow in the tradition of other NBC shows Parks and Recreation and 30 Rock, comedies that are produced by women and focused on fully realized female characters living life on their own terms in a world that resembles the real one. Instead, with its stilted scenes, canned laughter, and handwringing about marriage, Whitney feels more like a step backward."

Click through to read the rest of the review at PopMatters.

As part of PopMatters' survey of 100 essential directors, I did a brief piece about Oliver Stone.

The 100 Essential Directors Part 9: Victor Sjöström to Luchino Visconti

Oliver Stone

Underrated: Nixon (1995) and W. (2008). These two films, though controversial, are not as easy to argue about or as quick to ruffle feathers as JFK. And, though political, they don’t touch the same kind of raw, emotional nerve as a subject like the Vietnam War, like Stone did in Platoon and Born of the Fourth of July (1989). As a result, they’re both overlooked, a shame considering what Stone manages to accomplish in them: painting a human, even sympathetic, portrait of a figure that stands for everything he’s against personally. The two imperial presidents are cast in very different lights: Stone’s Nixon, in his quest for power, causes his own undoing, while his George W. Bush is almost totally powerless, haplessly flubbing his way through his own presidency. And yet Stone manages empathy for them both, and gets award-worthy performances out of Anthony Hopkins and Josh Brolin in the process.

Click through to read the rest of the article at PopMatters.

Westchester vs. The City

For the September cover story, I wrote and edited a meaty package comparing Westchester County to New York City. The intro explains it this way:

"At some point, you made a choice between urban living and suburban living. For some of you, the debate between the two ended the second you put down roots in Westchester. Maybe you never had doubts to begin with. For others, the struggle continues within. Every time you pay your tax bill, you think that you may have been better off with a cute little condo in Brooklyn Heights. (But would you have had to give up your washer/dryer for the indignity of the coin-op machine in the basement?) Then again, when you notice that you inadvertently left the house unlocked—again—and return to find your possessions untouched, you might revel in suburbia’s relative safety, and congratulate yourself for making such a smart choice.

It’s time to put the debate to rest. We may wonder about it every day, but how does life in New York City really compare to our suburban Westchester existences? We pit urban and suburban living head-to-head, piling in as many of the pertinent stats and facts as we could, to put the arguing to rest once and for all. Here, our (completely unbiased) findings."

The rest of the package includes

...a comparison of housing costs in the two areas.
...a head-to-head match-up of amusement parks, public parks, music halls, historic houses, and art museums.
...a look at demographics and statistics.
...words from a chef about why he chose Westchester as the spot to open his restaurant (and a restaurant comparability chart).
...a comparison of crime statistics.
...a list of rejoinders to win Westchester vs. City cocktail-party spats.
...a side-by-side check of incidental costs, such as library fees or movie tickets.
...a Q&A with Westchester-to-City transplant Sloane Crosley.
...a look at the differences in commuting.
...a comparison of the retail landscape, with a list of which chain stores excel in each area.
...thoughts on how the NYC nightlife mostly trounces Westchester's, but how Westchester has more green space.
...three different first-person essays from writers who have lived in both areas.

Read the entire package by clicking through the links, or downlaod the PDF above.

Fall Arts Preview: Fall Movies

"Anonymous

Everyone knows that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, Macbeth, and all those other great plays. But, to paraphrase the Royal Tenenbaums, what this movie presupposes is—maybe he didn’t? Director Roland Emmerich, best known for his disaster movies like 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow, offers a melodrama that asserts that Edward De Vere, the Earl of Oxford, is the true scribe whose work  launched a million high-school essays.

 

The Artist

In the era of 3D, IMAX, and surround sound, it seems almost woefully backwards to recommend a movie that’s silent. Yes, silent. And black-and-white. And not in widescreen. The Artist is a new French film that takes place in Hollywood during the silent-film era, and it attempts to recreate that experience for current audiences. It’s a perfect antidote for those suffering from loud, color-saturated, quick-cut comics-movies fatigue."

Click through to read the rest of the article, or download the PDF above.

 

Fall Arts Preview: Fall Books

"Why Read Moby-Dick? by Nathaniel Philbrick

It’s an American classic and all, but, ugh, 700 pages about a whale? Really? Nathaniel Philbrick, author of the equally seafaring In the Heart of the Sea, makes a case for why you should sit down and finally read something that’s a thousand times longer than a Facebook status.

 

Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos

This young-adult novel comes to us from Jack Gantos—author of the Joey Pigza and Rotten Ralph books—and happens to be about a nose-bleeding, grounded-for-life character…named Jack Gantos. Things get even stranger when he’s conscripted to type out obituaries for his town’s elders, an entryway into the strangest summer he’s ever had. It’s an unusual coming-of-age tale without a wizard wand in sight—imagine that."

 

Click through to read the rest of the article, or download the PDF above.

 

Fall Arts Preview: Fall TV

"Terra Nova

This series is executive produced by Steven Spielberg and bears more than a passing resemblance to one of his biggest hits: Jurassic Park. In it, a futuristic society, having depleted the Earth of all resources, decides to go back to a prehistoric era to try the whole civilization thing again. Except this time, there are dinosaurs.

 

2 Broke Girls

It’s like The Odd Couple, if the genders were flipped and the whole thing took place in a Hollywoodized version of the hipster-infested Williamsburg. Kat Dennings and Beth Behrs play the titular broke girls, one a streetwise chick and the other a deposed trust-funder, and they form an unlikely alliance with a goal of saving up enough tips to open up—what else?—a cupcake bakery."

 

Click through to read the rest of the article, or download the PDF above.