New York News Alert

Seeing the American madscape clearly for the first time NETFLIX Ambitious and earnest but fitful and awkward, Noah Baumbach’s adaptation of Don DeLillo’s now classic 1985 novel, White Noise , has a conflict at its weird heart, and that conflict is between DeLillo and film. Arguably, but not really, no other living major American novelist has such a distinctive stylized voice in terms of dialogue and character — call it High Meta Ironic Alienation In-Joke Idiom. DeLillo’s people are always too smart for their own good, and talk to each other around craters of pain and emptiness in metaphor-rich rants — a kind of shared dialect of referential banter, in conversations we can feel they’ve had many times already, and now all that’s left is to hypercharge what’s said, spice it up with strained insights, reach for symbolic gestures, glibly punch for the obscure rather than submit to the mundane.   It’s not realism, despite DeLillo’s intense devotion to addressing what...

Two Trees’ Jed Walentas with rendering of 346 Kent Avenue (Michael McWeeney, SHoP Architects, James Corner Field Operations, Getty) Two Trees Management secured $364 million in loans for a two-tower residential project that is rising as part of its Domino Sugar megadevelopment. JPMorgan Chase provided the financing for 346 Kent Avenue, also known as Site D, where 600 apartments will be built across two buildings that share a podium. The financing package includes $304 million building loans and $60 million in project loans, according to filings with the city’s Department of Finance. Construction of the buildings began six months ago, and is expected to be completed within two years. The anticipated timeline places the project well within the deadline to qualify for the now-expired property tax break 421a. Developers needed to at least have foundation footings in place by June 15 to qualify for the program, and must complete construction by June 2026 . A representative fo...

Representative-elect George Santos is under investigation by federal prosecutors from the Eastern District of New York, a law enforcement source confirmed Thursday to NBC News. The investigation is said to be in its very, very early stages and has not zeroed in on any one allegation of wrongdoing yet. But the source confirms that prosecutors are examining Santos’ finances, including potential irregularities involving financial disclosures and loans Santos made to his campaign while he was running for Congress. Danielle Hass, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, declined to comment, NBC News reported. The news of a federal investigation into Santos comes just one day after Long Island prosecutors announced they have launched an investigation into the 34-year-old after revelations surfaced that the now-embattled Republican lied about his heritage, education and professional pedigree as he campaigned for office. Calls for George Santos to...

ALBANY — Finding ways to fix smartphones and other electronic devices will soon be a little easier for New Yorkers. Gov. Hochul signed a slimmed-down version of a bill that will eventually require manufacturers to make diagnostic manuals, tools and other parts necessary for repairs available to the public and independent service shops. The measure, considered the first so-called “right to repair” law in the country, will only apply to products made or sold after July 1, 2023. “This landmark law will save New Yorkers money, provide them with more convenient repair options, and cut down on waste,” said Marta Tellado , president and CEO of Consumer Reports. “When your device is broken, you should have more options than a high-priced service or the landfill.” The new law will cover digital electronic products, such as phones, tablets and IT equipment, and require companies provide access to the parts, tools and information needed to repair equipment. However, Hochul included s...

The story of the great French modernist Marguerite Duras is rarely told as a tale of household management, despite her obvious talent for it. She made her name writing about the agonies of her own eros in ruthless, blanched sentences—and yet she could also knit socks, sew a set of pajamas, and repair a lamp. She felt strongly that the Spanish were wrong about gazpacho, which should be made with water, not broth, and despite her hellacious drinking and prolific output (more than fifty novels, plays and films) she made sure that the shelves of her country home were stocked with the necessities: wine, potatoes, butter, oil, garlic, insulating tape, steel wool, and nuoc mam . Keeping a house, Duras explains in “ Practicalities ” (1987), is an endless struggle to impose order on the chaos of everyday experience. Like “doing a balancing act over death,” domestic work defends against the household disasters (adultery, mental breakdown, murder) that structure so many of her works. In “...

The worst of the historic winter weather is likely behind western New York as temperatures were forecast to rise Wednesday and allow the region to thaw, a trend meteorologists say was set to spread across large swaths of the U.S. But community members are still reeling from storm’s devastating impacts this week. The death toll in Erie County, which contains Buffalo – the area hardest hit in the storm –rose to 34, officials confirmed in a Wednesday morning update. Along with burying the city with more than 50 inches of snow since Christmas Eve, the storm carried frigid temperatures and extreme winds – with gusts measured stronger than 70 mph at times, according to the National Weather Service.  Those conditions were expected to dissipate Wednesday as temperatures rise into the 40s and 50s throughout next week. Some rain was in the forecast, which along with melted snow, could bring possible flooding. (Associated Press, USA Today a...

Photo: Paramount Pictures/YouTube Here’s some vindicating news for anyone who thought Babylon was too Baby -long: A shorter version of the extravagant drama set in 1920s Hollywood does in fact exist. The final movie has a run time of more than three hours, but per Entertainment Weekly , director Damien Chazelle revealed during a recent Q&A that he shot a snappier cut before filming officially began. “It’s a very tight, two-hour version of the entire movie, [filmed] on an iPhone in our backyard,” he said in an impressively subtle flex of the size of his phone storage and his outdoor space. For this homemade video, he recruited just two actors. Olivia Hamilton (who is also Chazelle’s wife) played director Ruth Adler, and Diego Calva played assistant turned producer Manny Torres. “We rehearsed the whole movie in his backyard, only Olivia, Damien, and I,” Calva confirmed during the Q&A. “It was a very uncommon kind of situation.” In addition to Hamilton and Calva, th...