Today's the big day: the 87th annual Academy Awards. Perfect timing to share this Oscars® "For Your Consideration" video for Christian Bale's latest historical epic Slavery. According to Brooklyn-based sketch comedy troupe The Shorts Show, nobody but the mighty Welshman could properly tell the story of this tragic period in American history. Spoiler Alert: Bale is a slave.

The Art of Brooklyn asked The Shorts Show's creator Corey Scott Rutledge and director/writer/editor Nick Snow about making comedy videos, working as a team and why whitewashing in movies needs to be called out and mocked whenever possible. Read on for the interview and video!

It all started with a series of real voicemails left for Coney-Island-born filmmaker William D. Caballero by his grandfather. They congratulate, scold, and offer words of wisdom across a variety of topics ranging from birthdays to trips to Puerto Rico. 

Will decided to turn these voicemails into a short film, and the beloved character of "Gran'pa" was born. We interviewed Will about his award-winning film, turning that film into a web series and his experiences at the Art of Brooklyn Film Festival. 

It's the largest indoor theater in Brooklyn, with 3,000 seats. And in its heyday was one of the most beautiful movie palaces in the city, if not the world. After closing for good in 1977, you'd be hard pressed to find a New Yorker who thought the Kings would ever reopen. Things like that just don't happen very often, especially in Flatbush. The Kings had become a grand memory, the gilded star of stories Brooklynites told of a theater that was so gorgeous it made your head spin.

Now, it's back. Defying all the odds, the Kings Theatre has returned to her former glory thanks to a $95 million renovation. Gothamist has the full story along with a photo gallery shot by Clay Williams. Gaze upon it in awe and wonder!

The Home Reporter ran a full-page story on the indie mockumentary "When Broomsticks Were King" about the glory days of Brooklyn stickball. The film was directed by Brooklyn-born-and-raised filmmaker Jason Cusato. 

Broomsticks is available for streaming rental or purchase via Brooklyn On Demand. 

Launched in September 2014 by the Art of Brooklyn, BKOD is the only video-on-demand hub to focus exclusively on Brooklyn-centric indie films. We created it to promote the Brooklyn indie film scene to a worldwide audience and to help filmmakers earn revenue for their work. 

Check out the trailer for "When Broomsticks Were King" and rent or buy it via Vimeo. It's free to sign up for Vimeo and you can even do it via Facebook. 

In the first of a series of interviews we are doing with fascinating Brooklynites, Art of Brooklyn met with folklorist Joseph Sciorra in his Williamsburg apartment, where he told us about Italian American folk life, in the borough and beyond. 

Sciorra has researched and written about religious festivals, yard shrines—even the famous Christmas lights that festoon Dyker Heights during the holidays. But he spent the most time describing nativity scenes called presepi, which integrate the figures of the Holy Family into complex assemblages that can include “anachronistic figurines, objects from nature, architectural items hand-crafted from recycled milk cartons and Popsicle sticks, and multi-colored blinking electric lights.” 

Brooklyn-born Dr. Sciorra creates a presepio every year at Christmas around a different theme (see the slideshow below). This year he transformed a corner of his apartment kitchen into the time-warped basement (ca. 1973) of an imaginary Uncle. Decorated with props gathered all year long —an avocado green rotary phone, 70s Christmas cards, wood paneling, vintage magazines, etc— and a detailed nativity nestled inside a hollowed out tube television, it is an incongruous slice of a past-within-a past at the edge of the sunny kitchen he shares with his wife and children.

SLIDESHOW: Presepi by Joseph Sciorra

Joseph Sciorra is the Director for Academic and Cultural Programs at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, Queens College (City University of New York).  

You can preorder his upcoming book, Built with Faith: Italian American Imagination and Catholic Material Culture in New York City on Amazon.

Comedy and photography might seem to have nothing in common, but they're both about seeing everyday topics in a new way. Jenny Rubin has been making New Yorkers laugh for years and has recently discovered a new passion: taking pictures. Born and raised in the Village, she's also lived in Park Slope and Carroll Gardens. 

The Art of Brooklyn sat down with Jenny to talk about her creative life and her new book of photographs, "New York Walk."