The Yes List
Each week, The Daily Beast scours the cultural landscape to choose three top picks. First up: a Sundance hit that's making its way to the megaplex.
Chuck Zlotnick / Fox Searchlight
A Hot Summer Movie
One of Sundance’s biggest-buzz films, Marc Webb’s (500) Days of Summer, is finally hitting theaters, with the goal of being this season's alterna-date flick. The sweet indie romance stars the dashing Joseph Gordon-Levitt and hipster dream-girl Zooey Deschanel. The film—which tells the tale of a failed relationship from the breakup backward, from the man’s point of view—features Hall & Oates dance numbers, making-out in Ikea, and a burning chemistry between the two young leads. Deschanel, who plays a quirky secretary, told the Los Angeles Times that she turned down the script at first, saying that it focused too much on the male perspective and that her character, Summer, wasn’t “in it that much.” After a revise, Deschanel signed on, and the results are undeniably adorable. And hey, the 92 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes can’t be all wrong.
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A MoMA Show for Mama
Think twice before throwing out that squeezed tube of toothpaste and 10-year-old greeting card—the ephemera of your daily life could eventually become an art project on a grand scale. Waste Not, the new installation at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, might remind you of your childhood home—provided your mom never threw anything away. Four years ago, Chinese artist Song Dong convinced his mother that his best tribute to her would be an art project. The result is a hyperorganized display of one person’s life and a walk through 60 years of Chinese culture. Song has taken every last rubberband and shopping bag from his now-deceased mother’s house in Beijing and laid them out—lovingly, carefully—between the sparse, art-hung walls of the museum. The unique installation has made its way from China and Europe to New York, where its obsessively laid out stacks of clothes and kitchenware, along with his mother’s refrigerator and bed, are a kind tribute to a methodical life. The exhibition will continue until September 21.
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Maxwell Back on Top
The R&B singer Maxwell scores the No. 1 record this week, with his long-anticipated BLACKsummers’night CD—he waited seven years to release it. The album is flying off the shelves—people reported that they couldn’t find it anywhere. Those who have stopped the ancient practice of buying physical CDs also rocketed Maxwell to the top of iTunes. His hiatus is officially over.