CL’s Chante LaGon, Debbie Michaud and Curt Holman chat about this year’s Holiday Guide. Dubbed the Regression Issue, the guide revisits our childhood love for toys — with a few grown-up twists.
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Role Model Citizen by Fahamu Pecou
As usual, here are a few arts events to add to your weekend roster. Also, don’t forget about the Hense exhibition at The Rail Yard and the Kvares show at Beep Beep. This weekend’s art scene is chock-full so enjoy.
FRIDAY (Today)
Head to Castleberry Hill’s tattoo parlor/art gallery City of Ink to check out John Hairston Jr.’s vivid, realistic graffiti-style art. His latest work, Hollywood Africans, celebrates the life and career of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Walk away with a unique perspective on one of the world’s first African American art greats and maybe even some new ink. Free. City of Ink. 404-525-4465. www.thecityofink.com/.
Fresh from the NYC fashion scene House of Diehl’s Style Wars hits Atlanta runways. Watch designers battle head-to-head and make killer creations in 5-minute knock-out rounds. It’s Project Runway on crack! $15-$20 7:30 p.m. Opera. 404-874-0428. www.houseofdiehl.com/stylewars.
SATURDAY
Eyedrum’s First Annual Ear Ball is sure to satisfy all your aural cravings. The event–originally conceived as a fund raiser–is a showcase of the works of a diverse pool of local sound artists. Whether you’re into jazz improv or are looking for some electronic soundscapes Eyedrum’s got you covered. Pay what you can. 12 p.m.-2 a.m. Eyedrum. 404-522-0655. www.eyedrum.org.
Get This! Gallery is housing Atlanta neopop artist Fahamu Pecou’s first solo show. Whirl Trade was inspired by Pecou’s travels in Africa and explores the interpretations and misconceptions of blackness in African-decended communities. Through images that are arranged as faux magazine covers he sends a powerful message about popular media and the power of influence. Free. 7-11 p.m. Get This! Gallery. 678-596-4451. Gethisgallery.com.
SUNDAY
It’s Pecha Kucha time! Volume 14–the last of the fall season–is titled Back to Basics. The diverse roster (including CL favorite Danielle Roney and former mayoral candidate Kyle Keyser) promises to provide some tasty food for thought and make for lots of candid conversation. Free. 7 p.m. Octane Coffee Lounge (Westside). www.atlantapechakucha.com.
Ted Danson takes a dive in the boxing ring as magazine editor George Christopher in the Bored to Death season finale. Photo: Esquire
It’s rumble time between two magazines on Bored to Death tonight.
GQ editor Richard, book critic Lewis, and a lowly cartoonist are taking on the Edition team. George, Jonathan, and Ames are working out at a downtown boxing gym with a surly trainer named Sal. Between beating on tires with sledgehammers, hitting the heavy bag, and tossing the medicine ball, they’re getting in pretty good shape. They just might kick GQ’s ass, but women keep getting in the way.
Jonathan is falling for Stella, the co-op worker he met last week while tracking down the lesbian black market sperm thieves. They’re getting together to smoke pot but he hasn’t made any moves on her yet. “What are you, in the fifth grade?” Ray asks.
“Yeah, I lost my virginity in the fifth grade,” Sal says.
“What was his name?” Ray asks.
“Father Francis,” Sal says.
Continue reading “Bored to Death episode 8 recap – season finale” »
Calling all dancers! MTV’s coming to Atlanta to cast street dance groups to compete in the fifth season of “America’s Best Dance Crew.” The series (produced by “American Idol’s” Randy Jackson) pits 12 groups against each other in an intense 10-week competition. Each week the dance groups are presented with a choreography challenge and face elimination. The winning team receives 100K, a Golden B-Boy Trophy, and the satisfaction of knowing that it’s America’s Best Dance Crew.
Take a look at last season’s winner, We Are Heroes, below. The auditions will be held at Dance 411 Studios (475 Moreland Ave.) on Fri., Nov. 20 at 8 a.m. Callbacks will be the next day at the same time. E-mail info@dance411studios.com with your crew name and phone number to reserve an audition slot.
Ever since I saw Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire, I’ve been trying to think of a quip that riffs on the unwieldy title. If other movies follow suit, will we see such titles as Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End: Based on the theme park ride by Disneyworld? As usual, the New Yorker’s Anthony Lane provided the wittiest line:
Please make sure, when you buy a ticket for Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire, to pronounce the title in full. I know you will. There was a plan to call it “Push,” until another movie got there first. But why not call the new one “Precious,” and leave it at that? After all, Deborah Kerr didn’t star in The Innocents: Based on the Novella ‘The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, and Dustin Hoffman didn’t star in Rain Man: Based on the Overwhelming Desire to Win an Academy Award by Dustin Hoffman, so why the change in rubric?
Serial memoirist Augusten Burroughs will read from his new book, You Better Not Cry, at SCAD’s Ivy Hall tomorrow. If you can’t make it or want a sneak preview of the profane, droll world that spills from his mouth, we’ve got a got a great clip of him reading a passage from the book. It’s not quite as trancelike as his recent interview, but Burroughs has the sort of distinct voice that lends his stories a memorable charm.
Be sure to stick around for the opera singer.
Augusten Burroughs reads from You Better Not Cry
Free. 6:30-8 p.m. Wed., Nov. 4. SCAD-Atlanta, 1600 Peachtree St., 4C. 404-253-3206. www.artofrestoration.org.
(Mp3 courtesy of Macmillan Audio)
Jonathan, Ray and Stella get stoned at the Park Slope co-op while tracking down the lesbian black market sperm thieves. Photo: Paul Schiraldi
Jonathan Ames and company took on a new case this week, “The Case of the Stolen Sperm.”
The lesbian couple that Ray has been donating his sperm to have suddenly disappeared and thrown his life off-balance. “Look, for years I’ve been jerking off purely for medical reasons, like lancing a wound, but trying to have a baby with them has given it new meaning,” he says. Jonathan agrees to help him track the couple down, but they find out a little more than they expect.
Somehow I missed Drag Me to Hell when it played in theaters earlier this year, but I caught up with it last night. It’s smart and nasty in all the right ways, while being totally icky — it could just as easily had the title Don’t Put Stuff in My Mouth. Director Sam Raimi seems to be having more fun plaguing Alison Lohman’s loan officer than he did in all three Spider-man movies combined. This weekend it’s playing at GSU’s Cinefest if you’d rather see it on a big screen in a dark room for Halloween.
For scares at your local multiplex, you can still find ultra-violent Zombieland and the lo-fi sleeper hit Paranormal Activity (which outgrossed Saw VI last weekend). Two other lesser-known horror flicks have been highly touted, but I can’t vouch for them (yet). Critics like the 80s-retro bloodfest The House of the Devil, which hasn’t yet opened in Atlanta. A cult following surrounds the Halloween anthology flick Trick ‘r Treat, which was long-shelved but has recently been released on DVD:
Nearly every horror film that’s off-beat or extreme in some way has champions, even dreadful ones, so it’s hard to separate the superior from the shlock. Here’s a list of more chilling choices from the darker corners of the video store, as well as intriguing ones that I’ve been meaning to see.
Continue reading “13 Days of Halloween: Which (obscure) scary movie to see?” »
Long ago Tina Fey’s sitcom “30 Rock” established that resident hayseed-naif Kenneth the Page (Jack McBrayer) hails from Stone Mountain, Ga. “Stone Mountain” provided the title of last night’s episode, in which Fey’s Liz Lemon and Alec Baldwin’s Jack Donaughey traveled to the Bible Belt to find a new “TGS” cast member with appeal for Middle American viewers. McBrayer was born in Macon and raised in Conyers, but it’s not surprising that “30 Rock’s” notion of Stone Mountain — located in “Western Georgia” — bears virtually no resemblance to the suburb found East of Atlanta. At one point a Stone Mountain newscaster announces that a local funnyman “has been hired by a Catholic to appear on ‘TGS’ with a black fella.” One gets the impression that “30 Rock’s” creators think that people actually live on Stone Mountain. It’s good for a few chuckles, though:
For sheer literary merit and respectability, Frankenstein has cast a shadow over all horror novels published over the two subsequent centuries. Picking Mary Shelley’s 1818 classic seems like an easy out, though, which ignores more recent landmarks of the genre like Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes. The new century has already seen some excellent horror novels, including Dan Simmons’ huge, Victorian-era chillers, The Terror and Drood, Scott Smith’s disturbing vacation-from-Hell The Ruins (hey, anyone see the movie?) and China Mieville’s genre-busting Perdido Street Station.
Still, evaluating the scariest of everything for the 13 Days of Halloween series has reminded me of the subjectivity of fear-based entertainment and the fact that the most lingering scares date back to youth. For the novel that scared me most, I have to back to vintage Stephen King, who penned several heart-stopping books before I was old enough to drive. Salem’s Lot and The Stand would be satisfying choices, not to mention his “Monkey’s Paw” homage Pet Sematery). His novel that scared me most, though, wasn’t even a novel.
Continue reading “13 Days of Halloween: The scariest novel” »
Movie theaters tend to be our culture’s equivalent to the campfires, the places where we gather and attempt to frighten each other. Of all the film genres, the horror movie offers the most likely return on investment, so cinema offers more than a century’s worth of spooky material, from Universal Studio’s black-and-white classics like Bride of Frankenstein of the 1930s to recent high-tech ghost stories like Japan’s Ringu. Of course, the vast majority of horror flicks only inspire laughter or disgust, but the jagged diamonds in the rough can be exhilaratingly frightful, like John Carpenter’s Halloween which created the template for the slasher film in 1978.
After most movie “boo!” moments, the fear subsides once you see the stage blood or realize that only a cat was making the unnerving noise. A few, however, create horrors that follow you home, none more so than The Exorcist, William Friedkin’s notorious depiction of demonic possession. Linda Blair’s Regan transforms from a cute, normal little girl to a misshapen, all-knowing, possibly homicidal ghoul. The Exorcist’s nightmarish sound design alone can fray a viewer’s nerves, but the film violates the rule that what you don’t see is scarier than what you do, offering a glimpse of unimaginable, inexplicable evil and hostility made flesh. The Exorcist combination of stark fear and abhorrence proves so potent, even remembering it can scare you. The pea soup is the least of it.
To be fair, I probably don’t know enough scary radio shows to make an informed decision, and radio’s a perfect medium for generating chills. While I’m sure there are many unsung classics, Orson Welles’ broadcast of The War of the Worlds seems an inarguable choice, given that it generated actual hysteria in real life.
Exactly how many people thought Welles’ news report-style adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel really was an actual alien invasion is subject to dispute (some estimates hold the number to be well over a million). The Mercury Theatre on the Air’s War of the Worlds included three disclaimers that it was fiction, and here’s my favorite theory about how it still scared people nontheless:
Later studies indicate that many missed the repeated notices that the broadcast was fictional, partly because the Mercury Theatre (an unsponsored “cultural” program with a relatively small audience) ran opposite the popular Chase and Sanborn Hour over the Red Network of NBC, hosted by Don Ameche and featuring comic ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and singer Nelson Eddy, three of the most popular figures in broadcasting. About 15 minutes into the Chase and Sanborn program the first comic sketch ended and a musical number began, and many listeners began tuning around the dial at that point. As a result, some listeners happened upon the CBS broadcast at the point the Martians emerge from their spacecraft.
Notoreity aside, Welles’ War of the Worlds holds up quite well, particularly the passage mentioned above, when the newly-arrived Martians aim a death ray at a broadcaster (whose delivery was allegedly inspired by the famous play-by-play of the 1937 Hindenburg crash). Check out the “eyewitness account” at the 7-minute mark, and listen for the blood-curdling scream and even more nerve-wracking silence that follows. Then imagine stumbling across it while dial-surfing in the 1930s:
Sequential television programs don’t readily lend themselves to fright, because the same characters usually come back every week and can only be put in so much peril. Anthology shows had more license to torment their victims, particularly Rod Serling’s ingenious “The Twilight Zone” and his more feverish “Night Gallery.” In one of “The Zone’s” best gotcha moments, from “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” a squirrelly mental patient (William Shatner) on a malfunctioning aircraft looked out his plane window only to see a gremlin’s bestial face staring back at him. (The adaptation from the uneven movie is good, too.)
“The X-Files” at its best proved highly effective at presenting new hauntings and alien abductions each week, and showed the influence of the 1970s short-lived, much-beloved monster-hunting show “Kolchak: The Night Stalker.” In a way, “The X-Files” served as a “safer” version of “Twin Peaks,” David Lynch and Mark Frost’s night-time soap opera with an ironic hybrid of lurid twists and ironic humor. “Twin Peaks” wasn’t always violent or horrific, but its darkest moments may never be surpassed at terrifying viewers. “Peaks” hit its monstrous heights when Lynch directed the nightmares and criminal acts that set the demonic spirit called “BOB” lose against helpless victims. In a sadistic joke on the show’s loyal audience, “Twin Peaks” concluded with BOB taking possession of wholesome FBI agent Dale Cooper. Here’s one of the show’s most disturbing visions from the end of the second season premiere:
I should also mention a TV show that doesn’t quite “count,” but comes first to my mind when the phobia-inducing subject comes up.
Continue reading “13 Days of Halloween: The scariest TV series” »
Graphic novels have an equivalent to Sweeney Todd in From Hell, Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s encyclopedically dense and disturbing autopsy of the Jack the Ripper murders (currently published by Top Shelf Productions). Well before the English writer penned From Hell and Watchmen, he terrorized American readers in the 1980s by taking over Swamp Thing, then an obscure DC Comics title about a plant-man in the Louisiana bayou. Moore pushed not just the character but the very medium into breathtaking territory, abetted by artists Stephen Bissette and John Totleben, whose intricate illustrations harked back to classic/shlocky EC Comics titles like Tales of the Crypt from the early 1950s. (Forget about the movie and TV versions with their tree-hugging “Do not bring your evil here” messages.)
Moore’s second issue of Swamp Thing, titled “The Anatomy Lesson,” offered a wildly diverse reinterpretation of the title characters origins while also providing a Poe-worthy revenge tale. One moment comes to mind that conveys the depths of Moore’s imagination from the Saga of the Swamp Thing Book Two collection (coming out just in time for Christmas). In one issue, Swamp Thing descends to Hell itself to rescue his lady love and happens upon the soul of his arch-enemy, Arcane, being eaten alive from the inside out.
“How many years have I been here?” Arcane asks.
“Since yesterday,” Swamp Thing replies.
The scream of a villain’s realization of the scope of eternal damnation? Priceless.
