The toughest part of writing about San Francisco's Jejune Institute "thing" was trying to describe it, something I attempted to do for this site twice. In a first piece about the citywide game, which was put on by a group called Nonchalance, I went with "[p]art public-art installation, part scavenger hunt, part multimedia experiment, part narrative story." For the follow-up, I added "underground alternate reality game" to the mix. Both summaries missed the mark, partly because of my own inadequacies as a writer, but also a symptom of the project's sprawling originality—it wasn't like anything else out there, and that was part of what made it [...]

Do you like that guy Zach Condon's band Beirut? I sure do. He wrote a very nice new song recently (with especially nice horn parts, as you might expect), and played it in Norfolk, Virginia on Monday. (It's funny that a band named after city makes a song named after a different city. Beirut has done this before, though with a less famous city for the song. Some other band must have done it, too. But can't think of any other examples. Does Boston have a song called "Helsinki?" Did Berlin ever cover Seger's "Katmandu?") Oh, Beirut has a new album coming this summer, which is [...]

Not only are the facts and premise of the documentary Waiting for Superman not at all right, but now we learn that at least one scene was staged for the film. This touching scene from the documentary (the overall storyline of which is: poor people desperately yearning to get into charter and private schools), in which a mother first tours the Harlem Success Academy and oohs and ahs, was actually staged after her child was rejected. Here's the director, Davis Guggenheim, telling the Times about that: "So that scene is real; her reaction, her talking to kids touring the school, is how she would play it." So [...]

Man, I'm psyched to see The Promise, a documentary about the making of Bruce Springsteen's 1978 album Darkness on the Edge of Town, my favorite Springsteen album (which is a little bit like saying, "the favorite part of my heart.") Directed by longtime Springsteen cinematographer Thom Zimmy, it's set to premiere at the Toronto Film Festival next month, along with interesting-sounding documentaries by Errol Morris, Alex Gibney, and Werner Herzog (whose Cave of Forgotten Dreams is about prehistoric cave paintings and is for some reason shot in 3D.) HBO will be airing The Promise for me in October-and for you, if you want to see it too.

This year I went to Sundance, saw 24 films in six days, and whew! somehow lived to tell the tale. I tried my hardest to see everything that sounded intriguing but, with more than a hundred films screening, it was inevitable that I would miss out on some good ones. I’m still upset that I got shut out of Bachelorette, for example.

But I did get to see some fantastic films, which was a nice consolation for my complete failure on the celeb-sighting-at-Sundance front. What I would have given to spot Robert DeNiro in the wintry climes of Park City! Instead, I got cut in line at a nightclub [...]

The clear, steady gaze of Mildred Jeter Loving looks right at you from the photographs. Then there’s the shy, smitten glance of her husband Richard at the skinny woman he called “Bean.” In never-before-seen archival footage, their daughter, Peggy, faces down the camera as her mother pulls knee socks onto her legs, her brothers playing in the background. We’re getting a privileged glimpse into a loving family. The Loving family, who lent their name to the Loving v. Virginia decision, delivered on June 12, 1967, by the unanimous Warren Court, which invalidated anti-miscegenation laws in Virginia and 15 other Southern states.

The Loving Story is director Nancy [...]

Obviously I have not watched all the finalists in the Vimeo Awards but this one struck me as excellent. There is also in the documentary category as well this video but I suspect it's a little too heartbreaking for the middle of the workday. (SPOILER: I THINK THE DOG DIES. Maybe you need a cathartic breakdown?)