Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Media Today's Most Annoying Facebook Thing: Disney Secrets
Posted by Henry Stewart on Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 5:00 PM
Politics Insurance Companies Will Do Anything To Maintain Profits
Posted by Jonny Diamond on Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 4:31 PM
The wonderful Megan Carpentier, over at the Washington Independent, has a depressing list of the 10 Ways Insurance Companies Will Get Out of Reforming. Read it and be saddened.
News Swan on Swan Violence Latest Incident in Bizarre Prospect Park Animal Death Orgy
Posted by Jonny Diamond on Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 4:03 PM
I've tried my best to just look away from the bizarre and ongoing Prospect Park "random animal parts" mayhem. Mainly because it reminds me of those weird pseudo-events in middle school when "666" would get spray-painted on the special ed. outbuilding and pubescent wags would suggest that Roger the Janitor was a Satanist... ANYWAY.
Well, the recent beating death of one swan by other swans is just too fucked up to ignore: to paraphrase Peter Venkman, I'm pretty sure that Prospect Park is cursed by a malevolent paranormal entity. Does this freakiness augur the second coming of Zuul? Yeah, it does. Behold your imminent future, New Yorkers:
Music Even More 8 Bands Fun? Watch North Highlands Perform "Collar Bones"
Posted by Mike Conklin on Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 3:40 PM
North Highlands just recoded a Big Ugly Yellow Couch Session, and one of the songs they performed was "Collar Bones," which is a pretty stellar example of what they're all about. Watch the rest here.
Music More 8 Bands Fun: Watch MiniBoone's New Video
Posted by Mike Conklin on Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 3:07 PM
At the 8 Bands photo shoot a couple weeks ago, I introduced editorial assistant Lauren Beck to some of the dudes in MiniBoone, and she immediately started laughing out loud, and said, "You guys all have beards and glasses!" It was totally fucking crazy, and it was also the exact moment I started drinking heavily. Then one of them told us that it was for a video they were making, which I assume is this one.
Art New Museum Curator Richard Flood "Just found out about blogs three months ago."
Posted by Benjamin Sutton on Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 2:44 PM
According to Hyperallergic, Flood closed his talk titled "Creating Networks: The New Internationalism" at the Portland Art Museum with a get-off-my-lawn-like rant about blogs and the blogging bloggers who tweet them. It began with, “I just found out about blogs three months ago,” and then got so much better.
Film The Hart of London: Ontario Symphony
Posted by Tom McCormack on Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 2:21 PM
Music This Torn-Up Piece of Cardboard Will Probably Be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame One Day
Posted by Mike Conklin on Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 1:57 PM
Each year, as we work on this feature, I have a piece of paper where I write the name of each band as they become official. I don't know why I do this, but it now seems like a very important step in the process, and so I thought I'd show you this year's, which was actually a torn-up piece of white cardboard. Totally lo-fi, right?
News Obama Said He Would Drill for Oil, So Now He's Going to Drill for Oil
Posted by Jonny Diamond on Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 1:36 PM
- There will be oil.
Putting aside the obvious environmental impact (which is just depressing), the impending Climate Bill will be sad and frustrating for far more superficial reasons, mainly because it will follow a similar pattern to the Health Care Bill, i.e., "Here's a bill with a lot of Republican ideas in it that is somehow being portrayed by Republicans as a socialist/communist/fascist/Muslim/Breatharian monstrosity." So, once again, many Democrats will have to defend an ideologically compromised piece of legislation to a bunch of ideologues. Gah, exhausting.
Only slightly less frustrating will be the outrage from more progressive Democrats. You see, even though my sympathies lie with them, I can't share their anger because this is exactly what Obama campaigned on, and insofar as I supported him then, it would seem a bit disingenuous to flip out now.
Music / TV American Idol Recap: I Thought For Sure I'd Be on Paternity Leave By Now
Posted by Mike Conklin on Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 1:11 PM
TV "I Hit My Head and Now I Don't Speak English": Lost, "The Package" Recap
Posted by Henry Stewart on Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 12:37 PM
“Some people just aren’t meant to be together,” Keamy X said during last night’s episode, which pretty much sums up Lost at this point: no one is together anymore, except maybe Rose and Bernard, if they ain’t skeletons in some cave somewhere. Least of all: Sun and Jin, around whom “The Package” revolved.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say last night’s episode was a good one, but it wasn’t as terrible as so many have been lately. It might be because I’ve given up all hope that any episodes centered on characters’ flashsidewayses will be any good, but at least last night’s episode moved Lost forward without too much of the usual stalling and bullshit.
Theater Jean-Luc Picard Beaming Back to Broadway for Mamet Revival
Posted by Benjamin Sutton on Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 12:03 PM
The Atlantic Theater Company's Neil Pepe, who directed the Broadway revival of Mamet's Speed-the-Plow in 2008 will direct, though no preview date or theater has been announced. A Life in the Theater premiered Off-Broadway in 1977 and was revived again Off-Broadway in 1992, but will be making its Broadway premiere. I hate to say it, but they should totally cast Robert Pattinson opposite Stewart and the show would sell out every night.
News Innovations in Vice: Off-Track Betting in Your Local Bar
Posted by Jonny Diamond on Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 11:26 AM
- My two favorite gambling addicts.
As of this moment, the OTB says it has about 100 non-binding letters of intent from bars, who likely think that the gambling will increase the drinking. And they are right.
Music 8 NYC Bands You Need To See
Posted by Jonny Diamond on Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 10:39 AM
It's finally here, our much-loved annual feature, 8 NYC Bands You Need to Hear, which means Music Editor Mike Conklin can go back to watching Welcome Back Kotter all day (true story). We lured all eight bands to Bushwick Country Club (thanks again) a couple Saturdays ago and took thousands of pictures. Here's a little taste of the BEHIND THE SCENES MAGIC. (For more, you can head to our Facebook page).
Slideshow
Art Illustrator Scott C. Draws the Greatest Cinematic Showdowns Ever
Posted by Benjamin Sutton on Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 9:44 AM
On his Tumblr blog Great Showdowns, New York-based illustrator Scott Campbell has been posting his cute watercolor renderings of epic showdowns from movie history at an impressive rate of one per day for the last two weeks. The two above are my favorites so far, although Campbell's version of the epic showdown in Taxi Driver is pretty great too. (PoppedCulture)
Fashion Watch This Beautiful Short Film for Rising Fashion Designer Rodarte Starring Maggie Cheung
Posted by Benjamin Sutton on Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 8:56 AM
Rodarte, the increasingly ubiquitous label founded in L.A. by sisters Kate and Laura Mulleavy (recently given the NYer profile treatment and favorites of our own Laurel Pinson), collaborated with Peter Kam (Hong Kong-based composer of the scores for several Jackie Chan movies) and director Wing Shya (who shoots stills on the sets of most Wong Kar Wai movies it seems) on this beautiful short film starring Maggie Cheung that's a lot like a series of four fashion spreads with movement. It also reminds of a certain Cindy Sherman series and some David Lynch dream sequences. (DesignYouTrust)
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Media New Blog Shows Famous People With Their Almost Famous Cats
Posted by Benjamin Sutton on Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 4:24 PM
Much like the internet, famous people can't resist the cuteness of cats, which is how we get the intriguing niche where the web factions obsessed with LOLcats and photographs of celebrities meet: the Tumblr blog Almost Famous Cats. From Peter Lorre and Mark Twain through MGMT and Natalie Portman by way of Michel Foucault and Jane Fonda, no famous person since the invention of photography is found lacking a feline companion. Another amazing hybrid of multiple internet trends into a hydra-like Tumblr beast. (TheDailyWhat)
Film Oh, One More Thing From That Harris Savides Interview
Posted by Mark Asch on Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 3:59 PM
To which interviewer David Schwartz asks, "Woody Allen now, or from the [cinematographer] Gordon Willis period?"
Savides: The earlier Woody Allen. But I worked with him recently on Whatever Works, and he would've liked to have been able to do that. But there were circumstances beyond our control. I know he wanted to try to do that. Like have them come in, we see the room and we understand where we are, and then they end up talking, two-shot. Which Bergman does, too.
Schwartz: But he was not able to do it as much as he wanted or—?
Savides: Sometimes there are performance issues that you must cut around.
Juicy! A blind, item, almost: "WHOSE shitty performance did Woody Allen have to cut around in Whatever Works?" Except...
Art Groundbreaking Downtown Gallery Gavin Brown's Enterprise Expanding into Meatpacking Plant Next Door
Posted by Benjamin Sutton on Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 3:27 PM
Though the meatpacker wasn't able to sell the building (the real estate market being, you know, not great right now) it will be leasing the space to the gallery, which will inaugurate the expansive new rooms with a show of the often uncomfortably funny and violent work of video and conceptual artist Jonathan Horowitz titled, wait for it... "Go Vegan!" Gavin Brown's Enterprise is undoubtedly one of the city's few big commercial galleries that can be expected to do something genuinely interesting and worthwhile with more space. Hopefully they get rid of that fresh meat smell before the veganism-themed exhibition opens. (ArtForum)
Film Greenberg, 70s Hollywood, and Harris Savides
Posted by Mark Asch on Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 2:58 PM
This comes through, a little, in the film's music, by James Murphy, which captures the feel of Los Angeles studio pop of the late 60s and early 70s—I thought, like P'fork did, of Harry Nilsson, though I really could have used a song like his "Everybody's Talking," from noted post-studio auteur film Midnight Cowboy.
But it's especially a matter of the cinematography, by Harris Savides.
