OLD STONE (Lao shi) (2016, directed by Johnny Ma, 80 minutes, Canada/China) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC The advance word on the new thriller Old Stone, shot in the eastern Chinese city of Anhui by second generation Canadian director Johnny Ma, narrowcasts it as a damning indictment of contemporary Chinese society. In reality, this story of a man who turns desperate while battling the medical bureaucracy feels distressingly universal in its depiction of how governmental dehumanization rubs off on its citizenry. The film may be set in far-off China but U.S. audiences won’t have to squint too hard to […]
BEING THERE: Twin Peaks @ Union Transfer
Photo by DYLAN LONG Chicagoan indie rockers Twin Peaks and openers together PANGEA and Golden Daze showed up at Union Transfer and they brought with them good times in the form of luscious and high-energy rock n’ roll. Having seen Twin Peaks open up for surf rockers Wavves before, I can personally attest to how solid of a group they are. With a mixture of power pop and jangle rock with some seriously rockin’ harmonies, it’s good stuff, plain and simple. LA-based Golden Daze, a six piece band with count ‘em four guitarists, was first up and nothing short of […]
#PIZZAGATE: The New Abnormal
WASHINGTON POST: On Oct. 28, FBI Director James B. Comey told Congress that he was reopening the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was secretary of state. New emails had been found on a computer belonging to disgraced former New York congressman Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin. Two days later, someone tweeting under the handle @DavidGoldbergNY cited rumors that the new emails “point to a pedophilia ring and @HillaryClinton is at the center.” The rumor was retweeted more than 6,000 times. The notion quickly moved to other […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR: As Donald Trump continues to court controversy via Twitter, Fox News host Megyn Kelly tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that the president-elect “really does need to be aware of the power that he has when he releases these tweets.” Kelly felt that power firsthand in August 2015, when she pressed the candidate about his derogatory comments about women during the first Republican primary debate. Trump responded with a Twitter attack, which was quickly followed up by a barrage of insulting tweets and even death threats from his followers. “What people don’t realize about Donald Trump — and […]
MUST SEE: ‘They Are Slaughtering Us Like Animals’
NEW YORK TIMES: You hear a murder scene before you see it: The desperate cries of a new widow. The piercing sirens of approaching police cars. The thud, thud, thud of the rain drumming on the pavement of a Manila alleyway — and on the back of Romeo Torres Fontanilla. Tigas, as Mr. Fontanilla was known, was lying facedown in the street when I pulled up after 1 a.m. He was 37. Gunned down, witnesses said, by two unknown men on a motorbike. The downpour had washed his blood into the gutter. The rain-soaked alley in the Pasay district […]
BOOK REVIEW: Be Here Now
BY CONOR HARRINGTON Jacob Bloch, is a fortysomething writer and father of three whose marriage of 16 years is already ripping at the seams when his wife Julia discovers his second phone and triggers the book-length unraveling of his life that is at the center of Jonathan Safran Foer’s third novel, Here I Am. Toggling through Jacob’s text messages, Julia reads her husband’s dirty talk texts to a co-worker — e.g. “give me your cum, then you can have my cock” and “you don’t deserve to get fucked in the ass.” This tawdry revelation is devastating not just for […]
BOWIE BOSSANOVA: Q&A w/ Brazil’s Seu Jorge
Artwork by ANDREW SPEAR EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview first ran on VICE/NOISEY. BY JONATHAN VALANIA The Brazilian actor/musician Seu Jorge is probably best known to American audiences for his performance as the Bowie-singing sailor Pele dos Santos — he of the pointy blood red toque, lip-dangling Gitane and vintage white Adidas Sambas — in Wes Anderson’s 2004 film, The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. But his breakout role was the homicidal avenger Knockout Ned in City Of God, Fernando Meirelles’ graphic 2002 study of the spiralling ultra-violence of internecine gangster warfare in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. After seeing […]
This Is What A Wall Across The Southern Border Of The U.S. Would Look Like Beginning To End
GOOD: The central pledge of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is essentially a racist pipe dream that will never come to fruition. “I will build a great wall—and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me—and I’ll build them very inexpensively,” Trump has said. “I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.” For some perspective on just how insane Trump’s border wall idea is, Digg created a video called “Best of Luck With the Wall” that uses 200,000 satellite images from Google Maps to show what […]
WORTH REPEATING: Trump’s Agents Of Idiocracy
NEW YORK TIMES: And there are disturbing signs about how a Trump administration will conduct itself, from the early diplomatic blunders that signal a worrisome break in the continuity of protocol, to his team nursing vendettas and continuing to dangle the threat of jail in front of his opponents. Last week Conway appeared to waffle on whether Trump or a federal agency during his term might still pursue prosecution of Clinton; the Trump lackey Corey Lewandowski forthrightly said of the executive editor of The New York Times: “He should be in jail.” And to add insult to injury, Trump […]
Fearing Budget Cuts, Pentagon Buries Report Detailing $125 Billion In Bureacratic Waste
WASHINGTON POST: The data showed that the Defense Department was paying a staggering number of people — 1,014,000 contractors, civilians and uniformed personnel — to fill back-office jobs far from the front lines. That workforce supports 1.3 million troops on active duty, the fewest since 1940. The cost-cutting study could find a receptive audience with President-elect Donald Trump. He has promised a major military buildup and said he would pay for it by “eliminating government waste and budget gimmicks.” For the military, the major allure of the study was that it called for reallocating the $125 billion for troops and weapons. […]
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: Trump’s Swamp Things
Illustration by JAMES EDMISTON BY WILLIAM C. HENRY In the final days of the election, Trump promised to “drain the swamp” of corruption and self-dealing that is our nation’s capital. No more lobbyists. No more career politicians. No more corporate vultures. No more bribes disguised as campaign contributions. No more globalist middle class job exporters. Can’t argue with that — Lord knows the DC swamp is filled to the brim with snakes and vermin and leeches and covered in pond scum. So, now that the bulk of Trump’s cabinet nominees have been announced, let’s see if he kept his word: […]
The Death Of Journalism In Post-Factual America
“NBC Poll” from a pro-Trump fake news site called The Real Strategy NEIL GABLER: Just as Trump has shredded our values, our nation and our democracy, he has shredded the media. In this, as in his politics, he is only the latest avatar of a process that began long before his candidacy. Just as the sainted Ronald Reagan created an unbridgeable chasm between rich and poor that the Republicans would later exploit against Democrats, conservatives delegitimized mainstream journalism so that they could fill the vacuum. Retiring conservative talk show host Charlie Sykes complained that after years of bashing from the […]