Oprah and Barbie help Ailey celebrate 50th: Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater will launch its 50th anniversary season in high style on Wednesday with a performance at New York City Center and kick ass after-party in a ballroom decked out in Revelations-inspired décor.
Further fabulousness includes: Oprah Winfrey as special guest and honorary chair, the Empire State Building lit up in gold, and a special-edition Barbie doll designed by AAADT artistic director Judith Jamison.
The City Center season, which features performances by Wynton Marsalis and Sweet Honey in the Rock, will continue through January 3, followed by a tour of 50 cities in the U.S. and abroad.
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When we kept running into Todd Zuniga, founding editor of Opium Magazine, around town at literary events, we decided that we had to introduce ourselves and ask for a reading list. Opium is not just a biannual venue for fiction and poetry, but a “platform for curious and clever types” to exhibit their art of choice. With Opium 7, the mag opened itself up to your ideas with its “Special Projects,” currently featuring the Jesse Nathan-curated section of illustrations, making it one of the most diverse and unique reads around.
Zuniga is also the founder of Literary Death Match, an event that assembles four up and coming writers for a duel of words; it transforms the standard, oftentimes awkward and boring literary reading into a performance-oriented exercise in wordsmithery (that is nothing short of awesome). No surprise then that he’s an expert on emerging writers you should be seeing in a bookstore near you. After the jump, check out Zuniga’s favorite writers to come out of Opium since Issue 1.
1. Lily Allen, “The Fear”
A promising, synth-heavy cut from Allen’s upcoming album, It’s Not Me, It’s You, suggests that she’s no one-album-wonder [Stereogum]
2. Jay-Z [ft. Santogold], “Brooklyn Go Hard”
We predict that this Kanye West-produced anthem will be playing in a BK bar near you for months and months to come [Pitchfork]
3. Nellie McKay, “A Christmas Dirge”
Brooklyn Vegan just posted their 2007 Holiday Mix for your downloading pleasure, but we like this new song from an old favorite more [Nellie McKay via Brooklyn Vegan]
4. These United States, “Get Yourself Home (In Search of the Mistress Whose Kisses Are Famous)”
This twangy live cut from the D.C.-area indie rockers makes us want to hop on our desks and scream yee-haw [My Old Kentucky Blog]
5. White Denim, “Sitting”
gorilla vs. bear just put out a list of their favorite albums of 2008, and these Austin up-and-comers scored top honors [gorillavsbear]
“Lorne brought her over to my house when she was head writer. She was very mousy. I thought, Well, they gotta be having an affair. But they weren’t. He just appreciated her talent. And now, suddenly, she’s become this sexy, showing-tit, hot-looking woman. I said to Lorne, ‘What the f*ck did she do?’”
- Hollywood agent Sue Mengers on Tina Fey’s unlikely transformation from comedic ugly ducking to swan [Vanity Fair]
MGMT spent their Thanksgiving holiday performing on Le Grand Journal in Paris.
Jane Mount and Jason Polan love to draw. Their love for drawing is infectious. Jason drew 132 Birds at the American Museum of Natural History. (He likes spending time in museums.) Jane painted *132 Birds Leaving the AMNH (response to Jason Polan), before she ever met him. (She really liked his drawing.) Now they are friends. Jane and Jason are both smart and funny and make work that’s smart and funny about this world that we live in that’s teeming with animals, people, good friends and strangers, clones (more animals!), books, films, and art. The best thing about Jane and Jason and the art that they make: it’ll make you more curious about all these things in this world that we live in.
Don’t believe me? You’ll have to **meet them yourself.
- Sara Lang Distin
* Jane’s 132 Birds Leaving the AMNH (response to Jason Polan) will be released on 20×200 this week. If you want first crack at seeing the print, sign up for the 20×200 mailing list here.
** Check out these emerging artists at Thrilla in Manila, a no holds barred draw-a-thon between arty friends at Jen Bekman Gallery to benefit 826NYC, Wednesday, December 3rd through Saturday, December 6th, noon to 6 p.m.
According to our friends over at GalleyCat, W. Hodding Carter just scored a book deal for A Year of Living Within Our Means, a timely work that will follow him and his family of six as they try out cost-saving techniques from the Great Depression and the first cookbook in America while on a tight budget.
But what exactly will that entail — boiling their leather boots? That’s what we wondering, and then we found a strange but helpful Web site with a bunch of Depression Era recipes for everything from doughnuts to beet jelly.
After the jump, check out the Poor Man’s Casserole (which as the author points out, artfully combines meat, potatoes and vegetables into one dish), and let us know in the comments if it’s something that you’d be willing to sample.
Unlike the most of the country, we decided to escape our own family drama with the big screen version, taking in Rachel Getting Married over the Thanksgiving weekend. The box office report indicates that everyone else caught Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn in their new comedy Four Christmases, which grossed a healthy $46.7m over the five-day period. (Rounding out the top five was Twilight, $39.52m; Bolt, $36.01m; Quantum of Solace, $28.13m; and Australia, $20m.)
But back to Rachel Getting Married. We had read only positive reviews for the Jonathan Demme/Anne Hathaway vehicle. We had heard the Oscar buzz Hathaway has been generating for her daring crossover from popcorn princess to indie bad girl. Plus we’re big fans of Demme’s previous work, which includes flicks like Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia. It seemed like a no-brainer.
So why did we almost follow suit when over seven people got up and left our not-so-crowded theater?
“No topic was off limits. No question went unanswered.” That’s how MTV’s new one-hour documentary special Britney: For The Record — a “film” directed by Phil Griffin that the star says she decided to make because she wasn’t being seen in the light that she wanted to be seen in — opens. Shot over the 60 days following the MTV 2008 Video Music Awards, it plays out more like a very special episode of The Hills than VH1’s Behind the Music. Unlike some critics, we think that’s OK.
Sure, we went in skeptical — it was presented by Britney’s fragrance and her manager Larry Rudolph was an executive producer for chrissake — but we left rooting for the pop star’s impending comeback. Did we get snowed by this slick infomercial or is there a chance that Britney’s not bad — just totally not balanced.
Some highlights from the show after the jump.
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