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