By Drew Grant 5/21 3:31pm

Hate crime

10 Photos

US-CRIME-PROTEST-GAYS

Photos: Thousands March in Memorial of Hate Crime Victim

(Photos via Getty Images)

Last night, New Yorkers came together to mourn the death of 32-year-old Mark Carson, a gay man who was shot in the head this weekend in Greenwich Village; the victim of an alleged hate crime. Crowds gathered at the LGBT Center on West 13th and marched to 8th Street and Sixth Avenue, the location of the shooting, where a rally/vigil was held to memorialize Mr. Carson and express the outrage of the city’s denizens. Read More

By Steve Huff 11/14/12 3:52pm

Crime

Julie Patz, on the Today show, two years after her son Etan's disappearance.

Pedro Hernandez Charged With Second Degree Murder in Death of Etan Patz

A New York grand jury has indicted Pedro Hernandez in connection with the 1979 death of Etan Patz. Mr. Hernandez, a 51-year-old resident of Maple Shade, N.J., has been charged with murder in the second degree. He was arrested in May 2012 after reportedly confessing to killing the little boy.

Etan Patz was on his way to school when he vanished from Soho on May 25, 1979. His disappearance became national news, his image eventually appearing on milk cartons across the country.

At the time, Mr. Hernandez was a stock clerk at a bodega near the Patz residence. According to a statement from NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly, Mr. Hernandez said he lured Etan into the basement of the bodega by promising the boy a soda. Read More

By Rex Reed 7/24/12 5:09pm

movies

Hirsch and McConaughey in Killer Joe.

Trailer Park, Unhitched: With Killer Joe, Friedkin Continues His Slow Descent Into Depravity

Director William Friedkin has always been attracted to lurid movie material. From the gruesome, overcooked The Exorcist to the vile and unhinged Cruising, he craves plots about deeply conflicted characters who are hopelessly alienated, disconnected from both the society that surrounds them and even their own lives. One craves another well-crafted action nail-biter like his Oscar-winning The French Connection, but at 76, his view of the world just gets darker than ever. Small wonder, then, that he has found his literary soulmate in Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tracy Letts, whose twisted, controversial and fascinating work has found its way to the screen through Mr. Friedkin’s jaundiced camera twice—first in the repellant schizophrenic thriller Bug, and now in the toxic trailer-trash thriller Killer Joe. When this sick, ludicrous cocktail of sex, violence and mayhem was first unveiled a year ago at the Toronto International Film Festival, one wag aptly described it as “the ghost of Tennessee Williams meets the spirit of Quentin Tarantino.” For shock value, cut to Gina Gershon, crawling across a filthy kitchen floor covered in blood to perform fellatio at gunpoint on a Colonel Sanders drumstick, and you have a high-water mark in tastelessness that gives depravity a bad name. Read More

By Rex Reed 6/13/12 12:25pm

movies

The Tortured Leaves Audience Past Pain Threshold

The Tortured, unconvincingly written by Marek Posival and awkwardly directed by Robert Lieberman, is a nasty piece of work that’s been hanging around for two years looking for an audience. It’s a revolting horror film that wastes the talents and good looks of Erika Christensen and Jesse Metcalfe in favor of severed penises and other violent atrocities performed on a kitchen table. Be forewarned: it’s not for the demure or easily shocked. Read More

By Rex Reed 4/24/12 8:00am

movies

Black and MacLaine.

Weekend at Bernie’s: East Texas Murder Mockumentary Makes For Amusingly Mordant Matinee

One of the many delights of Bernie, the offbeat new comedy by Richard Linklater, is that it is fresh, surprising and funny without going for sitcom punch lines or ridiculous, contrived situations inserted for guffaws. It’s not hilarious. It’s just warm and real enough to keep you smiling and awed at the same time. It is also the only movie I have ever liked Jack Black in, one of the few times Matthew McConaughey, a terrible actor, has ever come anywhere close to giving a tolerable performance, and features Shirley MacLaine’s best role in years. A lot to like here, and I liked it all. Read More

By Rex Reed 4/10/12 7:22pm

movies

Jenkins, Amy Acker and Whitford in The Cabin in the Woods.

The Cabin in the Woods Is a Pixelated Nightmare

On the advice of a friend who described The Cabin in the Woods as the next cinematic “happening” in horror and mayhem, I bit the bullet and suffered through a creepfest so stupid it makes trashy slash-and-burn epics like Humans Versus Zombies and I Spit on Your Grave seem like Molière and Proust. Some films have to seek their own audience like oil seeks its own level in water. Others arrive with a preordained sort of word-of-mouth anticipation that cannot be explained. This is one of them.

A testament to the wonders of writing under the guidance of crystal meth, this nightmare spoof of everything from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to the Scream franchise totally defies logic, and pretty much eludes description. Read More

By Steve Huff 3/30/12 12:25am

sad

Charles Snelling (from Mr. Snelling's Facebook page)

Charles Snelling, PA Republican Pol and Author of NYT ‘Life Report’ Commits Murder-Suicide

Charles Darwin Snelling, a noted Pennsylvania Republican who wrote a “Life Report” published by columnist David Brooks in the Times last December, killed his wife and committed suicide in Pennsylvania on Thursday. Mr. Snelling was 81. He had been married to wife Adrienne for 6 decades. Mr. Snelling had been caring for his Alzheimer’s-afflicted wife for six years and  in his long essay published by the Times on December 7, 2011, expressed what seemed a fundamentally positive view of the situation: Read More