Arts

Wizards 35th Anniversary Edition

by Shawn Stone April 4, 2012

When Wizards was released in 1977, it turned Hollywood’s view of feature animation on its head. The film’s success proved that there was a market for more than children’s fairy tales (though Wizards was consciously ...

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Bargain Bin

by Shawn Stone April 4, 2012

I was going to call this edition of the cutout column “Bargain Burt,” as it features two 1970s vehicles for then-superstar Burt Reynolds. But that wouldn’t be fair to Reynolds’ costar in both comedies, Jill ...

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Wish Fulfillment

by Laura Leon April 4, 2012

Fairy tales are everywhere these days, and I couldn’t be happier ever after. The tremendous TV shows Once Upon a Time and Grimm, and the debut of Tarsem Singh’s take on Snow White, Mirror Mirror, ...

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Mythmash

by Ann Morrow April 4, 2012

The gods of Olympus are a bunch of Tinkerbells. Or so it seems in Wrath of the Titans, a frenetic, imbecilic action movie that just happens to involve Zeus and his extended family of deities. ...

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Artists and Aliens

by B.A. Nilsson March 29, 2012

If, like me, you’re an insomniac, and/or you enjoy the early antemeridian hours, you’ve tuned in to the radio program Coast to Coast AM. Which means you’ve heard the callers, the people phoning in from ...

1 comment Proctors

Grim Humanity

by Shawn Stone March 29, 2012

Another Holocaust movie? Yes, another Holocaust movie—and a good one, this time. And by “good,” I mean a drama without easy answers and only tarnished heroes. The Oscar-nominated In Darkness tells the harrowing story of a ...

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Teenage Drivel

by Shawn Stone March 29, 2012

Filmmakers have become adept at bringing us the end of the world: zombies, plagues, natural disasters, Biblical wrath, comic-book doom and other such grim whatnot. The Hunger Games brings something new to the “post-apocalyptic dystopia” ...

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Art Beat

by Shawn Stone March 22, 2012

Art Beat Metroland has, in the past, sung the praises of Troy’s Gasholder Building, a 19th-century brick industrial monstrosity that has hosted some very interesting music and dance events over the last decade. This weekend, experimental ...

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Pecking Order

by Ann Morrow March 22, 2012

Is it too early for 2005 nostalgia? You know, those mid-years before the super-sensitizing of alternate sexuality, green economy, and inclusiveness over exclusiveness? Apparently not, because 21 Jump Street, a spoof on the late-’80s Fox ...

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Say What?

by Laura Leon March 22, 2012

Casa De Mi Padre is a weird little film—little not just in terms of its short running time (84 minutes), but also its ambition. Director Matt Piedmont, writer Andrew Steele and star Will Ferrell set ...

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Soul to Soul

by James Yeara March 22, 2012

The first song starts immediately once the lights fade into a blackout, and “Down on Me” reverberates like a call from the shores of the Hudson River far beyond the walls of the theater. Then ...

0 comments Capital Repertory Theatre

Tri-City Crusader

by Ann Morrow March 15, 2012

Where are the George Gray murals? Long ago, there were four large historical paintings—the Battle of Saratoga, Yankee Doodle, Uncle Sam, and the Battle of Bataan in WWII—by the famed muralist hanging in the Hendrick ...

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A Separation

by The Staff March 15, 2012

A Separation, the Iranian movie that just won the Best Foreign Film Oscar, demands your attention from its first seconds. Married couple Simin (Leila Hatami) and Nader (Peyman Moadi) sit before a judge who will ...

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John Carter

by Ann Morrow March 15, 2012

The works of Edgar Rice Burroughs are so influential in terms of modern blockbusters that it’s almost impossible to adapt them for the screen nowadays without recalling the movies that Burroughs inspired: Stars Wars, for ...

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Big Men in Town

by B.A. Nilsson March 7, 2012

Frankie Valli’s Four Seasons were one of the few groups who withstood the seismic blast the Beatles wrought upon pop music in 1964. With No. 1 hits before, during, and after the height of the ...

0 comments Proctors

Blessed Event, Fast Workers

by Shawn Stone March 7, 2012

The talkies had been around for six years, but the movies had never seen a motor-mouthed monster quite like Lee Tracy when he exploded on the scene in 1932. That year the Georgia-born Tracy, who ...

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Get Lost

by Laura Leon March 1, 2012

Jill, a waitress troubled with fractured memories of having a year earlier been kidnapped and left in a hole in the woods, comes home from her late shift to discover her sister Molly (Emily Wickersham) ...

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Three Stooges

by The Staff February 23, 2012

This Means War is a romantic comedy structured around a love triangle, and is more than faintly reminiscent of a another movie, Design for Living, that just came out on Blu-ray from the Criterion Collection. ...

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Flame Out

by Ann Morrow February 23, 2012

Johnny Blaze, the Marvel comics stunt biker who made a pact with the devil, spends so much time up in flames that it’s a wonder that audiences doesn’t succumb to heat exhaustion. And if they ...

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Fearless Oscar Predictions . . . and Complaints

by The Staff February 23, 2012

Best Picture John Brodeur Will Win: The Artist Should Win: The Artist Overlooked: Melancholia Overrated: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close Laura Leon Will Win: The Artist Should Win: The Artist Overlooked: Warrior Overrated: The Descendants Ann Morrow Will Win: The Descendants Should Win: Midnight in Paris Overlooked: Harry ...

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Merry Mendelssohn

by B.A. Nilsson February 22, 2012

The third movement of Felix Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio No. 1 is a scherzo of incredible vivaciousness, throwing all three instruments into a lively, virtuosic dance. The acrobats are leaping, tumbling in gravity-defying merriment, at any ...

0 comments Union College Memorial Chapel

Gorgeous George

by Ann Morrow February 16, 2012

He was, in his day, bigger than Madonna or Gaga, bigger than the Beatles or Beiber fever, bigger than all the crowned heads of Europe put together (c’mon, how many people could pick King Louis ...

0 comments Albany Institute of History & Art

Dressed to Kill

by James Yeara February 16, 2012

Wit’s not the thing you need around the house, And it’s no joy to have a bookish spouse. When I get married, you can bet your life My man will study nothing but his wife --Martine, Act 5, scene ...

0 comments Shakespeare & Company Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre

Step Right Up

by Jeff Nania February 16, 2012

The live variety show has made a comeback in a big way. This performance by the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus was part of a monthly series that Club Helsinki and the Cirkus presented this winter, and ...

0 comments Club Helsinki

Time to Remember

by Laura Leon February 16, 2012

Maybe The Vow is the kind of chick flick that makes you embarrassed to be seen waiting in line for, but at the same time, it deserves props for respecting the genre and delivering its ...

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