In 1953, the democratically elected government of Iran was being overthrown thanks to a CIA-backed coup d’état with the aid of an oil-greedy Great Britain. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was installed, and numerous lives were lost, not counting many freedoms. The aftermath? Turn on CNN.

Situated in that pivotal year, photographer Shirin Neshat’s startling feature debut, Women Without Men, is meant as a tribute to those Iranis who fought, those who were crushed, and those who died thanks to foreign imperialist interference.

"The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require our attention."

Mary Flannery O'Connor
(25 March 1925 – 3 August 1964)
American novelist, short story writer and essayist.

Le Poisson Rouge was ablaze last night, and not just Immodesty (photo left), although she was in full ermine regalia 00 albeit until she shared her bodacious body with the ravenous crowd.

All hail the Queens of Burlesque. An international cavalcade of women that would melt even the flimsiest veneer of even the most stoic prude. This is not your granddaddy's bump-and-grind of days gone by.

Some of the hottest gals on scene strutted, shook, shimmied, stretched, whipped, and preened to the catcalls, table thumping, and whistles of adoring guys and dolls en masse.

My head is throbbing just thinkin' about it all. I could barely keep off the Mrs. when I finally staggered home and crawled into bed.

But where does one begin?

From the neck down?

Mother

There’s a quote in the book For Mom with Love that goes, “A mother is a person who seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie.”

That’s the kind of parent the eponymous Mother (Lim Hye-ja) is in this engrossing, Korean Hitchcockian thriller that showcases the dangers of unbridled maternal affection.

The musical Yank! that opened off-Broadway this week at the York Theatre refers to itself as “A World War II Love Story.” It is, indeed, but Yank! is not your conventional wartime love story, but rather a love story between two gay soldiers. The plot revolves around Stu, a young soldier grappling with and coming to terms with his own sexual orientation, and Mitch, who is having a more difficult time dealing with the obvious attraction he has for Stu.

What makes Yank! so ingenious is that its creators, Joseph and David Zellnik, wrote it in the style of an old-fashioned 1940s musical, with plenty of standard musical comedy and dance moments, even a dream ballet.

Few can predict the success of new adult comic books and graphic novels. There are many of us who relish the fringe area of this literary wonderland. No doubt that numerous titles come and go, yet some remain permanently etched in our psyche, such as Peter Bagge's Hate and Bob Burden's Flaming Carrot. Imagine my joy when I happened upon the new four-part, limited-edition cover series from IDW Publishing featuring everyone's favorite mutant, Bat Boy (half-boy, half-bat found living in a cave). "I've been a big Bat Boy fan since I saw him in the paper about 10 years ago," says IDW publisher and editor-in-chief Chris Ryall. That the Weekly World News supermarket tabloid, one that created absurdly outrageous faux news stories for 30 years, could be turned into a compelling narrative seems like a very risky endeavor in today's volatile print world, but Mr. Ryall has hit it out of the park.

The Temperamentals

As was recently pointed out in a New York Times article, this theater season is loaded with productions that explore gay themes. They range from such musicals as the off-Broadway Yank! and a Broadway revival of La Cage Aux Folles to off-Broadway plays old (a revival of The Boys in the Band) and new (The Pride), plus a new play that has made the move from off-Broadway to Broadway (Next Fall), just to name a few. Another entry is Jon Marans’s fine and intriguing play The Temperamentals, which had an off-off-Broadway run last summer and has now opened for a commercial run at the New World Stages.

ATO Records and the Athens-based power punk trio The Whigs are very excited to announce the release of their new album, In The Dark. Set for a March 2, 2010 street date, In The Dark is an explosive collection of intense and tuneful songs that have been developed through years of non-stop touring and two critically acclaimed albums - Give 'Em All A Big Fat Lip and Mission Control.

Catch them live at a venue near you. And while you're at it, enjoy this free MP3 title track "In The Dark".

Martin Scorsese, wanting to be Stanley Kubrick, has failed big time. I know The Shining, and Shutter Island is no The Shining.

Elephantine in every aspect, this attempt at a psychological horror thriller exploits the Holocaust, the plight of those incarcerated for insanity in the '50s, and the victims of anti-Communist purges by splicing together moments of those inhumane historical atrocities into an empty-headed, grotesquely dissatisfying cinematic journey.

Buy Jazzbo's Exclusive CC Concert!

From his early piano wizardry in the David S. Ware Quartet to his 28 recorded works, Matthew Shipp has helped define the modern era of jazz. Often cited as one the leaders of improvisational music, his metaphysical approach can be witnessed in this exclusive 45-minute concert. Order Mysterious Principle below:

Watch Video -- Subscribe -- iTunes

The devastation continues. But there are still simple ways to pitch in. Scott Harrison of Charity Water is asking that all current donations be made straight to two affiliated partner charities. Wyclef Jean suggests texting "Yele" to 501501 to automatically donate $5 to the Yele Haiti Earthquake Fund. It will be charged to your cell phone bill. If you prefer donating your money to someone who is actually in Haiti, send Ms. Alison Thompson -- filmmaker and relief effort worker who helped rebuild an entire village in Sri Lanka, documented in her award-winning documentary The Third Wave -- a PayPal payment through her new website with Sean Penn entitled J/P HRO. And check out my friends at One.org for practical relief efforts. peace, Dusty

This April, in what many predict will be the most watched criminal proceeding since O.J. Simpson’s, Dr. Conrad Murray will be tried for involuntary manslaughter of Michael Jackson, the King of Pop. Meanwhile, the California Medical Board is filing a motion to revoke the cardiologist’s medical license.
        
Thirty years ago, Dr. George Nichopolous, was tried on the same charges in the death of Jackson’s father-in-law, Elvis Presley. The Tennessee Medical Board also moved to pull his license. Nichopolous was acquitted of manslaughter charges, and the board suspended him for three months.

Take It to Heart
by Kathleen Farrell (Rupert Hart Davis)

If Kathleen Farrell's first novel, Mistletoe Malice, was a dissection of the dreaded and dreadful family Christmas, her second, Take It To Heart (1953), was a none-too-flattering stab at the motivations and mechanics of love. Hers was not Valentines and flowers, nor the happy-ever-after appropriation of feelings. It is a world driven by need, insecurity, and the wish for control. Love is a condition, but is rarely conditional. A myriad of impulses, far removed from sententious versions of the real, in which she drafts a series of relationships, none of which could be described as fair, balanced, or emotionally genuine, but which drive their perpetrators to distraction and despair.

Our ancient ancestors adorned their civilizations with artwork telling us the story of peoples and ways of life from otherwise forgotten periods in human history. With the ever-growing gap between today’s art market and mainstream culture, if future generations were to uncover much of the contemporary art created over the past few decades, it’s debatable what it would communicate about us and our society. With all the movements and experiments, the basic thread of public accessibility seems to have been abandoned in the world of visual arts. Peter Gazdag is a Budapest-born artist dedicated to restoring humans to the art form as he explores new narrative techniques with canvas and paint.

Parenthetical Girls sound like Colin Meloy if he grew up with the Elephant 6 collective. After 2008’s ambitious orchestral opus Entanglements, the band is set to release their new album, Privilege, on their own Slender Means Society label, distributing the tracks in the form of five EPs to be released sequentially over the next fifteen months.

The first offering, Privilege Pt. I: On Deaths and Endearments, will be released in extremely limited 12" on February 23. Leading up to that day, videos for all tracks will be made available. The lead single, “Evelyn McHale”, acts as a Parenthetical Girls manifesto.

If you want of taste of what it must have felt like to attend the original Broadway production of HAIR, skip seeing its current revival and head straight to Fela!. Music, movement, drugs, sexual liberation, political protest, and the fight for human rights are all in full swing at the Eugene O’Neill Theater in a new, musical exploration of one of Africa’s most daring and inspiring gadflies, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti.

Born in 1938, Fela showed musical inclinations early in life. At the age of twenty he began traveling abroad, learning different ethnic styles of music that he would eventually combine with traditional African beats, obtaining international fame with an entirely new genre known today as Afrobeat.

Civil Rights Viewed Through The Music That Shaped It!

Danny Glover and his team discuss their unique view of the '60s Civil Rights movement through the people that shaped it and the music that kept them united in their must-see documentary, Soundtrack for a Revolution.

Listen -- Subscribe -- iTunes