Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Art Warhol Silkscreen Stolen in Detroit
Posted by Paul D'Agostino on Wed, May 23, 2012 at 2:51 PM
An unnamed collector operating an unnamed business in Corktown, a Detroit neighborhood, is the victim of a rather hefty—or maybe not so much—art theft.
According the the Detroit Free Press, a silkscreen Warhol used to make the Flowers series, along with 18 works authored by other artists, were stolen sometime over the last weekend of April. Yesterday the FBI announced a $5,000 reward for "information on the hijacked collection"—information directly beneficial to their investigation, presumably.
Quite debatable, it seems, is the estimated value of the stolen works. Since the take included works by artists such as Joseph Beuys, Larry Rivers, Francesco Clemente and Philip Taaffe, some estimates place its dollar value in the millions.
Music GoogaMooga Offers Full Refunds
Posted by Henry Stewart on Wed, May 23, 2012 at 1:43 PM
News Anonymous Internet Commenters Are Pissing Off New York Politicians
Posted by Sydney Brownstone on Wed, May 23, 2012 at 12:50 PM
But the effort is real, and, apparently, it all comes down to a matter of cyberbullying. "Victims of anonymous cyberbullies need protection," State Senator Tom O' Mara, a sponsor of the Senate bill, said in a press conference. "We're hopeful that this legislation can be helpful to the overall effort to deter and prevent anonymous criminals from hiding behind modern technology and using the Internet to bully, defame and harass their victims."
Film Yes, Old Sport, This Great Gatsby Trailer Is Making Us Uncomfortable
Posted by Sydney Brownstone on Wed, May 23, 2012 at 11:58 AM
Get More: Movie Trailers, Movies Blog
So is the medium the message? Is that what this bawdy piñata of a trailer is all about? Australian director Baz Luhrmann's take on the story seems a far cry from F. Scott Fitzgerald's reflective, flowing prose, but that probably should have been expected from the guy who did Moulin Rouge. We (maybe) see what this is going for: an excessive, hedonistic, 3D moviegoing experience, an expression of the garishness that ruins the story's West Egg characters. Even the Kanye West/Jay-Z "No Church in the Wild" bit makes sense in this context, the rappers being fabulously wealthy (and rapping about being fabulously wealthy) themselves.
Still, it feels like there's something exploitative, and undeniably gross, going on. Perhaps that's the point. The American Dream is dead, everybody. Extra cheese on your movie theater nachos?
Sex The Semen In Cupcakes Story You Shouldn't Read But Will Read Anyway
Posted by Audrey Ference on Wed, May 23, 2012 at 11:06 AM
- Butter, frosting, and romance
A 16-year-old student was suspended after allegedly giving a classmate a cupcake laced with his semen, Minneapolis City Pages reports.St. Paul police spokesman Sgt. Paul Paulos told the Pioneer Press the boy gave cupcakes to "quite a few people" on May 9, but "only one supposedly had semen." Unfortunately, the unlucky classmate ingested the baked good, so authorities are unable to confirm the allegations. [Huffington Post]
As the HuffPo piece points out, it "harkens back" to that dude who fed his unsuspecting students jizz cookies. And also this spit in a burger story, the guy from high school who claimed he jizzed in people's milkshakes at McDonalds, and every urban legend ever.
If you've caught yourself thinking that adding semen to food might be a great way to get a little cheap protein in your diet, please allow me to remind you that this continues to exist: Natural Harvest: A Collection of Semen-Based Recipes. If life gives you semen, make semenade, I guess.
News Brooklyn Led City in Murders in 2011
Posted by Henry Stewart on Wed, May 23, 2012 at 9:49 AM
Film Brooklyn Heights Cinema Building Will Be Razed
Posted by Henry Stewart on Wed, May 23, 2012 at 8:58 AM
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
News New York City's Hudson River Gas Pipeline Has Been Approved
Posted by Sydney Brownstone on Tue, May 22, 2012 at 3:41 PM
- saneenergyproject.org
- Map of the pipeline route.
Though the commission ruled that building the pipeline under a densely populated area shouldn't pose significant environmental threats, critics of the endeavor have been wary of things like explosions, contamination of the water supply, as well as noise from construction.
News Bei Bei Shuai, Imprisoned For Attempting Suicide While Pregnant, Finally Released
Posted by Audrey Ference on Tue, May 22, 2012 at 2:20 PM
In December 2010 Shuai was running a Chinese restaurant in Indianapolis with her boyfriend, Zhiliang Guan, by whom she was eight months pregnant. Just before Christmas, he informed her that he was married and had another family, to which he was returning. When Shuai begged him to stay, he threw money at her and left her weeping on her knees in a parking lot. [The Nation]
Luckily, she survived. Unfortunately, her fetus did not:
Although Ms. Shuai did everything she could, including undergoing cesarean surgery, to ensure that her baby survived, her newborn died shortly after birth.Ms. Shuai was arrested for the crime of murder (defined to include viable fetuses) and feticide (defined to include ending a human pregnancy at any stage). The sentence for murder can be the death penalty or 45 years-to-life. The sentence for attempted feticide is up to 20 years. Both of these kinds of laws are promoted and supported by “pro-life” organizations. [Change.org]
Today, after spending more than a year in jail, she was finally released. We value the lives of women so little that we criminalize any mental illness that endangers their roles as baby incubators. Under Indiana law, she was facing 45-65 years in jail. The law that put her away is still on the books, and pro-lifers want more of them. Women who miscarry can be subject to police investigation. It's getting very, very scary out there.
I guess if you consider losing your partner, child, and spending only a year in jail for it a happy ending, then Bei Bei Shaui deserves congratulations. I think she deserves an apology, and I hope she's able to heal from all of this. Let's hope the next woman who has something awful happen to her is as "lucky."
Books Win Drinks on Us at Literary Upstart By Answering New York City Literary Trivia Questions on Twitter This Week
Posted by Mark Asch on Tue, May 22, 2012 at 2:16 PM
Now: if there's one thing I've discovered while signing people up for New York City Literary Trivia at Upstart these past few years, it's that all you guys—all of you—come to the event solely for the chance to answer semichallenging questions about New York books and writers, and that the short fiction readings are just window dressing.
So! To extend the excitement into the realm of social media, where we all live, we'll be anticipating Thursday's trivia competition (and reading, fine) by bestowing $20 worth of drinks at this Thursday's reading to the first person to correctly tweet back at us with the answer to the New York City Literary Trivia question we'll be tweeting out, via @thelmagazine, this afternoon; we'll also have a question for you on Wednesday afternoon, and again around lunchtime on Thursday.
News Joffrey Ballet To Begin Residency At Bay Ridge High School
Posted by Sydney Brownstone on Tue, May 22, 2012 at 1:19 PM
According to the Daily News, the idea was conceived at a barber shop, while the husband of one of the school's finance teachers was touching up the Joffrey director's, Gail D'Addario's, highlights.
Media The Seven Most Hilarious and/or Horrifying Moments of Geraldo Rivera's Career
Posted by Daniel Mehrian on Tue, May 22, 2012 at 12:27 PM
Music Meet The Spoon, Wolf Parade And New Bomb Turks Supergroup
Posted by Sydney Brownstone on Tue, May 22, 2012 at 11:35 AM
According to Brooklyn Vegan, the Divine Fits' debut album will be released on Merge Records sometime later this year. British recording engineer Nick Launay, who has worked with artists such as Arcade Fire, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Silverchair, Nick Cave, Lou Reed and David Byrne, is responsible for production.
Pop-Up Mart for Street Art
Posted by Paul D'Agostino on Tue, May 22, 2012 at 10:43 AM
If staying attuned to the mores and modes and ever-variant idiomatic codes of street art is your thing, and if owning fresh exemplars of the same might fall within your sphere of interests as well, then Robin Grearson's Street Art Pop-Up Store should sound enticing.
Grearson, who recently curated a show of works by Criminy Johnson, a.k.a QRST, at the Active Space, has decided to transform her studio into an art shop of sorts during Bushwick Open Studios, promising therein a wide range of drawings, paintings, prints, posters and the like by about 20 different street artists, all priced to sell—items will be tagged in dollar amounts ranging from 0 to no more than 300.
So if you've been looking for something affordable by Christ Stain, Nathan Pickett, Quel Beast, Daniel Feral, Elle, Enzo & Nio, General Howe and many others, take note of the dates and times and related details from Grearson's press release below.
(Or if you're looking for some bespoke facial hair, pay particular attention to the line about Moustache Man.)
Theater Pina Bausch's Dance Company Coming to BAM in October
Posted by Henry Stewart on Tue, May 22, 2012 at 9:45 AM
BAM "has been [Pina's] exclusive US home since 1986," the publicist handling the show told us. "We were always planning to present it; it has nothing to do with the film, although obviously it was amazing to see an iconic BAM artist get worldwide recognition and meant a huge deal to all of us who have worked with Tanztheater Wuppertal, many for 30 years."
Monday, May 21, 2012
Film Imperial Fantasies: The Dictator and Battleship
Posted by Benjamin Mercer on Mon, May 21, 2012 at 4:03 PM
Art Brooklyn "Creative Mediums" Set Out To Deliver Artifacts From A Parallel Universe
Posted by Sydney Brownstone on Mon, May 21, 2012 at 3:12 PM
Theater It's Time to Stop Standing Ovations
Posted by Henry Stewart on Mon, May 21, 2012 at 2:24 PM
Music Watch Mick Jagger's Moves On SNL: The Good, The Bad, The Group Singalong
Posted by Josh Kurp on Mon, May 21, 2012 at 1:31 PM
To the surprise of few, Mick Jagger’s performances with Arcade Fire (featuring the Strokes’ Nikolai Fraiture on bass!) and the Foo Fighters on SNL this past weekend were pretty great – the former was an enthusiastic, raucous take on a seldom-heard Rolling Stones classic, “The Last Time” from Out of Our Heads (at least here in America), while the latter featured Dave Grohl & Co. blazing through a medley of "19th Nervous Breakdown"/"It's Only Rock 'n’ Roll (But I Like It).” Also, the Stones frontman impersonated Steven Tyler in a sketch called “So You Think You Can Dance at an Outdoor Music Festival,” which was quite amusing and contained a now-obligatory mention of Burger King’s Crispy Chicken Strips.
Film At Cannes: You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet, Antiviral, Beasts of the Southern Wild
Posted by Glenn Heath Jr. on Mon, May 21, 2012 at 12:39 PM
At first, this meta-production about the process of artmaking is both breakneck and funny. Resnais seems to be skewering the fact that each actor can’t simply experience a fresh perspective on their work without taking back control of their “characters” and overpowering their peers with a louder staging. As each actor inhabits their original roles, they become more immersed in the spotlight of performance, more gleefully obsessed with reimagining their past. Resnais’s fluid camera, faux digital backdrops, and jarring editing flourishes (split screens, vignetting, and quadrants abound) further illuminate the artificiality on display, and for a while the film plays brilliantly.
