The Coen Brothers Are Writing a Musical ComedyThe Coen Brothers’ new movie, the music-heavy comedy-drama Inside Llewyn Davis, hits theaters this weekend, and they’re prepping a new project […]
Cans of Food Made Into Art? Impossible!Sure, canned-food drives help feed the hungry, but there’s something about them that just isn’t very … sexy. So in a Warholian effort to add some glamour to this year’s collection, City Harvest came up with Canstruction, an installation of can sculptures created by architects and designers like Guy Nordensen and the people at Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill. The works are ingenious, as interesting to look at (in our food-writer view) as any other large postmodern sculpture installation, and with the added bonus that going to see them helps to feed the hungry: The price of admission is one or more you-know-whats of food. The public is also given the opportunity to cast its vote for the People’s Choice award. Preview a few of the candidates after the jump.
Canstruction, New York Design Center, 200 Lexington Ave., at 32nd St. Mon.–Sat., 9 a.m.–5 p.m., through Nov. 22.
atlantic yards watch
The Highbrow Case for Atlantic YardsFor some time now, it’s seemed that the richer, whiter parts of Brooklyn were opposed to Bruce Ratner’s gargantuan Atlantic Yards project, while the poorer, minoritier parts were in favor. The development, including lots of market-rate housing, some below-market housing, and a future Brooklyn Nets stadium, has always attracted a weirdly disconnected array of reactions: Most blue-collar local residents welcomed it (more jobs, retail, etc.), while highbrow liberals — looking out for the people! — were aghast. (Entitled NIMBYism? Wishful suckerism? Who knows.) Was it possible, then, to be a pro-Yards guilty intellectual? Yes! Acceptance is just another twist of pretzel logic away, as demonstrated by the contrarian post-ironists at n+1. The stadium, writes Jonathan Liu, is a great idea precisely because it’s all wrong for the borough. It’s our ossified idea of what’s right for the borough (brownstones, more brownstones) that’s the problem, he says. Or something.
Whatever he’s saying, it seems Atlantic Yards has — finally! — reached the “Backlash to the Backlash” point on our Undulating Curve.
A Sporting Chance [n+1]
Mr. Ratner’s Neighborhood [New York Magazine]
in other news
The Most Misguided Reaction to September 11 (Since Invading Iraq)Presented without further comment from this week’s Entertainment Weekly, about the forthcoming Die Hard 4:
When Bruce Willis and his longtime producing partner, Arnold Rifkin, were marooned in Manhattan on September 11, the two took a somber walk down a muted Park Avenue. Along the way, a young fan spotted Willis and shouted, “Where is John McClane when you need him?!” “What I realized,” says Rifkin, “is people wanted to see John McClane again.”
— Ben Mathis-Lilley
