Capital New York

J. Gabriel Boylan commented on A 'New Yorker' Festival triptych: Patti Smith, Alison Bechdel, Salman Rushdie

Posted on October 12th, 2012 11:41am

Le Carré's masterful spy stories, spun on film

But two of the least-known films in the series, The Looking Glass War and The Deadly Affair, are perhaps the most enjoyable and surprising of the bunch. Largely forgotten, they are both, in their own ways, wonderfully evocative of the Cold War era, and while stylistically and narratively they couldn't be more different, they share some of le Carré's most essential enduring themes. And of course, nearly everyone gets screwed over. More

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By J. Gabriel Boylan

J. Gabriel Boylan commented on MoMA presents the Quay Brothers' work as much more than a cabinet of curiosities

Posted on August 20th, 2012 9:48am

What Ai Weiwei means here, and at home

His work is unarguably brave and commendable, but how does it fit into contemporary Chinese life, society, and activism? It's hard to tell, even in Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, a new documentary on the Chinese artist and activist, out today. More

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By J. Gabriel Boylan

The extraordinary ordinary: Rineke Dijkstra at the Guggenheim

Of course it's not just the old, familiar "information overload" complaint that actually echoed through the ages long before the digital era. For those of us who don’t give in to the paranoia that zettabytes of cat videos and baby pictures are unstoppably degrading the sanctity of The Image, it’s extraordinary to be confronted, as one is at the Guggenheim Museum’s current Rineke Dijkstra mid-career retrospective, with rather ordinary-looking images of rather ordinary-looking people, and to be intensely moved. More

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By J. Gabriel Boylan

Artist Tom Sachs previews his mission to Mars, starting from Park Avenue

"I wondered, What's the ultimate brand. And I thought, NASA represents our destiny in the stars and ... the mutation of man growing wings using his super-powerful mind," Sachs said. It's this celebration of the human mind that is the through-line connecting all the pieces in Space Program: Mars, from the modified Winnebago (Mobile Quarantine Facility) to the exercise unit (Space Camp) to the bike-repair shop to Mission Control Center—a huge array that includes a boombox, an iPad, turntables, bottles of vodka, and monitors that can show dozens of locations around the Armory, from miniature sets of splashdown to the intimate moments the astronauts share inside the Lunar Module—most of the things constructed from plywood, fiberglass, and Con-Edison's familiar white-and-orange wood pedestrian barriers. More

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By J. Gabriel Boylan

A Capital anticipations list: Drinks with Arianna, Cloud City, James Franco art, Figment Art Festival, Tiki Disco

Each week, Capital's editors and writers will offer a list of the events, activities, releases and personal obsessions that we are looking forward to during the next week. Here is a list of our anticipations. More

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By Joe Pompeo, J. Gabriel Boylan, Gillian Reagan and Dana Rubinstein

'Moonrise Kingdom' and the necessary Gizmology of Wes Anderson

Wes Anderson's latest film, Moonrise Kingdom, out today, epitomizes how, for him, attention to detail goes way deeper than forming a pretty picture More

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By J. Gabriel Boylan

A Capital anticipations list: a Woody Allen favorite, a wrestling match, the real Jersey Shore, grindcore

Each week, Capital's editors and writers will offer a list of the events, activities, releases and personal obsessions that we are looking forward to during the next week. Here is a list of our anticipations. More

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By Azi Paybarah, J. Gabriel Boylan, Dana Rubinstein and Gillian Reagan

Werner Herzog, art-world insult-comic

"Craft has completely shifted to the world of ideas," he said. "You take some cardboard boxes and throw them in a corner, and a rolled-up, greasy sleeping bag, and some squished beer cans… and all of a sudden you're making a commentary of homelessness." He spoke of a world of artists "trying to manufacture excitement." More

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By J. Gabriel Boylan