No sophomore slump for writer/director Janicza Bravo, who follows up her offbeat debut feature, “Lemon,” with a sensational cinematic rendering of A’Ziah “Zola” King’s now-iconic late 2015 Twitter thread detailing a wacky tale about how two Detroit exotic dancers make an impromptu “hoeism” trip to Florida that goes horribly awry. “It’s kind of long but full of suspense,” Zola cautioned her audience. And so began an odyssey, replete with segues into prostitution, murder, and attempted suicide, which quickly went viral, en route to becoming tragicomic fodder well-suited for a filmmaker who describes her lens as “a little bit unusual.”
Critical reaction to the curio that was “Lemon,” which world premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, was a mixed bag. On the other hand, “Zola” has overwhelmingly been praised by critics, and is one of the most anticipated films of the year — especially as potential catharsis for audiences entering an uncertain post-pandemic future,...
Critical reaction to the curio that was “Lemon,” which world premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, was a mixed bag. On the other hand, “Zola” has overwhelmingly been praised by critics, and is one of the most anticipated films of the year — especially as potential catharsis for audiences entering an uncertain post-pandemic future,...
- 6/29/2021
- by Tambay Obenson
- Indiewire
How much of our ancestry is tied to the history of the places we call home? While some of us would probably answer “None,” we’d be wrong. Just because your family tree was lucky enough to exist on the periphery of major historical moments as bystanders doesn’t mean you haven’t been impacted by wars, tragedies, inventions, and art in ways that defined your choices and subsequently the choices of your children. Why did my grandfather immigrate to America from Lebanon (then part of Syria) when he did? How did my father not getting drafted to Vietnam influence my sister’s birth and my own? Where does 9/11 fit in as an Arab American who never had an ethnic option on forms to check besides “Caucasian” previously? History defines us.
With that said, however, some are embedded much deeper than others. One example is German documentarian Thomas Heise. His...
With that said, however, some are embedded much deeper than others. One example is German documentarian Thomas Heise. His...
- 9/6/2019
- by Jared Mobarak
- The Film Stage
Last week, writer and comedian Keaton Patti showed how bots can be a force for good when he said he fed 1,000 hours of Olive Garden ads to a machine and asked it to write one of its own. The result was an absurdist nightmare in the mold of Heiner Müller’s Hamletmachine, a terrorscape where the “pasta nachos” are “warm…
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- 6/19/2018
- by Randall Colburn on News, shared by Randall Colburn to The A.V. Club
- avclub.com
The consensus is that it's "natural" for Dan Friedman to take over as artistic director of New York's Castillo Theatre. In Friedman's words, it is a "logical and natural progression." In the words of Richard Schechner, editor of The Drama Review, at Friedman's official appointment on April 4, it is "only what should happen in the natural-social-political-artistic order of things."That's largely because Friedman was present when the seeds of this grass-roots theater company were planted. Back in the early '80s, he and the other founders of Castillo utilized their backgrounds as community organizers to raise money for a politically and socially engaged theater. As expected, most people kept walking past the group's streetside tables. Many were just nasty, claiming Friedman was a scam artist. The few who expressed interest would say, " 'This sounds like a great idea, but I don't think you have a chance of a snowball in hell of succeeding,...
- 4/9/2010
- backstage.com
What's the best piece of acting advice you ever got?Traycee KingLos Angeles; 'He's Just Not That Into You,' 'Eleventh Hour'A few years ago, I had this acting coach who was very honest with me. He used to tell me to just "let go," and what he meant by "let go" was forget everything I was taught and "become" whoever I was trying to portray. Because if I got caught "acting," everyone would know and my performance would be known as a lie.He also said that it shouldn't be called "acting" but "becoming." We have to allow ourselves to let go and be vulnerable and allow people to question our sanity. Then the audience will forget they're watching a performance and feel guilty about intruding in our personal lives, and that's what you want.It was the best advice I was given, because up until...
- 3/2/2010
- backstage.com
Hamletmachine explores late 20th century Western culture, in a richly poetic and layered text. Heiner Müller's masterpiece borrows from Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot and Jean-Luc Godard, among others. (He was "sampling" before there was such a thing!). Müller was a protégé of Bertold Brecht. Castillo has become one of the foremost producers of his work here in the U.S.
- 6/11/2009
- BroadwayWorld.com
Hamletmachine explores late 20th century Western culture, in a richly poetic and layered text. Heiner Müller's masterpiece borrows from Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot and Jean-Luc Godard, among others. (He was "sampling" before there was such a thing!). Müller was a protégé of Bertold Brecht. Castillo has become one of the foremost producers of his work here in the U.S.
- 5/28/2009
- BroadwayWorld.com
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