New York Asian Film Festival

Film

Summer means Asian Films Are Go. The New York Asian Film Festival will present its wild selection of the most recent and most curious films culled from the current crop of Asian pop cinema. This is also the second year the festival will be held in conjunction with Japan Society’s Japan Cuts festival of new Japanese films, which begins July 2nd.

From Chinese war pictures (Assembly) to Japanese spaghetti westerns (Sukiyaki Western Django) the unclassifiable breadth of Asian cinema is on display. But this year a fascinating trend continues to emerge amidst the hyperbolic genre explosions the fest is known for: stream of consciousness slices of life, those who like a little representation with all that mythological presentation.

Angrier Every Night

Film

In one of his most straightforward magazine articles, “True Love: Groping for the Holy Grail,” science fiction legend Harlan Ellison signs up with a dating service—Great Expectations—which in the 1970s, was both technically cutting edge, and a cultural throwback. Utilizing five-minute video interviews, people were able to anonymously size up potential lovers and safely set up dates. Describing the process, Ellison says “even though I cut a very blunt and arrogant tape, [Great Expectations] was able to bring out the jellylike core of my being. All unknowing, I revealed the soft, sweet pussycat that slumbers beneath this wretched, obnoxious, contentious anthracite façade.”

From Brooklyn to DC: Kevin Powell with Theodore Hamm

Express

"Hip-hop values include making something out of nothing, winning on your own terms. That's why I'm running for Congress," says Powell.

Gamblin’ with the Ice Machine

Music

"Gambling is a nihilistic endeavor,” Graham Watling, aka Ice Machine, says on a recent Monday night in Atlantic City, leaning over a $5-minimum roulette table at the Tropicana Casino. “And I see making music as basically a nihilistic endeavor.” Watling is wearing an oiled-leather jacket, a wild beard, and a light-blue visor, which he thinks may have subconsciously influenced the female croupier’s decision to give him light-blue gambling chips.

Shapeshifting

Fiction

We had always considered Joel crazy, but not, to put a fine point on it, crazy crazy. There is a difference. For Joel, who got off on being the center of attention, craziness was a form of self-presentation.

One War Comes to an End...

When I saw Obama speak at Washington Square in late September of last year, I really didn’t think he would pull it off. He was charismatic, of course, but he seemed a bit blasé—it was almost as if he really didn’t think he could topple the House of Clinton, either.

Rebel with a Lens: Neighborhood Preservation in the Darkroom of Clayton Patterson

Local

Inside, Clayton Patterson sits among boxes. Artwork rests propped against the walls or hangs in the darkened eaves of the room.

Chuck Close with Phong Bui

Art

The following conversation between Chuck Close and Rail Publisher Phong Bui was initially held at The Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation—The Space Program in its new location at 20 Jay Street, D.U.M.B.O., Brooklyn, of whom both are members of the Artists Advisory Committee—then carried further at the painter’s West Village home last Sunday.

Wynn Kramarsky with William Corbett

Art

Wynn Kramarsky’s collection of contemporary works on paper consists of more than 3,000 drawings amassed over the last 50 years. His interests focus on the work of Minimalist and Post-Minimalist artists. Kramarsky currently serves on the Board of Trustees of New York’s Museum of Modern Art—where he is active on the Drawings, Education, Library and Museum Archives committees—and on the Board of the UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. He has formerly served as Chairman of the Andy Warhol Foundation and Chairman of The Drawing Center in New York. William Corbett of the CUE Art Foundation Advisory Council welcomed Kramarsky to CUE for an interview before a packed house.

David Novros with Phong Bui

Art

Since his last exhibition of six copper paintings at Earl McGrath Gallery in 2000, David Novros has been working on five monumental paintings which can be seen as his synthesis of early shaped canvas and fresco paintings. On a sunny afternoon this Spring, Rail Publisher Phong Bui paid a visit to the painter’s studio to talk about his life and work.