This Week in the Voice

By Roy Edroso Tue., Dec. 15 2009 at 9:08 PM

Categories: Featured, This Week in the Voice

Sailors used to roll around the city like Gene Kelly, but security concerns and technology have changed things, and now they mostly stay on the ships or, if they're lucky, at rare havens like the Seafarers & International House. The men whose boats brought you almost everything you have are mostly invisible to New Yorkers, but landlubber Steven Thrasher walked with some of them and heard their stories.

How has Mayor Bloomberg reacted to his surprisingly close victory in November? By gutting his own "green" initiatives to suit landlords, steering public land to influential developers, siding with developers on the Kingsbridge Armory, and picking a fight with Robert Morgenthau. Behold, says Tom Robbins, the power and the glory.

Michael Musto has caught movie awards fever and sees Nine, A Single Man, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, et alia through Oscar-colored glasses. He also talks to Zoe Kazan and takes in nightlife and the theater.

Musto also lightly treats A Little Night Music, but Michael Feingold comes at it with an axe; when, in the song Liasons, Madame Armfeldt "bemoans... the disappearance of style, skill, forethought, discretion, passion, and craft," he says, "she could easily be reviewing the show she's in." Nor does he enjoy the "multimedia hash" of Brief Encounter, but he is amused by So Help Me God!

D.C.(post-)H.C. band Jawbox played a song on the Jimmy Fallon Show, but stretched things out at the sound check, for which Rob Harvilla was on hand.

Is Avatar worth $400 million, or even $10.50? Well, says J. Hoberman, it'll get people talking. Also: A Town Called Panic.

Plus more Music, Art, Theater, Film, Books, Dance, Restaurants, Free Will Astrology, Ask a Mexican, Dan Savage, and lots of gravy.