The Art Of Autumn
CINEMA
PEDRO ALMODOVAR All About My Mother
WHY "Wring me out!" cried one normally stone-faced critic at the Cannes Film Festival after seeing this vivacious screwball melodrama, which won Almodovar the Best Director prize. Hot tears are an apt response: the two most innocent characters die; the others grieve and carry on womanfully. At the center of the film is Manuela (Cecilia Roth, in a heroically clenched performance), who goes to Barcelona looking for her ex-husband and ends up mothering half a dozen lost souls. She is Mother Courage, Mother Teresa and your mom on her very best day. But All About My Mother also gives the viewer reasons to laugh and cheer. It brims with life; it has more convulsive plot twists than any recent Hollywood movie; it parades a fistful of seductive Spanish stars (Penelope Cruz, Marisa Paredes, Antonia San Juan); it shows Almodovar, the Spanish writer-director best known for Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, in full emotional and cinematic maturity, with no loss of his early pansexual pizazz. Here is a beautifully composed mash note to the theater and to theatricality, to actresses and mothers--to a woman's will to survive with grace and good humor. WHEN Sept. 24, New York Film Festival; Nov. 19 in theaters.
Love Is in the Air In the fall a filmmaker's fancy turns to romance. Six movies with pretty people and tough problems:
Guinevere Starring: Sarah Polley, Stephen Rea Obstacle to their love: He's her father's age Release date: Sept. 24
Random Hearts Starring: Harrison Ford, Kristin Scott Thomas Obstacle: Their dead spouses had an affair Release date: Oct. 8
Fight Club Starring: Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, Helena Bonham Carter Obstacle: 2 guys, 1 gal Release date: Oct. 15
The Bone Collector Starring: Denzel Washington, Angelina Jolie Obstacle: He's a suicidal, quadriplegic cop Release date: Nov. 5
Sleepy Hollow Starring: Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci Obstacle: He's obsessed by a headless horseman Release date: Nov. 19
Anna and the King Starring: Jodie Foster, Chow Yun-fat Obstacle: He's "Siamese," she's "English" Release date: Nov.24
MUSIC
RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE Untitled Fall Release
WHY You can judge this band by its book covers: on the inside of Rage's previous CD, Evil Empire, there was a collage of the dust jackets of leftist classics like Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth and George Jackson's Soledad Brother. It's hard to be a radical band in moderate times; it's hard to believe, in the age of the Backstreet Boys and a booming Dow, that music has meaning beyond SoundScan figures. Nonetheless, Rage's rock-hop music takes on racism and capitalism while also offering vocal support to Mumia Abu-Jamal and the Zapatista rebels. And with a Chicano singer (dreadlocked Zack de la Rocha) and an African-American guitarist (wizardly Tom Morello), the band looks like the future of America. Rage's new CD--with songs like Calm Like a Bomb and Guerrilla Radio--promises to be uncompromising and exhilarating. "We've made the record we've been waiting our whole lives to hear," says Morello. "It incorporates the angriest anger of the best punk and the deepest funk of the funkiest hip-hop." WHEN Nov. 2.
Sounds for a Serious Season
Whatever your individual taste, the next few months will bring a major release that's worth relishing. Among the most anticipated:
CLASSICAL Arthur Rubinstein's career is celebrated in A Life in Music (RCA Red Seal), a 94-CD set, due Oct. 12
COUNTRY The Dixie Chicks' sophomore album, Fly (Monument), arrives in stores this week
POP Salsa star Marc Anthony croons in English on his self-titled, Latin-tinged CD (Columbia), due Sept. 28
SOUL D'Angelo's brilliant Voodoo (Cheeba/Virgin) brings a refreshing, maverick artistry to R. and B. on Nov. 2
ART
NORMAN ROCKWELL Retrospective
WHY In the 55 years that Norman Rockwell practiced his clean-scrubbed style of American optimism, from World War I to Vietnam, barely a single image delved into anything deeper than a smitten heart or a sweet longing for home. Only late in life did Rockwell's work begin to turn from ingrained nostalgia to a grittier reality, most notably in The Problem We All Live With, a 1964 painting of a young black girl on her way to school escorted by federal Marshals. His commonfolk, humorous and brave and spiritual to the core, became icons to generations. Yet a lifetime's work--nearly 4,000 smartly rendered pictures--never brought Rockwell acclaim in the inner circles of art that embraced everything from Cubism to Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art during his long career. Now a huge survey of his work is being launched at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta and landing six stops later at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. But for all the overexertions of the catalog's scholarly essays to transform Rockwell from influential illustrator to grand artiste, he remains what he will always be: our deftest draftsman of democracy's dreams. That should be enough. WHEN Opens Nov. 6.
Looking Back at the Century
Curators are in a reflective mood, musing on the works that have defined the past 100 years
THE AMERICAN CENTURY PART II Andy Warhol's Elvis will be among the stars in the Whitney Museum's continuing survey. Opens Sept. 26
MOMA 2000 The Museum of Modern Art displays Modernism's styles and movements, including Picasso's Guitar. Opens Oct. 7
Temple Gods, Tattoos and Other Timeless Wonders
Heading into the new millennium, American museums take a look at the archaeological and anthropological legacies of cultures past
EGYPTIAN ART IN THE AGE OF THE PYRAMIDS Opens at the Metropolitan Museum on Sept. 16
THE GOLDEN AGE OF CHINESE ARCHAEOLOGY Recent finds spanning 5,000 B.C. to A.D. 924. On view at the National Gallery of Art Sept. 19
BODY ART: MARKS OF IDENTITY A cross-cultural look at ways of using the torso as a canvas. At the American Museum of Natural History Nov. 20
TV
LINDA CARDELLINI NBC/Freaks and Geeks
WHY This year's girl does not have supernatural powers. This year's girl does not wield a sword or a stake, does not have a pinup's bod, does not even sport a radiant mane of natural curls. What Lindsay Weir has is a prodigious brain that she's slightly uncomfortable with, an olive-drab jacket weighing on her shoulders like chain mail and--something rare enough among prime-time adults, let alone teens--a genuine crisis of faith. Having witnessed, alone, the death of her grandmother--who told Lindsay, as she slipped away, that she saw "nothing" beyond--Lindsay is questioning the justness of the world and her own place in it. Cardellini captures her simmering outrage with just the right mixture of sarcasm, melancholy and self-righteousness. And she's only one among the well-imagined, glam-free nerds and burnouts in this high-spirited, heartfelt story set in 1980. Amid TV's endless regatta of 1,000-watt, magazine-cover-ready superteens, NBC has created a rich, character-driven ensemble show, fueled by Styx music and outsiders' gallows humor, that's more Richard Linklater than Kevin Williamson--and has rewarded it with a time slot in Saturday night's Siberia. Now, in fact, might be a good time to register www.save-f&g.com In the meantime, we'll set our VCRs. WHEN Starts Sept. 25 at 8 p.m. E.T.
The Networks' Greatest Hopes
TV execs are hurling dramas, dramedies and a few sitcoms at your living-room wall. They're hoping these will stick
ABC/Once and Again
What they're thinking: Talky, divorces-date-again story returns thirtysomething's makers to SUV-land
What we're thinking: Um, didn't we just see a Rite Aid ad like this?
CBS/Now and Again
What they're thinking: The Eye goes dark with a paranoid Six Million Dollar Man update
What we're thinking: Wry and intriguing. What's next? Alien/U.N. conspiracies on JAG?
Fox/Action
What they're thinking: Raunchy movie satire aims to push envelope all the way to the bank
What we're thinking: The real f______ big deal is the blistering, brilliant comedy
The WB/Roswell
What they're thinking: Extends net's spooky-youth monopoly with UFO-crash orphans
What we're thinking: Beyond giggle-inducing premise, an odd and earnest misfit romance
UPN/Shasta McNasty
What they're thinking: "Rowdy rappin' roommates" sitcom sends a shout-out to the youth niche
What we're thinking: Those who fail to learn from The Monkees...
OPERA
CATHERINE MALFITANO A View from the Bridge
WHY Arthur Miller's next opening night is not on Broadway but at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, where composer William Bolcom and librettist Arnold Weinstein have teamed up with the celebrated playwright to turn A View from the Bridge into an opera. Bolcom, whose eclectic tastes run from ragtime to Sondheim, is just the man to set it to music. "I've written some flat-out tunes," he says happily, "and there's even a doo-wop quartet." The cast includes soprano Catherine Malfitano, one of the most powerful actresses in American opera. "She plays a woman who makes bad calls," says Bolcom. "That's not typecasting by any means, and it'll be interesting to see what she does with it." WHEN Opens Oct. 9.
Mode Millennial
Walt Disney Co. chairman Michael Eisner, left, has commissioned millennial choral symphonies from two up-and-coming American composers, Michael Torke and Aaron Jay Kernis, center. Kurt Masur, right, and the New York Philharmonic will premiere them on Oct. 8.
THEATER
WOODY HARRELSON Play: The Rainmaker
WHY Broadway is getting pretty blase about the big names from Hollywood--Nicole Kidman, Helen Hunt, Christian Slater--who keep showing up to prove they're more than just flickers on a screen. Harrelson is not a stranger to New York City theater (his first break was as an understudy in Neil Simon's Biloxi Blues in 1984), but he's far better known as a star of TV (Cheers) and film (Natural Born Killers). So can he cut it as the eponymous con man of N. Richard Nash's 1954 drama, being revived by the Roundabout Theatre? It's this fall's most intriguing stage mystery. WHEN Opens Nov. 11.
BRIAN STOKES MITCHELL Musical: Kiss Me Kate
WHY They also serve who must stand and wait for stardom. Mitchell was a Broadway journeyman before his galvanic performance as Coalhouse Walker in Ragtime. Yet even that role didn't win him quite the renown he deserved (he lost the Tony to Cabaret's Alan Cumming). Now he's starring in the first Broadway revival of Cole Porter's sparkling 1948 musical based on The Taming of the Shrew. He gets to reintroduce such Porter hits as So in Love, is teamed once again with his Ragtime co-star Marin Mazzie--and doesn't get killed in the end. Sounds de-lovely. WHEN Opens Nov. 18.
BOOKS
SCOTT TUROW Personal Injuries
WHY Ever since his best-selling first novel, Presumed Innocent (1987), Scott Turow has turned out taut legal and psychological thrillers at the rate of one every three years: The Burden of Proof (1990), Pleading Guilty (1993) and The Laws of Our Fathers (1996). If this is 1999, there must be another one on the way, and sure enough, here comes Personal Injuries (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 384 pages; $27). But another Turow, as his constant readers have discovered, does not mean the same story with different names attached for the sake of variety. Turow likes to alter the form as well as the content of his novels, and Personal Injuries contains some surprises that are remarkable even by Turow's inventive standards. "This is a lawyer's story," announces the narrator, George Mason, at the very beginning of the book, "the kind attorneys like to hear and tell." What this means is that readers will be taken behind the scenes as a group of lawyers and law enforcers try to gather evidence that will break up a cabal of corrupt judges in Turow's fictional Kindle County. This sting operation poses dangers for everyone involved, and Turow spares neither his characters nor readers maximum suspense. WHEN Sept. 28.
The Pluck Of the Irish
Call it luck or write it off to coincidence, but Ireland and her people crop up often in the season's new books
'Tis The sequel to the phenomenal Angela's Ashes takes Frank McCourt from Limerick to Manhattan
A Star Called Henry The first of a trilogy of novels by Roddy Doyle setting out to portray 20th century Irish life
All Souls Michael Patrick MacDonald's gritty, vivid memoir of growing up Irish and poor in South Boston
The Great Shame Thomas Keneally (Schindler's List) writes a history of the Irish in times of trouble and triumph
DANCE
SUZANNE FARRELL Masters of 20th Century Ballet
WHY What does a retired ballerina do for an encore? Suzanne Farrell, whose cool lyricism and blazing virtuosity redefined American ballet in the 1960s and '70s, has put together a troupe of 16 young dancers to perform her stagings of works by Jerome Robbins, Maurice Bejart and her mentor, George Balanchine. The repertory includes Meditation, which Balanchine made for Farrell, then 18, in 1963. Until now, no other woman has ever appeared in Meditation. "Dancers have asked to do it in the past," she explains, "and I always said no. But then I suddenly thought, What am I saving it for?" WHEN Opens Oct. 19 at the Kennedy Center in Washington; on tour through Nov. 28.
FASHION
MICHAEL KORS Celine Fall '99 Collection
WHY Beyond providing an excuse for lots of people to go to far-flung parts of the world to polish off bottles of Asti Spumante, the approaching millennium has also served as inspiration for goofy futurism, much of which has been in evidence on the runways. When designers unveiled their fall '99 collections earlier this year, many churned out garments of rubber and plastic in silhouettes that seemed bound for spaceships. The clothes had a circa 1966 sci-fi writer's vision of the year 2000.
Michael Kors, however, in his second collection for the French house of Celine, managed to capture the real spirit of the age: an unabashed appreciation of money. This is not to suggest that Kors, who is responsible for the distractingly elegant ensembles worn by Rene Russo in The Thomas Crown Affair, is in any way a proponent of the garish. The Kors aesthetic is one of beguiling luxury, and his Celine line--with its dramatic but unfussy suits, plush cashmere turtleneck sweaters, buttery leather coats and simply cut beaded gowns--is meant for the woman more than pleased with her mutual-fund performance but not about to make a big show of it. And not about to take off for Pluto anytime soon either. WHEN In stores now.
Autumn's Adornments
It's their accessories that define the truly chic. This year those with seasonal savoir faire will wear...
Something red Just a dash will do, as with this felt handbag from RL
Pony-skin anything Indulge in equine madness: Dolce & Gabbana's pump
A jacket with a tie Try a stylish waist cincher like this one from Jill Stuart
DESIGN
SMARTEST KID ON THE BLOCK
WHY Tricky thing, a high-rise. The wall between efficient elegance and monolithic monster is easy to traverse. Even more hairy is designing a high-rise--in the heart of Manhattan, no less--that is to be the U.S. headquarters for LVMH, the fashion, champagne and other image-heavy-goods conglomerate. Ugly just won't do. But Christian de Portzamparc, the Pritzker-prizewinning French architect, has created a tower with elan. His 23-story building has a kinky, faceted, overlapping-glass facade, like a whimsical piece of origami, which nevertheless abides by all the city's fiddly zoning laws. The mixture of transparent and opalescent glass and the etched patterns on the windows enhance the prismatic effect, and will no doubt make quite a sight when the building's 300-ft.-high neon lights are flicked on later this year. WHEN October.