Email Author David Ng

2005 Stories by David Ng

• Shadow Plays

  published December 13, 2005

  In his Scottish play, Shakespeare warned that "The instruments of darkness tell us truths." This month, two photo- phobic Off-Broadway productions... More >>

• 'Happy Here and Now'

  published December 6, 2005

  Strange by even its director's ultra-eccentric standards, Happy Here and Now takes Michael Almereyda's usual reality-blurring,... More >>

• Memories of Murder

  published December 6, 2005

  "I'm not sadistic," says Michael Haneke, smiling slyly. Best known for his art-house torture contraptions The Piano Teacher and Funny... More >>

• Exact Fare: Peruvian Drama Takes 'Taxi Driver' Route

  published November 29, 2005

  Peru may not have the same world-cinema cachet as Lat-Am heavyweights Brazil and Argentina, but judging by Josué Méndez's assured... More >>

• Martyr, He Wrote

  published November 22, 2005

  His colorful life encompassed beautiful boys, Marxist politics, and some of the most explicit films ever made, but Pier Paolo Pasolini is perhaps... More >>

• Maid to Order

  published November 15, 2005

  There is no Hilda in Hilda. Like Godot or Sylvia the goat, Hilda remains an offstage presence in a play that bears her name. For the... More >>

• CNN Got It Wrong

  published November 8, 2005

  On Monday, two French colleagues and I were talking at a chi-chi café in Paris when we saw a group of police officers in battle regalia... More >>

• Devos Puts on Acting Workshop As Wounded French Wife

  published November 8, 2005

  The demure heroine of Frédéric Fonteyne's Gilles' Wife is every bit as loyal and self-effacing as the movie's title... More >>

• 'Unveiled'

  published November 8, 2005

  An Iranian version of Boys Don't Cry, Unveiled overflows with sociopolitical outrage even if its portrayal of a gender-confused... More >>

• Theater

  published October 18, 2005

  Immortalized by King Lear, the three-sisters drama has been appropriated and embellished countless times by artists as eminent as Anton... More >>

• 'Garçon Stupide'

  published September 6, 2005

  For those of us counting, Garçon Stupide marks the third gay French-language film to open here in less than a month. Of the lot,... More >>

• 'Côte d'Azur'

  published August 30, 2005

  A French family's seaside vacation is disrupted by repressed libidinal urges in Côte d'Azur, a sex comedy that is neither sexy nor... More >>

• Teenage Wasteland: Feisty Wordsmiths Bond in 'Banlieue' Tale

  published August 23, 2005

  Past and present ferociously head butt each other in Games of Love and Chance (L'Esquive), a French drama in which an insult like... More >>

• Theater

  published August 9, 2005

  Anton Chekhov's Ivanov is routinely labeled a "problem play" for being gloomy, psychologically opaque, and long, among other unforgivable... More >>

• Clean and Sober

  published July 5, 2005

  Woe to the festival that attempts to embody the cinematic output of an entire continent, especially if that continent is the constantly mutating... More >>

• Jump the Shark

  published June 28, 2005

  Interspecies romance isn't the sole domain of Greek mythology or Edward Albee. In Swimming in the Shallows, a lovesick gay boy falls for a... More >>

• Eco and the Funnymen

  published June 28, 2005

  For the record, Umberto Eco is an avid user of the Internet but he's not a fanatic. "I've never downloaded an MP3," confesses the Italian... More >>

• Theater

  published June 14, 2005

  Few stage personalities come as proudly miscegenated as Staceyann Chin: half black, half Chinese; Jamaican born but a longtime Brooklyn resident;... More >>

• Diversified Bonds: Hybrid Director's Elliptical Cinema

  published May 31, 2005

  "I made Wild Side as a kind of reaction to what I was seeing in French cinema—this very false vision of the country as being... More >>

• His Living World: A French Director Redefines Direct Cinema

  published May 24, 2005

  To the frenzied and talky world of French auteur cinema, the films of Eugène Green are a vital reminder of just how radical simplicity can... More >>

• Loud and Louder

  published May 24, 2005

  He is stocky and emotionally inexpressive and works as an investment banker. She is slender and prone to verbose confessions and paints for a... More >>

• Senior Camp

  published May 17, 2005

  In the bitchy vernacular of contemporary gay society, a "troll" typically refers to a man of a certain age (i.e., over 40) whose less-than-perfect... More >>

• The Harry With Trouble

  published May 10, 2005

  "Who can trust a novelist?" The question, posed early in Harry Mathews's My Life in CIA, befits a book that willfully tests the limits of... More >>

• Misalliance

  published May 3, 2005

  The haute solemnity inherent in the genocide-inspired drama can be preachy at best and trivializing at worst. Playwright Richard Kalinowski... More >>

• Manhattan Confidential

  published April 19, 2005

  Chemistry had Marie Curie. Computer science had Ada Byron. But what about physics? Of the hard sciences, physics is typically regarded as the most... More >>