David Edelstein on High Flying Bird and Arctic … Sara Holdren on True West … Matt Zoller Seitz on Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes.
MOVIES / DAVID EDELSTEIN
A League of His Own
An agent tries to blow up the NBA in High Flying Bird.
STEVEN SODERBERGH’S made-for- Netflix movie High Flying Bird (from a script by the playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney) takes place in Manhattan during a months long NBA lockout with no agreement in sight between owners and players. It sounds like the premise for a rowdy big-business melodrama with fast talk and hoops, but the tone from the start is chill, bordering on mournful, and it’s marinated in righteous resentment.
The story opens in a fancy restaurant high above the city, where a seasoned agent, Ray (André Holland), lambastes his young client, the No. 1 draft pick Erick Scott (Melvin Gregg), for taking out a high-interest loan that—with no checks coming in—Erick can’t pay back. Erick’s precarious finances, says Ray, are no fluke: This kid is one more in a line of black NBA players lured with crazy-big money by white club owners and then left high and dry. Ray, we see, has one foot in gung ho capitalism and one in raising his players’ historical consciousness, and the stances aren’t easy to reconcile. His harangue is capped by news that his corporate credit card has been canceled, and he has to walk to work, where his smug white superior (Zachary Quinto) in a faceless corner office seems ready to dump him.
Denne historien er fra February 4, 2019-utgaven av New York magazine.
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Denne historien er fra February 4, 2019-utgaven av New York magazine.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Early and Often: David Freedlander - Momentum vs. Machine The Trump and Harris campaigns battle it out for every last vote.
WIth two weeks left to go, the contours of the 2024 presidential election are clear: Both campaigns need voters who usually don’t vote, and Kamala Harris needs to bring the Democratic coalition, including its Trump-curious members, back home.While the Republican side plans to spend the remaining days of the contest trying to lure low-propensity voters to the polls, the Harris team will attempt to persuade voters of color to return to its side and will try to increase numbers among white voters in previously red suburbs.
Drowning in Slop - A thriving underground economy is clogging the internet with AI garbage-and it's only going to get worse.
SLOP started seeping into Neil Clarke's life in late 2022. Something strange was happening at Clarkesworld, the magazine. Clarke had founded in 2006 and built into a pillar of the world of speculative fiction. Submissions were increasing rapidly, but “there was something off about them,” he told me recently. He summarized a typical example: “Usually, it begins with the phrase ‘In the year 2250-something’ and then it goes on to say the Earth’s environment is in collapse and there are only three scientists who can save us. Then it describes them in great detail, each one with its own paragraph. And then—they’ve solved it! You know, it skips a major plot element, and the final scene is a celebration out of the ending of Star Wars.” Clarke said he had received “dozens of this story in various incarnations.”
The City Politic- The Other Eric Adams Scandal The NYPD shot a fare evader, a cop, and two bystanders. He defends it.
On Sunday, September 15, Derell Mickles hopped a turnstile, got asked to leave by cops, then entered the subway again ten minutes later through an emergency exit. This was at the Sutter Avenue L station, out by his mother's house, five stops from the end of the line. Police said they noticed he was holding a folded knife. They followed him up the stairs to the elevated train, asking him 38 times to drop the weapon.
Can the Media Survive?
BIG TECH, Feckless Owners, CORD-CUTTERS, RESTIVE STAFF, Smaller Audiences ... and the Return of PRINT?
Status Update
Hannah Gadsby's fascinatingly untidy tour through life after fame and death.
A Matter of Perspective
A Matter of Perspective Steve McQueen's worst film is still a solid WWII drama.
Creator, Destroyer
A retrospective reveals an architect's vision, optimism, and supreme arrogance.
In Praise of Bad Readers
In a time of war, there is a danger in surveying the world as if it were a novel.
Trust the Kieran Culkin Process
First, he nearly dropped out of Oscar hopeful A Real Pain. Then he convinced Jesse Eisenberg to change the way he directs.
The Funniest Vampires on TV
What We Do in the Shadows is coming to an end. Its idiosyncratic brand of comedy may be too.
