Reuters - Bruce Springsteen's next album is expected for release around the time of Barack Obama's presidential inauguration in January, according to the fan Web site Backstreets.com ( http://www.backstreets.com ).
Reuters - Giant-screen movie theater chain IMAX Corp reported a smaller third-quarter loss on Thursday, as higher box office revenues help offset equipment and interest costs. Source: Yahoo! News: Entertainment News | 6 Nov 2008 | 1:17 pm
Reuters - Giant-screen movie theater chain IMAX Corp reported a smaller third-quarter loss on Thursday, as higher box office revenues help offset equipment and interest costs. Source: Yahoo! News: Entertainment News | 6 Nov 2008 | 1:17 pm
AP - 50 Cent has a new show on MTV, where business-savvy contestants compete for a shot at fame and a huge cash prize. But the rapper says he's not following the path of that other famous reality show hosted by Donald Trump.
The husband of troubled retro-soul singer Amy Winehouse swapped prison for rehab Wednesday, a man familiar with the matter said. Blake Fielder-Civil was freed from prison on condition... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsEnter | 6 Nov 2008 | 12:29 pm
AP - Last winter, Nobel laureate Toni Morrison received a phone call from Sen. Barack Obama, then the underdog to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.
(Reuters) Reuters - Having previously essayed the role in "Hizzoner" and a revival of the musical "Fiorello!" Tony Lo Bianco again portrays the legendary New York City mayor in "La Guardia." Source: Yahoo! News: Entertainment Reviews | 6 Nov 2008 | 9:16 am
E! Online - Note to Carrie Ann Inaba: You might not want to force a woman to declare Leo-on-Titanic style "I'm doing good in this competition!" if it's fairly apparent she's getting the ol' heave-ho.
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Geeks save the date: NBC Universal has finalized plans to auction props, costumes and set pieces from Sci Fi Channel's concluding cult-favorite... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsEnter | 6 Nov 2008 | 6:33 am
Reuters - A musical version of the saga of the Spanish-Californian hero with the mask and deadly sword sounds like a commercial bridge too far, but "Zorro the Musical," with songs by the Gypsy Kings, is a pleasure and a half. Source: Yahoo! News: Entertainment Reviews | 6 Nov 2008 | 6:31 am
Note to Carrie Ann Inaba: You might not want to force a woman to declare Leo-on-Titanic style "I'm doing good in this competition!" if it's fairly apparent she's getting the...
Hip-hop entrepreneur Russell Simmons says he didn't get emotional when he heard that Sen. Barack Obama had been elected president, but he did get inspired.
A venerable figure, someone we've come to expect to see on TV just about every day, has been sent home.
No, not Sen. John McCain.
We're talking about another longtime...
Front Page: Actor in final negotiations to play artist -- Antonio Banderas is in final negotiations to play Salvador Dali in the Simon West-helmed indie biopic "Dali."
Front Page: Rodrigo Garcia to writer, direct drama -- Annette Bening and Naomi Watts will headline "Mother and Child," a multilayered drama from scripter and helmer Rodrigo Garcia.
If there's one thing we can count on from Madonna, it's the making of a little music history now and again.
Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake will be performing alongside the...
Holly Madison isn't the only Girl Next Door to find a new press-pleasing public relaysh. Our snoopy Seattle sources say GNDoor Kendra Wilkinson's BF, Philly Eagle hunk Hank Baskett,...
So Obama won (yay), but the craziest election ever is over (boo). So what am I going to think about now? Leighton Meester?
—Taylor, Norfolk, Va.
Need some new obsessions,...
It's time for Anderson Cooper to make a trip to Atlanta.
Why?
Because Real Housewives of Atlanta star NeNe Leakes says she wants to give him some "brown...
Should this whole fame thing end up going down the drain, Miley Cyrus has nothing to worry about. Why? She's got something to fall back on.
Under Tyra Banks' questioning, the...
• After months of making her show as bipartisan as possible, Oprah Winfrey finally lets loose with her Obama love.
• Evan Rachel Wood's transformation into...
We just got our hands on the first issue of tar magazine, complete with new magazine smell and everything. BlackBook founder Evanly Schindler and former worldwide advertising and communications director for Diesel Maurizio Marchiori created the new title. They call it "more of an art book than a magazine" and describe the content as a mix of "art, culture, fashion and social consciousness." It reminds us of Purple, but perhaps a tad less on the edge. The 300-page tome, weighty with fashion ads, includes a feature about overpopulation, an editorial by Arianna Huffington, and a dialogue between artist Matthew Barney and film director David Cronenberg. As for fashion editorials, photographer Ryan McGinley shot a handful of models nude for a 32-page spread. You see one of those shots here. Click through for the NSFW content.
Photo: Ryan McGinley for tar
Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere [tar magazine (not online)]
• Seductive Sarah Palin: "At the GOP convention in St. Paul, Palin was completely unfazed by the boys' club fraternity she had just joined. One night, Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter went to her hotel room to brief her. After a minute, Palin sailed into the room wearing nothing but a towel, with another on her wet hair. She told them to chat with her laconic husband, Todd. 'I'll be just a minute,' she said."
• Hesitant Hillary Clinton: "On a cold midmorning in January 2007, Hillary sat in the sunny living room of her house on Whitehaven Street in Washington, a well-to-do enclave off Embassy Row where she lived with her mother and, on occasion, her husband. She was finishing a last round of policy prep with her aides before getting on a plane to Iowa for her first big campaign swing. In a moment of quiet, she looked around the living room and said, to no one in particular, 'I so love this house. Why am I doing this?' Her policy director, Neera Tanden, and her advertising director, Mandy Grunwald, laughed, a little too lightheartedly. Clinton went on. 'I'm so comfortable here. Why am I doing this?' Tanden spoke up. 'The White House isn't so bad,' she said. 'I've been there,' said Clinton."
• Oblivious Obama: "A newcomer to the campaign in September 2007, Betsy Myers — sister of former Clinton press secretary Dee Dee Myers and a former Clinton White House staffer herself — hoped that Obama, in town overnight, might come to headquarters to cheer the staff. 'But he didn't,' she recalled later that fall. 'He went to the gym instead.' She paused as she recollected. 'He hasn't been in the headquarters in months. A lot of these people are young and really look up to him, and it would have meant a lot to them if he'd stopped by.' Another pause. 'Nobody would have had to tell Bill Clinton to stop by if he was just a couple of blocks away. You would have had to physically drag Bill Clinton out of there.'"
• Measured McCain: "Palin launched her attack on Obama's association with William Ayers, the former Weather Underground bomber, before the campaign had finalized a plan to raise the issue. McCain's advisers were working on a strategy that they hoped to unveil the following week, but McCain had not signed off on it, and top adviser Mark Salter was resisting. McCain also was reluctant to use Obama's incendiary pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, as a campaign issue. The Republican had set firm boundaries: no Jeremiah Wright; no attacking Michelle Obama; no attacking Obama for not serving in the military. McCain balked at an ad using images of children that suggested that Obama might not protect them from terrorism. Schmidt vetoed ads suggesting that Obama was soft on crime (no Willie Hortons). And before word even got to McCain, Schmidt and Salter scuttled a 'celebrity' ad of Obama dancing with talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres (the sight of a black man dancing with a lesbian was deemed too provocative)."
Pigs tattooed with the Louis Vuitton logo have been banned from the Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair. Wim Delvoye, a 43-year-old Belgian conceptual artist, tattooed the pigs when they were babies and tracked the tattoos (he calls them "canvases") as they grew. Animal-rights activists complained, and the fair officials decided to remove the pigs. The artist says the animals are treated humanely and given sedatives before getting tattooed. [Telegraph]
Actor Josh Lucas visited a bunch of colleges in his native Pennsylvania to encourage students to vote for Barack Obama this election year. "We went to Villanova, Temple, Lehigh, and Drexel, knocking on freshman doors getting people to vote," he told the Observer. This strikes us as an excellent strategy, and as far more effective than making a stupid YouTube video. What college freshman wouldn't want the smoldering star of Sweet Home Alabama showing up at their dorm? "I knocked on this one girl's door. She looked at her television and saw me on it, then she looked at the door and she went, 'huh?'" It might have been magic for her! Except: "I was so ready for us to win already, I wore an Obama shirt for 45 days straight," he added. EW. [NYO]
Who's the hopemonger (to borrow John Heilemann's term for President-elect Barack Obama) of high-density construction in Manhattan? Extell Development chief Gary Barnett. We recently caught up with Barnett, who stands apart from his peers as he continues to push projects through construction: The ecoefficient Lucida condo on the Upper East Side will open next year and a 600-room hotel just east of Times Square just came out of the ground last month. While Barnett got shut out of the Hudson Yards deal and has relatively few friends in the city's real-estate elite, he also has enough land (including the onetime Trump portfolio at Riverside South) to look past the current economic crisis. "It's no fun to go through, but when you look at it from 30,000 feet, it's not a bad thing for the market," said Barnett, who admits to letting go of 10 to 15 percent of his staff in this bear market — but sees brighter days ahead. "This is not like the early nineties, where there was a huge overhang of inventory. On the residential side there's almost no vacancy." While megaprojects like Hudson Yards founder, Barnett says Extell will draw on its land bank to deliver new residential projects in as soon as nine months.
Finally the Gossip Girl stars have started selling themselves out! Ed Westwick will star in the upcoming K-Swiss campaign, which is being shot in New York today. The ads for television (yesssss!) and print promote K-Swiss's Classic Shoe. So maybe it's less Bass face and more Bass feet, but we're still excited. E! Online reports:
The ads will feature the Brit actor holding tennis balls, rackets and guitars.
…[T]he campaign will launch in February. Says the source, "It's going to be very Brit cool, blending tennis and music."
Mark Ronson, Maroon 5's Adam Levine, and Ne-Yo were reportedly considered for the campaign. Some fine-looking men, but none quite smolders like Chuck Bass.
1. Nas and Green Lantern, "Election Night"
After previously expressing some doubt, Nas is the first rapper to call the election for Obama on brand-new track recorded yesterday. [Umbilical Cord]
2. M.I.A. and Blaqstarr, "Save Ur Soul"
ScarJo did fine on her set of Tom Waits covers, but M.I.A. does more than cover his "Way Down in the Hole," bringing in Blaqstarr to rap the verses. You've seen the video, now enjoy the MP3! [First Up!]
3. Megapuss, "Adam & Steve"
Devandra Banhart and Greg Rogove's side project turns in another awesome, sloppy half-song, not that you'd expect anything less. [Stranger Dance]
4. Scott Weiland, "Fame" (David Bowie cover)
Weiland remakes Bowie's case that fame is nothing but a four-letter word, not that this beat-heavy cover from his upcoming solo record is likely to get him all that much attention. [He's a Whore]
5. James Figurine, "Blinded by the Lights" (Streets cover)
James Tamborello (who also records as Dntel and half of Postal Service) turns Mike Skinner's A Grand Don't Come for Free track into a glitchy instrumental, and you'd have to be deafened by the lights not to enjoy it. [Music Slut]
Front Page: International reaction to U.S. election -- Barack Obama's historic victory was greeted around the world with reactions ranging from hope to hostility.
The actress let this nugget slip to former Spice Girl Mel B, who was guest-hosting The Paul O'Grady Show in the U.K. Mel B asked her point-blank whether there'd be a sequel to the successful first movie, and Cattrall said: "Yes there will." Oh God, here we go again. How on earth could they make a sequel interesting? After Charlotte sharted, we thought for sure we were at the end of the franchise. [Daily Mail]
Karlie Kloss in Bulgari's new fragrance campaign. Photo: Courtesy of Bulgari
MAKEUP
• Club Libby Lu, the fairy-inspired makeover store for tween girls owned by Saks, is closing after five years in business. Maybe the lipstick economic theory doesn't hold for tweens. [CNN Money via Consumerist]
SKIN
• Cambodian women have been using personal lubricant from Number One Plus condoms to shrink their acne. Creative! But how someone concocted that idea in the first place, we don't want to know. [BellaSugar]
• A new study from the United Kingdom reports that beauty creams may contain nanoparticles that have toxic effects on the body, but firms aren't disclosing if they use nanoparticles or not. Calls are out for more testing, but nothing is mandatory by law … yet. [Telegraph]
FRAGRANCE
• Model Karlie Kloss stars in the new Bulgari campaign for the Omnia Green Jade fragrance launching this February. It will feature notes of green mandarin, spring water, white peony, pear blossom, jasmine, pistachio, white woods, and musk and target younger consumers. [Now Smell This]
• Guerlain's holiday perfume bottle skips traditional green and red colors for lilac and white. Refreshing. [Daily Beauty Reporter/Allure]
Maybe running for president seemed like a good idea a couple years ago, when our country was mildly stable and the docket was familiar: Do something with Iraq, keep protecting the homeland, try to lower the cost of health care. But when the financial industry collapsed and took much of the economy along with it, the duties of the next president changed drastically. Barack Obama was swept into power by an electorate desperate for an economic fix and attracted by his plans to help the middle class, but it's unclear how easy those will be to implement. Already, the pundits are abuzz.
• Matt Cooper expects Obama's transition to be "unlike any other since 1932, when that economic crisis dominated the transfer of power." There are many uncertainties, since "we don't really know what direction the Obama economic plan will take given the realities of the market crash." But he's most likely to "move at his briskest pace" on bringing "America's financial architecture" under federal supervision. [Capital/Portfolio]
• Martin Hutchinson thinks that Obama's choices will be restricted by the chaos in the banking system, the housing crisis, and rising deficit, "despite what appears to be a broad mandate from the American people." Major spending programs will be risky and further monetary expansion "almost impossible." [Breaking Views]
• Jonathan Weisman and Laura Meckler expect Obama to "start fast, with a large economic-stimulus package, legislation to fund embryonic stem-cell research and an expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, a government insurance program which will be financed with a rise in the tobacco tax." But "Democrats are divided over how to proceed" after that. [WSJ]
• Megan McArdle insists the "very best [Obama] can hope for is a fairly successful process of trial and error. To the electorate, that will look like bumbling as Rome burns." [Atlantic]
• Andrew Clark suspects "Obama will face pressure to crack down on excessive risk, to strengthen the Securities and Exchange Commission as a financial watchdog and to take action on multi-million dollar boardroom pay." [Guardian UK]
• Kelly Spors asks whether Obama's plans on taxes, health care, employment, finance, immigration, and unionization, all of which would affect small business, are actually "implementable." [Independent Street/WSJ]
• Mary Beth Franklin says likely targets for "quick action" will include "a new round of stimulus checks for taxpayers to grease the wheels of the economy, a move to suspend income taxes for the growing number of Americans collecting unemployment benefits, and temporary changes in tax rules affecting retirement-plan distributions." [Kiplinger]
• James Politi notes the nervousness over Obama's protectionist trade rhetoric during the primaries, but says that "in Washington trade policy circles, few believe these fears are entirely justified." [FT]
• Brian Wingfield writes that tax policy and reforming the financial system will be top priorities. Changes in the financial system could include "streamlining of banks' regulatory structure, the implementation of capital requirements and increased powers for the Federal Reserve." [Forbes]
• Chris Isidore predicts that "another half-million jobs likely will be lost between now and Inauguration Day," and many economists think "there's little Obama can do to stop more job losses in the short-term, even if he's able to get a new economic stimulus package passed by the lame-duck Congress and signed into law by President Bush." [CNN Money]
• James Pethokoukis says Obama has to "kick-start" the economy "as quickly as possible." He'd definitely be willing to sign in a $200 billion government-aid package despite "a budget deficit of $1 trillion or more next year." Why? "A rotting economy can be poison to any new administration, sapping it of public support." [U.S. News]
AP - The Obamas' first official appearance as first family-elect will be long remembered for many weighty historic reasons, but it could also signal another new beginning: An entirely different fashion sense in the White House.
The Dow closed down 486 points today after yesterday's Election Day rally, spoiling an otherwise nice day by reminding us that the economy the president-elect is inheriting is stuck pretty far down the toilet, and dude does not yet have a plumber. [WSJ]
One more reason to feel good today: Due to the results of last night's election, Elizabeth Peyton's new painting Michelle and Sasha Obama Listening to Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention August 2008 has, as predicted, joined the 104 other works in her current retrospective at New Museum.
The New York Public Library honored Nora Ephron at Monday’s Library Lions gala — a significant change of heart from an earlier incident between the writer and the NYPL. Ephron once applied to use the Frederick Lewis Allen Room, a special space for authors with book contracts. “I was interviewed by whoever the person was who ran the Frederick Lewis Allen Room, and he rejected me,” Ephron told us with mock outrage. Now she’s a lion — an exemplar of Patience and Fortitude. Get other library revenge stories from Salman Rushdie, Tina Brown, and Ivanka Trump by viewing our Party Lines slideshow.
Honestly? Do you really want to know? You have exhausted all other possibilities? What about the squirrels on your stoop, did you ask them? Because they might have something interesting … Really? Okay then. Guest of a Guest went and asked some socialite types — you know, the younger ones, the ones who are the future — what they thought about Barack Obama's historic win last night. Here are some of their responses:
Lydia Hearst: "Today is a proud day for America. I just wanted the best candidate in the job and I am in full support of Obama. Like anyone I am excited for change! I think its exactly what this country needs and wants. As far as Palin not making it into the Whitehouse [Eds: Sic on all of this and everything that follows, by the way], I just want candidate in the job regardless of age, sex, or race. I do think John Mccain and his administration would have done a fine job but I am also very optimistic about the next four years.”
Steve Lewis: "Taking WC Fields lead, I voted against the people who I didn’t believe in. Sarah Palin is everything that was wrong with the Republican party, and our country in general. She is a disgusting b*tch.”
Jules Kirby: “Its really disappointing that Sarah Palin will not be holding slumber parties with handmade teddies in the White House”
Nicholas Rhodes: “I had chills during Obama’s speech and I woke up so proud to be an American which is a feeling that I haven’t had for a very long time. I am really excited to see it all unfold! Palin looked like a sour puss!”
D.J. Nick Cohen: “I choose to stay out of political discussions and elections because I do want to justify legitimate organized mafia…”
If you want to see the rest of them, if you really want to, you'll have to go over there. Peter Davis does not come into this house.
It's hard for us to focus today, bear with us. But let's all think back to last week, when we were still in dark times. Our only shining beacon was the news that Posh was about to strip down for Emporio Armani underwear ads. (We've heard the ads are simply amazing.) Nothing like another Beckham baring it for our viewing pleasure. Of course, this isn't the first celebrity-laden underwear ad to capture our hearts (we said hearts, people). The last decade or so has been filled with near-naked celebs posing for the camera, and some models have become famous solely on what they barely cover up. (Thank you, Calvin Klein!) From Marky Mark to Eva Herzigova's famous breasts, take a walk down skivvy lane with us. Leer, ogle, enjoy our unmentionable slideshow.
Rockers making movies is only slightly less obnoxious than actors becoming pop stars. But Christmas on Mars, the brainchild of visionary Flaming Lips front man Wayne Coyne, is worth the cliché. The 47-year old Oklahoma native toiled for seven years in his backyard on the DIY sci-fi fantasy, which plays kind of like a collaboration between Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch, and Alfonso Cuarón — one critic described it as a “thrift-shop Solaris.” It’s what you’d expect from a band known for their gleefully theatrical live shows. The film, featuring bit parts by Fred Armisen and Adam Goldberg, is finally onscreen, now showing “till the end of the year if not the end of time” at KGB Bar. Coyne, who will be at KGB Bar for tonight’s screenings, spoke to Vulture about big ideas, spaceships, and what he did for Halloween.
Where did you get the idea for Christmas on Mars?
As the 1990s rolled along, I thought, We should have a movie. Rock bands, as they move through space and time, should have a movie: The Beatles have movies, Pink Floyd has a movie. There is a movie called The Fearless Freaks that’s about us. But I thought it’d be cool to have a movie where we’re in it as mythological exaggerated characters or something. So I was looking for the perfect idea. We send out a Christmas card every year, and one year, my wife painted me dressed up as a Martian as Santa Claus. For the next year, people said, “Oh, Wayne, we love that character of you as the Martian.” That was 1998 or 1999, and now we’ve got a movie.
Are you capable of thinking small?
I just get these ideas, and I go as far as I can. The week before Halloween, we have our annual March of a Thousand Flaming Skeletons as part of the parade here. People from all over the country come and spend the weekend with us, and we put everybody in this skeleton costume. I know that if I was 6 years old, and my folks had taken me to a parade, and a thousand skeletons with torches went by with some monstrous sound system, I would have grown up thinking the world was a crazy, wonderful, mysterious freak-out of a place.
What did you do for Halloween, then?
Halloween night, I built a 500-pound human brain in one of my circus tents. I used one of my space bubbles; we put some foam on it and a giant sound system in there. Then we had neighborhood kids come in and ask the 500-pound human brain any question, because it was the smartest entity in the known universe. The neighborhood I live in is one of the most depressed neighborhoods in Oklahoma City, and a lot of the kids that come in have lived in the ghetto their whole lives. This one kid came and said, “When is my mom gonna get out of prison?” And the brain — of course it’s me answering — the brain had to scream, and I had to tell them that the brain can’t tell the future. The next question was, “Am I going to be in the NBA or not?”
What’s amazing is that you do all this with relatively little. The same could be said for your music, and Christmas on Mars, which you basically shot in your backyard.
Admittedly, a lot of the things we’re doing are things we were doing in the Flaming Lips shows anyway, with the bubbles, the sound system, the strobe lights. I think if you get up close, which is what I want people to do, you see that it’s all held together with a lot of duct tape. This isn’t some big immaculate futuristic factory. We’ve been doing a Halloween thing since about 1995; we started off with a dead guy on the porch. But yeah, my house is basically Salvador Dalí meets Sanford & Son.
Over the seven years of toiling on the film, was there anything you were unprepared for?
Well, my character lands in a big bubble, and then he shrinks the bubble and eats it, which, when I sat down to watch it all, I realized, Wait, this is kind of a great statement. You are your own spaceship, you eat your own spaceship. You carry around with your way of presenting yourself to the world. But the idea just sort of occurred in the triage of trying to fix the story. I just did that thing in a fucking panic because we were thinking: If he leaves his spaceship out there, wouldn’t the other characters then see it, and wouldn’t we then have to incorporate that into the story? So I sat down and I thought, Okay, he’ll just shrink it down and eat it, that’ll work.
Finally, you worked at a Long John Silver’s for twelve years earlier in your life. What do you think of their introducing healthy, non-fried options to their menu?
[Laughs] I do keep abreast of what’s happening there because so many of them are closing down. I still run into people who knew me then. I saw couples come in on their first dates, I saw them after they had their first child, I saw them after they got divorces. But I have to say, the food really is good. It’s not good for you, and it’s nothing like real fish and chips. But at least once every couple of years my wife and I will go and have it, and we’ll feel terrible afterwards, but we’ve gotta do it. It’s like smoking crack every couple of years.
P.S. 39, in that bastion of precocity, Park Slope, held a mock election where, big surprise, 93 of the kids voted for Obama and five voted for McCain. (The Fascist Five were promptly wedgied at recess.) And of course the kids were more scarily literate on the pertinent issues than you want any likable 9-year-old to be: "Obama would lower taxes except for really rich people because they don't need tax breaks," said one. Oy. Another, upon hearing that 93 had voted for Obama, said, "Imagine if the whole world voted like us — that'd be 93 thousand million." Thank God somebody's kid in the Slope is on a learning curve we can cope with. [Brooklyn Eagle]
Front Page: Fox moves forward with adaptation -- Twentieth Century Fox is moving forward with a bigscreen adaptation of "Gulliver's Travels," with Jack Black taking on the title role as his next project.
This isn't the Target line, but the McQ line that inspired the Target line. Photo: Courtesy of Alexander McQueen
Yesterday we learned Alexander McQueen would design a diffusion line for Target based on his lower-priced McQ line. Today we have tantalizing details. The line will be available in stores and online from March 1 through April 11, 2009. Prices haven't been determined, but it's inspired by the Duke Spirit, a British band with an affinity for the sounds of late eighties and early nineties grunge bands. Lead singer Leila Moss was McQueen's muse for the collection, which WWD describes thusly:
The collection has a muted color palette of black, white, gray and tan with accents of cobalt blue and bright pink. Studs and mesh give items an edge. For example, a chambray sleeveless shirtdress has stud detailing, there’s a mesh wrap dress and an open yarn zipper cardigan. Graphic prints and silk-screen photographs give tunics, dresses and T-shirts visual interest. The Leila silk-screen T-shirt with a necklace collar was designed for The Duke Spirit lead singer, while other band members are immortalized on a sleeveless jersey T-shirt.
A sateen strapless pleat dress in a tattoo print of mermaids, dice and anchors is an example of McQueen’s penchant for pairing feminine fabrics with tough details — in this case, a studded leather belt.
Alexander McQueen does mermaids and we can afford them? This is too much.
Jonathan Horowitz's Obama '08 (2008). Photo: Courtesy of Gavin Brown's Enterprise
We turn again today to Jonathan Horowitz’s election art at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise where the artist has cobbled together a very appropriate wall decoration for Obama’s new office.
Front Page: Major cable news outlets were up from 2004 -- ABC and a record-setting CNN joined Barack Obama in the winner's circle on Tuesday, drawing the most viewers on Election Night.
The current exciting contemporary-music scene in New York owes quite a bit to a 1987 meeting between Michael Gordon, Julia Wolfe, and David Lang — the future founders of the Bang on a Can collective. Bang on a Can is now an institution, and Lang won a Pulitzer Prize this year for the latest in his canon of intrepid works, The Little Match Girl Passion (out on Harmonia Mundi this spring). He’s playing (Le) Poisson Rouge tonight in honor of the release of his new Pierced and took a few minutes to speak to Vulture from his Tribeca home.
How did you find out you were nominated for the Pulitzer?
I had no idea that I was nominated or that I was in the running, and actually I was the last person to find out. I was in a recording session all morning, in a really cranky mood, and I came out just to get a breath of fresh air at 3:30, flipped on my phone to call my wife. Immediately, NPR was saying, “So, do you have some comments for us?” And I went, “About what?” Apparently they’d been looking for me all morning.
How did you react to that, having been a bit of an outsider for most of your career?
I'm really gratified that people would listen to my music and take it seriously and like it … it’s unfortunate that some people will like it better now that it has this credential. I'm the same composer I was the day before I won it. So that’s slightly creepy, that all of a sudden because I have this imprimatur it’s safe to listen to my music. But on the other hand, if people now decide they can take a risk on me, maybe I can do even more ridiculous or meaningful things.
Tell us a bit about your winning piece and why you chose to use the Passion format.
I wrote it for this singer, Paul Hillyer. When I got the commission from Carnegie Hall, I did some research into what he’s done and realized that because he’s a singer, he’s spent his whole life doing vocal music from the Western tradition — which means in the service of Christian music. It just sort of hit me — that’s always been a strange sore spot for me, because I’m a Jewish composer, who loves classical music and feels it very deeply, but there are times you are sort of hit in the face with the fact that a lot of it is about being in the service of a religion that is not yours. So I thought I could do something more humanistic — make this Passion format work if I took Jesus out and put somebody else’s suffering in.
What is your writing process like?
My wife and I get our kids out early in the morning, and I get to work immediately. The great thing about having kids, all of a sudden you have a really definite schedule. Before I had kids, I could write anytime, 24 hours a day — which meant I didn’t write that much. Now, I feel like, ‘Okay, it’s a race against time — when they come back, all creativity stops.”
The new music scene in the city seems to be flourishing. Do you think a mainstream new music exists now — and are you part of it?
Well … it’s hard to know what a mainstream new music would be. I’m pretty sure Philip Glass can go to the grocery store and not be noticed by too many people. I don’t think anyone in my world needs to worry about becoming Brad Pitt — and I think that’s good, in a way. What’s interesting is you don’t know who’s making these rules about what’s outside or inside; it’s like a terrorist list! Maybe all anybody in America can hope to be is an outsider to the European tradition — that we’re the acceptable barbarian.
Tonight you’ll be presenting your take on Lou Reed’s “Heroin.” Why did you decide to cover it?
I was a nerdy classical-music person in high school, right? I played in a rock band, but I was totally unprepared for hearing this music because I’d never heard anything that was dangerous before. You get used to what these musics are for: Classical music is about nobility, about things with capital letters that are big marble busts on pedestals, and pop music is about dancing and sex. But I’d never thought of music as something that was terrifying. It was an introduction to a way of living I found scary, and still do. I thought for years and years I’d just make my own arrangements of those songs, and finally I thought, Maybe I just want to deal with the lyrics. The first one I made was “Heroin.”
So now that you’re living post-Pulitzer life, have you noticed organizations are more open to programming your work?
Yeah, I’ve definitely had good things happen. People have called up and said, “Remember this project of yours we were considering doing? Well, now we’re doing it.” But basically the real value of this thing is that now my father doesn’t think it was a terrible idea that I didn’t go to medical school. “He doesn’t make a good living … but he won the Pulitzer!” That’s really worth something to me.
Front Page: News outlets shift programming, personnel -- The post-election shuffle of programming and personnel began quickly for TV newsies on Wednesday, even as most news outlets spent the day parsing the what-it-all-means factor of Tuesday's returns.
On a recent trip to Berlin, this blogger noticed the Germans are embracing acid-wash denim. Is it the start of a global acid-wash resurgence? We're dubious since the style has "come back," like, seven times since the eighties. But if you want a piece, some retailers are selling acid-wash styles. James Jeans even debuted an organic way to bleach denim last week for their spring 2009 line. Or if you're broke and feeling fortuitous, grab a can of bleach and go hog wild. [Flypaper]
Front Page: Cavill, Worthington in talks for toga pics -- Relativity Media is negotiating with Henry Cavill ("The Tudors") to star as Theseus in the Tarsem Singh-directed "War of the Gods."
Well, this is just completely sad. Billion-selling sci-fi author Michael Crichton unexpectedly died in Los Angeles yesterday after a "courageous and private battle against cancer," according to a family spokesperson. Crichton is well known as the creator of ER, which was born out of his own experiences as a medical doctor, as well as the writer of Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain, and Disclosure, among other novels, many of which were lucratively adapted for the screen. A private funeral service is reportedly expected, and no further details will be released to the public, says his family.
The suit at Neiman Marcus and Sarah Palin wearing it last night. Photo: neimanmarcus.com, Getty Images
We're not done talking about Sarah Palin's $150,000 wardrobe. She might have returned some of her designer stash, but last night she wore a $498 Elie Tahari suit, incidentally sold at Neiman Marcus. Going back to her old clothes didn't last long now, did it? And it sounds like her wardrobe didn't cost $150,000, but somewhere closer to $200,000. Newsweek is reporting that according to a senior aide, Palin was told to purchase three suits for the convention and hire a stylist. Palin took that to mean she could buy expensive clothes for herself and her family from luxury retailers like Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. A source also tells Newsweek a wealthy donor purchased the clothes for Palin and was "shocked" at how much she spent. What's more, the McCain campaign was furious at Palin's gratuitous shopping sprees.
But there's more: Palin reportedly asked low-level staffers to buy clothes on their credit cards. The McCain campaign wasn't aware of this until those staffers sought reimbursement last week. Tricky!
One aide estimated that she spent "tens of thousands" more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband. Some articles of clothing have apparently been lost. An angry aide characterized the shopping spree as "Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast," and said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books.
This sentence is so great we're going to print it again:
An angry aide characterized the shopping spree as "Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast."
Now that that's out of our system, let's see what Palin's people have to say! An aide told Newsweek:
"Governor Palin was not directing staffers to put anything on their personal credit cards, and anything that staffers put on their credit cards has been reimbursed, like an expense. Nasty and false accusations following a defeat say more about the person who made them than they do about Governor Palin."
Fbpmpt. They're right — the truth-seeking media are such haters, and Palin is a poor, poor Valentino-clad victim.
No — you know what? A lot of people defended Palin's wardrobe because the clothes were seemingly just given to her and it wasn't really her choice. But all this just proves she knew exactly what she was doing by buying and wearing those clothes. Considering she had the nerve to wear that $498 suit last night, she must really not care how incongruous all this is with her image. Furthermore, aides didn't tell McCain about Palin's extravagant spending because they thought he'd be "offended." In fact, Palin and McCain rarely spoke during the campaign. Now that is horseshit.
Front Page: 'Solace' director in negotiations with Universal -- Universal is in negotiations to remake the Korean film "Die Bad," developing the drama as a potential directing vehicle for "Quantum of Solace" helmer Marc Forster.
Front Page: Dip due to fall in TV ad sales, film studio -- News Corp. offered the grimmest report yet of any media conglom in this unsettled earnings season.
"I would not be standing here actually in reality at all because my parents met working for Biden. They met on (a long-ago) campaign, so they have this particular affection for Joe. He came to their wedding. If it weren't for Joe Biden, I would not exist as a human being." —Fall Out Boy's Pete Wentz [AP via Yahoo]
"I felt like my vote was the vote that put him into office. It was down to one vote, and that was going to be my vote. And that may not be true, but that's how much power it felt like I had." —Diddy elected Barack Obama! [AP via Yahoo]
"I never thought there'd come a day when I'd be compared to Madonna." —Elisabeth Moss on starring in Speed-the-Plow [Newsday via PopMatters]
"Do I want it? You bet your fucking ass I do! I think that people assume that I don't care or don't want it or don't need it or something. It's hard to be there five times, and I'm only human, you know? But I don't go home and cry, because we're all grown-ups here." —Kate Winslet on being a five-time Oscar loser [VF]
"Too many chords." —Harry Shearer on why Spinal Tap will never cover any songs from his new album Songs of the Bushmen [Spinner]
"I write a lot of sonnets. One of my favorites is called 'Me And Clouds.' And of course my most famous one, which you can read on my blog, 'Rain In My Heart.'" —Paul Rudd on why screenwriting isn't that challenging [A.V. Club]
Naomi Campbell stars in Yves Saint Laurent's fall campaign, but she's out for spring 2009. So quick — everyone in the same room as Naoms right now duck and cover! Oh, we kid. Claudia Schiffer will replace Naomi for the spring ads. She recently said at a party that Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadib shot the campaign in L.A. last month. YSL designer Stefano Pilati is probably taking a turn from the dark fall ads, which feature Campbell and a chair in a desolate, attic-esque room. But blonde Claudia in L.A. — it couldn't be more spring if you put her on a sun-soaked patio with a snow cone and a fawn. (Fall is great too, though … sigh.) Now we just have to sit back in our sweaters and wait for the ads to break. And for the tabloids to start rumors about Naomi and Claudia feuding, of course.
Tagline: "Chicago 1950: Sex had a sound. Danger had a rhythm. And freedom had a music all its own."
Translation: Eh.
The Verdict: Despite an awesome cast — including Beyoncé, Jeffrey Wright, Mos Def, and, we guess, Adrien Brody — Cadillac Records still doesn't quite feel like the spiritual sequel to Dreamgirls that it was likely intended to be. Maybe we're burned out on musical biopics. Or, maybe, in a time when the real-life music business has all but ceased to exist (thanks in no small part to greed and hilarious financial mismanagement), we're finding it slightly hard to get excited about a movie that looks back fondly on hilarious record-label mismanagement. Plus, were there really women dropping babies off at Muddy Waters' house? Also, did all five members of the Rolling Stones really once show up unannounced at Muddy Waters' studio, only to find that he'd never heard of them? Seems unlikely is all.
Peter Som for Best & Co. girl's organza dress ($995), girl's sleeveless dress ($995), girl's double-breasted coat ($1,195). Photo: Courtesy of Best & Co.
Peter Som may have officially resigned from Bill Blass on October 28, but he's wasted no time finding new projects. Luxury children's brand Best & Co. signed the designer to create a seven-item limited-edition capsule collection — four pieces for boys and three for girls — for the holidays, launching tomorrow at Bergdorf Goodman. And while Som's Bill Blass line may have had financing problems, this collection certainly doesn't. The price tags are hefty, reaching upwards of $1,195 for a girl's double-breasted coat or $995 for a girl's organza dress. And for the boys, a full navy suit with trouser, shirt, vest, and blazer comes to the grand total of $1,715, perfect for a Chuck Bass in the making. And though this may seem excessively expensive given the current economic outlook, the launch reminds us that there's a market for high-end, well-made children's clothes. After all, you can't expect future Dalton alumni to wear Osh Kosh B'Gosh. We'd be bitter if the clothes weren't so darn cute.
Boy's tuxedo pant ($395), boy's pin-tuck shirt ($350), boy's vest ($395), boy's blazer ($575). Photo: Courtesy of Best & Co.
This Friday sees the release of Soul Men, the Bernie Mac–and–Samuel L. Jackson–starring comedy from the Weinstein Company about a pair of retired backup singers who end a twenty-year feud and agree to play a reunion concert after the death of their former lead singer (played, somehow, by John Legend). It's hard to imagine anyone not being completely delighted by this news, but we guess there's always somebody. Sam Moore — the surviving half of the legendary soul duo Sam & Dave, the guys who originally made "Soul Man" a hit — is alleging the movie "gives a defamatory account" of an ill-fated reunion that he and Dave Prater had in 1982, after they'd not spoken in four years. "It's so amateurish, so stupid, and I'm surprised that Samuel L Jackson is involved in this," says Moore, who apparently has not seen any of Jackson's last 37 films. "They have bastardized my whole story."
The movie's soundtrack includes one of Moore's songs, and Jackson and Mac's characters even work with the late Isaac Hayes, who produced and wrote for Sam & Dave in the sixties (he's responsible for "Soul Man"). But according to a lawyer for the Weinstein Company, Soul Men "tells a different story about different people," and if Moore files a lawsuit, "he will lose," presumably because Weinstein Co. probably can't afford to pay him much even if he wins.
Two young brothers, Sumo and Duffy, are sent to visit family members they've never met on a remote Hawaiian island. A journey deep into the heart of an erupting volcano will test their mettle and reveal the truth about the mother they haven't seen in years — but just might kill them both. Caldecott-winning children's-book author Don Wood's first graphic novel, Into the Volcano, is a gripping, gorgeously drawn adventure story that captures the terrible beauty and danger of life on the volcano's edge.
On today's Comics Page, Vulture is proud to present an exclusive twelve-page excerpt from Into the Volcano, out now from Scholastic.
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So Obama won (yay), but the craziest election ever is over (boo). So what am I going to think about now? Leighton Meester?
—Taylor, Norfolk, Va.
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• After months of making her show as bipartisan as possible, Oprah Winfrey finally lets loose with her Obama love.
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On today's Comics Page, Vulture is proud to present an exclusive twelve-page excerpt from Into the Volcano, out now from Scholastic.