THE WANDERER By Dmitry Lipkin Flea Theater 41 White Street 212.414.7773 Lipkin's fantasies collide with the Russian Brighton Beach NOTHING IS ELUCIDATED Magic realism can be daunting. Even the most experienced literary practitioners have moments when they...

University Wire 09-10-1999 (The Daily Iowan) (U-WIRE) IOWA CITY, Iowa -- Pariah is one of those movies that forces me to distinguish between liking what something tries to do and liking what it actually is. I respect the film for its very frank handling...

As its exclamatory title announces straightaway, the exhibition called Russia! at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is an event that commands attention. Fortunately, it’s also an exhibition that rewards however much attention we can give it. For newcomers to Russian art—a large and complicated subject...

As its exclamatory title announces straightaway, the exhibition called Russia! at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is an event that commands attention. Fortunately, it’s also an exhibition that rewards however much attention we can give it. For newcomers to Russian art—a large and complicated subject...

There is no obvious claim to depth or originality in Kon Ichikawa's 1973 film, The Wanderers (Matatabi). Set in rural Japan in the turbulent years of the early nineteenth century, it draws on many elements of the samurai film. But its total effect is much more: comic, elegant, mordant, heartbreaking, breath-taking. It's easy to appreciate the technical mastery behind the film—an almost flawless sense of timing and imagery. It's less easy to see just how this criss-cross of moods ...

With The Wanderers [Matatabi], happily, the evident need for an internationally saleable gimmick had led Ichikawa to a … congenial model in the Hong Kong kung-fu phenomenon, from which he borrows not the 'martial art' itself, but the blandly invincible hero and the nonstop string of gymnastically stylised fights. The notion of a battle in which hordes are formally defeated without a blow being noticeably struck obviously appeals to Ichikawa's sense of the absurd; and he battens g...