Results tagged “benbrantley”

While accepting the best supporting actor prize from the New York Film Critics Circle on Monday night for his riveting performance in Milk, Josh Brolin lashed out at the Times's chief theater critic Ben Brantley, who negatively reviewed Brolin in True West on Broadway. Sure, that was over eight years ago, but Jo Bro does not forget a slight: "As much as actors like to say they don't read reviews, I do. Ben Brantley—honestly I hate that motherfucker! And I don't think he's a good writer." (We do.) Then Brolin turned to his Milk co-star: "Quite an actor Sean Penn...Amazing. Not an asshole like Russell Crowe."

In Samuel Beckett’s 1961 play Happy Days, a decidedly upbeat woman named Winnie spends Act One striving valiantly to make the best of her sticky situation: she’s irrevocably buried up to her waist in a “low mound.” True, Winnie has her reticent companion Willie for company, but she cheerily defies the barren void by holding forth for a seemingly nonexistent gathering of spectators. And Act Two finds Winnie still determined to make a go of it, despite a marked deterioration of her condition: she is now buried up to the neck. 47 years after Beckett finished it, the brutally funny and moving Happy Days is now the hot ticket at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

SKATE: Free skating at Bryant Park just got...more free! Now you can get free rental skates every Wednesday provided you are one of the first 100 people to get over to The Pond Exhibit Area.

The most exciting story in New York theater this year had nothing to do with the Broadway stagehands' strike, it was the vibrant growth of what used to be called “experimental theater”, a movement that can now really only loosely be defined by what it’s not: non-naturalistic and not made for TV, with an emphasis on bold physicality, collaboration and, sometimes, multimedia.

TREE LIGHTING: Earlier this year, New Yorkers Fountains of Wayne transformed Demetri Martin into a lonely suit living in Brooklyn in this video. Tonight the band will be rockin' around the Stuy Town Christmas tree. A reader writes in:I just happened to see this flyer hanging up for the annual christmas tree lighting. And what the hell is this...7:30-8:00pm, FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE. Seems like it's top secret, but there are flyers everywhere.Random! But if you're...

Young Frankenstein, Mel Brooks’s latest big-budget musical theater beast – rumored to cost over $16 million – has finally slouched toward Broadway to be born. It opened last night at the Hilton Theater; this morning the Times’s Ben Brantley shuffled out of the delivery room to tell us all about the freak of nature Brooks delivered. Proud ticket buyers who shelled out the record-setting $450 for “premier seats” are probably going to want to put...

- The effects of cannabis on a web-based lifestyle.

So since the whole country united around the television set on Sunday night to watch the awards and then every conceivable media outlet chewed over the results for the whole day Monday, Gothamist can skip right to previewing what’s coming up this week, yes? Oh…heh…we’re talking about the Tonys. Even with a 2% increase in viewership the audience was still only 6.6 million, so maybe there does need to be a little explanation, although there weren’t really any huge surprises. The main news, probably, was how little Spamalot got; top musical honors were in the bag ever since Ben Brantley declared, a bit sniffily, in his Times review that it was “the best new musical to open on Broadway this season…but that's not saying much.”

Grimes goes into Nicolai Ouroussoff's and Ben Brantley's territories with a quasi review of the Dodger Stages, a new off-Broadway venue with three stages, on West 50th. You know the Dodger Stages, it's at Worldwide Plaza between 8th and 9th Avenues, where there was a $2 movie theater that showed fairly recent releases; they later charged $2.50, then $3, to stay in business (Gothamist knew the movie theater had problems when we saw a man masturbating to a Mel Gibson movie). Anyway, Grimes seems to have a pretty good time at the "theaterplex" and gives the Dodger Stages bathrooms the thumbs-up. And he revealed himself in January after he stepped down. Gothamist on Grimes's announcement he was leaving the restaurant beat and his interview with Newsweek.

were simply hilarious. A few of our favorite quotes:

">book about kabuki. Check out some sushi via Sushi NYC and NYC Sushi Finder. And Gothamist visited the Lincoln Center Festival last year with a trip on the Angel Project.

Gothamist went to see Avenue Q - aka "the puppet musical" - this past weekend. While the performers and creative team have roots on Sesame Street and the material is upbeat, the story and songs are gleefully subversive and honest. Songs include, "Everyone's A Little Bit Racist," "The Internet is For Porn," and "Schadenfreude." The cast is a mix of puppets and humans, but you still see the humans behind the puppets, as Avenue Q tries to reveal all (there are even naked puppets, having hot puppet sex, so no taking the kids to this one, unless you want to start the therapy early). Gothamist's favorite part: The "Bad Idea Bears" who appear to encourage the id, whether it be drinking, impulsive sex, and suicide.

Possibly the coolest thing to do between now and July 27 is go to Deborah Warner's Angel Project, a performance installation in the Lincoln Center Festival. You show up at the Roosevelt Island tram and then you're sent on a scavenger hunt in the city.

It's July 4th, Independence Day. There are lots of activities in the city, but the highlight is Macy's Fireworks over the East River. This year's fireworks display is called "Lights of Freedom." According to information from Macy's, the display will have 50,000 shells, which means 1,600 shells per minute. And the Macy's Fireworks show uses 55 times more fireworks than the average US fireworks display.

Broadway producers are complaining about theater critic Ben Brantley of the Times and his potential to make or break their shows. Ah, it's almost like the days of Frank Rich - the Butcher of Broadway...now Rich writes the Times Op-Eds. Anyway, Gothamist thinks that the right of the critic, to support what he/she can and make people aware of what's not good...movie critics do it all the time, bringing up other films in their reviews.

S. Epatha Merkerson, Lieutenant Van Buren on Law & Order, stars in a new play at the Public Theater, "Fucking A." Ben Brantley of the Times feels it's well acted if uneven and another sign of playwright Suzan Lori Parks' talent. (Brantley's review is also amusing for how it tries to explain the full title: "The full title of '. . . A' cannot be printed here. Suffice it to say that 'A' is modified by an obscene word heard regularly on the streets of New York and is the adjective of choice on 'The Sopranos.'") S. Epatha certainly has come a long way from playing Reba the Mail Lady on Pee Wee's Playhouse, but her tough-yet-sympathetic demeanor was apparent even then.