With 2008 fast approaching, we’re marking our calendars for some excellent entertainment options. By Jenna Schnuer and John Ross
Books We Can’t Wait to Read
1 THE BOOK:Trail of Crumbs: Hunger, Love, and the Search for Home by Kim Sunée (Grand Central Publishing, $25)
WHAT IT’S ABOUT: One of the most graceful memoirs to come along in recent memory, Trail of Crumbs takes readers along on the author’s search for her identity after her mother left her sitting on a park bench in South Korea when she was just three years old.
DON’T READ IT WHEN YOU’RE HUNGRY: When Sunée, an accomplished cook, writes about the food she serves to the people in her life, you can almost feel the warmth of her kitchen.
WHEN YOU’LL FIND IT: In January
2 THE BOOK: The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt (Houghton Mifflin, $24)
WHAT IT’S ABOUT: This may be one of the most buzzed-about books of the winter season. With her father about to zip off in a time machine (stick with us here), Louisa, a chambermaid at the Hotel New Yorker in 1943, befriends inventor Nikola Tesla. Apparently, they both have a love for pigeons. The book follows their friendship as well as that whole time-traveling thing.
NO, YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE A GEEK TO GET IT: It would be tempting to shrug it all off as sci-fi foolishness, except that the author has published and presented some stellar fiction in the New Yorker and McSweeney’s and on public radio’s This American Life.
WHEN YOU’LL FIND IT: In February
3THE BOOK: American Photobooth by Näkki Goranin (W.W. Norton and Company, $30)
WHAT IT’S ABOUT: Photobooths. No, really. It’s a photo book about photobooths. And why not? There’s just something about a photobooth, isn’t there? The little half curtain that serves up a small dose of privacy in the midst of a busy spot, the strip of pictures, the captured moment in time.…
A GOOD REASON TO LOOK AT PICTURES OF STRANGERS: Goranin, a collector of historic photos, delivers plenty of strips that showcase how other people have spent their minute in the booth. But she also focuses on the history of photobooths — where they came from, how they’ve changed — and shows why, in the age of the camera phone, we still love them.
WHEN YOU’LL FIND IT: In February
4 THE BOOK:The Ten- Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America by David Hajdu (Farrar, Straus and Giroux; $26)
WHAT IT’S ABOUT: Before Elvis was swiveling his hips on Ed Sullivan, parents and kids were clashing over a different pop-culture phenomenon: the sensational and bloody breed of comics some felt was too adult for children. So shocking and graphic was the content that some comics were burned in public bonfires and banned by local governments. The stir reached national proportions when Congress held hearings on the matter.
ELLINGTON AT NEWPORT SEEMS LIKE FITTING READING MUSIC: Hajdu, a journalism professor at Columbia University, knows something about pop culture and controversy — he’s also written biographies of Bob Dylan and Duke Ellington’s composer, Billy Strayhorn.
WHEN YOU’LL FIND IT: In March
Movies We’re Waiting to See,
if Only for Their Handsome Casts
THE MOVIE:The Other Boleyn Girl
THE PRETTY PEOPLE: Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson, Eric Bana BRUSH UP ON
YOUR BRITISH HISTORY: Before Henry VIII (played here by The Hulk’s Bana) got divorced, he got married. Before that, his affections were the source of a fierce competition between Anne Boleyn (played by Portman) and her sister, Mary (played by Johansson).
WILMA OR BETTY? RACHEL OR MONICA? NATALIE OR SCARLETT? Who’s your favorite? And who do you think should win the king’s heart? That probably depends on what you know about what the real-life winner ended up losing. (Hint: It was her head.)
CHECK THE BOX OFFICE: In February
THE MOVIE: Leatherheads
THE PRETTY PEOPLE: George Clooney, Renée Zellweger, and John Krasinski
SPRINGTIME FOR FOOTBALL: It will actually be baseball season by the time this football-themed film hits theaters in the spring. And perhaps that’s appropriate, given that the plot of Leatherheads sounds a lot like that of Bull Durham. It’s about an aging pro athlete competing with a green but talented rookie for the affections of a hardscrabble woman who follows their team’s every move.
KEVIN COSTNER DOES NOT APPEAR: The truth is, Leatherheads isn’t really like Bull Durham at all. Leatherheads is set in the post–World War I Midwest. It was directed by Clooney, who also stars in it. And where Bull Durham reveled in sports clichés and sentimentality, Leatherheads — costarring Zellweger as a sports reporter and The Office’s Krasinski as the rookie — spins the clichés for comic effect. Plus, people hit each other really hard and no one mentions the novels of Susan Sontag.
CHECK THE BOX OFFICE: In April
A TV Show We’ve Already Set the TiVo For
THE SHOW: Miss America Live!
SHE’S A LITTLE BIT COUNTRY AND A LITTLE BIT ROCK AND ROLL: Once upon a time, before there was a channel for everything, including openheart surgery, the Miss America pageant was a big deal. Those days officially ended in 2004, when ABC bumped the pageant from its airways. And though CMT has aired the pageant for the past two years, Miss America was as ill-fitting on the country channel as are a pair of Kenny Chesney’s jeans. That’s where TLC comes in. The network that makes a living telling you What Not to Wear, among other things, has inked a long-term deal with the event that gives a crown to a woman who is not young enough to be Miss Teen America and not married enough to be Mrs. America.
REAL DRAMA: What we’re really excited about isn’t the pageant itself. That’s just the finale, after all, to the monthlong reality show TLC is producing. It features, in TLC’s words, “52 of the country’s smartest and most beautiful women as they prepare for a competition they’ve dreamed of their entire lives.” So it’ll be like Top Chef, only without the knives. Maybe. WATCH FOR IT: The show begins in January, and the competition concludes with the January 26 telecast on TLC.
A CD We’re Pretty Sure Will Rock and/or Roll
THE CD:Jukebox
THE SINGER: Cat Power
YOU’VE HEARD OF HER, EVEN IF YOU HAVEN’T HEARD OF HER: Surely it’s not by design, but Cat Power’s career seems to have been scripted for a VH1 special. The plot? Musician plays inventive, original music culled from troubled past; develops following; becomes more troubled in the process; puts on wacky, rambling stage shows; sinks deeper; goes to rehab; emerges as an even better performer, blending a sparse style with a beautifully mournful voice that makes critics swoon; and so on.
THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME, ALTHOUGH DIFFERENT: Given that her career has played out in such an unfortunately traditional way, it’s only appropriate that Power pays tribute to other troubled or tragic musical legends — Bob Dylan, for one — by releasing her second album of cover songs. Her first, titled The Covers Record (what else?), came out in 2000 and included songs from Dylan, Lou Reed, and the Rolling Stones. On the new album, songs from Hank Williams and James Brown get Power’s unique, slimmed-down, acoustical, and somber treatment. And that, oddly, makes us very, very happy.
CHECK THE RECORD STORES: In January