This movie is a must see for film buffs (especially NYC ones) but what struck me, while reviewing the film for the first time in a decade, is the ever-so-timely portrayal of media corruption.
This fall, legendary cult-rock band The Flaming Lips, Warner Brothers Records, and film company Cinema Purgatorio will bring the long-awaited Christmas on Mars: A Fantastical Film Freakout Featuring the Flaming Lips to offbeat venues across the country.
Christmas on Mars will open theatrically in New York City on September 12, 2008, presented in a custom-designed cinema at the KGB Complex at 85 East Fourth Street, screening in high definition video and the custom designed Zeta Bootis Mega Supersonic Super-Sound Surround System, which the Lips created for the film. Christmas on Mars will screen at unusual showtimes, the first of which have been have been announced (and some have already sold out) on cinemapurgatorio.com. Showtimes will include 7am and 9am showtimes, so audience members can go to Mars before they get to work, as well as some traditional evening showtimes.
Christmas on Mars is the directorial debut of Wayne Coyne, lead singer and frontman for the Flaming Lips. Coyne co-directed with George Salisbury, an audiovisual technician who works with the band. Coyne constructed much of the set - representing Mars - in his Oklahoma City backyard.
The film does indeed take place during Christmastime on Mars, as the colonization of the Red Planet is underway. But when an oxygen generator and a gravity control pod malfunction, Major Syrtis (the Lips' Steven Drozd) and his team (including the Lips' bassist Michael Ivins) fear for the worst. Syrtis hallucinates about the birth of a baby, and many other strange things. Meanwhile, a compassionate alien superbeing (Coyne) arrives, inspiring and helping the isolated astronauts.
Following the arrest of Scott Sturgeon, 32, lead singer of the punk-rock band Leftover Crack, and four of his fans in the East Village last Friday evening, three men identifying themselves as Police Department Internal Affairs Bureau officers paid a surprise visit to Bill Cashman, the band’s manager, Monday afternoon. The three officers easily entered the building, on Avenue C near 10th St., since its front door had reportedly been left open due to ongoing construction inside.
The man was tased through his shirt on his upper torso for three seconds with the Taser being used in “touch-stun mode.” The deputy inspector noted that a Taser’s other mode is to shoot two electrically charged darts, which are attached to wires on the Taser, up to 20 or 30 feet. These darts puncture the person’s skin and leave wounds that could get infected, he said. The “touch-stun” technique — in which the Taser is manually pressed against the individual — is safer, especially at close range, he noted.
A demolition permit for St. Brigid’s Church on Avenue B was still in effect last week, despite the promise in May of this year of $20 million from an anonymous benefactor to restore the 1849 building and the East Village parish that the Catholic Archdioceses of New York dissolved in 2004.
But an archdiocese spokesperson said last week that architects were preparing plans and contractors were drawing up documents for building permits.
“We know the demolition permit has to be withdrawn and we decided to do it all at once,” said Joseph Zwilling. “There is no construction date and we’ll make an announcement when we have one.”
Nevertheless, Edwin Torres, president of the Committee to Save St. Brigid’s, the group that went to court in 2005 to prevent the church building’s demolition, said last week that the committee was troubled that the demolition permit was still on file at the Department of Buildings.
Your favorite street festival lives on! This year we are expanding to two blocks, giving people lots of room, and heading toward event greater demonstrations, educational displays and community involvement. Bring your own costume, and prepare to pucker!
As always, Pickle Day will feature pickles from around the world, and around the corner. In addition to expanded selection of pickled fruits, vegetables, meats, cheeses, we want to hear from you, what you’re doing, and your relationship to the pickling industry. It’s your festival, after all… on Orchard St, between Broome and Grand, 11-4:30.
Seen on First Avenue. TV Squad was game enough to call the attached number. For a CBS series called "The Ex List." Ugh.
I remember seeing this one in the subways, and at the time it was very appropriate. As you can see above, the ad plays on the MTA’s notoriously unreliable public address system. Fifteen years, the MTA swore they were working to improve the PA system. Based on what I hear on the trains and in stations every day, I’m guessing that the PA overhaul is one project not quite there yet.
English architect Lord Norman Foster must be tired of dealing with all the stuffy uptowners (lookin' at you, Tom Wolfe!) who get mixed up in the business of his grand architectural visions, because rumor has it he's heading downtown—to the Bowery, so conveniently left out of the East Village/Lower East Side rezoning. According to a Curbed tipster, Foster & Partners has designed the above nine-story gallery building for an established Chelsea art dealer at 257 Bowery, just north of the New Museum and across the street from FLAnk Architects' planned eco-friendly hotel.
Walk to Broadway and down two blocks south to the Crossroads of the World. Unsurprisingly, a lot of drinking history occurred at this intersection. On the southeast corner of Seventh Avenue and 42nd Street, you can still see the Mansard-roofed beauty that once was the Knickerbocker Hotel. The bar was so favored a watering hole of uptown swells in the first two decades of the 20th century that it was called the 42nd Street Country Club. (It was also the original home of Parrish's "Old King Cole" oil painting.) Its main importance in cocktail history, though, lies in the once-prevalent claim that its head bartender, Martini di Arma di Taggia, invented the martini in 1912. This is balderdash, since mentions of the drink had been appearing in print for decades prior to that. But give ol' di Taggia a quick salute, anyway.
Directly opposite Broadway was the Hotel Metropole, another popular way station for actors, politicians, and the like. Its house cocktail was the Metropolitan, which is basically a Manhattan, but with brandy standing in for the rye. It hasn't retained the fame the Manhattan has but is still a damned decent drink.
There are few entries in the annals of New York alcoholism to rival the bar at the “21” Club in Midtown Manhattan. The broad, mahogany bar stood since the 1940s in the center of the first floor. Drinks were had there by the likes of Humphrey Bogart and Ernest Hemingway.
With its celebrity patrons and speakeasy heritage, it was the subject of paintings by artists like Leroy Neiman and immortalized in films, notably “The Sweet Smell of Success.”
But now in the celebrated dining room of “21,” which reopened this month at “21” West 52nd Street after renovation, there is only the sweet smell of shellac, given off by — egads — a sleek new bar, freshly varnished.
It resembles the old bar, down to the brass foot rail, but there are differences. It is much narrower (about half as wide as the four-foot-wide old one), and shorter (by about 12 feet), leaving more space in the dining room for tables. And there are no spittoons.
