Ever since O.J.: Made in America won the Oscar for Best Documentary earlier this year, I’ve been contemplating whether it should’ve even been eligible.
Author: Steven Strauss
KILLING GROUND, WOLF CREEK, & the Current State of Torture Porn
Comparing 2005’s Wolf Creek (the movie; not the newer TV adaptation) to the recently released Killing Ground acts as a sort of Australian lens through which to examine just how much the horror genre’s relationship to gruesome violence has changed over the last decade.
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All The World’s a Stage, and All the Men and Women Merely Selfish Audiences
My main problem with criticism today, both formal and informal, can be summarized in the phrase: “the selfish audience.”
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GOD OF VENGEANCE & RHINOCEROS at the New Yiddish Rep
In the endearingly-enigmatic climactic scene of Jim Jarmusch’s brilliantly-weird and weirdly-brilliant Paterson, a mysterious yet undeniably-wise member of the literati proclaims, “Hearing poetry translated is like taking a shower wearing a raincoat.” When the camera flashes to the opened book on his lap, the page contains a poem in both its original language and the reader’s native tongue.
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YEN at MCC Theater
If you’re looking for a normal review of last season’s Yen at MCC Theater, then keep looking.
ON THE EXHALE at The Roundabout Theatre Company
Martín Zimmerman’s On the Exhale at the Roundabout Theatre Company was a 60-minute masterclass in non-polemical and thus effective theatrical activism, anchored by the best performance of last season by Marin Ireland and the ingenious direction of Leigh Silverman.
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WAKEY, WAKEY at the Signature Theatre
Will Eno is this generation’s Samuel Beckett, isn’t he?
ALL THE FINE BOYS at The New Group
Erica Schmidt’s All the Fine Boys at the New Group Theatre chronicled how systematic patriarchy first destructively subsumes and dictates the worldviews of two girls too young to know any better.
LINDA at the Manhattan Theater Club
Very few other playwrights so evocatively plumb the plights of modern women as Penelope Skinner.
THE OUTER SPACE at the The Public Theater
In The Outer Space at the Public Theater – the best musical of last season – the inimitable Ethan Lipton utilized the ludicrously wide range of his musical voice to leave Earth far behind, both literally and figuratively, to obtain new, creatively absurd and absurdly creative, allegorically-resonant perspectives on the existentialism of Earth-bound existence.
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Write All Nite 