A close friend of mine wisely pointed out via Facebook that, while no Hollywood natural-disaster film is complete without a grizzled, determined, and attractive lead character to save the day, the media frenzy surrounding Hurricane Irene’s east coast debut lacked a standard hero type. Since the double lead of Steve McQueen and Paul Newman in 1974’s The Towering Inferno, American film has never missed this opportunity to remind us that, while we will all someday die, we should always go out looking our best. Dante’s Peak had Pierce Brosnan. The Perfect Storm had George Clooney in flannel. Independence Day (because extraterrestrials are still natural) had Will Smith. Twister had Bill Paxton. The Day After Tomorrow touted Dennis Quaid for moms and Jake Gyllenhall for daughters. 2012 featured the boyish duo of John Cusack and Chiwetel Ejiofor. Ad infinitum, et cetera.
Author Archives: DANIEL SCHWARTZ
Rokia Traore’s Mali Goes West…
When Malian singer-songwriter Rokia Traore goes west:
Multinational Debut Novelists Take New York
It is easy to assume that a writer’s debut novel will take an at least partially autobiographical form. We imagine authors living their stories before putting them onto paper; their voices emerge once they manage to organize their thoughts and observations into a narrative. Only then, with their distinct selves discovered, structured, and shared, are …
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The View from a Volcano
Through August 27th, New York City art space The Kitchen is hosting a two-month retrospective of its auspicious first fifteen years as a bastion for the downtown art scene of the seventies and eighties. Now located in Chelsea, The Kitchen stood in Soho for its first fifteen years, where it supported the wild, defiant expressionism of a very pre-Giuliani metropolis.
Zazen and the Art of Vanessa Veselka
Ever since H.G. Wells published his speculative sci-fi telegram The Shape of Things to Come in 1933, numerous artists have adapted his title to suit their own prophecies. Ornette Coleman’s The Shape of Jazz to Come demanded that the genre evolve or face irrelevance. Swedish band Refused did the same for underground rock with The Shape of Punk to Come. Ornette and Refused don’t sound particularly alike, but they both purported that music, and art in general, loses all power and urgency once it has become fashionable, marketable, a commodity of mass culture. They were onto something––––after all, this is a world in which Che Guevara t-shirts are sold at shopping malls.
Terrence Malick and the Making of America
Now that Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life––––a film that earned both heckling and the Palme d’Or at Cannes this year––––is almost out of theaters and more firmly a part of the controversial auteur’s cannon, I feel prompted to reexamine Malick’s career and his ideas about American life.