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Film

‘Zero Dark Thirty,’ ‘Lincoln’ Dominate First Major Film Awards of 2012 Season

By Judy Berman on

It’s an exciting day for those of us who trust film critics over the Academy: The New York Film Critics Circle has spent the past several hours announcing the winners of its annual awards in the most excruciating way possible — one by one, on Twitter. This year’s biggest honors went to Zero Dark Thirty, which scooped up Best Film, Best Director, and Best Cinematographer. Lincoln also made out well, with two acting awards (Best Actor Daniel Day-Lewis and Best Supporting Actress Sally Field) and a Best Screenplay win for Tony Kushner. Considering that both of these movies are likely to get several Oscar nominations, this first major awards announcement of the year may well anticipate what we can come to expect this season. Click through to see the full list of winners. … Read More

New York

New York’s 100 Most Important Living Writers

By Flavorwire Staff on

Philip Roth’s recently announced retirement got us thinking about the state of New York City’s literary landscape. As a result, we’ve compiled a list of the city’s 100 most important… Read More

Books

10 Contemporary Plays That Should Be on Your Shelf

By Emily Temple on

Tomorrow marks the release of much beloved, left-of-center author Daniel Johnson’s new book, entitled Soul of a Whore and Purvis: Two Plays in Verse. Like many of his readers, we are most familiar with Johnson through his novels (Tree of Smoke) and short stories (Jesus’ Son), so we were psyched to jump into this new-to-us format for the author. Inspired by Johnson’s plays, we started thinking about all of the wonderful contemporary playwrights out there whose work deserves a spot on anyone’s reading list, whether they’re a theatre junkie or just an average lover of fantastic literature. Click through to check out our list of contemporary plays that everyone should be reading, and if we’ve missed your favorite, be sure to add to our recommendations in the comments! … Read More

Film

“American” Movies: What’s the Titular Attraction?

By Benjamin Hart on

HBO’s new show How to Make It in America is billed as the East Coast’s answer to Entourage, but one big difference between the two shows jumps out immediately: their titles. The creators of the new program didn’t choose an innocuous, could-be-about-anything name like its precursor; nor did they go with the relatively straightforward “How to Make It.” Instead, they opted for the grand, sweeping “How to Make It in America.”

It made us think about all of the other works of art that have laid claim to that loaded word over the years. Though musicians (Green Day’s American Idiot), playwrights (Tony Kushner’s Angels in America), authors (Philip Roth’s American Pastoral), and TV shows (American Idol, which, notably, was called “Pop Idol” in England) have all co-opted the word successfully, it’s filmmakers who seem to enjoy naming their creations after this enigmatic nation of ours most of all. … Read More

Web

But World of Warcraft Won’t Make You Feel Confident [Morning Links]

By Caroline Stanley on

Book: We find it interesting how quickly authors nipped this text-to-speech thing on the Kindle 2 in the bud. Any SAG members paying attention? [Guardian]

Dance/Opera: An “opera about the history of opera as the most important genre in European culture” ends up being “banal and pretentious, not an easy combination to bring off.” But if you go to see Vita Nuova, you will get to hang out in the pretty new Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center… [NYT]

Design: “When I build on a site in nature that is totally unspoiled, it is a fight, an attack by our culture on nature.” Pritzker-winning Norwegian architect Sverre Fehn dies at 84. [Newsday] … Read More