OH, MOTHER! Can this really be the end? To be stuck in J-Law's earhole with the Messiah blues again? Scene after scene, in tight closeup on Jennifer Lawrence's face, we peer into her eyeballs as if we were ophthalmologists. Watching Mother! you'd suspect that Lawrence was wearing a mechanical camera rig to follow her as closely as possible, some sort of selfie-stick cum halo-cast. She's been accused of overacting, but with the camera this close, it's Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan) who imprisons her. Every bad thing that happens-rather, every thing that's probably going to turn out bad-follows with a cut to Lawrence so she can react to it. We know exactly how she feels at every moment. Some ambiguity would have spiced up this Kafka fable » Read More

There are two ways to look at J.D. Salinger. The insufferably titled biopic Rebel in the Rye looks at only one of them. One is to consider Salinger as a veteran who triumphed over his PTSD to write the beloved Catcher in the Rye--whose desire to renounce all distraction, all "phoniness" made him turn his back on the world and forbid a film version of Catcher. And it's not that Salinger hated cinema--there are affectionate passages in Catcher about Sir Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (1948) and Hitchcock's The 39 Steps (1935). The other way to look at Salinger is as a snob-prince whose magnum opus created the scourge known as young adult literature: at its worst, so easy to read, so cravenly flattering to the adolescent perspective. » Read More

"Curiouser" at Cantor Arts Center gathers together several different series like this one from the artist's extant oeuvre. Katchadourian's dry wit is engaging. The overall impact of the exhibit erases the formal distance between the framed, mounted art and the viewing public. This is especially true when she is the subject of her own work. For example, the photographs in Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style draw the viewer in closer because you want in on the joke. Katchadourian writes that the genesis of these self-portraits began for her on long airplane flights. She would retreat into the lavatory and shape the paper products there into clothing accessories as seen in 16th and 17th century Flemish paintings. There are » Read More

Several years and a cross-continental move later, her work still centers on the human body. Through a deliberate use of color, light and sacred iconography, the New York-based painter creates images that evoke the most intimate and sexually explicit moments of our lives. "When I started realizing I wanted to paint, it just felt natural to make paintings about my own physical bodily experiences--my personal narrative, which is something I've always felt I have complete control over," Hollowell says. » Read More

Don Alfonso counters, wagering that he can prove all women are fickle—even the officers' beloved Dorabella and Fiordiligi. The men accept, and soon they are pretending to be called off to war, then disguising themselves in Eastern European garb and false mustaches, as they attempt to seduce each other's lover. At first, Dorabella and Fiordiligi are perplexed at their new "Albanian" guests, and are just as quick to deny their advances. But with a little finagling, lying, and with the added support of Don Alfonso (along with the ever-changing personas of chambermaid Despina), Ferrando and Guglielmo soon get in over their heads, risking their lovers for the sake of a misogynist gamble. » Read More

One of the nation's most infamous serial killers, Jeffrey Dahmer was just one more kid that nobody noticed. A bullied misfit in a small, rural Ohio town in the mid-1970s, he dissected roadkill in secret, skinning it to get to the bones. He drank heavily, showing up stinking of booze at school, trying to drown his unspeakable urges. In his own numb, dead-faced way, Dahmer was always willing to participate in pranks. He got a kick out of pretending to be a spastic-lapsing into fits, cawing, bleating and brandishing a twisted-up arm, pranking the squares at the local mall or livening up the school cafeteria. A fellow student who helped put him up to the tricks was one John Backderf. » Read More

For the first time in San Jose, more than 100 men will wear their finest tailored suits while riding classic or vintage-styled motorcycles for charity. Call it Triumph meets Tweed, or Mad Men on Motorbikes, if you will, but the Distinguished Gentleman's Ride, as it has come to be known, now unfolds in 600-plus cities throughout the world. Thousands of dudded-up and dapper dudes take to the streets to raise money for prostate cancer and men's mental health, with people from Melbourne to Serbia, from Vietnam to Wales, from Peru and Morocco to India and the Philippines all contributing. If you don't ride a motorcycle but still harbor a passion for the cause, sponsor a rider or make an anonymous donation. » Read More

Women have a tendency to be hinty and otherwise indirect in telling a guy they aren't interested. As personal security expert Gavin de Becker puts it in "The Gift of Fear": "Rejecting women often say less than they mean," and "men often hear less than what is said." Men's poor, um, hearing actually seems to be an evolutionary design feature. Research by evolutionary psychologists Martie Haselton and David Buss suggests that men evolved to be poor guessers about women's sexual interest in them--erring on the side of assuming a woman's interested when they have no definitive sign that she isn't (as in adult variations on "off my case, toilet face!"). » Read More

Psychologists say most people need a scapegoat--a personification of wickedness and ignorance onto which they can project the unacknowledged darkness in their own hearts. That's the bad news. Here's the good news: The coming weeks will be an excellent time for you to neutralize that reflex and at least partially divest yourself of the need for scapegoats. How? The first thing to do is identify your own darkness with courageous clarity. Get to know it better. Converse with it. Negotiate with it. The more conscientiously you deal with that shadowy stuff within you, the less likely you'll be to demonize other people. » Read More