Exclusivity, like any product, gets more valuable the more people want it; it is both the cruellest and the most honest thing that a restaurant can sell. The Eighty-Six, a mega-swank steak house that opened in the West Village last fall, was, from Day One, clubby, celeb-packed, and impossible to get into—no surprise, as it’s … Read more
He is also sitting in front of a screen. “Am I the only one willin’ to bleed / Or take a bullet for bein’ free / Screamin’ ‘What the fuck?’ at my TV?” Lewis bellows. This oscillation between rage at one’s own powerlessness and fantasies of violence is the song’s motive force. It could be … Read more
We see this, for example, in an untitled portrait sometimes called “Two Ladies of Bamako.” Here, Keïta captures a pair of women—holding each other at the shoulders and the hands—dressed in traditional Malian robe-like garments called boubou. Behind them is a printed-fabric backdrop, and at their feet, a woven rug tessellated with oval patterns. Enveloped … Read more
The project evolved out of an informal recording session. In the summer of 2025, the Copelands were offered two free days in a studio in Montreal, and they hired a choir to sing with them. In a recent video call, Elizabeth told me, “It was just, let’s put this stuff down so we have it … Read more
The worry that taste is deceptive or distracting haunts seemingly every narrative in which it figures. In “Strangers,” Burden wonders how she failed to notice her husband’s unhappiness, and asks how he might have failed to notice it for himself. “I thought I was happy but I’m not,” he tells her. “I thought I wanted … Read more
In what feels like a vestige from a more collaborative era, the Cuban contemporary-dance troupe Malpaso Dance Company is the product of a joint venture between an American institution—the Joyce Theatre Foundation—and an exceptional group of Cuban dancers and choreographers based in Havana. Malpaso’s repertory combines works by local dancemakers with international commissions, all performed … Read more
Most of the movie takes place in the span of a single day, and two clocks, political and personal, seem to be ticking out of synch, urgently and discordantly. Folarin’s political engagement emerges by chance when he runs into a long-unseen friend (Olarotimi Fakunle), whose nickname, Corridor, reflects his size and his ability to open … Read more
The British drama “Riot Women” begins with a blackly comic suicide attempt. Beth (Joanna Scanlan), a teacher on what she calls “the wrong side of fifty,” burdened by loneliness, depression, and the incessant needs of others, pours herself a stiff drink and steps up to the noose she’s hung from the rafters of her airy … Read more
In 1968, Stewart Brand, a young hippie who had studied biology at Stanford, co-created the Whole Earth Catalog, a “do-everything-yourself compendium” that became a touchstone for both Bay Area counterculture and, eventually, Silicon Valley technologists. “Maintenance: Of Everything,” his new book, is a kind of spiritual descendant of the Catalog—a celebration of the practice of … Read more
