“Dreams of Violets,” which premiered last week at the Tribeca Festival, is the first movie generated entirely by AI to be programmed at a major film festival — and it’s also the first movie generated entirely by AI that I’ve seen. As such, those of us at the premiere were really watching — and evaluating — … Read more
With Robin Byrd, you kind of had to be there. There, in this case, being the red-orange dank no-man’s land of late-night Manhattan public-access cable TV in the ’70s and ’80s. That’s where Robin Byrd, in her black-crochet bikini, with her caramel-blonde hair and white-as-Elmer’s-glue fingernails and spaced-out grin, was the beckoning host of her … Read more
“Cotton Fever,” “Here I’m Alive” and “Summer of Three” are among this year’s Tribeca Festival winners. In the narrative competition category, the top winners were Daniel Blake Schwartz’s “Cotton Fever” and Joshua Z Weinstein’s “Here I’m Alive,” with Marcel Ruiz, Paolo Schoene and Kiki Montilla taking home awards for their performances in “Summer of Three,” … Read more
If you look at the history of cults, especially the ones that began to flourish in America in the 1970s, when they’d absorbed a lot of the New Age mystical we’re-all-Jesus let-your-primal-feelings-out messianic psychedelic trappings of the ’60s, you’ll see that almost every cult has two things in common. They’re led by snake-oil gurus who … Read more
The Tribeca Festival has condemned the jokes made on the red carpet of “The Wedding Entertainer (The Tale of Moishe Badhan)” by comedian Elon Gold and influencer Lizzy Savetsky about the rape of Palestinians, calling them “offensive and unacceptable.” In a clip that was widely shared on social media, drawing outrage, Gold noted that the … Read more
Jodie Foster reminisced about her time playing 12-year-old prostitute Iris in “Taxi Driver” alongside Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro and Paul Schrader during the film’s 50th anniversary reunion at the Tribeca Festival. One memory that remains “seared in [her] memory” is arriving on set and finding Scorsese and De Niro unable to stop giggling as … Read more
On Friday night, Madonna and a dedicated legion of her fans descended upon the iconic Beacon Theater on Manhattan’s Upper West Side for the premiere of “Confessions II – The Film.” The screening was followed by a Q&A with the queen of pop herself, alongside directing duo TORSO, otherwise known as David Toro and Solomon … Read more
Sean Penn hates selfies and will not, under any circumstances, go to a public gathering with more than eight people — which is why he was noticeably absent from the recent 98th Academy Awards, where he won Best Supporting Actor (his third Oscar). The revelations came during a conversation between Penn and CNN anchor Kaitlin … Read more
The first time I saw William Friedkin’s 1980 gay crime thriller “Cruising” may have been decades ago, but I will never forget how surprised I was that a movie like that was made in the 1970s. “Cruising” stars Al Pacino as a straight New York City police officer who goes undercover in the gay leather … Read more
AI as we know it has been used for everything from making full-length feature films to solving nearly impossible math problems. But today AI is also, relatively speaking, just a child. That said, AI is a child that has learned languages, how to play games, how to blackmail people, how to power robots and, in … Read more