Or more precisely, our screening of Coogan’s Bluff last Friday was brilliant/lowbrow, according to New York magazine’s Approval Matrix. “Clint Eastwood,” they wrote, “wasn’t always just a middling director whose movies require night-vision goggles.” See it large here.
When Michael is not illustrating comics, he’ll glance at the website English Russia, if time allows. And he get his news on Twitter, the “magic grapevine.” Read more about his culture and media habits below, in the 92Y Culture Klatsch Q&A.
Where do you go for news when you start your day?
Twitter. It’s a magic grapevine.
What are your favorite websites?
I have no time anymore, but an amazing one to look at is English Russia. Apparently Russia is a cross between The Road Warrior and Brazil. Endlessly fascinating.
How much do you use Twitter and Facebook (or other social networking services)?
A lot. I genuinely enjoy Twitter and the interactions I find there; with Facebook I enjoy the interactions but detest the site itself. Someone on my Twitter feed recently compared it to East German in the 1970s, which I thought was very apt; the spying, the control, the fact that you can never do what you want/need to. It’s maddening!
Josh Freed is a filmmaker who turns the camera on his own love life in his latest film, Five Weddings and a Felony, as he grapples with his fear of commitment while surrounded by friends growing up and getting married. We’re screening the film at 92YTribeca on November 30 and Freed will be present for a post-screening Q&A.
Today, Freed is also the subject of the 92Y Culture Klatsch Q&A.
Where do you go for news when you start your day? NYTimes.com
How much do you use Twitter and Facebook (or other social networking services)?
A lot. After years of hard work I’ve mastered the wasting time part of social networking. Still working on the successfully-promoting-myself/my work-through-them part. Follow me @Jishky.
Made in India is a feature length documentary from filmmakers Rebecca Haimowitz and Vaishali Sinha. The film explores the human experiences behind the phenomena of “outsourcing” surrogate mothers to India.
In a review of the film, Varietywrote: “Rebecca Haimowitz and Vaishali Sinha’s engrossing feature follows a working-class U.S. couple proceeding with a last-resort hope for having a child genetically their own: paying a young Mumbai woman to carry their implanted embryos in her womb.”
In the United States, surrogacy can cost up to $100,000. For Lisa and Brian Switzer, the subjects in the film who have exhausted natural options at childbirth, those costs are prohibitive. They look to India, where the cost of surrogacy is reported at roughly $25,000. “In the US, if you’re struggling to have a child, you have to be a lawyer or a doctor to afford this,” they said. “It’s not fair.” When accused of exploitation, Lisa responds: “Walk a mile in my shoes before you judge me.”
The award-winning film screens at 92YTribeca on November 9. Both filmmakers will be in attendance to discuss issues of sex, sexism and colonial legacy.
At this point, it’s probably safe to assume that you have seen James Cameron’s 1984 movie The Terminator. It’s also probably safe to assume you’ve seen a couple of the sequels and maybe played an officially licensed pinball machine or two.
It seems less likely that you caught the 1989 Indonesian entry into the canon, Lady Terminator. That can change. We’re screening Lady Terminator at 92YTribeca on September 16. “An utterly shameless rip-off of The Terminator,” wrote Eccentric Cinema, they described it as “enormously entertaining — the very essence of cinema cheese.
Hey, don’t mind us. We are just geeking out to this great video Winslow Porter created for GeekDown, “a splendid display of interactive art and wearable technology,” happening tomorrow, August 13 at 92YTribeca. GeekDown is created by some of the brightest young minds in new media and is shaping up to be a night of interactive art, video and music the likes of which you’ve never seen.
Sam Adams, writing in the A. V. Club, looks at the push towards streaming movies at Netflix and what that might mean for film viewers. He’s concerned about the erosion of available titles as viewers are allowed more instance options.
As critic and historian Dave Kehr is often moved to point out, the prevailing myth that “everything is on DVD” is hilariously wrong. Every time a new technology takes over, a chunk of film history gets left behind. Movies that were mainstays of undergraduate film classes have been marginalized as colleges and universities zero out rental budgets and build new classrooms that only allow for projection from digital sources.
Chris “Sandman” Sand is a rappin’ cowboy from Dunn Center, North Dakota (population: 120 and shrinking). And Roll Out, Cowboy is the documentary film that tells his story.
He drives a semi, plays the guitar and raps. Sandman looks like Woody Guthrie but sings like LL Cool J. And he’s about to unveil his alter-ego in front of his community. Watch the trailer here.
The film is having it’s New York Premiere at 92YTribeca on August 11 and director Elizabeth Lawrence will be in person for a post-screening Q&A. Get your tickets here.
Director Dustin Guy Defa feature debut, Bad Fever, premiered at South By Southwest and continues to be beloved at festivals across the country. Gordon and The Whale wrote:
“BAD FEVER is a challenging, haunting piece of filmmaking that feels like it comes from a very personal place while exploring universal themes of loneliness and desolation. It’s the kind of movie that Hollywood used to make in the 1970s before the invention of the summer blockbuster and the even more recent catering to fanboy fantasies.”
Bad Fever is playing at 92YTribeca on July 11. So we’ve asked Dustin Guy Defa to be the next subject in the 92Y Culture Klatsch Q&A.
Where do you go for news when you start your day?
Indiewire, Filmmaker Magazine Blog, Hammer to Nail, The New York Times. When I get my hands on an actual Times paper, I like that with my coffee.
What are your favorite websites?
I like the blogs my friends have, mostly. I also like Animals Being Dicks. Eléonore Hendricks’ website for her photography is always on my mind. David Lowery’s blog.
How much do you use Twitter and Facebook (or other social networking services)?
I’m trying not to use them too much. Facebook is a hard one to stay away from, Twitter is easier. I check up on them often but I would like to only look at them once a day.
He’s also the latest subject to take part in the 92Y Culture Klatsch Q&A, our twelve questions that delve into the media and culture consumption habits of the interviewee. As you’ll learn below, Elliot is obsessed with staying up to date on “the progress of the Washington Square Park redesign,” and will occasionally daydream about cowboys and dinosaurs.
Where do you go for news when you start your day?
NY1 is the alpha and omega of news for me—I can wait to hear the national stories, but I absolutely must know about the progress of the Washington Square Park redesign RIGHT NOW.
What are your favorite websites?
I spend a lot of time at Talking Points Memo for political news and the Onion A.V. Club for entertainment news. Otherwise I’m mostly looking for information about obscure movies, comic books, or cartoons, so I head to Mike Sterling’s Progressive Ruin and Mark Evanier’s News From Me.
The (Tentatively Named) 92Y Culture Diet Q&A With Tom Blunt
Meet the Lady host Tom Blunt is today’s subject of the (Tentatively Named) 92Y Culture Diet Q&A*, where we pry into the media and cultural consumption habits of our friends! In this Q&A we’ve learned, among other things, that Mr. Blunt refreshes the Drudge Report all day and thinks Edith Zimmerman, editor of The Hairpin, is an evil genius.
Bag It is a full-length feature film that tackles the role of plastic in our lives. The film tells the story of an average guy who makes a resolution to stop using plastic bags at the grocery store. Little does he know that this simple decision will change his life completely. He comes to the conclusion that our consumptive use of plastic has finally caught up to us and looks at what we can do about it. Today. Right now.
Bag It screens next Thursday, April 21 at 92YTribeca, part of the series Story Leads to Action presented by Chicken & Egg Pictures and Working Films.
If you can’t make it to the screening, 92YTribeca will be will live webcasting the post-screening Q&A. Tune in live, here, beginning at 9:15 pm. Watch a trailer for the film below…
Mickey Rapkin with Josh Radnor (r) at a preview screening of Radnor’s new film happythankyoumoreplease, at 92YTribeca on Tuesday
Josh Radnor stopped by 92YTribeca this week for a preview screening of his new film, happythankyoumoreplease, which is now playing in select theaters in New York and Los Angeles. If you missed the screening and Q&A at 92YTribeca, The New York Timespublished a charming profile of Radnor last week, including a review of his latest film:
For the past few years the actor Josh Radnor has been trafficking in two very different New Yorks. The one he works in more often is located in Los Angeles. That’s where Mr. Radnor films “How I Met Your Mother,” the CBS sitcom about five friends in Manhattan — or at least studio-set version of the city: clean sidewalks, perfect outfits and brownstones for everybody.
This New York bears little resemblance to the one portrayed in the indie coming-of-age film “Happythankyoumoreplease,” Mr. Radnor’s debut film, which he wrote, directed and stars in. “I wanted this to be a below-14th Street movie,” Mr. Radnor, 36, said over lunch in SoHo. “I said to the costume designer: ‘No new clothes. Shop at thrift stores. These kids don’t have money.’ ” He was often frustrated that “it’s hard to show how small New York apartments are in a movie,” he said, “because you can’t fit a whole crew inside them.”
In the 1995 film The Net, fifteen years before Mark Zuckerberg would complain about not having enough friends in The Social Network, computer analyst “Angela Bennett” races against the clock to stop a (different) megalomaniac from amassing all the world’s personal information. All of it, even the pizza you order at Pizza.net.
As we learn in the trailer above: “Every trace of our existence is computerized. Everything about us in encoded somewhere on a complex network of information.” And “Angela Bennett” is going to do something about it!
92YTribeca screens The Netthis Friday, February 11, part of the Beer Goggles series. Before the screening there will be trivia and prizes too, so get there early!
92YTribeca’s monthly Meet The Lady events throw film clips in among live performances and interviews, culminating in you-had-to-be-there variety show awesomeness. Last weekend host Tom Blunt celebrated National Stalking Awareness Month with a madcap tribute to stalker cinema—in particular, ladies who stalk, and the movies that celebrate them. Related: New York magazine has put together a handy Movie Stalker Flowchart!
As seen in the photo above, Jessica Harper, constant prey in movies such as Suspiria, The Phantom of the Paradise and Shock Treatment, appeared on stage via magic Skype to discuss the new bane of her existence: picky eaters. She also discussed her new cookbook, The Crabby Cook Cookbook and admitted that she does in fact still find herself singing ”Bitchen in the Kitchen” while working on particularly tough meals.
Kate Wilkinson, one of the creators/stars of the 2005 off-Broadway comedy Fatal Attraction: A Greek Tragedy (which also starred Corey Feldman!) discussed the cultural footprint of the 1987 Adrian Lyne movie that inspired her play.
Director Dustin Guy Defa feature debut, Bad Fever, premiered at South By Southwest and continues to be beloved at festivals across the country. 
Our friend Elliot Kalan, host of 
In the 1995 film 
