Jason’s got some discussion/speculation about Wes Anderson’s so-far monogamous relationship with Futura in his films, which continues into The Life Aquatic.
Futura and Wes Anderson [kottke.org]
Related:
new The Life Aquatic trailers at Apple.com
Talk about control: Anderson’s next project is stop-action animation (what, no puppets?)
Author: greg
The NYT A&L Hegemony Continues
Sorry, your entire Sunday morning isn’t enough. Now the NYT Arts & Leisure section wants your whole weekend. Jan 7-9, 2005, to be precise, far enough in advance that you can’t pretend you have something else planned.
Some program highlights:
Sat (1/8), 6:00-7:15 p.m.
“Bigger Roles, Smaller Films” Patricia Clarkson and Hilary Swank tell rockstar editor Jodi Kantor what it’s like to work with Katie Holmes, [“that Oscar-nom-less little scene-stealer.”]
Sunday (1/9), 4:00-5:15 p.m.
“The Prophet of a New Modern Architecture”
Nicolai “Herbie Who?” Ouroussoff interviews Rem Koolhaas. Doesn’t say who they’re talking about. Huh.
little things from reading the paper:
a couple of the things I would’ve missed had I not actually read the printed version of the Sunday Times:
2004-11-29, This Week In The New Yorker
Issue of 2004-11-29
Posted 2004-11-22
THE TALK OF THE TOWN
COMMENT/ MORE WAR/ Philip Gourevitch on seeking true victory in Falluja.
DEPT. OF SCHOOL SPIRIT/ FARM TEAM/ Ben McGrath on the eager Democrats of the New York City Council.
EXCAVATION DEPT./ FOUND/ Peter Hessler traces rare bronze artifacts back to China.
CONTRABAND/ PSST! GOT MILK?/ Frederick Kaufman meets a coven of black-market dairy consumers.
THE FINANCIAL PAGE/ WHY GOLD?/ James Surowiecki on the shared fantasy of a precious metal.
PERSONAL HISTORY/ Jonathan Franzen/ The Comfort Zone/ At home with Charlie Brown.
REFLECTIONS/ David Sedaris/ Old Faithful/ Tests for a lover.
FICTION/ Roddy Doyle/ “The Joke”
THE CRITICS
A CRITIC AT LARGE/ Robert Gottleib/ The Hitmaker/ Or, The Man Who Came to Broadway.
BOOKS/ Elizabeth Kolbert/ Why Work?/ A hundred years of “The Protestant Ethic.”
THE THEATRE/ John Lahr/ Shadowboxing/ Rage takes the stage.
MUSICAL EVENTS/ Alex Ross/ Maestro North/ A new era at the Boston Symphony.
ON TELEVISION/ Nancy Franklin/ Playing Doctor/ “Huff” and “House.”
THE CURRENT CINEMA/ David Denby/ Sex Appeal/ Alfred C. Kinsey reconsidered.
FROM THE ARCHIVE
CARTOONS/ The First Decade: 1925-1934/ A selection from the recently published The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker.
Forget The Trailer; I Want A Japanese Retail Cult
Is it a Hollywood perk trend, or just a by-product of working at The Directors Bureau? Whichever, director/artist Mike Mills is the latest auteur to attain that most incongruous of filmmaking achievements: his own blindingly trendy store in Tokyo.
Humans by Mike Mills, located in Harajuku, right by the massive Roppongi Hills comples, is actually a “store cum gallery” [eww. there goes my Net Nanny rating…] and “more a conceptual experience than a shopping trip,” according to Casa BRUTUS, one of a million Paper-like magazines in Japan.
From the limited Japanese writeups I’m finding, that means t-shirts, cd’s, and window installations by the likes of Susan Cianciolo and her Japanese doppelgangers.
From Mills’s Humans Manifesto: “I don’t trust people who are very articulate. The only way to be sane is to embrace your insanity. When you feel guilty about being sad, remember Walt Disney was a manic depressive. Everything I said could be totally wrong.”
Yep, sounds great, now get back to work.
Humans by Mike Mills near-empty official site, Casa BRUTUS mention, and 06/2004 launch week info (in Japanese)
The Directors Bureau
Coincidence? Fellow TDB’er Sofia Coppola’s Japanese fashion line, Milk Fed
Related Mike Mills posts on greg.org
The Cola Blog Wars
So now some guy’s drinking only Pepsi for 45 days and blogging about it?
45 days? Call me when you get to three years, pal.
This entry, like the 1425 before it, was brought to you by Diet Coke. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to pee. Again.
So, What Else You Working On, Yoshio?
Here we are, the week before Thanksgiving, stuffed and groggy from consuming so much MoMA-related press, which we probably have to regurgitate on Thursday for our out-of-town relatives.
Then comes this new angle for the MoMA-weary: Turns out Yoshio Taniguchi’s other silvery, $400 million-plus, urban planning tour de force, tourist mega-destination has recently opened in Hiroshima. It’s the Naka Incineration Plant, a 490,000 sf waterfront waste processing center that’s open for public tours, in order to encourage Hiroshimans to consume wisely. [and while they’re there; Taniguchi threw in a bar.]
Like its sister building in Manhattan, the NIP [hmm. let me confirm that acronym, -g.] features Taniguchi’s clean lines and meticulous attention to detail. No word on the ticket price.
Hilton Kramer, you cranky old deluded bastard, consider this an early Christmas gift. And for the rest of you MoMA critics, don’t say I never gave you anything (besides a drubbing over some of your flimsy and/or hysterical arguments, that is). As for me, I think it kind of looks like the Tate.
Beauty in Garbage: Naka Incineration Plant by Yoshio Taniguchi [Fred Bernstein in ArchNewsNow, via life without buildings]
Given Wi-Fi Enough And Time, What I’d Like To Watch From Tate Modern’s Archive
The art historian talks about time and the work of On Kawara, Wolfgang Staehle, and Bill Morrison (Decasia)
[thanks, archinect]
Felix On Richter At DIA
When we went to DIA Beacon last fall, we gave the Gerhard Richter gallery a cursory glance on the way in, and then were transfixed by it on the way out. It’s the kind of thing you have to be in the mood for, attuned to, and that seems to take some time.
Felix Salmon feels similarly, but he writes about the experience much more clarity.
Richter at Dia [felixsalmon.com]
On Art At MoMA
I heard there was art at MoMA. Here are some highlights:
Giacometti described his attenuated figures as existing on the edge of perception, as if they just came into view on a hazy horizon. I’ve always wanted to make a movie recreating this sculptural scene on Utah’s Salt Flats, the existentialist remake of Eve Sussman’s 89 Seconds at Alcazar. See City Square on the Flash site for MoMA’s 2001 Giacometti retrospective.
Still, the most rewarding Twombly experience is upstairs, where two later, graffitoed paintings face Rauschenberg’s contemporaneous drawing/collages. It’s the kind of dialogue that the Rauschenberg in the Fifties show at the Menil and Guggenheim could’ve captured, but didn’t. [Cy and Bob traveled to Rome together as kids.]
Guys and Twenty Dollars
In the nineteen-thirties and forties, Damon Runyon was the most widely read journalist in the country, and his movies like Double Indemnity and Broadway plays like Guys and Dolls were hits. Runyon held court nightly in Lindy’s Restaurant on Broadway and 51st Street, which, even in May 1949, three years after his death, was the fabled realworld haunt of many of his thinly fictionalized characters: Dave the Dude, Harry the Horse, Izzy Cheesecake.
In his Times’ May 22, 1949 profile, Leo “Lindy” Lindemann told of a “timid, well-dressed” older woman who came to the restaurant asking after “some of those quaint persons Mr. Runyon writes about.” Lindy pointed her to a regular, who he identified as Morris the Schnook. “She was delighted. She pressed his hand when she left. When she reached the siewalk, the Lindy habitues roared with laughter. Morris the Schnook was their invention. Their butt was really Abe Lyman, the orchestra leader.” And thus, the Times saw fit for the first time to print the term “schnook.”
Now, 55 years later, and just months after self-hating Jew Jerome Robbins was quoted calling himself “a schnook from Weehawken,” I’m as surprised as an orchestra leader to offer up the 86th appearance of “schnook” in the paper of record. Frankly, I’m a little verklempt.
What Is the Value of Priceless Art? Debate Continues on $20 Admission [NYT]
Hilton Kramer Wakes Up, Finds Out It’s 2004
Needless to say, he’s in a bad mood.
Related, I’m guessing, from Christopher Knight in the LAT: “It will also drive some people nuts, which is another reason to applaud. At a preview, one notoriously fusty critic was heard to shriek, in reference to what he imagined was being done to Barr’s legacy, ‘This is patricide! Patricide!'”
Oedipus on 53rd St [Observer]
Fox Presents: Bocaccio’s Decalogue
Now! From television’s acknowledged experts in adultery, profanity, lying, and covetousness!
According to Variety, FX SVP Gerard Bocaccio dreamed up the concept for ‘The Ten Commandments,’ a series of 10 one-hour TV movies which will “explore the spiritual and moral issues faced by modern America.”
Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney’s Section Eight will exec produce, and the two will be joined by eight other “A-list directors [sic, Clooney’s A-list? how about ‘up-and-coming’? Seriously, people],” and each will tackle a commandment.
I wonder who gets “Thou shalt not steal?”
Related:
FX gets serious about Bible study [Variety, via Yahoo, thanks to GreenCine]
Read like a million posts about Kieslowski’s Decalogue, a ten-hour made-for-TV exploration of the spiritual and moral issues faced by modern America Poland.
Chest-Haired Americans (Still) Need Not Apply
As part of a settlement in a discrimination suit, Abercrombie & Fitch will create an “Office of Diversity.”
$50 million buys a lot of waxing [SJ Mercury News]
Y Tu MoMA Tambien
While a few “right on”s and “elitist”s trickled in over the weekend, and my favorite–“MoMA is a corporation, the new building is a corporate HQ. You are a foot soldier”–just arrived yesterday morning, the quality of the responses to my little MoMA admissions price challenge did not improve with time.
I should’ve wrapped this up and posted the winners a couple of days ago, but I’ve been too busy hobnobbing with a bunch of MoMA bigwigs (10%) and a kid (99%, Yeah, it doesn’t add up. Tell me about it.)