More stories

  • in

    New York Comedy Festival Recommendations

    The intriguing options range from well-known names like Bill Maher and Tracy Morgan to under-the-radar standups like Chloe Radcliffe and Jay Jurden.When the New York Comedy Festival started in 2004, it was a modest affair, with only a dozen standup shows. Twenty years later, it has grown into a bustling, sprawling staple of the comedy season, featuring more than 100 shows, big and small, in every borough. The festival begins Thursday and runs through Nov. 17. Here are a few promising options.‘Chloe Radcliffe: Cheat’Chelsea Music Hall, SundayMore than a decade ago, a Hollywood producer told me you couldn’t make a movie about a woman who cheats on her boyfriend or spouse and still retain the audience’s sympathy. The stand-up Chloe Radcliffe proves him wrong in this personal solo show that explores infidelity (her own and the subject broadly) with a refreshing candor and open-mindedness. “Cheat” finds a new take on an old subject while delivering hard-hitting punchlines.Bill Maher: The WTF TourBeacon Theater, Nov. 16In a festival that doesn’t seem especially packed with political comics, Bill Maher, who has performed at the event more than any other comic, stands out. He has talked about giving up standup and focusing on his weekly HBO show and podcast, so who knows if this will be his swan song. In September he predicted Donald J. Trump would lose. What will he say now?Jay JurdenGramercy Theater, MondayWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • in

    David Harris, Actor in the Cult Classic ‘The Warriors,’ Dies at 75

    He played Cochise, a member of the Warriors gang who navigated a panoply of costumed aggressors in New York City.David Harris, who played a member of a street gang in the 1979 cult classic movie “The Warriors,” died on Friday at his home in New York City. He was 75.His daughter, Davina Harris, said the cause was cancer.As the Warriors evaded and did battle with rival crews in New York City streets and subway cars, Mr. Harris in the role of Cochise dutifully supported his brothers. In a gang that conformed to matching red leather vests, Cochise cut a defiant presence with his headband and turquoise necklaces that bobbed to the rhythm of their violent journey home to Coney Island.After the Warriors are falsely accused of killing a gang leader, they have to navigate a panoply of colorful and costumed rivals — malevolent mimes, pinstriped baseball bat thumpers and villains aboard a school bus fit for “Mad Max.”In a movie with moments (the sinister bottle clinking, the baritone bellow of “Can you dig it?”) that have been recreated and parodied in media in the decades since the film’s release, one of Mr. Harris’s scenes inside a rival gang’s den was a central point in the mayhem.After being seduced by an all-female gang, a party in an apartment quickly turns sideways, with a hand near Mr. Harris’s face suddenly wielding a switchblade. He bobs and dodges, jumps and jukes before swinging a chair and plowing through a door that allows him and his fellow members to escape bullets and blades.“We thought it was a little film that would run its little run and go, and nobody would ever talk about it again,” Mr. Harris said in an interview in 2019 with ADAMICradio, an online channel about TV, films and comics.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • in

    A New Venue Celebrates the Sound of the Bronx

    The Bronx Music Hall is the first new independent music venue in the borough in more than 50 years.Good morning. It’s Friday. Today we’ll get a look at the Bronx Music Hall, the first brand-new music performance space to open in that borough in more than 50 years.David Dee Delgado for The New York TimesThe 250-seat music performance space that is opening tonight in the Melrose section of the Bronx began with a cassette recording that was played at a staff meeting of a nonprofit organization. This was in the early 2000s, when cassette tapes were still a thing.The tape was a sampling of the musical legacy of the Bronx — music that had been written or performed there.“Everyone’s eyes lit up,” recalled Nancy Biberman, who at the time was the president of the nonprofit, the Women’s Housing and Economic Development Corporation.She remembers telling herself after the meeting that “maybe we are thinking too narrowly about what community development could mean — it’s not just bricks and mortar.” That realization morphed into thinking about what tenants would want besides basic needs like food, health care and education. What would make them happy?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • in

    Ka, Lone Soldier of New York’s Underground Rap Scene, Dies at 52

    The rapper, whose name was Kaseem Ryan, was known for self-producing 11 albums while also a maintaining a career with the New York Fire Department.Kaseem Ryan, who built a small but fervent following as an underground Brooklyn rapper known as Ka while maintaining a career as a New York City firefighter, died in the city on Saturday. He was 52.His death was announced by his wife, Mimi Valdés, on Instagram, as well as in a statement posted on his Instagram page. No cause was given, though the statement said that he had “died unexpectedly.”First with the mid-1990s underground group Natural Elements, and then on 11 solo albums he produced himself and released over nearly two decades, Ka gripped hard-core hip-hop listeners with gloomy beats and vivid descriptions of street life and struggle.In a 2012 review of his second album “Grief Pedigree”, The New York Times pop music critic Jon Caramanica described Ka as “a striking rapper largely for what he forgoes: flash, filigree, any sense that the hard work is already done.”Kaseem Ryan was born in 1972 and raised in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn in New York. During his teen years, he dealt crack and sold firearms.He spent much of the 1990s trying to make a name for himself as a rapper, but then quit music altogether, only to come back a decade later.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • in

    Filmed in New York, Hold the Taxis and Radiators

    When independent movies like “Rosemead” travel to a state for tax incentives, they save money but add creative challenges.On a rainy morning this past January, Roosevelt Avenue in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens was a stream of yellow cabs, honking buses and weaving cyclists. Nearby, a film crew peering out the windows of a Chinese pharmacy discussed how to make all of that invisible.The film it was making, “Rosemead,” starring Lucy Liu as an immigrant mother with a mentally unwell teenage son, was based on a real-life story and set in the San Gabriel Valley of sunny Southern California. Any signs of the East Coast would need to be hidden. No cabs, no buses, no bare trees and overcast sky.“That’s a very New York-looking trash can,” said Liz Power, an assistant director, ruefully eyeing the green receptacle just outside the pharmacy’s glass door.Filming “Rosemead” in Rosemead, Calif., would certainly have been easier. But the producers had decided on New York over California because of tax credits.According to a survey by The New York Times, states have spent $25 billion on tax incentives over the past two decades to lure Hollywood, often competing against one another. New York State, which writes checks to studios of up to 40 percent of their costs producing a movie or TV show, has handed out more than $7 billion to entice productions from California, which has dedicated more than $3 billion to try to retain them.The movie industry says the incentives help create jobs and spending in the communities where they film, but economists have long been skeptical of whether they create enough value to justify the taxpayer cost. More

  • in

    Sean Combs Will Try Another Appeal of Judge’s Decision to Deny Bail

    Mr. Combs is in a Brooklyn jail awaiting trial on federal charges of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy.The music mogul Sean Combs has given notice that he will file a second appeal of a judge’s order that denied him bail and sent him to a Brooklyn jail while he awaits trial on charges of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy.In a brief form filed with federal court in Manhattan, lawyers for Mr. Combs indicated that they would be appealing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Judge Andrew L. Carter Jr. had denied Mr. Combs’s first appeal of a federal judge’s order that he be held in the detention facility until trial.Attorneys for Mr. Combs did not immediately respond to a request for further information about his appeal.As recently as last week, Mr. Combs’s lawyers had informed Judge Carter that they did not, at that point, intend to ask for Mr. Combs to be moved from the Metropolitan Detention Center, a federal facility in Brooklyn.The M.D.C., as that facility is known, has been harshly criticized by lawyers and advocates for what they say are poor conditions and chronic understaffing. But in a statement last week, Marc Agnifilo, a lawyer for Mr. Combs, spoke positively about the facility, saying the “dedicated professionals at the M.D.C. are doing everything possible to help him and his lawyers prepare his defense, and I personally thank them.”“I can’t say enough good things about the M.D.C.,” Mr. Agnifilo added, “which has been responsive to our and his needs.”In arguing for Mr. Combs’s release on bail, his lawyers have suggested a variety of measures to ensure he would not flee before trial, including offering to post a $50 million bond as security if he were released. They have emphasized that their client has been cooperating with the prosecutors’ investigation for months, and that he had taken steps to fund the bond offer. Under an unusual proposal, which a federal judge rejected, Mr. Combs would have agreed to remain at his mansion in Florida, monitored around the clock by a private security force.But prosecutors have fought to keep Mr. Combs behind bars, citing concerns that he will tamper with witnesses if given the opportunity and that he is prone to violence. Judges have so far sided with the government, leaving him in the same unit of M.D.C. as Sam Bankman-Fried, the crypto mogul convicted of fraud. More

  • in

    Jessel Taank is Back For More on ‘RHONY’ Season 2

    Early on a Monday evening during New York Fashion Week, Jessel Taank breezed into the Sabyasachi boutique in the West Village, passing a life-size elephant sculpture near the sidewalk. But the “Real Housewives of New York City” star couldn’t quite say what it was doing there.“Good question,” she said with a laugh. “There’s apparently a great elephant migration that I wasn’t aware happens this time of year, and Sabyasachi is celebrating that tonight.”In fact, The Great Elephant Migration is a touring art installation featuring a herd of 100 faux pachyderms, handcrafted in Tamil Nadu from a dried invasive shrub. (Actual Indian elephant migration in India happens year-round.)Such obliviousness to details seems on brand for Ms. Taank, 41. After all, who could forget when she called TriBeCa “up and coming” on the last season of the “Real Housewives of New York City”?Ms. Taank with an art installation outside the Sabyaschi fashion week party she attended on a recent Monday night. Lanna Apisukh for The New York TimesBut when she commits these faux pas, she does so with a disarming smile, one that has won over prickly fans. By the end of the show’s 14th season — and the first of the cast reboot — it was clear that she had received the villain edit, criticized for what came off as willful ignorance and bratty behavior. But she had also found a fan base so ardent that, according to Rolling Stone, its members call themselves “Taank Tops.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • in

    Only Connect: Meredith Monk’s Antidote to What Divides Us

    As the story goes, Indra, the king of the gods, takes a net and stretches it across the universe. At each joint is a jewel, unique and infinitely faceted, that reflects all the others in an endless web of interdependence.This tale, from Indian myth, and shared by Hinduism and Buddhism, is the basis for Meredith Monk’s immense, interdisciplinary “Indra’s Net,” which has its North American staged premiere at the Park Avenue Armory on Monday. The concluding installment in a trilogy about connectedness and the natural world, it arrives at the start of Monk’s 60th performance season, and in New York, where her idiosyncratic artistry has long been synonymous with the downtown scene and spirit.“I just am really grateful that I’ve had a life where I’ve done what I’ve loved all these years,” said Monk, 81, a polymathic avant-gardist who has long eluded categorization, and has composed, choreographed, directed, sung and played in her works. “I’ve held out this long, and my voice is holding out.”Listen to Meredith Monk sing a theme from “Indra’s Net.”“Indra’s Net” is preceded in the trilogy by “On Behalf of Nature” (2013) and “Cellular Songs” (2018), but it was the first to enter Monk’s mind. Nearly 15 years ago, she was working on “Weave” for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra; written for two vocal soloists, an orchestra and chorus, its structure recalled, for her, the myth’s story. But the title “Indra’s Net” didn’t feel right for that piece, so she held on to it for later.Still, she was haunted by the title and the story. Monk is an artist who embraces humanity with Whitmanesque generosity, and her earlier works have shared themes with the interconnectedness of Indra’s net. It was at the front of her mind as she made drawings after the premiere of “Weave.” And then again one afternoon as she sat at her piano and came up with eight-bar themes for “jewels” in the net. But she put all that away and wrote “On Behalf of Nature” instead.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More