Abercrombie and Fitch has finally issued a formal apology for CEO Mike Jeffries’s face.
Just kidding. They apologized for his ridiculous comments about “cool” kids.
“We sincerely regret and apologize for any offense caused by the comments we have made in the past which are contrary to (the values of diversity and inclusion)” a Read More
CANNES, France — Only God Forgives: unforgettable? More like unforgivable. Back in 2011, Nicolas Winding Refn’s first outing with Hollywood hunk Ryan Gosling resulted in the suave, rapturous crime thriller Drive, which premiered here in Cannes and nabbed the Danish filmmaker the prize for Best Director. So expectations were not unreasonably high for this Read More
There’s a new trend taking off in Williamsburg, but this one’s a little more commercial than its residents would probably like.
Over the space of two days in the past week, both Kanye West and James Franco have taken over walls in the hip neighborhood across the water, joining a fast growing fashion for P.R. Read More
The first book of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s six-volume autobiographical novel My Struggle was published in Norway in 2009 and the final volume in 2011. The books have since sold half a million copies there, a number that represents something like one in ten Norwegians. Still, when the first volume of My Struggle was published in the United States last year, translated by Don Bartlett, it was thanks to a small non-profit in Brooklyn called Archipelago Books, which in turn relied upon the New York state government and charitable foundations to subsidize the effort. Narrated by the author, whose family and friends are the central characters, Mr. Knausgaard’s books recount his life in full, from the most banal memories to the most important events. Upon the publication of Book Two and a paperback reissue of Book One by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Mr. Knausgaard has won a very loyal English-speaking readership. It turns out that assembling IKEA furniture while contemplating the meaninglessness of our lives transcends the boundaries of nationality and language. As Mr. Knausgaard writes, “As is always the case with books that seem to be groundbreaking, they put into words what for me had been suspicions, feelings, hunches.” Read More
STEAL THE MENU: A MEMOIR OF FORTY YEARS IN FOOD
RAYMOND SOKOLOV
(Knopf, 242 pp., $25.95)
It’s hard to believe in these gourmet-mad times, but 40 years ago the U.S. had “no radicchio, no world-class restaurant, no foie gras, no Sichuan food.” So recalls lifelong food writer Raymond Sokolov in this entertaining memoir. Mr. Sokolov Read More
At the Brooklyn Academy of Music, once a night, John Turturro has been climbing a steeple. To a quiet drumbeat, he goes hand over hand up the side of a tilting house, and when he reaches the top, he does not beat his chest like King Kong.
“I’m just trying to be careful,” he said last week.
His wife and friends watch from below, panicked and exhilarated, and the audience feels the same, joined together for a few minutes in the timeless tension of wondering whether or not a man is going to fall. Read More
There wasn’t a drop of red wine at the New York Historical Society’s perennial Strawberry Festival luncheon last week, and Shindigger was left to wonder: wasn’t it five o’clock somewhere? Sure, there was a delicious quinoa, truffle and herb salad, but that wasn’t why everyone had turned out. It was to see Morning Joe’s Mika Brzezinski receive the Women in Public Life award. Read More
The artist appeared on our block two weeks ago. A lean man with inky fingers covered in silver rings, he wore a cap, a small button fastened to the bottom of his shirt—“I love porn”—and a menthol-flavored Marlboro tucked behind one ear. He would arrive around 9 a.m., arrange his scroll of paper, his pot of ink and his various clips on the sidewalk between The Observer offices and the adjacent Japanese barbecue joint, remaining there, painting intently, until 6 or 7 p.m. As he painted, he scrunched himself into contorted positions and seemed not to take breaks or register the passersby, who invariably stared.
We were curious about the new arrival on our block. Though of course West 44th between Eighth and Ninth Avenues hardly belongs to us alone. We share it with a lumber yard, a theatrical supply company, the Intercontinental Hotel, several parking lots and a convenience store whose clientele appear to buy nothing but lottery tickets. And, as we recently learned, we also share it with the dingy walk-up where Cuban novelist and poet Reinaldo Arenas spent the last years of his life and committed suicide in 1990 at age 47, impoverished and suffering from AIDS. Read More
It’s a back-to-work Tuesday, and Stark Sands and Charl Brown are not resting on their Tony nominations. They are anxious to get back into harness.
“You sorta beat your body into shape over the course of the week, then you get a day off—it’s like a reset button,” Mr. Sands told The Observer over his pre-show matzo ball soup at The Edison Café. “You have to start again. It takes a bit longer to warm up.”
Mr. Brown couldn’t agree more: “Once you get into the groove of the week, your body is ready for action every single day. But when coming back on Tuesday, you also have to wake your brain back up.” Read More
Peter Martins has been making ballets for 36 years now, ever since Calcium Night Light, in 1977. As I remember it, City Ballet’s orchestra was on strike, the company was shut down, and somewhere in Brooklyn Martins previewed this startling duet (to Ives) for Heather Watts and Daniel Duell. Everyone trooped out to see it, everyone was knocked out by it, and soon it was in the company’s repertory. Arlene Croce described its climax as “a staccato, nonstop, seriocomic pas de deux in which limbs become hinges and handles, bodies are clamped together, then slid part. The choreography,” she went on, “makes not one superfluous gesture, everything stands out with bright-edged clarity, and the flatly factual tone communicates an instantaneous emotion.” Balanchine liked it enough to insert it into his own Ivesiana, where it didn’t belong, but the compliment to Martins was immense. Read More
