fall arts preview
Fall Arts Preview: The Season’s Top 10 Films
The Master
Paul Thomas Anderson Read More
Fall Arts Preview: Top 10 Books
Joseph Anton: A Memoir
by Salman Rushdie
Random House, September 18
In 1989, Salman Rushdie was sentenced to death by the Ayatollah Khomeini for his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, which the ayatollah claimed was anti-Islam; instead of enjoying his rise to global fame, he was sequestered to police details, moving from house to house. Read More
Top Ten Museum Shows
Crafting Modernism
Museum of Arts and Design
Oct. 12, 2011 – Jan. 15, 2012
Lest we forget that, as Tom Wolfe so eloquently put it once, this is the “museum formerly known as craft,” the place is putting on a mammoth exhibition devoted to craft, specifically to the relationship between it and design after WWII. This is a fascinating proposal because while craft slowly became a four-letter word during that period, design became uber-fashionable, to the point where, today, it sells to the same crowd that buys Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons, and constantly prompts questions like, “Is it design, or is it art?” But forget the concept. Go for the pieces. The show, which is organized by MAD curators Jeannine Falino and Jennifer Scanlan, who are continuing a series of exhibitions presented at the museum in the 1990s, includes stunning pieces by George Nakashima, Isamu Noguchi and many, many others.
Read More
Thinking Outside the Book: Paul La Farge's Luminous Airplanes Takes Off Online
Later this month, Paul La Farge will publish his fourth book, Luminous Airplanes (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 256 pages, $25.00), a novel of fewer than 250 pages of words on paper but quite a bit more than that on a website specially designed to extend the story, with new chapters continually added over the next year or so. By the time it’s done, the site will contain a work “about three times larger than the book,” according to Mr. La Farge, who discussed the project with The Observer over email. Read More
Nina the Great: Venus in Fur Comes to Broadway
The first time Nina Arianda walked on the stage at the Cort Theatre, she broke into tears.
“I was having a conversation with somebody, and I got onto the stage, and I looked out, and it was—I just started crying,” she said a few weeks ago over an afternoon cappuccino in Soho. “Because you’re there. It’s happening to you. And I can ignore that as much as I want to, to keep myself calm and focused. But when you have to actually go and look at the space, you have to face the magnitude of the theater, and the history, and the ghosts. It’s beautiful. And it’s really—it was overwhelming.” Read More
Top Ten Film
Moneyball (Bennett Miller)
September 23
Scott Rudin, of last year’s movie-of-the-fall The Social Network is back with Moneyball, his latest attempt to prove that while a million dollars may be cool, what’s really cool is a Best Picture Oscar. The pedigree on this one’s impeccable—based on a Michael Lewis book (like The Blind Side!) it intelligently (not like The Blind Side!) looks at the Oakland A’s’ attempt to surmount their lack of money with a smarty-pants statistics system. (What is it about Mr. Rudin and computer geeks? Even his sports movies are about guys who probably listen to too much Radiohead.) Anyway, this movie stars Brad Pitt and a newly slender Jonah Hill, and is the first outing for director Bennett Miller since his Capote made everyone we know buy a copy of In Cold Blood.
Read More
Who Matters Now: A Handful of Rising Stars of the Screen
Amber Heard
The Rum Diary and The Playboy Club
It can’t be easy to be Amber Heard. The 25-year-old actress is in possession of the sort of smashing beauty that gets one featured on Maxim lists and offered parts in the likes of The Playboy Club, and charisma that goes unnoticed. The upcoming NBC drama, in which Ms. Heard is to play the most valuable Bunny at one of Hugh Hefner’s sex-and-Scotch nightspots, will create the sort of sensation Ms. Heard (previously best known for a string of near-mute girlfriend parts in films like Pineapple Express and The Stepfather) has thus far not experienced, but the part still demands more from her appearance than her thespianic skills. Thankfully, Ms. Heard’s talents are to be tested in the Hunter S. Thompson adaptation The Rum Diary, in which she plays the object of obsession for Johnny Depp’s alcoholic journalist character. Sure, it’s another girlfriend part, of sorts, but based on the epically terrible shoot and the evident artistic ambitions of Mr. Depp and director Bruce Robinson, Ms. Heard might soon be able to add line items to her resume that don’t include Maxim or Playboy.
Read More
Top Ten Pop Music
Panic of Girls, Blondie
September 13
The iconic Deborah (not Debbie!) Harry-fronted band is releasing its first album since 2003, and is on-trend with current monster-movie vogues: the first single, “Mother,” came with a video depicting zombies coming to life and taking over a dance club. (Vampires are so 2010.) Could Blondie itself be the band of zombies taking over the dance floor? Well, that presumes they’ll take over in a music scene glutted with a panic of girl-pop queens (Deborah Harry may have influenced Lady Gaga, but it’s the younger diva who runs the world). Whether you see Ms. Harry as a vital part of the pop scene or a reanimated 1980s relic, the nostalgia quotient of putting on this album and pretending the Odeon’s still a thing beats downloading a Jay McInerney novel to your Kindle any day.
Read More
Top Ten Theater
Man and Boy, American Airlines Theatre
opens Oct. 9
Frank Langella’s back! Frost/Nixon’s Nixon returns to the stage with a drama by the beloved British playwright Terence Rattigan. Mr. Langella’s knack for being imposing, stentorian and vituperative will come in handy in Mr. Rattigan’s tale of a brutal financial wizard fallen on hard times, one who must exploit his son in order to stay afloat. Is this to be the Inside Job of Broadway—a play that exposes the vanities and degradations of the world’s financial markets? We don’t know—but with Mr. Langella involved, we’re willing to go along for the ride!
Read More
