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“Image is everything in Atlanta.”

“In Atlanta, money and class give you power.”

“Everybody wants to be in Atlanta. It’s hot!”

These are just a few of the tips I picked up watching the premier of Bravo’s “The Real Housewives of Atlanta” last night. It was all news to me, and I’ve lived in Atlanta my whole life. (Marietta, technically, but if these women — in their 15,000-square-foot mansions in the gated communities of north Georgia — live in Atlanta, then so do I.) I’ve never had money or class or a cake in the shape of a Louis Vuitton bag, but I’ve still managed to scrape by. And it’s definitely true that Atlanta is hot. Sometimes very hot. (more…)

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Yesterday marked the release of Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*! by Art Spiegelman, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the Holocaust memoir Maus. Printed in large, 10-inch-by-14-inch format, Breakdowns is, for the most part, a re-release of a collection of strips printed in 1978 with an original run of 5,000. It’s a book within a book, with a facsimile of the original Breakdowns sandwiched between new material. It begins with an illustrated biographical introduction and ending with an afterword by Spiegelman himself — a kind of reflective essay about Breakdowns and how it came about.

From the afterword:

Although Breakdowns figures prominently in my life and my development as an artist, I was still startled when Pantheon expressed interest in re-issuing the book. I couldn’t help but worry that, once the scarcity factor was removed, Pantheon would be lucky to sell as many copies of this edition as I’d sold of the 1978 book. I didn’t want my editors to think they had some red-hot commodity on their hands — like, say, an Elvis Presley poster book — simply because of the success of Maus. In fact, it was the resounding lack of response to Breakdowns that led directly to the 300-page Maus. (more…)

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Here are some of the titles that come out on DVD today. For more, see Matt Brunson’s View from the Couch column tomorrow.

“30 Rock” Season 2

“‘Allo, ‘Allo!” Series 9 and the Complete Collection

Dare Not Walk Alone

“Grace Under Fire” the Complete First Season

Halloween Unrated Three-Disc Collector’s Edition

The Happening

“How I Met Your Mother” Season 3

Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer

“Martin” the Complete 5th Season

“Mission Impossible” the 5th Season

“Robot Chicken” Season 3

“The Simpsons” the Complete 11th Season

Sleeping Beauty Two-Disc Platinum Edition

The Visitor

You Don’t Mess with the Zohan

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This week CL Charlotte’s Matt Brunson discusses the DVD releases of Ewan McGregor-Hugh Jackman movie Deception, Iron Man, the special Coppola Restoration of all three Godfather movies and more.

DECEPTION (2008). It’s hard to believe a movie starring Hugh Jackman and Ewan McGregor, two impossibly charismatic actors, could be so dull, but the evidence is right here. McGregor stars as Jonathan McQuarry, a meek accountant who has no fun until a lawyer named Wyatt Bose (Jackman) swoops down like a slumming deus ex machina and introduces his new pal to the pleasures of pot, nightclubs and mixed doubles tennis matches. Just before Wyatt leaves town for a business trip, he “accidentally” switches cell phones with Jonathan; soon, the virginal numbers cruncher is receiving calls during which sexy female voices merely whisper, “Are you free tonight?” Passing himself off as Wyatt, Jonathan soon discovers an anonymous sex club in which the members all turn out to be Wall Street movers and shakers. Read the rest here.

(Godfather photo courtesy Paramount Pictures)

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Here are some selected titles that arrive on DVD today. Keep an eye out for Matt Brunson’s “View From the Couch,” posted tomorrow.

2008 Olympics - Beijing 2008 Complete Opening Ceremony

“Adam 12″ Second Season

An Autumn Afternoon

“B.L. Stryker” the Complete Series

“Beauty and the Best” the Complete Series

Bigger, Stronger, Faster*

Can’t Hardly Wait 10th Anniversary Edition

“Click & Clack’s As the Wrench Turns”

CSNY: Deja Vu

“Deadliest Catch” the Complete Fourth Season

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Iron Man

Jellyfish (more…)

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Kerry Howard, or “Big Daddy,” of Cumming, Ga.’s Howard House Interiors, was a much-loved contestant on the second season of Bravo’s “Top Design.” He was eliminated in episode three when his team’s design (he was paired with fellow contestant Wisit Prapong, who was not eliminated) failed to satisfy their client, Jeffrey Sebelia - winner of “Project Runway” season three - in the window display challenge. I spoke to him about the show, his business and the allure of Atlanta (and its housewives).

So, how was “Top Design?”
It was phenomenal. I had a great time. It was the experience of a lifetime.

What would you say your design style is? Do you have a specialty?
I’m very transitional, which, to me, is defined as a mixture of old and new. I love mixing old architectural elements with new modern pieces, such as a Barcelona chair or really high-end leather. I really just enjoy a challenge to mix old and new things to form an eclectic field.

You were very diplomatic when you got cut in episode three. Were you upset that you didn’t get another chance to prove yourself on an individual challenge?
Yeah, I would have loved to prove myself on an individual basis, but I think the end result was, you know, everything happens for a reason, and it was just my time to go. If I was to do it all over again, I would have loved to start the whole show with an individual challenge, so America could see our personal style, but that’s just the way the ball rolled for me, so I just have to go with the flow.

Have you watched Blade Runner yet [the film his client, Jeffrey Sebelia, wanted his space to be designed around, in Howard’s losing challenge]?
No, I have not. I’m not a real big sci-fi person, but I have gotten an overabundance of clips from people around the country. I have an idea of it, I’m just not a big sci-fi person. (more…)

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Mila Kunis and Jason Segel in Forgetting Sarah Marshall

This week CL Charlotte’s Matt Brunson discusses the DVD releases of Cool Hand Luke, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Leatherheads and more.

COOL HAND LUKE (1967). In a career filled with iconic anti-heroes – including what I deem the “4-H Club” from the 1960s (Hud, Harper, Hombre and The Hustler) – Lucas Jackson just might be the most popular of all the societal misfits played by Paul Newman. After drunkenly destroying parking meters in a small Southern town, Newman’s wisecracking loner is shipped off to a prison whose inmates break their backs working on a chain gang. Read the rest here.

(Photo by Glen Wilson)

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Here are some selected titles that come out on DVD today. For more, keep an eye out for Matt Brunson’s “View from the Couch” column tomorrow.

“Alvin and the Chipmunks” Holiday Gift Set

“Boston Legal” Season Four

“Brothers and Sisters” Season Two

“CSI New York” The Fourth Season

“Caillou’s Winter Wonders”

“Cashmere Mafia” The Complete Series

Deception

The Foot Fist Way

“Friday the 13th” Season One (more…)

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This week CL Charlotte film critic Matt Brunson takes a look at 88 Minutes, An American in Paris and more, including that dizzying color-fest Speed Racer.

AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (1951) / GIGI (1958). The film industry has produced a substantial number of truly transcendent musical masterpieces – Singin’ in the Rain, Top Hat and A Hard Day’s Night are but three examples – yet rarely have these films won Best Picture Oscars. Instead, the Academy’s taste in musicals tends to run toward lavish, overproduced extravaganzas that often lumber rather than waltz across the screen. MGM’s two Best Picture musical winners in the 1950s are entertaining enough – and certainly superior to such victors as Oliver! and The Great Ziegfeld – but they represent neither the finest of their respective years nor the movie musical genre itself. Read the rest here.

(Photo courtesy Warner Bros.)

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A whole bunch of movie and TV titles come out on DVD today. For more, keep an eye out for Matt Brunson’s “View from the Couch” column tomorrow.

88 Minutes

“The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet — Christmas with the Nelsons”

“Alvin and the Chipmunks” The Alvinnnn!!! Edition

An American in Paris — Two-disc special edition

Another Cinderella Story

The Babysitters

Beetlejuice — 20th anniversary deluxe edition

Blood Simple

The Busby Collection — Volume two

Charlie Chan Collection — Volume five

“Chuck” Season one (more…)

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Buying car insurance is easy. Happiness is difficult.

It’s this idea that local author Chris Wilson discusses in his book Healing the Unhappy Caveman: Why the Human Mind Was Not Designed for Happiness and What YOU Can Do About It, out last April. Wilson will be speaking at the Atlanta Freethought Society meeting this Sun., Sept. 14. I asked him a few questions about the book and his human mind.

Your book blows those Geico commercials out of the water. Tell us a little about its premise.

The basic idea is that genetically speaking, our minds are the same as the minds of our cave-dwelling ancestors who lived tens of thousands of years ago. Yes, culturally speaking, we are vastly different. However, our genes are influencing our perceptions of the world and our reactions to it a lot more than we’d like to believe. The reality is that our minds, like every other part of us, were designed by natural selection to facilitate our survival — in an environment that bears almost no resemblance to the modern world. So here we have two problems that are illuminated and addressed directly by my book:

1. Survival and happiness are not related. The mind was designed to survive long enough for the body to reproduce. Happiness was not part of the equation. Therefore, if we’re to be happy, we have to deliberately take steps to get there.
2. Our minds are routinely misinterpreting our world, and are responding in ways that are contrary to our happiness. (more…)

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This week, CL Charlotte film critic Matt Brunson reviews the Tina Fey comedy (mom-edy, perhaps?) Baby Mama, director Vadim Perelman’s The Life Before Her Eyes, Snow Angels and Young@Heart — all on DVD for the first time — as well as the second collection of the Fox Horror Classics.

BABY MAMA (2008). With Will Ferrell, Adam Sandler and other man-children routinely hoarding the screens in our nation’s multiplexes and living rooms, here come Tina Fey and Amy Poehler to remind audiences that girls just want to have fun. Indeed, the Cyndi Lauper hit of that name is granted its own karaoke-set scene, and its inclusion is fitting in a movie that’s similarly pointed, joyous, and light on its feet. This stars Fey as Kate Holbrook, a successful businesswoman who, upon finding out that she only has a one-in-a-million chance of getting pregnant, turns to an agency to provide her with a surrogate mom; she ends up getting Angie Ostrowiski (Poehler), who clearly resides several rungs down the social ladder. Read the rest here.

(The Life Before Her Eyes photo by Phillip Caruso. Courtesy Magnolia Pictures.)

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Here are some selected titles that come out on DVD today. For more, keep an eye out for Matt Brunson’s “View from the Couch” column tomorrow.

14 Women

“Alvin and the Chipmunks” — “Go to the Movies — Daytona Jones”

“Avril Lavigne: The Best Damn Tour — Live in Toronto”

Baby Einstein’s “Baby Beethoven” and “Baby Mozart”

Baby Mama

Barbie and the Diamond Castle

The Big Lebowski 10th Anniversary Edition

Brian Regan — The Epitome of Hyperbole

“CSI Miami” The Sixth Season

Child’s Play Chucky’s 20th Birthday Edition

Cool Hand Luke

Essential Art House, Vol. 1

The Fall

Fist of Legend

Foreign Exchange

Forbidden Kingdom

Fox Horror Classics Collection, Volume 2

“Grey’s Anatomy” The Complete Fourth Season

(more…)

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This week, CL Charlotte film critic Matt Brunson reviews the special edition release of the Coen brothers’ 1998 The Big Lebowski, as well as the French film Brotherhood of the Wolf, the two-disc edition of Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas and more.

THE BIG LEBOWSKI (1998). Joel and Ethan Coen’s The Big Lebowski may be sloppy, repetitious and occasionally abrasive, but it’s also imaginative, sharp-witted and ofttimes very, very funny. Jeff Bridges plays Jeff Lebowski, an unkempt pothead who calls himself “The Dude.” An avid bowler – he spends his days knocking down pins with his buddies (John Goodman and Steve Buscemi) – The Dude finds his life turned upside down when a couple of thugs mistake him for L.A.’s other Jeff Lebowski: the incapacitated millionaire (David Huddleston) whose sexpot wife Bunny (Tara Reid) ends up getting kidnapped. Read the rest here.

(Photo courtesy Walt Disney Home Entertainment)

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Here are some selected titles that come out on DVD today. For more, keep an eye out for Matt Brunson’s “View from the Couch” column tomorrow.

Ballet Shoes

Before I Forget

“The Big Bang Theory” the Complete First Season

The Blue Elephant

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