Artist and photographer Robert James Campbell roved the 1950s and ’60s Greenwich Village scene documenting jazz and its evolution into the beat ... More

Rebirth of the Cool

Book by Jessica Ferber

Rebirth of the Cool

Book by Jessica Ferber

Artist and photographer Robert James Campbell roved the 1950s and ’60s Greenwich Village scene documenting jazz and its evolution into the beat and folk movements. With work largely published by the Village Voice and Downbeat Magazine, Campbell captured the artists who shaped the jazz era and its cultural landscape—the likes of John Coltrane, The Modern Jazz Quartet, Philly Joe Jones, Count Basie, Bud Powell, Richie Havens and Chuck Berry.

In 2002, these photographs were discovered by a college student, Jessica Ferber, in a pile of cardboard boxes at the homeless shelter in Burlington, Vermont, where Campbell had died alone. Together, these photos tell Campbell’s story as diligently reconstructed by Ferber. A promising figure in the Greenwich jazz scene, Campbell was wrought with financial hardship, mental struggle and health failures, which dissolved his nascent career and set him wandering from New York to Los Angeles and back to New England in total obscurity. Rebirth of the Cool is Ferber’s time-capsule monograph of the forgotten talent, compiling Campbell’s best photography from legendary clubs like Birdland, The Village Vanguard and The Gaslight Café, alongside his street photography, travels in Germany and tour photos. A play on Birth of the Cool, Miles Davis’ 1957 album, Rebirth of the Cool is an insightful piece of revived history and an important addition to the annals of an American revolution.

via powerHouse Books

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The newest from Charlie Kaufman in conjunction with animation director Duke Johnson, Anomalisa is a stop-motion animated film following motivational speaker and ... More

Anomalisa

Film by Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson

Anomalisa

Film by Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson

The newest from Charlie Kaufman in conjunction with animation director Duke Johnson, Anomalisa is a stop-motion animated film following motivational speaker and writer Michael Stone through his identity crisis at a Cincinnati hotel. Kaufman, known for his complex and inventive screenplays Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Oscar-winning Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, originally wrote Anomalisa as a 2005 “sound play” under the pen name Francis Fregoli. Anomalisa explores mundanity and solipsism as Stone, voiced by David Thewlis, moves through a world where everybody sounds the same (as recorded by Tom Noonan) until he falls for a woman with a voice all her own (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Thousands of Kaufman fans made Anomalisa possible via Kickstarter funding, resulting in a film totally uncompromised by studios and strikingly unorthodox in its pairing of stop-motion animation with a Kafkaesque meditation on life.

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After winning the Golden Globe for best TV comedy in its first season, Transparent is back with its pioneering story of a ... More

Transparent

Season 2

Transparent

Season 2

After winning the Golden Globe for best TV comedy in its first season, Transparent is back with its pioneering story of a transgender father in the midst of transitioning, and the idiosyncratic family around him. Helmed by creator Jill Soloway, the second season continues to feature Jeffrey Tambor, Gaby Hoffman, Amy Landecker, Jay Duplass and Carrie Brownstein, and adds transgender model Hari Nef to its roster. All episodes stream on Amazon Prime, and pick up Transparent’s progressive and vital themes with a new focus on historical gender issues, feminism and portraying non-normative female bodies.

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Jenny Lee Lindberg, co-founder and bassist of Los Angeles band Warpaint, is releasing her debut solo album, right on!, as jennylee. The ... More

jennylee

Album “right on!”

jennylee

Album “right on!”

Jenny Lee Lindberg, co-founder and bassist of Los Angeles band Warpaint, is releasing her debut solo album, right on!, as jennylee. The album holds onto the dreamy psychedelic foundations of Warpaint overlayed by a darker new wave edge, and features musicians Norm Block (Plexi, Mark Langegan), Dan Elkan (Them Hills, Broken Bells) and Warpaint’s Stella Mozgawa.

via Rough Trade Records

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After years of writing and recording, Cass McCombs compiles his often forgotten, hard-to-find and previously unreleased songs for A Folk Apart: Rarities, ... More

Cass McCombs

Album “A Folk Set Apart”

Cass McCombs

Album “A Folk Set Apart”

After years of writing and recording, Cass McCombs compiles his often forgotten, hard-to-find and previously unreleased songs for A Folk Apart: Rarities, B-Sides, Space Junk, etc. The anthology features 19 tracks recorded between 2003 and 2014 with collaborators including Mike Gordon of Phish, Tim Dewit (aka Dutch E. Germ) and Joe Russo of Further. It’s an alternate telling of the past decade, a glimpse behind the curtain and an experiment in diverse compilation.

via Domino

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Italian writer-director Paolo Sorrentino, whose opulent film The Great Beauty won the 2013 foreign-language Oscar, returns with the very candid Youth. Set ... More

Youth

Film by Paolo Sorrentino

Youth

Film by Paolo Sorrentino

Italian writer-director Paolo Sorrentino, whose opulent film The Great Beauty won the 2013 foreign-language Oscar, returns with the very candid Youth. Set against the Swiss Alps, Youth tackles aging, art and regret with good humor as two old friends on a spa vacation confront the end of their creative careers. Michael Caine plays Fred, a retired composer and conductor resisting a bid for one last performance, opposite Harvey Keitel as Mick, a filmmaker writing a final script for his muse (Jane Fonda).

Stunning scenery and cinematography accompany an orchestral score celebrating Fred’s finest piece, “A Simple Song”—composed for the film by Pulitzer Prize winner David Lang. With Fellini-esque beauty and brilliant performances, Youth features supporting roles from Rachel Weisz as Fred’s daughter and Paul Dano as a Hollywood actor. The film was nominated for the Palme d’Or, Cannes Festival’s highest accolade, and won several versions of Italy’s Nastro d’Argento.

›› IMBD

Life tells the story behind the iconic 1955 Life magazine photo essay of rising star James Dean, published seven months before his ... More

Life

Film by Anton Corbijn

Life

Film by Anton Corbijn

Life tells the story behind the iconic 1955 Life magazine photo essay of rising star James Dean, published seven months before his fatal car accident. Directed by Anton Corbijn, who has helmed a number of complex, character-driven films including Control, The American and A Most Wanted Man, Life is a slow-moving and elegant portrait of the guarded young actor (Dane DeHaan), captured through the lens of photographer Dennis Stock (Robert Pattinson) desperate to jump-start his own career. The film delves into Dean and Stock’s professional relationship-turned-friendship as both struggle to make art on their own terms and realize the compulsory sacrifices that come with success. Co-starring Alessandra Mastronardi and Ben Kingsley, Life relies heavily on the chemistry between the two leads, allowing DeHaan to shine with a melancholic innocence. At its core, Life is a touching tribute to Dean teetering on the precipice of fame, full of rebellion, moodiness and mesmerizing talent.

›› IMBD

Founded in 1991 by Italian photographer Oliviero Toscani and art director Tibor Kalman, Colors is an Italian quarterly “about the rest of ... More

Colors

Book by Oliviero Toscani & Tibor Kalman

Colors

Book by Oliviero Toscani & Tibor Kalman

Founded in 1991 by Italian photographer Oliviero Toscani and art director Tibor Kalman, Colors is an Italian quarterly “about the rest of the world.” Colors has been called the magazine of the MTV generation, and Kalman once described it as, “a mix of National Geographic and Life on acid.”

After nearly twenty-five years and counting, a book about Colors explores the best of this influential magazine, recombining text and images from the far and near past into a strong iteration of Color’s ever-relevant, ever-expanding story about the enormity of human experience and art. Due to the publication’s wildly eclectic nature—with a range and scope that foreshadowed that of the internet—its content is organized thematically, including: “That’s Amore” (physical and emotional love); “Bang!” (weapons, violence, lust, shock); “Elvis” (fame, excess, degeneration, disguise, kitsch) and “I Want to Believe” (faith, cult, what we worship). With a foreword by renowned art curator and writer Francesco Bonami, Colors gives homage to this unconventional magazine, which tackled the era’s social and cultural issues with shrewd eccentricity.

via Damiani/Fabrica

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In 2015, when the internet has rendered publishing easy, accessible and above all free, why self-publish? Self-publishing has long been a way ... More

Self Publish,
Be Happy

Book by Bruno Ceschel

Self Publish, Be Happy

Book by Bruno Ceschel

In 2015, when the internet has rendered publishing easy, accessible and above all free, why self-publish? Self-publishing has long been a way to beat censorship, but the internet has no such boundaries as a communal space open to all. And therein lies another familiar problem: there’s way too much.

In reply to media oversaturation and digitization, a disparate mass of artists have banded together to create physical books of their work, resulting in a collective effort founded by Bruno Ceschel—Self Publish, Be Happy. The London-based organization began collecting self-published photo books in 2010, donated by the self-publishers themselves. Five years later, the archives of Self Publish, Be Happy comprise over three thousand titles.

Ceschel conceived the eponymous book form of the project as a sampling of the current collection as well as manual to the reader, offering ideas and information for pursuing DIY photobooks. His manifesto in the preface opens with, “Self Publish, Be Happy is not a survey of recent photobooks. It is not a best-of. It is a call to arms—a rallying cry to take part, to act, to share.” In short, a modern revolution of tangible art and communal experience against a virtual backdrop of homogeneity.

via Aperture

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