Miriam Makeba 1932-2008
Oft called "The Empress of African Song," the singer died after collapsing during a performance. The first African woman to win a Grammy, she was renowned for her 60s recordings with Harry Belafonte, and her activism. RIP.
Ennis Smith
Other Writings
Artfully Coming of Age
- Control - Anton Corbijn, director (The Weinstein Company)
Ian Curtis follows a long line of artists (James Dean, Buddy Holly) who crashed and burned prematurely. Anton Corbijn’s compact, masterful study of The Joy Division and its lead singer’s fall is moody in all the right ways, its black-and-white palette a fitting metaphor for the hero’s bleak working-class origins, the harrowing depictions of Curtis’s epilepsy, and his attempts to manage it through hit-and-miss drug regimens and its devastating effect on his relationships and career. But mostly it’s an elegiac celebration of a sound whose influence on rock endures, and an explosive, brooding genius. - Fun Home - Alison Bechdel (Mariner Books)
The fact that it’s a graphic novel isn’t what makes Alison Bechdel’s revelatory memoir about growing up in a funeral home with her mother, siblings and her erudite, closeted father such a dazzler, though without it (she is the author of the syndicated comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For), one would miss this artist’s wry, loopy visual depiction of the rural upstate where she grew up, and the encyclopedic ambivalence of faces that often convey more human truth than those of flesh and blood. But it’s her literary voice that makes Fun Home a must-read bildungsroman in this age of Proposition 8 and our morality wars: naked, full of wit and pain in its observance of one woman’s gay coming of age. - Solange – Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams (Geffen Records)
Toss in a dollop of Diana Ross, a spritz of Erykah Badu with just a hint of Nina Simone to make it sexy, and you’ll get a sense of Solange’s new release. Fun, funny, autobiographical, it’s retro without cynicism, Motown grooves and grownup beats from another planet. Solange takes on everything from men to the confusions of getting stoned—and even artistic/familial identity, beating to the punch those critics tempted to measure her talents alongside that of her older sister, Beyonce. They needn’t bother: Solange is irrefutably her own woman as this stunning showcase attests.
Amazon Reviews
November 10, 2008
November 09, 2008
Bang Bang you bastard...
Fast cars, explosions, double-crossers, hot mamas and Daniel Craig--it's a heavenly day when Quantum of Solace opens at the Ziegfeld (!) on Friday, November 14
November 04, 2008
October 27, 2008
Reich, Weller, and their wurthering worlds
Got shaken & stirred under the theater’s dark lights this weekend. Privileged to see the Steve Reich Evening at BAM, in collaboration with the choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. Reich isn’t for everyone: subtle tonal graduations emerge from his rich rhythms almost imperceptively, requiring a meditative frame of patience to reap listening rewards. For me it was just what the doctor ordered, as was De Keersmaeker’s lovely work, though it took the evening for the dance to coalesce; it finally did, powerfully accompanied by Reich’s Drumming—Part 1.
And there was the compelling, if imperfect Fifty Words at the Lucille Lortel on Christopher Street. Written by Michael Weller (Moonchildren, the film adaptation of Ragtime), it's a marriage-at-the-crossroads tale, as a couple confronts their cumulative shit aided by their child’s absence and a few glasses of vino; its head-scorching recriminations and honesty elicited chuckles (and gasps) of recognition from the audience—a house full of relationship vets no doubt. The play sputters out unsatisfactorily at the end, but as navigated by the fine Norbert Leo Butz and Elizabeth Marvel, this domestic long night’s journey is brutally thought-provoking. You certainly won’t doze. A production of MCC, it runs until November 8.
Photo of Butz and Marvel, courtesy of Sara Krulwich, NYT
October 16, 2008
Muriel!!!!!
Edie Adams, 1927-2008. Growing up Edie was everywhere: on television variety shows and especially commercials. In my head I still hear her voice, a jazzy belt that could make Muriel Panatella Cigars sound like the coolest thing on earth. Thanks to her, I'm sure that company made a lot of dough. RIP.
October 14, 2008
October 02, 2008
Lollipop Gilt
Nic Ouroussoff squawks. Roberta Smith blechs. Still, 2 Columbus Circle, new home of the Museum of Arts and Design is a cause for celebration, as a new art space (be warned: the work inside is hit and miss) poised to guss up our favorite traffic circle—notice how I stifled the word mall. The makeover is pretty in a tame, inoffensive way that makes me long for the contentiousness of the old Edward Durrell Stone facade, though it gets points for at least getting me to go inside--something I never did in its previous incarnations. Part of me wishes they ‘d cleaned up the old spot (and c'mon guys, bring back the subway entrance on its block—since it’s been closed my life has been a living hell) and let the Venetian-palazzo-whatever speak for itself. I suppose we should be grateful they didn’t demolish it, but Brad Cloepfil’s new clothes are not all that. Time will crawl …
October 01, 2008
Hayden Carruth 1921-2008
Goes
Old guy goes downstairs reeling
and shying at newel and banister
while how his feet once blistered
the treads is what he is recalling,
for the young know how to balance.
Christ help all who wobble,
stagger, trip, step double,
and are their own hindrance,
oh help them. The day is fine out,
bright cold, the blood tingles,
in the yard laughter jangles.
It's a great day to fall on your sinciput
blonk!--and the world is dipping,
breath is thin, vision blurred,
what no one says is what you heard.
Look at the bright blood dripping.
September 27, 2008
The King is Dead
Paul Newman 1925-2008. RIP
September 25, 2008
I'd kill for some Bacon
From the Francis Bacon retrospective at the Tate Britain--what I wouldn't give to be in London right now...sigh...
