You don’t have to be elected to spend a day here. via Facebook
Time to get on Island Time! Governors Island is back for what appears to be its best season to date. As big changes get underway on the island, vendors, events, and displays aren’t slowing down. For the perfect day sojourn, choose from any of the events listed below (and many more that we couldn’t list because, you know… space) or just post up under a tree and read. Don’t have a book? Visit the Uni Project’s outdoor reading room and select a tome—they’ve partnered with the NYPL, Brooklyn and Queens Libraries to bring you a great selection.
You could also bike, or nap, or play mini-golf (this year’s theme: “State of the Art”). (more…)
TropFest, the world's largest short film festival, is happening in Prospect Park on June 22nd
Tropfest, the world’s largest short film festival, is moving to Brooklyn on June 22nd. This fantastic fete in Prospect Park has all the things we love: big stars, free entry, and lots of movies. We’re so excited to have this show in our fair borough that we’re giving away two VIP passes to one lucky brokester!
This ain’t your grandmother’s giveaway. Tropfest is BIG — over 10,000 people showed up at last year’s US festival. With these passes you’ll get off the main lawn and into the VIP tent. You’ll be hanging out with just 250 people, among them festival host Liev Schreiber, the participating filmmakers, and the entire panel of celebrity judges. You also get reserved seating for the show and free food and drink!
Starting at 3 p.m. Chairlift, the DJs from Neon Indian, Bear in Heaven, Ghost Beach, and People Get Ready will be spinning and playing. At 6:30 there’s a black carpet event in the VIP tent with Liev Schreiber and the judges. Then at 8, Liev takes the stage and kicks off the main event: the screening of the short film competition.
Tropfest was started in the early 90s by filmmaker John Polson when he showed his own six-minute short at the Tropicana Cafe in Sydney, Australia. From these small roots the festival has grown into a worldwide event at venues in the Middle East, Asia, Europe, India, New Zealand, and, of course, Brooklyn (with even more places to be announced). Despite its immense popularity, the festival remains free for all to attend.
Interested? Of course you are! To enter just put in your e-mail address below. You can earn more entries by liking Tropfest on Facebook, tweeting about it, and getting friends involved. This contest ends soon so don’t miss out on this chance to experience Tropfest like a movie star.
Great place to go back to the future. via Facebook
You guys tired of all the free outdoor movies happening this summer? We know, it’s like, “Hey man, let us PAY for our entertainment, you’re making it too easy.” Well, bad news for those of you intent on paying: Habana Outpost‘s typically excellent Sunday summer movie schedule just landed on our inbox, and guess what? It’s a bunch of free excellent movies. (more…)
Odds of being on the next Times’ hip hop tour? 10,000:1
Awesome rap news giveth, awesome rap news taketh away. In what we can only assume is a tryout to be an Urban Outfitters spokesperson/Macklemore opening act, a Bushwick resident going by Lifestream made a video:
OK, so the sunglasses behind sunglasses gag never gets old. The rest of it, well, whatever. When you tell people you live in Bushwick, just point to something like its thriving freight train-hopping scene or actual legitimately cool tiny libraries. And if anyone does ask you about this, just tell them it was filmed in Ridgewood.
Their show could be your life. Or is it the other way around? Ugh, we give up
TV: teacher, mother, secret lover. Despite the fact that we don’t own one, we still try to keep up with what’s going on in the world of the pictocube. One thing we strenuously try to avoid though, is aping the characters on TV shows. This is mostly accomplished by watching shows with sociopath protagonists, like Archer, Mad Men and Breaking Bad. We’d argue that Girls should be on that list, since even at their most sympathetic, the characters on that show are still terrible. But, a lot like how dudes still want to be Don Draper despite the fact that he’s just awful, people in their 20s want to be, or think they are, Hannah Horvath. So of course someone advertised an open room in their apartment as being a scene straight out of Girls. (more…)
Make a film that you can watch faster than you can say its name. Via Tribeca Film Festival.
Ever wanted to participate in the Tribeca Film Festival, but never had time to produce one of those pesky full-length films? There’s an app for that. This year the Festival is introducing the Vine Competition, an online forum for micro-films. And, if you can show that you’ve got the chops, it could put $600 dollars in your pocket. (more…)
Sunday is a big day for people of a certain faith. Who look to great books to answer their questions about life, human nature and moral ways to act. What? No, what’s Easter? We were talking about it being a day that three cult television shows air on the same day, two of them at the same time even. Game of Thrones and Doctor Who kick off their long-awaited new seasons Sunday (Doctor Who premieres Saturday for you fancy lads with cable, but the party is Sunday), while third season of The Walking Dead shambles to its season finale, with all the related clifhanging and shocks that go along with it. And if you don’t have a TV, you’re missing out. Or are you? Here a few spots that will get you your fix of either time traveling, bloody court intrigue or zombies, depending on what you want. (more…)
Will the hungry crowds be sated this year? Festival organizers hope so. Photo by Rachel DeLetto
Like we mentioned yesterday in the news that the Great GoogaMooga is returning to Prospect Park this summer, last year’s festival had a few logistical mishaps. Long food lines, a really, really expensive VIP area where even the celebrities brought to hang out with you were openly contemptuous skeptical of the price of admission and vegans being placed in special ejection seats if they asked for quinoa were only a few of the complaints that people had.
But, New Yorkers are always willing to give people second chances: don’t forget that Rudy Giuliani lost his first mayoral campaign. Uh, bad analogy maybe. Anyway, the organizers have promised that they learned from last year’s mishaps, so let’s take a look at some of the ImproovaMoovements on the horizon. (more…)
Prospect Park got its first taste of the major festival experience last summer with The Great GoogaMooga. And while it was maybe a little bit of a shitshow, that’s no reason to not give it another try. So GoogaMooga is back this year, and they’ve made some changes. The festival will be three days (May 17-19) instead of two, it’ll have a larger general admission area and more places to buy the food and beers that the festival is all about. The Friday show will cost $50 and will feature the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the Flaming Lips; the free shows Saturday and Sunday will feature Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, Matt & Kim, De La Soul, Cults and Sharon Van Etten and 85 NYC restaurants.
Here’s the press release with all the details: (more…)
Name that Brooklyn bar. Photo courtesy of F#%king Up Everything.
For purposes of this review, I am breaking Brokelyn’s number one, OK, only editorial rule: no using the term “hipster.” This transgression is required by the fact that new off Broadway musical, F#%king Up Everything, describes itself in press materials as a “Brooklyn hipster musical.” I know… When I received the press release for the show I cringed at the the flagrant use of that word and was curious to see how many ridiculous Brooklyn clichés could possibly be packed into song and dance numbers. The answer is a lot. But that didn’t stop me from loving it. Which is basically how I feel about Brooklyn.
F#%ing Up Everything premiered last night Elektra Theater in Times Square. I was skeptical, but I didn’t hate it. In fact, I smiled and laughed along with the rest of the audience through almost the entire show with very little eye rolling. If you can’t enjoy a lighthearted musical that doesn’t take itself too seriously, uses lots of dirty sex puns and includes campy indie-rock songs about bongs, areolas, jizzing your Superman undies and pooping yourself, well then you’re just dead inside. (more…)
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