Big Fat Story
The box office has been growing ever nerdier, with more comic book and action figure movies every season, but 2009 will be the year that geeky obsessions and mainstream culture finally converged into the point where eye-glasses meet tape. J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek revival is the anchor of the movement; expect people to start sleeping outside for tickets in April for the May release. Watchmen, the adaptation of the seminal Alan Moore graphic novel, will also be a capital-B Big Deal for comic book lovers, who have been waiting for the Zack Snyder film to emerge from development hell since 2007 (there are still court battles raging over an official release date). The latest Harry Potter installment, The Half Blood Prince, will satiate Rowling groupies, while X-Men Origins: Wolverine not only adds another flick to the popular franchise, but may also be “one of the best comic book movies of the decade,” according to fans.
Every band you've been missing returns for another round.
In terms of popular music, 2008 was all about breakout stars (Taylor Swift, Leona Lewis, Lil’ Wayne, T.I.). 2009 will be about the triumphant returns of bands and artists we haven’t heard from in a while. Sonic Youth, released from the clutches of Geffen Records, have signed to ubercool indie label Matador and will release their sixteenth studio recording, the first in three years. Eminem is back with “Relapse,” his first rap album after a nearly five-year hiatus. No Doubt—Gwen Stefani and the original lineup—will put forth a new effort, the first since 2001’s “Rock Steady,” and fans of pop-ska everywhere can barely wait for it. Finally, the Boss, amped up by Obama’s win and an upcoming gig at the Superbowl (and maybe the Inauguration), will release “Working on a Dream,” his latest opus. Get your iPods ready.
A 90-year-old director breathes new life into a classic.
Arthur Laurents, now 90, wrote the libretto for the original Broadway production of West Side Story in 1957. Fifty-two years later, he is directing its big Broadway revival, a bilingual version stocked with unknown dancers tapping out Jerome Robbins’ original choreography. And though he is a nanogenarian, Laurents is still taking wild chances, reinventing the show in Spanish and making it more gritty and real. He told the Washington Post that he thought the 1961 movie was an atrocity: “Day-Glo costumes and fake accents! Boys with dyed hair and color-coded jeans doing jetes down real streets!” Audiences can also look forward to two high-profile revivals of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot—one with Patrick Stewart and Ian McClellan in London, and another with Nathan Lane and Bill Irwin in New York. Take your pick; both provide existential angst.
2009 Culture Hits
Jimmy Fallon hits PBS, Gwen Stefani rounds up the old gang, Harry Potter won't go away...and Shady's back. The Daily Beast's Rachel Syme takes a sneak peek at the year's coming distractions in entertainment.
No matter how obsessed we become with the new, the past still captivates us—ancient Egypt, in particular. In 2009, no less than 11 traveling museum exhibitions will showcase mummies, tombs, and the great pharaohs. Shows will pop up everywhere from Boston to Dallas to Geneva, Switzerland. But the biggest display will take place in Paris at the Louvre, where, from March through June, visitors will be treated to over 350 artifacts as part of “The Gates of Heaven: Visions of the World in Ancient Egypt.” If New York is your art destination, some other exciting exhibits this year include the Met’s first retrospective of Francis Bacon in 20 years, and the Whitney’s Jenny Holzer retrospective, an orgy of neon lights and flashing fluorescent messages.
Is this the year music for grown ups breaks out?
The New York Philharmonic could use a good kick in the first chair, and it will get one this year when conductor Alan Gilbert (who, at 42, is virtually a wunderkind in classical music years) takes over as music director. The first native New Yorker to hold the title, he makes his debut in May, when he will conduct the world premiere of Peter Lieberson’s The World in Flower, a New York Philharmonic commission. For aspiring classical musicians, 2009 also brings YouTube’s first ever global interactive initiative—Chinese composer Tan Dun (of the Beijing Olympics) created "Internet Symphony No. 1 'Eroica'" and put the sheet music on YouTube, encouraging thousands of musicians around the world to audition via web video for a big performance in Carnegie Hall. The concert takes place in April, but until then, you can watch the online gathering of talented strings and woodwinds from everywhere.
The Electric Company returns, and The United States of Tara shines.
Remember The Electric Company? It was that ‘70s show from the Children’s Television Workshop, where quirky sketch comedy doubled as educational infotainment. Silhouetted heads spoke phonetically to each other across a neon screen, and a nation of kids learned how to spell and look good in profile. Thirty-two years later, the program is back, and will feature guest stars like Whoopi Goldberg and Jimmy Fallon (it debuts January 23 on PBS). Also in the works for kids is an updated version of The Muppet Movie, helmed by Forgetting Sarah Marshall’s funnyman Jason Segal. And now that the writer’s strike is finally over and scripts are good again, we can look forward to the new Showtime comedy, The United States of Tara, created by Oscar-winning Juno writer and wonder woman Diablo Cody. In Tara, the brilliant Toni Collette plays a housewife with multiple personality disorder. Sometimes she’s a butch lesbian, other times a teenager on speed. Make sure you order cable this year.
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