OFTEN GHETTOIZED INTO the cobwebbed recesses of haunted houses, Tim Burton’s triumphant oddities and alluring grotesqueries are now anointed by one of the world’s elite cultural circles. Halloween’s pumpkin glow may have barely drained from New York’s autumnal complexion, but all things diabolical and dark will be resurrected beginning Nov. 22, as the auteur unveils over 700 never-before-seen ...

A stripped-down production of a musical can reveal hidden depths and new layers if the show is right. For example, Sweeney Todd and Company both benefited from a less-is-more approach. Ragtime, however, does not.

ASHLEY SPRINGER IS rapidly becoming the go-to guy for movies that require sexually explicit high school scenes. After losing his dick in 2008’s Teeth (a fantastic, underappreciated black comedy about a teenager with vagina dentata), Springer is back on screen in director Adam Salky’s Dare (based on Salky’s 2005 short, also written by David Brind), helping Emmy Rossum shed her good girl image as onet...

Lots of great ideas start with a night of heavy drinking—it’s the actual execution that normally suffers. Not so for Hard Case Crime. Charles Ardai and Max Phillips founded the Upper West Side-based publishing house to reintroduce readers to the hardboiled crime fiction of pulp novels five years ago after a night at the bar turned their typical discussion of a mutual love for the genre into plans for a p...

During La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet, director Frederick Wiseman’s leisurely immersion into the rhythms of the POB, the world outside of the company’s grand, historic home is irrelevant. If the company was not seen rehearsing The Nutcracker—along with several premieres and a repertory staple—one would have no idea what time of year it was. Wiseman and his crew roamed the studios, stage, off...

Billy, can I take your picture? He made a face and pretty much shuttered his baby blues. Billy, another one, can you please open your eyes? I asked again.