The Occupy movement is famous for welcoming anyone who wants to join. But you can’t help but wonder if, for campers who’ve endured taunts and snow and pepper spray, some musical guests are more welcome than others. Yes, it’s a thrill to see Philip Glass using the people’s mic at Lincoln Center, but too many of the celebrities who visit OWS seem (at the risk of being uncharitable) to be using its fame for their own good instead of vice-versa. One wonders, for instance, how many impassioned discussions of banking regulations and foreclosure statistics were ever interrupted by the comment, “You know who I’d love to hear right now? Third Eye Blind.”
With that in mind, we offer ten dream concerts for OWS — double bills of music that’s relevant and rousing, from artists (unlike these movement-friendly newcomers) with enough name recognition to draw both fans and media attention to Zuccotti Park, or anywhere else the 99 percent are trying to make themselves heard. Read More »
In these divisive times, there’s one thing Americans of all ages, genders, races, and political affiliations can agree upon: We love the Muppets. At least, that’s what we assumed. But according to the heavyweight cultural thinkers at Fox Business, The Muppets is nothing but liberal, anti-capitalist propaganda. In an unintentionally hilarious segment titled “Are Liberals Trying to Brainwash Your Kids Against Capitalism?,” Follow the Money host Eric Bolling goes bananas on the Muppets’ unjust persecution of the movie’s villain, a greedy oil magnate named Tex Richman. Bolling calls the film “class warfare,” and pundit Dan Gainor, of the conservative Media Research Center, concludes, ”What they’re telling our kids is what they told you in the movie The Matrix: that mankind is a virus on poor, old Mother Earth.” That is not exactly what we got out of the feel-good movie of the year, but, amazingly, things only devolve from there. Occupy Wall Street is invoked. A pretty, liberal straw woman is repeatedly shouted down. Barney Frank’s appearance is compared to that of a Muppet. We recommend watching the entire, seven-minute segment with your mouth hanging open. Read More »
I had high hopes for Season 2 of The Walking Dead, after previews hinted that it would be darker and more character-driven than its predecessor. But although the new episodes, set on an isolated farm of a misguided veterinarian and what’s left of his family, do focus more on Rick Grimes and his ragtag band of zombie apocalypse survivors, the script still hasn’t succeeded in making us care about anyone. The characters still feel like one-dimensional comic-book creations; they haven’t been lifted off the page yet. As a result, it’s too easy to predict how they’ll deal with their moral quandaries: Rick will do the right thing. Shane will do whatever it takes to survive. And Lori will struggle between those two extremes before ultimately choosing light over darkness. She did it earlier this season, when she considered letting her son, Carl, die of his gunshot wound rather than enduring life in a lonely, ravaged, dangerous world, and made a very similar — albeit more politically charged — decision last night. [Spoilers after the jump]Read More »
In an alternate universe, Barack Obama and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez don’t just get along — they make out, as do Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Although Pope Benedict XVI is about as anti-gay as it gets, here he is, locking lips with Ahmed Mohamed el-Tayed, one of Sunni Islam’s most important leaders. Hell, even Kim Jong-Il and his South Korean sworn enemy are getting in on the action. These are the bold and potentially controversial photo manipulations that make up the UNHATE Campaign, a Benetton-sponsored project that kicks off today and seeks to replace the “culture of hatred” with a vision of love between the world’s nations, cultures, and religions. Read more about UNHATE at its website, and check out its first, arresting images after the jump. Read More »
Burning money! Crying fat cats in business suits, with cigars! Tough, conservative women in business suits, without cigars! And most of all, glamour shots! Yes, friends, it’s the official trailer for The Undefeated, the Sarah Palin documentary that comes out in limited release next Friday. The all-out celebration of Mama Grizzly, with its parallel-universe title, will also feature a diverse cast of Tea Party types saying things like,”to hell with the Establishment.” Sixties radicals, contemporary ultra-conservatives — what’s the difference, really? If you’re in the mood for a good laugh, watch The Undefeated trailer after the jump and confirm once and for all that your decision to buy advance tickets for Harry Potter next Friday was the right one.
For most fans of John Lennon — you know, the guy who famously sang, ”Imagine no possessions/ I wonder if you can/ No need for greed or hunger/ A brotherhood of man” — the rumor making the rounds this week that the Beatle was a closet Republican wasn’t exactly a welcome revelation. The report originated with Lennon’s last personal assistant, Fred Seaman, who said in an interview shot for a forthcoming Beatles documentary that “John, basically, made it very clear that if he were an American he would vote for Reagan because he was really sour on (Democrat) Jimmy Carter.”
Now, Lennon’s publicist and longtime friend Elliot Mintz has come forward to say that’s all nonsense. “From the time I met John in 1971, until the end, all of those things he expressed in ‘Imagine’ were part of his belief system until the last breath of his life,” Mintz told TMZ, explaining that Lennon was consistent in his ideals until the time of his death and adding that “Fred Seaman has a distorted revisionist view of history.” Zing!
Graffiti has long been a way of asserting power, splashing and spraying imagery of cultural resistance over the structures and buildings of the ruling elite. And so it is no surprise that, as the uprisings in Middle East countries like Egypt have gradually become the white noise of the Western news cycle and public protests have become far harder to stage, graffiti has exploded into the streets.
Where in the United States, graffiti art has become something of a fetish among collectors, curators, and celebrities alike, in the Middle East, it is a political tool, a far cry from the subject of a blockbuster retrospective, like Jeffrey Deitch’s Art in the Streets. Additionally, as the popularity of graffiti and its begrudged brother, street art, has grown in the US, its identity has become increasingly fragmented. Battles over street artists vs. graffiti artists (i.e. art school kids who create intricate wheatpastes in their studios vs. those who spray paint with bottles in illicit dark spaces) pervade the genre, as well as questions like: Is exhibiting with celebrity curators like Deitch selling out? Is working with major fashion brands like Louis Vuitton selling out? Is working with real-estate moguls like Tony Goldman — aka king of gentrification in New York’s Soho and Miami’s South Beach, the same Tony Goldman that partially subsidizes the graffiti-happy New York gallery The Hole, which also curates the Houston wall, one of the most legendary graf-spots in New York — selling out? If so, then a substantial number of American graffiti artists, are, well, sold.
Here at Flavorpill, we don’t really consider Libyan dictators to be our go-to folks or fashion inspiration or, well, anything, for that matter. But, today, UnBeige reports that one of Qaddafi’s advisers invited The New York Times’ director of T Magazine Horacio Silva to visit Tripoli and feature the leader’s closet. The idea? Such a profile would help get a retrospective on Qaddafi’s style green-lit by the Met, so the clothes can be properly revered and protected in case the country’s turmoil threatens the garments. The adviser writes, “Our President is one of the very best dressed men of the last half century.” If you ask us, that’s a pretty big claim, and probably one to be judged by someone not under Qaddafi’s thumb. Instead, we’re going to answer the world’s burning question ourselves: just how does Qaddafi’s style rank in to the political sartorial world? Does he deserve more or less closet envy than the average dictator? Check out our roundup after the jump.
Writer Heather Woodbury takes on the day’s most pressing issues, from the environmental crisis to Christian fundamentalism and crazy TV lust, in As the Globe Warms, her serialized video “performance novel” and avant-soap digest.
As with previous works What Ever and A Tale of 2Cities, ATGW is written live on stage in real time, with plenty of audience advice and online chronicling. The new, expanded production picks up with Episode 25, but the vaguely circus-like energy and freshly baked character-driven nature of her narrative collages make it easy to dive right in.
Loosely based on Shahrnush Parsipur’s magic-realist novel, Shirin Neshat’s debut feature uses Iran’s 1953 CIA-backed coup d’etat as a backdrop for examining the anatomy of the country’s patriarchal society.
Over the course of several days, Women Without Men follows four women of varying social class and age as their lives converge in a haunting metaphorical orchard. All are at points of transition: Munis, the political activist; Zarin, the young prostitute; Fakhri, the unhappily married middle-aged upper cruster; and Faezeh, the innocent. Together, they struggle to find themselves amid the political and social turmoil of the time.
