Agenda Newsletter - August 8, 2007

Untitled Document

Texas duo re-up, big time
Underground Kingz
UGK; Jive; Buy it
With Pimp C giving batshit-crazy interviews, Bun B blogging about World War I, and the duo releasing the amazing “Int’l Players Anthem,” UGK have clearly been on the verge of something huge. That something is this new double album, the fulfillment of a twenty-year career stymied by label beef and Pimp C’s incarceration. Joined by a southern-rap who’s who, from Scarface to T.I., and undergirded by C’s inimitable beats, UGK have roared back without ever really having left.

The King runs amok—again
Elvis DVD Collection Elvis left the building 30 years ago. To commemorate the day, you could binge on barbiturates; rent Bruce Campbell’s bizarro Elvis tribute, Bubba Ho-Tep; or buy one of Presley’s 24 films (all miracles of cinema, of course) that landed on to shelves this week. A few—like his Fort Lauderdale spring-break flick Girl Crazy—are brand-new to DVD, but, then again, they’re awful. We’re grabbing his one true classic, 1957’s Jailhouse Rock, newly remastered for more precise hip-shaking. Paramount and Warner Home Video
Various prices

Ms. Sandwoman brings you a you-know-what
Dreamworld Here’s a neat trick: Make a song about folks untethered from reality and titled “Dreamworld” sound exactly the way your brain feels in the wee-hours bathwater that is REM sleep, with a man and a woman (not just any woman—Jenny Lewis!) murmuring in unison over a mollifying wash of guitar. Here’s a neater trick: Make a song with a feel for the louche and bittersweet to match that of Fleetwood Mac and a woman—not just any woman!—named Stevie Nicks. Rilo Kiley
Listen »

Modern-day Thoreaus read from new book
‘A Leaky Tent Is a Piece of Paradise’ Reading Contrary to popular fantasy, traveling to Montauk or Coney Island will not necessarily renew one’s bond with nature. For those looking for inspiration before a tan, there’s A Leaky Tent Is a Piece of Paradise, a new anthology of nature writing by twentysomethings. Poet Cecily Parks writes on her fear (and attraction to) lightning, and painter James Prosek on the beauty of eels; tonight, you’ll hear journalist Hugh Ryan read about a drag queen who helped him, uh, pitch a tent. McNally Robinson
7 p.m.
More info »

See drunk cinematography on a big screen
Fallen Angels A city has never seemed so kinetically crazy as the Tokyo of this Wong Kar Wai classic. In his very loose sequel to Chungking Express, the camera slices and reels through the streets at night like some kind of drunken cab driver (perhaps because, per rumor, cinematographer Christopher Doyle was actually drunk). There’s a underachieving hit man, his female boss, cops, and victims—none of whom matter as much as the neon lights smeared gorgeously across the screen. BAM
Through August 14
$11
Tickets »

Vermonters gets nuts with puppets
Divine Reality Comedy Circus Some 50 performers with giant puppets, lumpy masks, and a ten-piece circus-meets-Dixie-meets-klezmer band have come down from Vermont to put on one of the most spectacular Summer of Love–inspired pieces of sociopolitical comedy you’re likely to see in a while. You won’t want to miss any of this colorful pageant, least of all the “Computer Dance” (with a blackbird as trainer) and the Rotten Ideas Theater (today’s theme is extinction, from dinosaurs and dodos to the Geneva Convention). Bread and Puppet Theater
Lincoln Center Plaza
6 p.m.
More info »

August 8, 2007

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