*1 Anniversary
the Portastylistic
~
" A Sense of character that is authentic,
deliberate and perhaps
good style is simply when the outside
matches the inside. "
-the portastylistic
deliberate and perhaps
good style is simply when the outside
matches the inside. "
-the portastylistic
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BOOK'EM
THE MOVIES, MUSIC, TV, AND ART
YOU CAN'T AFFORD
TO MISS THIS FALL
- Fall Preview -
Stanley Kubrick's "Napoleon": The Greatest Movie Never Made (September 1)
Well, the GMNM besides Step Brothers 2, that is. Tucked inside this elegant carved-out book/archaeological specimen is an exhaustive collection of location-scouting photos, costume details, and letters—plus the last draft of the screenplay Kubrick had hoped to film following 2001. And the best part is… Not up for the hefty, $700 price tag? Kubrick's actual masterpiece of old-world Europe, Barry Lyndon, is readily available on Netflix.
Photo: Courtesy of Taschen
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Pancha Tantra, by Walton Ford (September 3)
The watercolorist's epic collection of Audubon-meets-Ralph Steadman animal portraits includes paintings of a sheet-covered monkey named Jack on his chaise longue deathbed and parrots simultaneously copulating and dining.
And the best part is… This is the first time Ford's work has been available in book form since 2002 (or the first to not cost $1,800, if you count an earlier limited edition of Pancha Tantra).
Photo: Courtesy of Taschen
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Os Mutantes, Haih…or Amortecedor… (September 8)
The missing link between Gilberto Gil (an early mentor) and Kurt Cobain (he petitioned them to reform in 1993), Brazil's legendary Tropic?lia/psych-rock band Os Mutantes (the Mutants) are back with their first album in 35 years.
And the best part is… Hiatus or no, they've always been incendiary live, and are about to head out for a 27-city North American tour.
Photo: Courtesy of Taschen
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Dappled Cities, Zounds (September 15)
Sydney's Dappled Cities isn't the pinnacle of grizzled manhood some might expect from the land of croc-wranglers and the Vines. What it is, frankly, is a lot more interesting: an indie pop band expertly wielding falsettos and soaring, Doves- and Arcade Fire-style arrangements.
And the best part is… The band uses a Gakken—a $40 self-assembled analog synth from Japan that must be heard to be believed—on all 12 tracks.
Photo: dappledcitiesfly.com
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Damian Ortega at the ICA in Boston (September 18)
Ortega has made a career out of every kid's favorite hobby: taking things apart and not putting them back together again (in the Mexican artist's case, things like cars, trucks, and Vespas). His first-ever museum survey includes hanging arrays of sharp objects that make Saw look like sissy work.
And the best part is… The Diller, Scofidio, and Renfro-designed Institute of Contemporary Art building, with its dramatic drop over the city's harbor, might just rival Ortega's exhibit—and somehow, it feels safer.
Photo: Courtesy of ICA Boston
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Bored to Death on HBO (September 20)
The Manhattan Murder Mystery spin-off you didn't even know you were missing. Written and produced by novelist Jonathan Ames, Bored stars Jason Schwartzman as a failed writer turned failed private investigator.
And the best part is… Say what you will about the silver-spooned Mr. Schwartzman, but he plays a fine incompetent alcoholic wiseass.
Photo: Courtesy of HBO
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Girls, Album (September 22)
The debut LP from the San Francisco two-piece composed of Christopher Owens and Chet "J.R." White is the guitar-based equivalent of an M83 album, filled with the sort of gauzy, post-Summer anthems that could rival cold beer as the primary spark of raspy sing-alongs and one-night stands.
And the best part is… Whether it has something to do with the creepy cult upbringing of singer-songwriter Christopher Owens or just the sheer quantities of drugs the band is rather frank about consuming, the duo's videos are perfect distillations of the adolescence you wish you'd had.
Photo: Courtesy of Matador Records
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Mika, The Boy Who Knew Too Much (September 22)
Mika, the Lebanese-born, London-based singer who summons Freddie Mercury in high camp mode, proves he's no one-album wonder with this sophomore studio effort. These are the sort of overly synthesized, falsetto disco hooks reminiscent of a lost nightclub diva from another time.
And the best part is… If you can't dance to "We Are Golden," you're not worthy of your sequined boots.
Photo: mikasounds.com
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Volcano Choir, Unmap (September 22)
Between Justin Vernon's Bon Iver album and a host of other beardo acts, some were ready to declare a new Walden Pond-esque era of indie rock. Vernon's new collaborative venture, thankfully, is not the earnest back-to-the-garden side project you might expect: It's marked by gorgeous off-kilter harmonies and the quick looping and blips of Collections of Colonies of Bees guitarist Chris Rosenau. And the best part is… This album was recorded three years before Bon Iver's breakthrough debut.
Photo: Courtesy of Jagjaguwar
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Looking In: Robert Frank's "The Americans" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (September 22) Hard to believe: Though it's been 50 years since Robert Frank released his seminal collection of 83 cross-country road photographs, this is the first time the collection has been shown in its entirety in New York. Of course, his brand of flinty, elegiac pessimism feels more timely than ever.
And the best part is… Frank, 84, is still shooting. His latest book, Seven Stories—a cased collection of inscribed-on-the-negative Polaroids—is just out from Steidl.
Photo: Robert Frank
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The Invention of Lying (September 25)
As Ricky Gervais proved in the overlooked Ghost Town, he's possessed of a Seinfeldian ability to play the straight guy in a world madder than he. In The Invention of Lying—with Jonah Hill, John Hodgman, and Tina Fey, to name but a few of his co-stars—Gervais is now the only person alive capable of dishonesty.
And the best part is… Watching the pudgy Brit pick up hopelessly clueless women with lines like, "The world is going to end unless we have sex right now."
Photo: Courtesy of Warner Bros.
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The Girlfriend Experience on DVD (September 29)
Despite the stunt casting of porn star Sasha Grey in the main role, Steven Soderbergh's diary of a Manhattan call girl is low on explicit sex. What you will find is something more lasting: a beautifully shot study of desensitized, moneyed New Yorkers just as the bubble was bursting.
And the best part is… Film critic Glenn Kenny's turn as the sleazy operator of an escort-review Web site.
Photo: Amazon.com
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A Serious Man (October 2)
The Coen brothers' low-key period piece follow-up to No Country for Old Men is, in their own twisted way, semiautobiographical. TV sitcom vet Richard Kind makes one hell of a bid for posterity as a freeloader slowly destroying his brother's carefully curated life (are people going to start bragging about how much they loved Spin City now?).
And the best part is… The Coens' visceral depiction of the place they grew up, Minneapolis suburb and Jewish enclave St. Louis Park.
Photo: Courtesy of Focus Features
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Anvil: The Story of Anvil on DVD (October 6)
What could have been a Spinal Tap-style roast of easy-target rockers turned out to be an earnest homage to a metal band's mettle that made hard-core mosh-pit dwellers well up like Fall Out Boy fans. (Up next: a U.K. tour later this fall and a new album, Juggernaut of Justice.)
And the best part is… They really do have an amp that goes to 11, and they really do go to Stonehenge.
Photo: anvilthemovie.com
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John Baldessari: Pure Beauty at the Tate Modern (October 13)
Comprising 130 works, the Tate's retrospective of the conceptual art pioneer known for his use of text, video, and photo collages is the most extensive Baldessari exhibition ever mounted. (If you can't make it to London, the exhibit will travel to LACMA and New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2010.)
And the best part is… His Tips for Artists Who Want to Sell. Hilarious, though maybe a bit too real for right now.
Photo: Courtesy of the Tate Modern
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Corn Flakes With John Lennon, by Robert Hilburn (October 13)
As well as breakfasting with a Beatle, famed rock critic Hilburn visited Folsom Prison with Johnny Cash, spent a week on the road with the Sex Pistols, and interviewed Dylan on his 50th birthday (after Silent Bob had turned down 300 other journalists).
And the best part is… Observations like this: "I listened to 'Folsom Prison Blues' for five decades before asking myself, 'If the guy in the song shot a man in Reno, what's he doing in prison in California?' When I asked John about it, he burst out laughing. 'I never did get good grades in geography.' "
Photo: Courtesy of Rodale
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Chronic City, by Jonathan Lethem (October 13)
Lethem's characters have a tendency to be annoyingly fortunate, so his new novel—about a fading child star who stumbles from the Upper East Side party scene into a mystery set deep in less gilded Manhattan circles—is a refreshing change of pace.
And the best part is… Who can resist a book that's equal parts Philip K. Dick, Saul Bellow, and Hitchcock?
Photo: Amazon.com
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Black Dynamite (October 16)
In this neo-Blaxploitation flick, Michael Jai White plays a former CIA agent tracing a heroin-planting, malt-liquor-manipulating conspiracy all the way to the Honky…er, White House. Haven't recent racial milestones done away with a need for such entertainment, you ask? Uh, no.
And the best part is… Four words: Arsenio Hall comeback vehicle.
Photo: Sony Pictures
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The Road (October 16)
A semi-obscure Aussie director, John Hillcoat, filmed this adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic tale in abandoned parts of Pittsburgh, post-Katrina New Orleans, and Mount St. Helens. While this is probably not your go-to date film, it's likely to be as powerful (and as polarizing) as the Pulitzer Prize-winning book.
And the best part is… As in Hillcoat's previous movie, The Proposition, a brilliant, eerie score courtesy of Nick Cave.
Photo: Dimension Films
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(Untitled) (October 23)
Any movie can make fun of arty rockers or the vapid posturing of the gallery scene. (Untitled) cunningly goes after both. "I think I want what I want to say to go without saying," says one artist. Enough said.
And the best part is… Adam Goldberg's performance as an experimental musician, complete with lunatic howling and subtly metaphoric bucket-kicking.
Photo: Samuel Goldwyn Films
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Z on DVD (October 27)
The lucky few with access to revival theaters probably caught Costa-Gavras' 1969 v?rit?-style masterpiece, starring the incomparable Yves Montand, earlier this year. You three can now skip forward; everyone else should immediately run out and buy this excoriation of Greece's right-wing military junta.
And the best part is… The list of things banned by the junta, which in addition to the letter "Z" includes the Beatles, long hair on men, and writing that Socrates was gay.
Photo: Courtesy of The Criterion Collection
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Urs Fischer at the New Museum, NYC (October 28)
Fischer is the guy who suspends rotating, wax-dripping tree limbs from the ceiling—and who cut jagged holes through plaster and metal at the 2006 Whitney Biennial. Now he's the first artist to take over the entire New Museum, for what he's calling a choreographed "introspective." We wonder if he'll leave the joint standing.
And the best part is… The pressure's on Fischer to outdo his 2007 show at Gavin Brown's Enterprise, a project that involved excavating the whole of the gallery's floor.
Photo: Courtesy of the New Museum
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Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present at the Brooklyn Museum (October 30)
Curated by Gail Buckland, this show compiles many rarely seen shots, both on- and offstage, of everyone from Bill Haley to Axl Rose to Amy Winehouse—often at the anonymous outset of their careers.
And the best part is… A toss-up between Ian Dickson's Ramones-in-'77 crowd shots (left) and Ryan McGinley's Morrissey crowd shots.
Photo: Ian Dickson
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1997-2008, by Sante D'Orazio (November 1)
In the cloistered world of art books, there is sometimes a tendency to overthink one's subject. Sante D'Orazio appears unplagued by this tendency. Like A Private View, his previous book, 1997-2008 consists simply of shots of pretty girls, many of whom have forgotten to put their clothes on.
And the best part is… See left.
Photo: Courtesy of Taschen
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The Inbetweeners on BBC America ("this fall" is all they're telling us for now; stay tuned)
A cross between Superbad, Freaks and Geeks, and American Pie, The Inbetweeners follows four teens as they navigate suburban London in the hunt for female conquests. As the universe of stateside material slavishly ripping off The Office metastasizes, it's nice to see a slice of home-grown sensibility being shipped back across the pond.
And the best part is… The soundtrack features Vampire Weekend, Arctic Monkeys, the Libertines, and Mark Ronson.
—Story text by Nick Mosquera
Photo: Courtesy of BBC America
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-the portastylistic
-the portastylistic
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