Caked with mud, Emma Stone's Abigail arrives at Queen Anne's palace. Abigail notices that she's not just filthy, but she smells. A servant says, "They shit in the streets around here. Political commentary, they call it." For similar reasons, what Yorgos Lanthimos does in The Favourite could be called historical fictionalizing. One understands the desire of Lanthimos (Dogtooth, The Lobster) to toss some mud at a wide-eyed cinema sweetheart like Emma Stone; it's like Bunuel slapping mire on Deneuve in Belle du Jour. And the era invites mockery; the first decade of the 1700s were something like peak foppery, with mile-high wigs and white makeup to conceal syphilis sores. » Read More

Viggo Mortensen is Tony "Lip" Vallelonga, a hustler of 1962 with the customary racist tendencies of an Italian neighborhood wiseguy. He (record needle-scratch) ends up as a driver, valet and personal assistant for a hoity-toity African American pianist, Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali) headed to tour the deep south. It's true, or truish; Shirley was a multi-talented artist, friends with Duke Ellington, a performer at the White House and the Boston Pops alike. Green Book is named after a periodical that used to let black travelers know where it was safe for them to eat and stay: a bit of history that deserves acknowledgement. » Read More

Instead of making a collage to fit inside of a frame, Murray (1940-2007) started each new work by sketching out her ideas. Then her bulbous, gangly forms would come to dictate the organic shapes of her canvases. The massive painting Bop (2002-2003) epitomizes her approach. It's an amalgamation of bold colors that challenges the viewer to come up with a logical response to it. A geometry assignment given at a clown college with a garish palette to match. Ketchup red outlines a distended yellow letter "M," which, in turn, exhales a teal ghost. The ghost is about to collide into a pink worm with holes cut out of its midsection.. » Read More

Few people can cast a spell simply by entering a room. Tandy Beal can. With the carriage of a queen and the grace of a Botticelli sylph, the dancer-turned-impresario personifies joie de vivre. Energizing a stage or critiquing a new work-in-progress, Beal is as fully alive, active andengaged as it is possible to be. Or at least that's what it looks like to her many students, audiences and fellow dancers. And it has for more decades than seems possible. Beal of the dark eyes, long limbs and infamous mane of Pre-Raphaelite hair just can't quit. She's been everywhere, collaborated with everyone from Frank Zappa to Bobby McFerrin, and directed both the Moscow Circus and Pickle Family Circus. Her company, Tandy Beal & Company, has been provoking » Read More

Diane Samuels is a bibliophile's bibliophile. In the exhibit "It's a Long Story" at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, she's transcribed, verbatim, lengthy tomes like Herman Melville's Moby-Dick and The Odyssey by Homer. But her enthusiasm for the written word, including contemporary authors like Salman Rushdie and Richard Powers, doesn't muddle what she accomplishes with her visual inventiveness. The words form the essential core of each piece, but they complement and enhance the sculptural nature of her paintings and drawings. » Read More

Life in the Mushroom Kingdom is a grand adventure. Even though it's filled with koopas and piranha plants, it's a place where the sky is always blue and a hero is never far away. That hero, of course, is a little fellow in a red cap and blue overalls. A man whose modest profession brought him to an amazing new world. A plumber named Mario. For 37 years now, Mario has been synonymous with fun and adventure--a character loved the world over. But while most people think of him as hailing from Brooklyn (where he is said to live) or Tokyo (where he was created by Nintendo), the lesser known fact is that Mario is actually from San Jose--or at least his voice is. » Read More

Between the Hammer and the Ha Ha, I went looking for Veggielution. Why? Because jackfruit mole tamales and vegan hot chocolate are great ways to activate dead public spaces. A full-functioning urban farm located at the far back corner of Emma Prusch Park in East San Jose, Veggielution already serves up a bouillabaisse of community activities, including farm tours, garden adventures and all sorts of educational initiatives. People can dig in the soil, cook in the kitchen or harass the pesky peacocks that invade the farm. I've done each of those things myself. "We went out in East San Jose and we actually walked around and talked to vendors and basically recruited them on the street," said Emily Schwing, Veggielution's development » Read More

Each of us gets into the holiday spirit in our own special way. Some of us build gingerbread houses; some of us build gingerbread psychiatric hospitals. To understand how you can long for human connection and (ugh!) long to avoid it at the very same time, it helps to understand the mechanics of loneliness. Like other emotions, loneliness is "adaptive," meaning it has a function. It most likely evolved to motivate ancestral humans to behave in ways that would help them survive and mate. (Survival in the harsh ancestral environment would have been strongly connected with social bonds, and mating without a partner tends to be a bust for those who aren't aphids or slime mold.) » Read More

When I write a horoscope for you, I focus on one or two questions because I don't have room to cover every single aspect of your life. The theme I've chosen this time may seem a bit impractical, but if you take it to heart, I guarantee you it will have practical benefits. It comes from Italian author Umberto Eco. He wrote, "Perhaps the mission of those who love humanity is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth." I swear to you, Aries, that if you laugh at the truth and make the truth laugh in the coming days, you will be guided to do all the right and necessary things. » Read More