Cover Story Pulling Back the Mask on Aaron Cromie, Philly’s Puppet Master More than 20 faces stare up at Aaron Cromie, each frozen into an exaggerated, often grotesque expression. One registers surprise, another dismay, still others confusion, elation or outrage.…

Mark Stehle More than 20 faces stare up at Aaron Cromie, each frozen into an exaggerated, often grotesque expression. One registers surprise, another dismay, still others confusion, elation or outrage. Someday in the near future, this mute rabble will convey…

City Paper grade: B– Thrown together in two months while director Sebastián Silva and star Michael Cera were waiting on another stalled project, Crystal Fairy reflects the loose, on-the-fly nature of its creation. Cera plays a toned-down variation of his drug-crazed…

City Paper grade: B It spoils nothing to reveal that Lucas, Mads Mikkelsen’s character in The Hunt, is entirely innocent of the child-molestation charges leveled against him. We see from the outset how Lucas, a laid-off Danish high school teacher now…

If there is a God, the unrelenting heat of the last few weeks can only be evidence of His wrath. So since He’s already pissed off, there’s nothing to lose by standing out in the open and celebrating His nonexistence.…

CROSS TO BEAR: As a Catholic priest, Father Adam (Andrzej Chyra) agonizes over his homosexual desires in the Polish drama In the Name Of. For Yoruba Richen, election night 2008 ended in a mixture of elation and disappointment. As an…

Though he’s long been associated with Boston’s improvised music scene, saxophonist Bhob Rainey has been dropping anchor in other cities in recent years, and has called Philadelphia home since last summer. Rainey is best known through his work in the…

In a back room of the West Philly yoga space Studio 34 last weekend, Dan Blacksberg sat in a circle with seven other musicians, leading them through the constituent parts of an entry-level klezmer tune. Turning to a saxophonist whose…

From a distance, Sabrina Gschwandtner’s quilts may seem indistinguishable from the wares in the windows of Lancaster’s Amish gift shops. But look closer and the geometry of the folk-art patterns fragments into tiny, incrementally changing images.  Gschwandtner creates her quilts…