David Cohn

2 weeks ago | dailycal.org | David Cohn

“We didn't make the movie because we want people to go blow up pipelines, right?”That’s coming from Daniel Goldhaber, a writer and director who, in many ways, is the quintessential independent filmmaker of our time. He has a talent for revitalizing retro film genres, demonstrated by his 2023 caper “How to Blow up a Pipeline.” He is politically conscious, having adapted that film from Andreas Malm’s eponymous manifesto about the ethics of escalating climate activism.

2 weeks ago | dailycal.org | David Cohn

On first glance, Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk’s “Hell of a Summer” seems like another wager that audiences have not yet sweated the 1980s out of their systems. Perhaps this film is more evidence of a shared gimmick between Wolfhard and Bryk: resuscitating that beloved period that ended a decade before either of their births. Wolfhard’s portrayal of Mike Wheeler on “Stranger Things,” along with both their parts in the revamped “Ghostbusters” films, already suggested some desire to become Gen X-ers.

1 month ago | dailycal.org | David Cohn

It’s become a Herculean task to find media that feels ‘real.’ Not media that is real, whatever that means, but that feels like it is — media that can convince us it wasn’t engineered with an ulterior motive and dropped in our lap. Though the artificial intelligence rage bait still needs some refinement, the blockbusters made by committee and short-form propaganda are more than enough to warrant existential crises from even their most level-headed viewers.

1 month ago | architecturalrecord.com | David Cohn

The new book by Madrid-based architecture critic and RECORD contributing editor David Cohn traces the roots of modernism in Spain, from the Spanish Enlightenment through the 21st century. But the book primarily centers on the years 1910–2008, a period that includes the fall of a monarchy, the turbulent Second Republic in the 1930s, a civil war, and the dictatorship of Francisco Franco.

1 month ago | dailycal.org | David Cohn

Actor Peter Riegert was unexpectedly excited to find out I was calling him from the Bay Area. “Excellent! I worked at the American Conservatory Theater quite a bit. I did a couple of Pinter plays there and I directed a Mamet play there.” But I shouldn’t have been surprised by his familiarity. Riegert is as much an actor as he is a globetrotter — there’s a true omnipresence to his body of work.