Dasha Nekrasova wanted all the exteriors in her directorial debut to have the ambience of Christmas in New York. First up: leering gargoyles lining the 15-foot front door of Jeffrey Epstein’s Upper East Side apartment building. Clearly, Nekrasova doesn’t share the same merry Christmas cheer as most.  In The Scary of Sixty-First, two roommates move into a semi-furnished apartment that may have been owned by the pedophile billionaire. When an amateur detective hyped up on amphetamines and conspiracies shows up to investigate Epstein’s life and death, the roommates are infected with the haunted truth of their new home. Creating a […]

Most mobile and wireline users rely on a commercial Internet Service Provider (ISP) to access the web. Such ISPs include big dogs like AT&T and Verizon, Time Warner and Comcast, as well as small fries like Earthlink and Juno. However, there is a second class of ISP that is little discussed: nonprofit ISP. Nonprofit ISPs involve two different types of providers – municipal or community networks and nonprofit corporations. In 2001, there were only 16 government-run networks in nine states. Today, there are an estimated 150 communities around the country with their own publicly-owned broadband networks. In the face of […]

After Sam Green and Dave Cerf premiered their “live documentary” Utopia in Four Movements at Sundance, I wrote the below as part of a Sundance wrap-up at FilmInFocus. Also part of New Frontier was Sam Green and Dave Cerf’s Utopia in Four Movements. In what was billed as a “live documentary,” filmmaker Green, who previously helmed the doc, The Weather Underground, explores a precondition for revolution: a shared vision of utopia. The score was composed and played live by The Quavers (Catherine McCrae, Dennis Cronin, T. Griffin, and Cerf), and Green did live voiceover over film clips and slides. Recalling […]