Arts

Deerhoof drummer Greg Saunier is always busy. When I got him on the phone one Sunday, he was in the middle of mixing a live album to be posted for free on the band’s website. The day before, Saunier participated in an explosive show at Brooklyn’s Union Pool with three other percussionists.

 “The X Factor” Wednesday-Thursday 8pm, Fox Simon Cowell exports his other hugely successful televised talent show to America, and it’s already courting controversy before the first episode airs. British pop-star Cheryl Cole was initially on the judging panel, but was booted after early auditions and replaced by Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger, who was initially hired […]

First, a warning: Don’t try this at home. However much it may seem like a piece of cake to build a whole movie around a lazy, lonely, corrupt, faux-racist, foul-mouthed provincial Irish cop, in fact it is a delicate art. Consider The Guard, wherein writer-director John Michael McDonagh, whose brother Martin wrote and directed In […]

Most people with English rattling around their heads give little thought to what their language looks like. Typeface and handwriting vanish quickly behind the meaning of the words they form. It’s a playful change of pace, then, to study the work of Noriko Maeda, whose Japanese calligraphy, on view through September at Warm Springs Gallery, […]

A barrel-chested man with a white beard and a casual manner, James “Ike” Eichling strikes up a conversation on anything, anywhere. He is most often found in his Downtown Mall shop, Ike’s Underground, an emporium for vintage clothes, furnishings, magazines, and other artifacts. Located below street level, that is where he sits most days, and […]

As the Microphones, the Anacortes, Washington-based musician Phil Elverum released The Glow, Pt. 2 in 2001, through the tastemaking K Records. The record channeled analogue warmth and a personal style that turned the songwriter and studio whiz into one of indie rock’s most respected.

What were you doing when we called? I was actually correcting a blog that I’ve been working on, a guest post about my novel for a book reviewer. They just want to know about my book. Aside from that stuff—how I wrote the book and why—the topic is usually sort of open.  Which of your […]

 “Ringer” Tuesday 9pm, CW Buffy is back! Well, not really, but Sarah Michelle Gellar returns to TV with this new thriller about identical twin sisters in trouble. Recently sober Bridget goes on the run after witnessing a professional hit job. She turns to her estranged sister Siobhan, a wealthy Manhattanite who has kept her past […]

Contagion is named for the film’s most developed character. That might seem unfair to the human actors, who play their parts—Marion Cotillard an epidemiologist, Matt Damon a paragon of endurance, Laurence Fishburne a CDC boss, Jude Law a blogger-alarmist, Gwyneth Paltrow a first casualty and Kate Winslet a damage controller—but that’s the nature of the […]

To be a sculptor or a painter these days means living and dying by the photographs on your website. Martha Saunders, who has painted with beeswax for the last decade, often jokes about switching to a medium that's easier to photograph than encaustic, but she is quick to credit photographer Scott Smith with bringing her work to life online.