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by Shawn Stone February 16, 2012

Ed Koch doesn’t want to leave Manhattan. Ever. The former mayor of New York has spent his entire life in the city that never sleeps, and when it’s time for him to sleep the big sleep, ...

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To the Moon

by Josh Potter February 16, 2012

This past year has seen a sudden craze for pioneering French filmmaker Georges Méliès—a mere 110 years after he released his most famous film, A Trip to the Moon. Méliès and his work, of course, ...

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Last Wednesday morning, the Miss Albany Diner was two days shy of closing—and slammed. People packed in like sardines at the counter, and the wait staff steered plates around winter coats that puffed out from ...

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Love in Blooms

by Ann Morrow February 9, 2012

A Ti leaf curls under, as though bowing from shyness in the presence of majestic roses and voluptuous peonies. In the same arrangement, green flax reaches above the blooms, gently waving. The artistic addition of ...

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Let Me Count the Ways

by Josh Potter February 9, 2012

“Number is the ruler of forms and ideas, and the cause of gods and demons,” proclaimed Greek mathematician Pythagoras—likely toga’d before an adoring audience of laurel-wreathed maidens and bronze-chested gents, daydreaming about how they’d really ...

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Can’t Buy Me Lovin’

by Erin Pihlaja February 9, 2012

Our great-grandparents may have enlisted the help of tomatoes, oysters or even spicy peppers to try and seduce their potential mates, but ours is a generation of convenience and instant gratification. We want our love ...

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The Major Lift

by The Staff February 2, 2012

I was excited for the Black Keys’ El Camino, I admit it. While the Keys lost me on Attack and Release with its awkward polish, I fell in love with them again on Brothers. Sure, ...

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Farming the American Dream

by B.A. Nilsson February 1, 2012

The documentary The First Season follows Paul and Phyllis Van Amburgh and their children through a year’s worth of changes as they pursue a crazy midlife dream of operating a dairy farm. They’re slaves to ...

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Lovable

by James Yeara February 1, 2012

Rich in theatrical allusions and as pregnant with satire and humor as a Chekhov or a Shaw play, Wendy Wasserstein’s The Sisters Rosensweig ripples with laughter as it pricks the soul. This 1992 follow up ...

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Sex Negative

by John Rodat January 26, 2012

Steve McQueen’s Shame might be as good as its hype—if, that is, you’re willing to accept certain prejudices about promiscuity or sexual behavior, generally. There are explicit indications that the lead character, Brandon (Michael Fassbender), and ...

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Rehabbing the Neighborhood

by Darryl McGrath January 26, 2012

The first thing you notice inside 95 Trinity Place is the light. An abundance of natural light flooding into a late-18th-century factory building is a suprise, considering that the first people who worked here had been ...

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Time to Upgrade?

by Stephen Leon January 26, 2012

The logo on the website, which went live on Monday, says, merely, “Kathy Sheehan for Albany.” And although there is considerable speculation among insiders that she is planning to run for mayor in 2013, Sheehan, ...

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Hot, Sweaty and Out of Breath

by Amy Halloran January 19, 2012

For those of us who didn’t fall in love with a sport in school, learning to use our bodies is a lifelong process. I spent my late teens and 20s pursuing physical intensities, but not ...

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Eat, Exercise, See

by Ann Morrow January 19, 2012

“Eat your carrots, they’re good for your eyes.” Turns out Grandma was right—in some cases, even medically right. Carrots, and other brightly colored vegetables, contain beta-carotene, which among other healthy things, travels from the liver ...

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The Beginning Is Near

by Josh Potter January 19, 2012

“It’s 2012!” the “new-age girl” gleefully proclaims between riffs on raw foodism, quantum physics and Deepak Chopra. In the past couple weeks, the “shit people say” meme has swept the Internet, playfully skewering personality types ...

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Objet d’art

by David King January 12, 2012

It’s a rare thing to find something so succinct and perfect as Cynic’s Carbon-Based Anatomy, like a little music box of out-of-this-time, ethereal prog rock. The six-song EP is far from straightforward or bare-bones: The ...

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Master of the Game

by Ann Morrow January 12, 2012

The Cold War oeuvre of John le Carre is so redolent of the recent climate of obssessive intelligence gathering that it’s surprising that a new adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy didn’t come down the ...

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The Story Ends

by Laura Leon January 12, 2012

I'm going to a funeral of a loved one later this week, although unlike the many wakes and burials of friends and relations I've attended, at which my brothers and uncles would have me in inappropriate ...

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Best of 2011: Theater

by The Staff January 5, 2012

Critic: James Yeara Best of 2011 1. Crowns Capital Repertory Theatre Crowns was the type of show that created a new community that hummed, swayed, and looked for hats all of its own. This was a show that deserved ...

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Best of 2011: Live

by The Staff January 5, 2012

Critic: Josh Potter 1. Francis and the Lights EMPAC, Oct. 29 Singer takes a 40-foot free fall into a hidden air cushion after performing a power ballad on a white Fender Rhodes perched on a ladder-accessed platform. ‘Nuff ...

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The Year in Review

by The Staff January 5, 2012

Gone but not forgotten Osama bin Laden, Col. Muammar el-Quaddafi, Kim Jong-il, Steve Jobs, Vaclav Havel, Elizabeth Taylor, David S. Broder, Andy Rooney, Betty Ford, John Barry, Sidney Lumet, Joe Frazier, Gil Scott-Heron, Christopher Hitchens, Bil ...

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Forces of Nature

by The Staff December 30, 2011

On Aug. 28, Tropical Storm Irene soaked upstate New York with record rainfall, causing extensive flooding and damage across a wide swath of the state including the Catskills, Schoharie County, the Adirondacks and the immediate ...

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Rallying Cries

by The Staff December 30, 2011

In February, a crowd of more than 500 people, including Rep. Paul Tonko (D-Amsterdam) and representatives of local labor unions, gathered for at the New York State Capitol for one of 50 nationwide rallies held ...

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Big Names, Big News

by The Staff December 30, 2011

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s victories on gay marriage, a property tax cap and an early budget—as well as his shrewd moves to get income-tax reform passed his way—made him the year’s big winner, politically . Marriage equality finally ...

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Lost in Translation from the Swedish

by Ann Morrow December 21, 2011

The Swedish version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo had the great good fortune of a lead actress who was unanimously considered to be the perfect counterpart to the ferocious anti-heroine of Stieg Larsson’s ...

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