Fall Preview
CINEMA
BIGGEST BUZZ
Wizards and Other Magical Wonders
The real world--who needs it? Not the movies, not this season, when the true realm of the fantastic beckons so seductively. Great anticipations hover over two projects that bring to the screen the most cherished franchises of fantasy novels in the past half-century: J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. Directors Chris Columbus (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, which opens Nov. 16) and Peter Jackson (The Fellowship of the Ring, due Dec. 19) have been on a sacred, scary quest. Each director must feel like a kid or a Hobbit who's been given a broom or ring with odd powers and told to go save the world. So it's nice to see that early indications give hope to match the hype. Snippets of the Tolkien film enthralled viewers at Cannes this May. And the Potter trailer is a smash. Hogwarts looks like a wizard's dream come to life; Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson look just right as Harry, Ron and Hermione; Maggie Smith and Richard Harris lend their veteran charisma to the Hogwarts faculty. We can't say if these films will realize their ambitions--pride always comes before the fall. But isn't it lovely to be able to anticipate two huge feats of movie magic?
CRITIC'S PICK
The Barber, His Wife, Her Lover...and the UFOs
Meanwhile, back on lower Earth--in the roiling depths of California film noir--there are plots every bit as dark and complex as those in the season's fantasy films. Just look into the barely beating heart of Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton), the barber of Santa Rosa, in Joel and Ethan Coen's tragicomic cardiograph The Man Who Wasn't There. He's got a cheating wife (Frances McDormand), a conniving friend (James Gandolfini), a dead-end job and the depressive sense that "life has dealt me some bum cards. Or maybe I didn't play them right." But the Coens do. They lay out their story in pearly, sepulchral black-and-white, infuse the dialogue with mordant wit and somehow blend those two postwar innovations, UFO mania and dry cleaning.
Like another bountiful fall offering, David Lynch's Mulholland Dr., the Coen film serves up a lovely, lurid brew of greed, murder and twisted identities. It's a smart essay on the overwhelming human need to love someone who's bad news. Thornton's fabulously dour performance--a prime display of postmortem acting--reminds us that fall is the time when things die.
TELEVISION
BIGGEST BUZZ
A Killer Serial, Hour by Hour
It's a tension-fraught nail biter involving shadowy forces, an assassination plot and close attention to timing. That describes not just 24 (Fox, Tuesdays, 9 p.m. E.T., debuts Oct. 30) but also the network skulduggery this ambitious, stylish thriller has engendered. In the series, CIA agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) tries to defuse crises professional (a shooter is planning to kill an African-American presidential candidate) and personal (his rebellious daughter has run away). The twist: the entire season is devoted to a single day's events, each hour-long episode unfolding in real time (allowing, of course, 16 minutes or so for commercials). Rival networks, fearing a juggernaut, have threatened to air stunt programming against 24's debut to snuff it before fans get involved. But if viewers sample the smart, expertly filmed pilot, which interweaves its stories using supercool multiscreening reminiscent of movies like Timecode, 24's would-be assassins should have as little luck as Squeaky Fromme.
Proving it's a small creative world, ABC also takes on the CIA in Alias (Sundays, 9 p.m. E.T., Sept. 30), a slick, emotional fantasy about a college woman turned spy, as does CBS in the more conventional The Agency (Thursdays, 10 p.m. E.T., Sept. 20). Beyond the spook trade, NBC revisits the medical sitcom with Scrubs (Tuesdays, 9:30 p.m. E.T., Sept. 25); the WB, the Superman saga with Smallville (Tuesdays, 9 p.m. E.T., Oct. 16); UPN, the Star Trek franchise with Enterprise (Wednesdays, 8 p.m. E.T., Sept. 26). Meanwhile, HBO launches a D-day-style invasion of the networks' fall party with the 10-part, $120 million World War II mega-miniseries Band of Brothers (Sundays, 9 p.m. E.T., Sept. 9), from Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg. Ah, we love the smell of ratings battles in the evening.
CRITIC'S PICK
At the Head of Their Class
The funny network sitcom has become the good 5[cents] cigar of TV, apocryphal and sorely needed. All the more reason to hail Undeclared (Fox, Tuesdays, 8:30 p.m. E.T., Sept. 18), an affable, perceptive coming-of-age story from Freaks and Geeks producer Judd Apatow. As with Seinfeld, Undeclared's premise is not much of one--a group of freshmen hangs out at a fictional, mediocre California college--but the strength is in the execution. Scenes zig when you expect them to zag; the characters are drawn with heart and respect; and the casting is pitch perfect, including lead Jay Baruchel (dryly Ben Stiller-esque as recovering nerd Steven), newcomer Carla Gallo, Freaks' Seth Rogen and folk singer Loudon Wainwright. Gut busting and touching, Undeclared studies a volatile moment of young adulthood closely, and the show has its subject down cold.
ART
BIGGEST BUZZ
Putting On Her Best Face
We generally think of Cleopatra as the cunning sexpot who took the world by storm, spangled herself in gold and bent powerful men to her will. In other words, we think of her as Elizabeth Taylor. "Cleopatra of Egypt: From History to Myth" would have us remember her first as the sober-minded and politically adroit monarch who confronted the growing might of Rome. Following a highly successful run at the British Museum in London, this show brings its ancient treasures and new insights to Chicago's Field Museum. In statuary of the 1st century B.C., Cleopatra is voluptuous but coldly imperial. In pornography produced by her enemies she is a harlot coupling with a crocodile. The Queen arrives in all her guises, including clips from Taylor's 1963 extravaganza, on Oct. 20. More demure female images can be seen in the portraits of Renaissance women in the National Gallery of Art's "Virtue and Beauty," which opens in Washington on Sept. 30.
CRITIC'S PICK
A Lost, Paradisiacal World
Who was the master of the dot in French painting? Georges Seurat, most would answer. But there was at least one other: Seurat's friend and luminous fellow painter, Neo-Impressionist Paul Signac (1863-1935). Signac, an avid yachtsman, helped create the French Riviera as a subject for painting--and Saint-Tropez, where he settled from 1892 on, as a mecca for tourism. His pursuit of pure color sensation, the yellow of beaches and the purple of shade under the umbrella-pines, made his canvases radical in their time. Yet to a modern eye, his paradisiacal view of the world--a world now hopelessly fouled by mass tourism--offers undiluted pleasure. The Signac retrospective that opens at New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art on Oct. 9 will be America's first complete view of the work of an underappreciated master.
POP MUSIC
BIGGEST BUZZ
Trying for the Crown Again
"I want you back," Michael Jackson once sang--but do we still want him? Legions of boy bands are desperately trying to moonwalk in Jackson's footsteps, but now the man behind Thriller is returning with Invincible (Oct. 30), his first album of new material in six years. It's too early to tell if he's still the King of Pop, but such current-day musical royalty as Britney Spears, Jill Scott and Ricky Martin are scheduled to pay homage to him at the tribute concerts he's throwing for himself at Madison Square Garden on Sept. 7 and 10.
Rock is staging a comeback too. There's the old school: Bob Dylan reveals a new masterpiece, Love and Theft, on Sept. 11. There's the new school: the Strokes puts out its excellent debut, Is This It, on Sept. 25, and rock-hoppers Incubus deliver Morning View Oct. 23. And there's international rock: Colombian rockera Shakira unveils her first English-language disc Nov. 6, and Femi Kuti, son of Nigerian Afrobeat performer Fela, unleashes his potent Fight to Win Oct. 16.
CRITIC'S PICK
Country Ways
Ryan Adams is a little bit country, and he's a little bit rock 'n' roll. Don't confuse him with Canadian pop-rocker Bryan (Cuts Like a Knife) Adams--the two are no relation, by blood or by music. Ryan, 26, the former lead singer for the alt-country band Whiskeytown, writes songs that have the passion of youth and a melancholy that one might think would be beyond his years. Sometimes he sounds like the old Bruce Springsteen; other times he sounds like a new Hank Williams. Adams' last album, Heartbreaker (2000), was released on a small label, and few fans heard it. His new CD, Gold (due out Sept. 25), is his major-label debut and should win him the larger audience he deserves.
DESIGN
BIGGEST BUZZ
Two New High Rollers in Vegas
It would be safe to say that Rem Koolhaas is the only renowned architect who also once wrote a screenplay for Russ Meyer, the director of Mondo Topless. But the Dutch architect's immersion in mass culture is part of what made him just the man to design the two latest additions to the Guggenheim Museum's global museum line, opening on Oct. 7. That's because both will be located at the Venetian hotel and casino in Las Vegas.
Koolhaas has promised that the two structures, his first completed projects in the U.S., will provide a "stark contrast" yet "merge completely with the casino experience." One is an exhibition space that boasts on its ceiling (which opens like shutters to admit light) a campy version of Michelangelo's Creation from the Sistine Chapel. The other museum is a Guggenheim collaboration with Russia's great Hermitage that will feature shows drawn from both institutions. Koolhaas is one of the world's most influential architects, a man brimming with ideas about how cities are shaped by shopping, entertainment, the pleasures of spectacle and the frustrations of desire. Sounds like Las Vegas to us.
CRITIC'S PICK
Aerial Dynamics
To design its new addition, the Milwaukee Museum of Art picked one of Europe's most original architects, Santiago Calatrava, a Spanish-born engineer whose buildings and bridges are high-wire acts of structural and aesthetic daring. His centerpiece for the museum, in Milwaukee, Wis., is a tall sunscreen with wings that open and close. But tests on building material hit a snag, pushing back the screen's official May debut to Oct. 14. It's a thing of beauty, but will it fly?
DANCE
BIGGEST BUZZ
Glories Past And Present
In 1995 the Joffrey Ballet, long a major presence on the American dance scene, ran out of money, shut down its New York City studio, stopped touring and relocated to Chicago. But instead of sulking, artistic director Gerald Arpino rolled up his sleeves and painstakingly built up a loyal audience in his new hometown while breathing new life into a seemingly moribund troupe. The Joffrey returned in triumph to Washington last fall, performing George Balanchine's demanding Square Dance with daredevil flair at the Kennedy Center's Balanchine Celebration. The resurrection continues in Chicago Oct. 11-14 with The Nijinsky Mystique, a season-opening triple bill of ballets by Vaslav Nijinsky, the most renowned dancer of the 20th century. The performances will include his once scandalous, now classic Afternoon of a Faun and controversial reconstructions of his long-lost choreography for The Rite of Spring and Jeux--exactly the sort of imaginative programming that put the Joffrey on the map back in its glory days. Four more programs will be seen in Chicago later this season, among them a revival in April of founder Robert Joffrey's psychedelic Astarte, which made the cover of TIME back in 1968--the first ballet ever to do so. Nice to see his company back on its toes.
CRITIC'S PICK
Taking His Place In the Spotlight
Ethan Stiefel, the greatest American-born male ballet dancer since Edward Villella, has appeared in a dazzlingly wide range of works since joining American Ballet Theatre in 1997--Le Corsaire, Billy the Kid, Balanchine's Apollo, Twyla Tharp's Push Comes to Shove--performing them all with a casual virtuosity and unmannered grace worthy of Fred Astaire. On Oct. 26, Stiefel adds a new role to his repertoire: the male lead in Dim Lustre, Antony Tudor's rarely seen, piercingly Proustian tale of remembered love. It's part of A.B.T.'s New York City winter season (Oct. 23-Nov. 4), which also features the world premiere of Clear, the latest work by the much talked-about Australian choreographer Stanton Welch, and the company premiere of Balanchine's Symphony in C.
BOOKS
BIGGEST BUZZ
A Novel View of Familiar Woes
Can a book about the discontents of three grown siblings and their aging, truculent parents be the Next Big American Novel? What if the book courses through the sorrows of marriage, the black comedies of sex, the mental chaos of old age and the surreal misfortunes of free-market Lithuania? What if it boasts some of the most lustrous writing of any novel in years? What we're asking is whether Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections (Farrar Straus; 528 pages; $26) will become that rare thing, a literary work that everybody's reading? A lot of people are saying yes. The season's other anticipated novels include The Pickup by Nadine Gordimer, Portrait in Sepia by Isabel Allende, Half a Life by V.S. Naipaul and The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa.
CRITIC'S PICK
T.R. Rides Again
Before the uproar two years ago over Dutch, his quasi-fictional biography of Ronald Reagan, Edmund Morris was the acclaimed author of The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, a wise and supremely readable account of T.R.'s first 42 years that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1980. In a move that could restore his reputation among people who found his account of Reagan a hard one to swallow, Morris is ready now with his long-awaited second volume on the 26th President, Theodore Rex. This one is devoted to Teddy's energetic presidency, which ranged from trustbusting at home to peacemaking abroad.
FASHION
BIGGEST BUZZ
All the Pretty Horse Looks
It isn't customary for fashion-crazed Manhattanites to blow their trust funds trying to look as if they're experienced with baling hay. But you can't get much more horse country than the Michael Kors Fall 2001 collection, the epitome of the much discussed "equestrian look": tight, jodhpur-inspired stretch pants tucked in to knee-high boots and topped with a diamond-patterned sweater reminiscent of a jockey's uniform, or a tweed hacking jacket like the one pictured here. Manifest in capes, suede pants, scarves and handbags that beg to be thrown over a saddle, the look has found its way into the collections of DKNY, Miguel Adrover, Jill Stuart (who has added girlie frills) and, of course, Ralph Lauren, who has made a whole career out of trotting horse-set style onto the runway.
While Kors has included an imposing pair of black men's britches in his lineup, it's still anyone's guess whether males will voluntarily don pants tight enough to give Axl Rose pause. Meanwhile, women can rejoice in the freedom of movement afforded by a silhouette that is as short on short skirts as it is on the spiky bracelets, studded handbags and other hard-edged accessories that were hot five minutes ago. Clotheshorses can get in touch with their inner sportswomen in sleek, graceful wools and leathers eminently practical for a brisk pony ride down Fifth Avenue or a fox hunt in the backyard.
CRITIC'S PICK
A Designer Earns His Stripes
Forget about speed, sweat and ankle support--this year's hot sneakers earn their price tag by scoring points at the cocktail party instead of on the court. Japanese fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto has teamed up with Adidas to produce six striking athletic shoes. The "Boxing Boot," shown here, offers shin protection; the smooth, shiny "Tenet" is available with or without a kimono-inspired flower on the forefoot.
Yamamoto agreed to collaborate with Adidas last year, impressed, he says, by the functionalism of sportswear design, and by the way the brand's three-stripes motif has endured for more than 50 years. Using those stripes as his muse, he has fused his own choice of fabrics and colors to Adidas' technical expertise. The result should put a bounce in any fashionista's step.
CLASSICAL MUSIC
BIGGEST BUZZ
Rach Concerts
For years you could have summed up Sergei Rachmaninoff in four words: Audiences cheered, critics sneered. Showpieces like the Third Piano Concerto (the "Rach 3" featured in the movie Shine) have always thrilled concertgoers, but Rachmaninoff's achingly nostalgic tunes and swirling pianistic fireworks outraged the austere sensibilities of the modernists, so he got no respect. Today, though, he is increasingly recognized as Russia's last great romantic, and New York City's Lincoln Center is celebrating his life and work with Rachmaninoff Revisited, a festival that runs from Sept. 13 through Nov. 18. Don't miss the second-night performance of Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini by Stephen Hough, the brainy supervirtuoso from Britain.
CRITIC'S PICK
Poetry in Motion
The Emerson String Quartet marks its silver anniversary with a mini-tour of Simon McBurney's The Noise of Time, a multimedia extravaganza inspired by the music of Shostakovich and performed in tandem with Complicite, McBurney's risk-taking theatrical troupe. This starkly poetic evocation of life under Stalin will be seen in Urbana, Ill. (Oct. 11-12), New York City (Oct. 17-21), Northampton, Mass. (Oct. 27-28) and Los Angeles (March 20-23).
VIDEO GAME
BIGGEST BUZZ
Crazy Creatures
When the creator of Super Mario, Donkey Kong and Zelda--the legendary Shigeru Miyamoto--gets ready to release a video game based on the same principles as Pokemon, you might as well wave the white flag to your kids and go wait in line at the video store. Created for Nintendo's new console, the GameCube, Pikmin casts the player as an astronaut stranded on a lush green world (based on Miyamoto's garden). Tap the ground anywhere, and the colorful eponymous creatures pop up. The goal is to direct them to fend off predators and construct a spaceship. GameCube technology means hundreds of these critters can crowd the screen at the same time. The more one learns about the Pikmin--and where their myriad varieties sprout--the more one succeeds. Don't tell the kids, but you'll probably enjoy it yourself.
CRITIC'S PICK
Imperial Ambition
Unlike movies, PC games tend to get better with each incarnation. Sid Meier's Civilization III is poised to become the pinnacle of achievement for what is rightly regarded as the greatest strategy title of all time. Players guide a fledgling empire through 4,000 years of expansion and technological change, just as before, but now can also trade luxuries with rival empires and build a culture. The more libraries and temples, the wider a city's influence. History has never been so addictive.
THEATER
BIGGEST BUZZ
When Harry Meets Susan
Newcomers to Broadway usually need a veteran hand to guide them along. Harry Connick Jr., like Mel Brooks, has grabbed hold of the best. The jazz singer, pianist and sometime actor is making his theater debut as the composer and lyricist for the new musical Thou Shalt Not. The show's director--and the reason it's the fall's most eagerly anticipated musical--is Broadway's current miracle maker, director-choreographer Susan Stroman, who won a Tony for staging Brooks' The Producers. It's not hard to see what attracted Connick to the show: it's an adaptation of Therese Raquin, Emile Zola's novel of adultery and murder, transplanted from 19th century Paris to post-World War II New Orleans, the musician's hometown. The lure for Stroman? Well, it's hard to resist a chance to achieve a theatrical grand slam: four (count 'em) hits on Broadway running simultaneously. (Along with The Producers, the others are her dance musical Contact and the revival of The Music Man.) She's assembled a solid cast, including Craig Bierko (The Music Man), Kate Levering (42nd Street) and Debra Monk (this summer's Seagull in Central Park). Thou Shalt Not is just one in a jam-packed lineup of musicals scheduled for Broadway this fall. Among them: Thoroughly Modern Millie, based on the 1967 movie; the Broadway debut of Stephen Sondheim's 1991 musical Assassins; and the New York City arrival of the show that has made Abba fans the world over scream with delight, Mamma Mia! No telling what we'll get from Connick and Stroman, but one thing is for sure: it won't be Dancing Queen. (Opens Oct. 25.)
CRITIC'S PICK
Fully Engaged Gender Warfare
Screenwriter Neil Labute first won attention for his fierce dissection of the battle of the sexes in films like In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors. He displayed an even grimmer view of human nature, along with some pretty fine writing, in his 1999 play Bash, a series of monologues that reveal the depravity lurking beneath the surface of ordinary lives. So the rave reviews that greeted his new play The Shape of Things when it premiered in June at London's Almeida Theatre can't help making a serious theatergoer's heart race. The drama, about a college guy who falls under the spell of a manipulative female artist, is making a gratifyingly swift transfer to New York City, retaining its London cast--Paul Rudd, Rachel Weisz, Gretchen Mol and Frederick Weller--and LaBute as director. Look for another unsettling evening, lots of theater-page debates and a battle for tickets. (Opens Oct. 10.)
See time.com for the season's graphic novels; hot file-sharing program, Morpheus; and more