‘Arts’ Archives
Movie Corner: “Old”
Old: courtesy Universal Pictures (2021 Universal Pictures) ★★☆☆☆ By HOWARD McQUITTER M. Night Shyamalan is up to another one of his "prize" thrillers that simply doesn't add up to a hill of beans. I often say I'll go for the ride with a movie if it lacks in major areas, but with OldI just wanted to not even get on the ride. Back in 2002, with his film The Sixth Sense(his first actual film is Wide Awake in 1998),the public was in awe of starring actors Bruce Willis, Haley Joel Osment, Toni Collette, Olivia Williams, Donnie Wahlberg, and Glenn Fitzgerald. Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense, indeed a sensation, drew viewers from word of mouth as well as by advertisement. Old is the movie that should have never left the drawing board. At first, about a dozen tourists are told about an isolated "paradise" island which is supposed to be the ideal vacation spot. Strange things [...]
In The Heart of the Beast Theatre Update
BOARD UPDATE AUGUST 12 2021In 2021, HOBT has been working to restart our organization and adapt to the impacts of COVID-19. We considered every path forward that would put us in the best possible position to live out our mission and carry the important work of the MayDay Council into the future.In conversation and with the input of HOBT staff and the MayDay Council, the HOBT Board of Directors has voted to sell the Avalon Theatre, our home since 1988.It”™s time to find a new, smaller home that will allow us to live into our vision of a decentralized MayDay. That includes moving into a new space that is more sustainable and accessible.HOBT is also in the process of moving out of our puppet storage warehouse, which was rented to store the thousands of puppets in HOBT”™s collection.The puppets will return to the artists that created them, museums who can house them (both locally and nationally), and HOBT will be maintaining a smaller collection to carry our work [...]
Summer of Soul
Movie Corner (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) Documentary/Music (2021 Searchlight Pictures) ★★★★★ By HOWARD MCQUITTER II Harlem Cultural Festival in 1969 is the festival all but forgotten, deliberately thrown (literally) down in a basement. Many people in Harlem at the time believed the festival is the main reason racial disturbances that year didn't occur like the previous year after the assassination of Martin Luther King on April 4,1968. All in all, over 300,000 Harlem residents, 99% African American, crowded into Mount Morris Park (now Marcus Garvey Park) - all outdoors - to see and hear a great tribute to African American music: gospel, jazz, blues, rhythm & blues, and soul. The few cops at the festival are barely visible. Nearly all the security is provided by the Black Panthers for an energetic, peaceful, and historical [...]
