Film The Children of Marx and Coca-Cola On Jean-Luc Godard and the Spirit of ‘68 Foolhardy is the critic who would ascribe an entire decade to one director, but allow me to play (Pierrot) the fool: the 60s belonged to Jean-Luc Godard. That explosive era may have featured more consistently successful and thematically subtle filmmakers, but nobody took such enormous risks as the French New Wave enfant terrible... more. Film The Children of Marx and Coca-Cola by Michael Joshua Rowin Battle for Haditha by Nicolas Rapold Speed Racer by Benjamin Strong Poultrygeist: Night of the Living Chicken by Benjamin H. Sutton The Fall by Sam Weisberg The Tracey Fragments by Mark Asch The Memory Thief by Mary Block What Happens in Vegas by Doug Strassler Theater The Walworth Farce by By Gwen Orel Art Art Fag City: Just Pretty, Naked and On Drugs? by Paddy Johnson

FILM The Children of Marx and Coca-Cola by Michael Joshua Rowin Foolhardy is the critic who would ascribe an entire decade to one director, but allow me to play (Pierrot) the fool: the 60s belonged to Jean-Luc Godard. That explosive era may have featured more consistently successful and thematically subtle filmmakers, but nobody took such enormous risks as the French New Wave enfant terrible... more Battle for Haditha by Nicolas Rapold Who knew that an alternative to Brian De Palma’s Redacted would come from the Brit filmmaker best known as a “stalkumentarian”? Having sought out the soul of Aileen Wurnos, the killers of Biggie and Tupac, and Margaret Thatcher, Nick Broomfield chases the dream of the responsible Iraq War chronicle... more Speed Racer by Benjamin Strong As with Michael Bay, Ridley Scott, George Lucas, M. Night Shyamalan and Mel Gibson, bombast lies at the heart of the Wachowski brothers’ (The Matrix trilogy, V for Vendetta) style. Their latest, Speed Racer — a two-hour-plus movie that would feel long at 70 minutes — piles the usual excess upon excess... more Poultrygeist: Night of the Living Chicken by Benjamin H. Sutton n true Troma form, no taboo is left unexplored, no stereotype unquestioned, no bodily secretion un-spewed in this biting indictment of just about anybody who opens their mouth in contemporary American discourse. Poultrygeist is card-carrying low-class art, and the crass context gives the filmmakers license to go after everyone... more The Fall by Sam Weisberg Filmed over four years in 18 countries (he couldn't get permits for Mars?), Tarsem's The Fall is everything and nothing all at once. Every one of its virtues is inevitably linked to an insufferable problem... more The Tracey Fragments by Mark Asch he Tracey Fragments, a Canadindie about a disturbed teenage runaway, sports a jigsawed chronology and a screen split into a shape-shifting grid on a warped space-time continuum; during the coming attractions montage that kicks the movie off, a mirror breaks, presumably to show the protagonist’s fragmented self... more The Memory Thief by Mary Block Everybody wants to feel like they belong somewhere, even if they don’t. Co-opting other people’s reality or history to formulate an identity for oneself is easy — the information needed to become whoever you choose is on the Internet, in movies, archives, and museums... more What Happens in Vegas by Doug Strassler Remember that Friends episode where Ross and Rachel drunkenly eloped in Vegas? Screenwriter Dana Fox sure does, and she’s recycled that plot with a Hollywood sheen in What Happens in Vegas. ... more THEATER The Walworth Farce by By Gwen Orel Red and yellow and pink and green can make a rainbow… or, when smooshed together, can make a brown muddy mess. The many shades of The Walworth Farce are more brownish than glorious — there's a little bit of Ionesco, a little Beckett, a little McDonagh, a touch of Friel... more ART Art Fag City: Just Pretty, Naked and On Drugs? by Paddy Johnson Ryan McGinley’s critics describe the narrative behind his photographs like this: “My friends are pretty. We get naked in the country. Usually there are drugs. Rad! Subversive!” That his 30-plus photographs of nudes in undeveloped landscapes, currently on display at Team Gallery... more

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