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K Hank Jost
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Apr 2, 2024 11:39 am
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Le Samourai Film Forum West Village, NYC 3/31/24
Film Forum is at it again with some truly aces programming. I’ve no doubt that the seats of this theater will remain as packed as they were for Sunday night’s showing of Le Samourai, Jean-Pierre Melville’s masterpiece of slick silence, stoicism, and understated aestheticism.
Showing as part of Film Forum’s Alain Delon retrospective, Le Samourai knowingly bathes the audience with the real reason for seeing any Delon film — the simple fact that the man is gorgeous in a way that feels like a genetic glitch, some deeply unfair flaw in the universe’s source code. Cast as a near silent, stone-cold assassin, Le Samourai’s camera works over Delon as though he’s the true work of art: story be damned, trick-shots and interesting techniques be damned, scenery and location be damned.
Just look, eyes wide and tearful, just look at the man!
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K Hank Jost
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Apr 1, 2024 11:10 am
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The Comedy Cellar West Village NYC 3/29/24
Comedy is always a gamble. And that’s part of the thrill, no doubt. The threat of a bomb looms over every set, and jokes that land are miracles. The ones that really kill, the laughter is religious in its ecstasy.
It was my brother’s last night in the City, we’d yet to do anything big and touristy or standard only-in-NYC. Not monuments, museums, or anything like that. I just showed him the City as I live in it. So it was only right that we did at least one thing that everyone who comes into town ought to do. We linked up with some friends and stood in the windy cold, waiting to be let in to the legendary Comedy Cellar.
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K Hank Jost
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Mar 30, 2024 12:51 pm
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Evangelion IFC Center West Village, Manhattan 3/29/24
(Spoilers. Etc.)
I am, with some small degree of vocality, no great fan of anime. I have a strong affinity for several of Miyazaki’s films, enjoy an episode of Cowboy Bebop occasionally, and think Akira is a fantastic piece of science fiction filmmaking. All the rest, the little else I’ve seen, I can largely do without. But Neon Genesis Evangelion holds a special, special place in my heart.
Maybe it’s the knowing and ironic style, operating with a basic disdain for it’s own genre. Maybe it’s the Christological symbolism and deep-fried psychoanalysis that underpins the narrative’s themes; maybe it’s the show’s hopeful rejection of apocalyptic nihilism. Maybe it’s that even through all the explosions, bloodshed, flat out ridiculous violence, and egregious sexuality the ultimate spectacle is one concerned with the state of the soul in relation to other souls.
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K Hank Jost
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Mar 29, 2024 11:58 am
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harf. at Mercury Lounge.
Review of harf. Mercury Lounge NYC 3/28/24
My little brother is in town, his first time in NYC. Ahead of his visit I asked him to search around and see if there’s any band playing, theater on, or hard-to-find movies screening that he’d want to check out. I know for a fact that my brother’s tastes diverge from mine quite a bit. I’d asked him, in some way, to show me the City as he’d have it explored.
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K Hank Jost
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Mar 25, 2024 5:58 pm
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H.G. Welp Heaven Can Wait LES, NYC March 23, 2024
I’ve said it once before, and I’ll say it again — I cannot stand the venue Heaven Can Wait. Last thing that got me out there was the anticipation and excitement I had for witnessing Luke Herbermann with a full band. This time what drew me was the request of a friend.
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K Hank Jost
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Mar 24, 2024 10:47 am
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Julian Lage The Town Hall Manhattan, NYC 3/23/24
To the uninitiated, jazz music can seem a secret language — rendering one’s witnessing of a performance akin more to eavesdropping than being spoken to. For aficionados, begrudging and reluctant as they may be to admit that this music touted at “democratic, of/by/for the people,” is in fact difficult and occasionally off-putting, the inscrutability of this language is, if we’re to be honest, one of the great joys of the music altogether!
However, there’s a secret within the secret: Deep structures abound here. Watch a jazz combo, of whatever size duo and upward, watch the faces they make, the extra-musical gestures, the little turns and nods, and witness there a language of some complexity composed entirely of smirks, wiggling eyebrows, yawps, and subtle footwork.
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K Hank Jost
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Mar 21, 2024 4:27 pm
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K Hank Jost Photo
Angel Food Magazine Launch Sisters Brooklyn, NYC March 20, 2024
Here we continue documentation of the early 2020s NYC literary magazine boom. I was genuinely excited for this one, the launch of Angel Food Magazine at Sisters. Something about the editor-in-chief’s and the magazine’s presence online gave me no small hope that this publication would be going for something different, not only in the styles it favors but also the editors’ method of conducting themselves. Tweets that blend the usual millennial quirk with an unwavering self-seriousness, a mission centered on the supremacy of good writing, a commitment to a left-wing politics, and a design sensibility toward the simplistic, all boded well and piqued my anticipation.
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K Hank Jost
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Mar 20, 2024 2:21 pm
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The Palace Reading Series Greenpoint, Brooklyn 2/19/24
I do my best in these articles to avoid reviewing the same folks. In a city like this one there’s always plenty new to find if one is willing to do the necessary seeking out. However, there’s also a fair amount of tried-and-true staples, places and recurring events that function as carousels of variety and, in the best of cases, serve as centers of gravity for the development of social scenes. Marissa Cadena and Rita Puska’s Palace Reading Series is increasingly becoming one of these events.
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K Hank Jost
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Mar 18, 2024 4:54 pm
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K Hank Jost Photo
Meernaa.
Meernaa Baby’s All Right Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NYC March 17, 2024
It’s no secret now that a good majority of modern independent music is fusional in its construction — more and more are bands wearing the stripes of multiple genres and approaches, all bashed together into sounds that are sometimes striking, sometimes sickening. This has, of course, always been the case.
There’s no “true originality” in the sui generis sense — or if there is, it’s rare. Artists make their work by locking together disparate influences. But, there’s something happening now and for the last twenty or so years, where this act of fusing isn’t hidden but acknowledged flat out: multi-hyphenate genre names, prefixes attached to ‑core, or — the worst of it all — nostalgia-bait genre revivalism. All to say, the sounds of the past have never been escapable. Perhaps now we’re just being honest about where we’re coming from.
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K Hank Jost
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Mar 13, 2024 3:14 pm
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Micsters Peter Vack, Serena Rubin
Lily Lady Presents Honey’s Brooklyn, NYC 3/12/2024
In writing this review, I’m struggling up front with where to put my focus. A six-person bill is quite a lot for a reading —usually, four readers is the max my attention can tolerate, though it is often also the case that the readers are unified in theme, approach, and scene.
This event, curated by artist/writer/filmmaker/the other usual etceteras Lily Lady, covered a wide spread of approaches and genres. To put it all as shortly as possible before I make my decision about who and what to discuss, we the audience were treated to autofiction, diary entries, curatorial notes, a critical essay, and Peter Vack … There was a lot going on.
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K Hank Jost
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Mar 11, 2024 11:44 am
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Blind Woman’s Curse Film Forum’s Japanese Horror Programming West Village, NYC 3/8/2024
Film Forum just can’t be beat, if I’m being honest. There’s not a week that goes by that they’re not there to provide a fantastic alternative to night in and locked away. Where else is one going to essentially stumble into a late showing of some heretofore unheard of Japanese horror film? Hell, where else is one going to reliably direct their stumbling, where else is one going to trust there would be something worth catching the fall?
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K Hank Jost
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Mar 10, 2024 10:08 am
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Heavy Traffic Magazine Launch Mast Books East Village, NYC 3/8/2024
It behooves any artist of any stripe to move through their milieu with mind questing to understand. One may and should have their precious personal project, their vision which no general trend or contemporary taste stands to shake them from, but always an artist keen to make work for the world around them and yet to come must cultivate a base of knowledge concerning the environment they occupy. It is in this spirit that I continue to go to literary events in NYC. It this spirit which led to my being turned away at a Forever Mag party a week ago, and it is in this spirit yet again that my partner and I attended the launch event for Patric McGraw’s Heavy Traffic Magazine — another of the few glossy lit mags to have cropped up out of the downtown scene in the last few years.
Dizzy Ventilators Big Bar East Village, NYC 3/3/2024
During a prior tenure as Big Bar’s Sunday night bartender, I could always count on a relatively profitable late-night push. Unusual for what is, if we’re to be frank, the worst shift one can work. Admittedly, this near-guaranteed brief bump in clientele was in no way on account of my presence behind the bar — sparkling charm and cracking conversational prowess are attributes of which I posses a constant dearth. Lucky for me, Daniel Jodocy and Yusuke Yamamoto, acting as Big Bar’s band-in-residence, the Dizzy Ventilators, were always there to draw the crowd.
Forever Magazine’s Issue 6 Release Party 99 Canal St. Chinatown, Manhattan
Something’s gone awry in NYC’s literary world.
To be properly cynical, I’m sure it’s always been this way, and my frustrations here will do nothing more than reveal myself a freshly hulled hayseed. So, before getting into this, I’d like to humbly offer my congratulations to everyone who never bought into the NYC-is-the-only-place-to-be propaganda, the folks who stayed the fuck where they’re from and are content to watch from afar, if at all, the shiftless vicissitudes of a scene eating its own tail.
Madeline Hollander: Entanglement Bortolami 39 Walker Through March 2
From the Tribeca Bortolami gallery room’s entrance, rows of cylindrical plinths, topped with flying saucer-like disks invite a remarkably unremarkable initial impression. That’s the first visual deception at one of the most surprising exhibitions that I recently visited in New York City.
