A Decadent Daily Fall Calendar - Fall Preview 2006 -- New York Magazine

The Three-Month Culture Orgy

The Good German.

(Photo: Courtesy of Waner Bros.)

November
1. Make haste to final previews for Voyage, part one of Tom Stoppard’s epic trilogy, The Coast of Utopia. Even if the plays weren’t so smart (which they are), you’d want to see Billy Crudup, Jennifer Ehle, Ethan Hawke, Martha Plimpton, and Brían F. O’Byrne pile onto one stage.

2. The OC’s fourth-season premiere conflicts with opening night for the fabulous Christine Ebersole’s Grey Gardens. Engage your TiVo and catch them both.

3. Date-movie-palooza: Check out either Sacha Baron Cohen’s cult-fave Borat or Volver, Pedro Almodóvar’s swoon-inducing ghost flick.

4. Don’t miss Anthony Minghella’s Madama Butterfly. Lush with Japanese Bunraku-style puppets and shoji screens, the opera sensation stunned London last season.

5. MoMA’s well-timed exhibit on art and political violence, Manet and the Execution of Maximilian, maps out the artist’s visceral response to the emperor of Mexico’s death at the hands of a firing squad.

6. A tip o’ the nib to the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art’s massive retrospective She Draws Comics: 100 Years of America’s Women Cartoonists.

7. Bard looks like a lady! Declan Donnellan takes the already gender-bendy Twelfth Night, casts an all-male ensemble, and makes them all speak Russian, at bam.

8. Fetching French-born pianist and adopted New Yorker Hélène Grimaud makes her Carnegie Hall recital debut with Chopin, Rachmaninoff, and Brahms.

9. The third annual New York Comedy Festival—this year’s headliners include Queen Latifah, Mario Cantone, and Denis Leary—bestows the Andy Kaufman Award to a fledgling stand-up at Carolines on Broadway.

10. Pick a movie according to your mood: In A Good Year, Russell Crowe inherits a lush vineyard in Provence; in Harsh Times, Christian Bale plays a Gulf War vet who turns psychotic.

11. Ponder the big questions as Harlem poet, professor, and performer Sekou Sundiata explores American identity in The 51st (dream) State.

Ballet Hispanico.

(Photo: Courtesy of Ayano Hisa/Ballet Hispanico)

12. Last chance to marvel over Ballet Hispanico’s signature mélange of styles: flamenco, Afro-Latin jazz, and Brazilian, all at the Joyce.

13. A little summer reading for the fall: Carl Hiaasen reads from his latest Honey Santana caper, Nature Girl, at the New School.

14. Sturm und Drang! The Met unveils 100 paintings and drawings from the Weimar Republic in the enchanting Glitter and Doom: German Portraits From the 1920s.

New photos by Barbara Probst at MoMA.

(Photo: Barbara Probst/VG Bild-Kunst/MoMA)

15. Remind yourself that photography can be relevant without gimmicks, at New Photographs 2006: Jonathan Monk, Barbara Probst, and Jules Spinatsch at MoMA.

16. The original Super Nanny arrives in New York: Mary Poppins officially opens on Broadway.

17. Bond is a blond in Casino Royale, while Christopher Guest drolly mocks Hollywood in For Your Consideration.

18. If you like Rent, you’ll love its fin-de-siècle progenitor La Bohème, opening at the Met Opera.

19. Dueling museums: The Guggenheim shows off the work of five centuries of Spanish art in El Greco to Picasso: Time, Truth, and History; the Met focuses on the artists from Cézanne to Picasso; and the Whitney highlights Picasso’s influence on modern American painters.

20. The Met reimagines the opera Il Barbiere by importing the world’s greatest Rossini tenor and enlisting the designer of the Tony Award–winning The Light in the Piazza.

21. Underage music wunderkind Beirut plays the Bowery Ballroom.

22. A triple feature: Steven Soderbergh directs George Clooney and Cate Blanchett in a post-WWII murder mystery, The Good German; Darren Aronofsky is out with his New Age-y sci-fi film The Fountain; Nicholas Hytner brings The History Boys to the big screen.

23. Thanksgiving. Watch football.

24. The Nutcracker opens at the New York City Ballet.

25. It’s the busiest shopping weekend of the year, which means it’s a good day to not go shopping. See a Broadway musical instead: Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas is the perfect antidote to consumer craziness.

26. It’s like Cirque du Soleil—on ice! Hence the name Cirque on Ice, at the St. George Theatre on Staten Island.

27. Last chance to see Monika Sosnowska’s Projects 83, an architectural installation of paper maquettes created especially for MoMA.

28. Holy Myth, Batman! A compelling exhibit at the Jewish Museum explores Superheroes: Good and Evil in American Comics.

29. Tourists see the lighting of the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center; opera lovers prefer the opening night of Tosca at the Met; fans and writers still buzzing from yesterday’s museum visit head to Comic Superheroes: Live on the Silver Screen, a night of discussions and screenings hosted by the 92nd Street Y.

30. Julianne Moore hits the boards. Hard. David Hare’s The Vertical Hour debuts today.