.jpeg?w=1920&resize=1920,1075&ssl=1 "The Metropolitan Opera Delves Into Comic Books")
The Metropolitan Opera Delves Into Comic Books
Illustration by Jimmy Simpson
1. The beloved British polymath and broadcasting legend Melvyn Bragg, who joined the BBC in 1961, recently stepped down from his show “In Our Time,” which, since 1998, has delved into matters of science, art, and far, far beyond, informed by academics moderated with Bragg’s great brio. In characteristic fashion, some of Bragg’s last episodes explore dragons, civility, and the evolution of lungs.
2. “WTF with Marc Maron” helped define the podcast form, starting in 2009, as Maron soul-searched and mea-culpaed his way through old beefs with fellow-comedians; he evolved into one of the best interviewers in the business. Autumn brings the end of “WTF” and a documentary about Maron, “Are We Good?”
3. “Kreative Kontrol,” an insightful labor-of-love interview podcast by the Edmonton-based journalist and music enthusiast Vish Khanna, marked its thousandth episode this summer. Khanna’s passion and depth of knowledge have yielded many coups, including notable interviews with the Silver Jews’ David Berman, in 2019, and with all the members of Fugazi, in 2024.
What to Watch
Rachel Syme on a movie-series companion to the Met’s “Superfine” exhibition.
September is unofficially Fashion Month in New York. The runway shows stomp through, along with the attendant canapé-dotted parties and slick brand events. Magazines drop their thickest, glossiest issues. There is an energized, back-to-school vigor around shopping—nubbly sweaters of all colors tempt passersby from well-composed store windows. This year, even a movie theatre is getting in on the stylish mood: Metrograph, on the Lower East Side, hosts a weekend film series, complete with talkbacks and special guests, called “Starving for Beauty!: Superfine Stories on Screen” (Sept. 20-21), a companion to “Superfine,” the Metropolitan Museum’s current Costume Institute exhibition exploring Black dandyism in fashion. (The exhibition’s curator, Monica L. Miller, put the series together.) Here are the five films on view.
A scene from “The Gospel According to André.”Photograph from Dustin Pittman / Penske Media / REX / Shutterstock
“The Gospel According to André” (2017, Kate Novack)
When André Leon Talley died, in 2022, the fashion world lost one of its most charismatic and fascinating figures. Talley, a brilliant bon vivant and the first Black man to serve as creative director of Vogue, was a kind of caped crusader for high fashion (quite literally; his cape collection was legendary). Talley was a staunch advocate for designers and their craft, even as he often critiqued the industry at large for its clubbish exclusivity.
“Black Is . . . Black Ain’t” (1995, Marlon Riggs)
The director put his own story at the center of this wide-ranging documentary about the diversity of Black experience in America. While making it, Riggs was battling AIDS, and the film’s meta-narrative, about whether he will survive to see it finished, lends the work a poignant urgency. The film won the 1995 Filmmakers Trophy at Sundance, but Riggs was not there to accept it; he died in 1994.
“Looking for Langston” (1989, Isaac Julien)
This gorgeous black-and-white exploration of the Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes expands into a wider meditation on queer Black identity. Julien used archival footage from the nineteen-twenties, intercut with the writing of Hughes, James Baldwin, and others, to show the connection between artists across time, both in speakeasies and on the page.
“Dressed Like Kings” (2007, Stacey Holman)
Holman’s short documentary digs into the subculture of oswenka (or “swank”) pageants in South Africa, in which men parade in their finest clothes in pursuit of being named “Best Dressed.”
“Portrait of Jason” (1967, Shirley Clarke)
A riveting documentary that is part monologue, part character study, part confrontation, this cult classic, shot in the course of twelve hours in Clarke’s apartment at the Chelsea Hotel, features a long, meandering conversation with Jason Holliday, a gay street hustler and aspiring cabaret performer who is a talker par excellence. Jason alternately romances the camera and spars with it; you will leave with your head spinning.
P.S. Good stuff on the internet:
