Tribeca 2022: An Awkward Destination Wedding in ‘The Drop’

By Abe Friedtanzer

 

People tend to behave differently when they’re on vacation -- it's the the whole “what happens in Vegas” trope. Being away from home is a break from reality even if you have to be home on Monday for work. But it doesn’t actually change reality. Your actions can still have implications beyond your trip not to mention puncturing the bliss in the moment. Something like dropping a baby, for example, can definitely ruin the vibe…

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Review: Sandra Oh in "The Chair"

by Lynn Lee

In my younger days, I wanted to be an English professor.  I was pretty serious about it, too – serious enough to major in English, get a fellowship, and enroll in a Ph.D program.  Ultimately, I realized academia wasn’t for me and left with just a master’s.  I’ve never regretted that decision.  Yet I still wonder occasionally what my life would have been like if I’d stuck with my original dream.

So it’s no wonder I immediately let myself sink into The Chair, a new Netflix (mini?)series starring Sandra Oh as the titular chair of the English department at Pembroke University. That's a fictional Ivy League school in what looks like a permanently snow-covered New England college town, although the show was actually shot in Pennsylvania.  Basically, it’s my alternate-universe existence if I were as cool and charismatic as Sandra Oh and as brilliant and committed as her character, Ji-Yoon Kim...

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The Timeliness and Timelessness of "Landline"

By Spencer Coile 

During a pivotal scene in Gillian Robespierre's Landline, just out on DVD, a familiar song begins to play. Curious to figure out what it was, I quickly Shazamed it on my phone to discover that it was Angel Olsen's 2016 song "Sister." It is an epic song -- almost eight minutes long, discussing the longing nature of wanting to change. I was initially delighted to hear a song that resonated with me back when years ago. But why was a tune from the late 2010's playing in a film that takes place in 1995? 

Landline is a film that is all about time. It is rooted firmly in the mid-90's with plenty of political, social, and pop culture references (Jenny Slate's Dana remarks that her and her fiancé rented Curly Sue from Blockbuster and that "it's a good film"). The use of "Sister," however, speaks to the film's transcendence from a period piece to one that is equally as relevant in 2017...

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Transparent S4 E1-3: Off to Israel

by Chris Feil

The opening theme music to Transparent by Dustin O’Halloran always chokes me up. Something about its evolving images and sound carry the weight of the shared histories - LGBTQ, Judaism, and family - speaks to both the known and still secreted past that makes the Pfefferman clan all too relatable. Like the rest of us, they’ve been somewhere and it hasn’t been easy. But from the opening emotive thrum, the theme now incorporating pilgrimage images and a traditional Jewish instrumentation, this season announces that it’s going somewhere too.

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Transparent Season 3. Part 3 - The Wrap Up

The marvelously special Amazon show Transparent, keeps on delivering dynamically as season 3 wraps up.  When Chris left us off, faith and religion had begun to take a firmer hold on the show and its characters, and Josh (Jay Duplass) was on his way to visit his biological son Colton to tell him of mother Rita’s death...

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