It makes sense to think of If Beale Street Could Talk as a Romeo and Juliet story in which white repression is the force keeping true lovers apart. The 22-year-old Fonny, short for Alfonso (Stephan James) is a young man with little money and the desire to be a sculptor. His lover, 19-year-old Tish (Kiki Layne) has just discovered she's pregnant. It all begins with Fonny in jail, wrongly accused of a violent rape. There's little or no money for the defense, the victim has fled to Puerto Rico and the New York politicians want the case prosecuted, no matter how fishy it is. When director and adapter Barry Jenkins (Moonlight) gets the lovers together, everything works. He seeks old-fashioned romantic movie intensity as they make love for the » Read More

Allow Ray's friend R. P. Gupta, in the book Satyajit Ray: An Intimate Master, describe the sensation it made. In Gupta's words, Ray "eliminated stagey make-ups, incongruities in costumes and anachronism in period details...that still held the Indian cinema in thrall." He brought the Indian cinema outside and into the village. In Pather Panchali (1955) the boy Apu is raised in a world of women, of sisters, mother and a gnarled old crone, the needy aunt Indir (Chunibala Devi). The attention to detail of the feminine side of life is so acute that it justifies Pauline Kael's comment that it was hard to believe that a man directed Ray's movies. » Read More

The gnarled, ungainly shapes are at odds with the lack of pigment. On real trees, these branches could be claws reaching out to harm strangers lost in an enchanted forest. But here they're bleached out to the pale color of something mild and antiseptic. "In this particular show, I'm working with plaster and gauze bandage, which are the traditional materials for casts for broken bones, for things that need mending," Fredette explains. And while her sculptures may resemble the leafless limbs of deciduous trees or some spare, bare shrubbery that's been whitewashed, the artist discloses what that pregnant, lonely pod actually is. » Read More

Walk through the black curtain behind the back gallery at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art and you'll get a taste of Tracey Adams and Virginia Folkestad's "Primordial Soup." They've created a prehistoric, pantry-sized diorama that depicts the beginning of life on Earth (or, at least, one postulation of it). Tendrils hang down everywhere. Some float from above like chandeliers at an octopus' dinner party. Others jut straight out of the walls. Amoeba-shaped critters are fixed in place but the squiggles on their backs suggest a scurrying motion as if they had unfinished business to carry out. Electronic music, composed by Jennifer Trust Wilkerson, drifts in and pulses out, summoning up an underwater version of a Dead Can Dance » Read More

The results, now on display at the New Museum of Los Gatos, are a revelation. Not so much in the individual cultural artifacts themselves but in culmination, as they offer a window on how each of the artists think. In this way, "Circle of Truth" works a bit like an old-fashioned psychological exam. It is a Rorschach test for the ages. It is the artist's psyche we see on the canvas, formulating thoughts or shouts or dreams. » Read More

In an age cluttered with Instagram influencers, YouTube stars and Russian Twitter bots, it may feel as though we've reached peak internet. There is more on-demand content to consume than ever before, and it is possible to access from just about anywhere--as long as there is decent WiFi or cellular service. But in her new book, Fiber: The Coming Tech Revolution--And Why America Might Miss It, Susan Crawford argues that we are only scraping the surface of the web's potential. Furthermore, the John A. Reilly clinical professor at Harvard Law School says there is much more at stake than crystal-clear 4K television. In fact, Crawford argues, if the United States continues to lag behind on its adoption of direct-to-consumer fiber optic networks, » Read More

Pasulka, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, will speak about American Cosmic on Jan. 17 at Cubberley Theatre in Palo Alto, sponsored by the Commonwealth Club-Silicon Valley, at 7pm. She is not a current or former government agent or conspiracy theorist. Instead, she analyzes the UFO phenomenon from an academic religious studies perspective, meaning she studies the resulting effects rather than whether or not anything is true. She also takes the approach of a media archaeologist in that she uses examples of forgotten media from previous eras to help examine how the current media landscape of cinema, TV and social media exacerbates and distorts the phenomenon. More than anything, American Cosmic » Read More

Men's continuing attraction to 20-something women makes evolutionary sense, as, the researchers note, the highest fertility in women "has been estimated to occur in the mid-20s." However, when older men are asked to think practically, women more similar in age have a shot. For example, research led by evolutionary social psychologist Abraham Buunk found that "men of 60 years old would marry a woman of 55." » Read More

Computer-generated special effects used in the 1993 film Jurassic Park may seem modest to us now, but at the time they were revolutionary. Inspired by the new possibilities revealed, filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick, George Lucas and Peter Jackson launched new projects they had previously thought to be beyond their ability to create. In 2019, I urge you to go in quest of your personal equivalent of Jurassic Park's pioneering breakthroughs. According to my analysis of the astrological omens, you may be able to find help and resources that enable you to get more serious about seemingly unfeasible or impractical dreams. » Read More