The civil rights activist and lawyer William F. Pepper, who has long contended that James Earl Ray did not shoot Martin Luther King, will be portrayed by Hugh Jackman in a conspiracy theory thriller about the assassination. “Orders to Kill,” reports the Los Angeles Times, will be directed by Lee Daniels (“Precious,” “The Paperboy”).

In 2010, Jackman and Daniels attempted to launch a film called “Selma,” about the triumphant 54-mile march of non-violent demonstrators led by Dr. King from Selma to Montomery, in Alabama, from March 16 – 24, 1965. It followed the killing of the deacon and civil-rights activist Jimmie Lee Jackson by an Alabama state trooper and two abortive marches earlier in the month, including that of “Bloody Sunday,” March 7.

The British actor David Oyelowo was lined up to play King. Jackman reportedly put on thirty pounds to play the racist Dallas County sheriff Jim Clark, whose men used cattle prods, guns, and clubs against Selma demonstrators. But despite backing from the Weinstein Company and the lining up of a stellar cast, Daniels could not finalize the $18 million budget and the project fell through.

Daniels’ film about King’s assassination, for which Millenium Pictures is currently seeking a distributor in Hollywood, has been adapted by screenwriter Hanna Weg from Pepper’s “Orders to Kill: The Truth Behind the Murder of Martin Luther King.” Published in 1998, the book was the culmination of 18 years of investigation by Pepper, who had befriended King and accompanied him during the organization of the Poor Peoples’ Campaign on Washington D.C. and the Sanitation Workers’ Strike in Memphis.

Initially Pepper believed that Ray was responsible for King’s murder in Memphis on April 4, 1968, but on meeting him he was convinced otherwise.

“What convinces Pepper of the convicted killer’s innocence is Ray’s rendition of the months leading up to the assassination and the obvious discrepancies between his story and the government’s official story,” Helyn Trickey wrote in her review of the book for CNN. “Pepper’s account of the months Ray spent in limbo, traveling across the country at the direction of a shadowy figure dubbed Raul, is reminiscent of film noir movies where the lead is caught in a web of deceit beyond his comprehension.

“Ray believed, according to Pepper, that he was helping to run firearms across the Canadian and Mexican borders in exchange for legitimate traveling papers. Instead, Pepper contends, Ray was handpicked to take the fall in a larger-than-life plan to assassinate King.”

Pepper, who is now 74, believes that government interests wanted King killed because of his opposition to the Vietnam War. He is supported by Dexter King, who believes his father was assassinated by a Memphis police officer.

Following Ray's death in 1998, Pepper represented the King family in a wrongful death lawsuit, "King family vs. Loyd Jowers and other unknown co-conspirators.” Jowers ran a restaurant near the Lorraine Motel where King was shot and supposedly received and hid the murder weapon.

Pepper produced over 70 witnesses during the month-long trial. Jowers, who testified by deposition, alleged that Ray was a fall guy uninvolved in the assassination, and that Earl Clark, a Memphis police marksman, fired the shot to the cheek that killed King. On December 8, 1999, the Memphis jury found Jowers responsible and that the conspiracy involved "governmental agencies." Clark had died in 1987; Jowers, who apparently wished to unburden his conscience, died in 2000.

The Los Angeles Times notes that the trial will climax “Orders to Kill,” which, even before it starts filming, is earning narrative comparisons with Oliver Stone’s factually discredited Kennedy assassination conspiracytheory film, “JFK” (1991). Daniels’ movie is being positioned as an alternative version of the events surrounding King’s death.

Read more culture coverage on Spotlight

Italy's Culture Minister Lorenzo Ornaghi unveiled a timetable on Tuesday for an extensive restoration of the Colosseum. In Rome, standing beside mayor Gianni Alemanno and fashion mogul Diego Della Valle, a principal patron of the project, Ornaghi described the centuries of admiration the ancient structure has garnered for Italy's capital when justifying the need for an intervention. “This is not only in the interests of Rome and Italy,” Ornaghi told the Telegraph, “but this is a symbol of how Rome presents itself to the world.”

The restoration, according to Borsa Italiana, will run from early December 2012 to approximately June 2015. In separate phases, workers will restore the Colosseum's internal passageways and underground cells, add support to the stadium's façades and main atria, replace iron pins from the exterior that have been lost or dug out, and build a tourist center. Ornaghi promises that the structure will remain open for the entirety of the project, all while insisting that it is absolutely necessary. Recently supporters of the plan have often pointed out an eerie recession of 40 centimeters (16 inches) between the northern and southern portions of the monument, a tilt that has invited comparisons to the leaning Tower of Pisa.

Like any major architectural restoration in Italy, this project has brought a few contrarians out of the woodwork. Among these is Vittorio Sgarbi, a famously litigious art critic and former Undersecretary of Cultural Affairs. Speaking to the Italian news site IlSussidiario.net, Sgarbi contends that the scientific community had been aware of the recession for "quite some time," saying that the tilt is caused by a layer of cement, installed beneath the structure in the early-19th century, "so that the Colosseum would be brought into balance.” 

“The diameter of the Colosseum is at least 150 meters, and nothing changes if you shift a few centimeters," Sgarbi told Il Sussidario. “The Colosseum is not in fact in danger for now, nor is the Tower of Pisa.”

Food trucks may be quick, full of variety, delicious, and on every corner in your city of choice. And though the mobile gastronomy boom has kept urban-dwellers fed, the truth is the food truck vogue has passed. It’s no longer a fad; it’s here to stay. What, then, will be the next market to take its vending to the streets?

Fashion, of course. The Associated Press takes a look at the burgeoning mobile boutique movement, where vendors set up the racks from their stores inside vans and trucks and take them to different places in a city. The approach seems to be a success. If you can grab a sandwich while walking to work, why not grab a pair of pants, too?

One of the vendors featured in the story is the StyleLiner, a former potato chip truck transformed into chic shop that traverses concrete. Started by former Jones Apparel Group trend director Joey Wolffer, the StyleLiner is stocked with pieces its founder handpicks, alongside some of Wolffer’s own creations. And naturally, it’s stationed all summer at various stops in the Hamptons.

“I wanted relationships with customers,” Wolffer told the AP. “I wanted to get out there and work with people and meet new people all the time.”

She added that the first summer she hit the road clothes-in-tow, in 2010, she made a profit.

Outside of New York there’s Bootleg Austin, a shoe store based out of an Airstream trailer, and the Fashion Truck, which zips around Boston.

But will the fashion truck trend take off like food trucks did a few years back? It certainly isn’t hard to picture boutiques going mobile in Williamsburg, or perhaps even Soho. Now they have to figure out where to put the changing rooms, as swapping pants in the street will probably not fly.  

Visit Artinfo.com/fashion for more fashion and style news.

Long before the Opening Ceremony, London set a distinct tone for its Olympic Games. Opting not to rival its 2008 predecessor Beijing in spectacle, the veteran host city had another ideal in mind: sustainability. This year's Olympic Stadium utilized a tenth of the amount of steel molded into Beijing’s Bird’s Nest; Zaha Hadid’s Aquatics Centre awaits its post-Olympic metamorphosis, in which it will shed two wings of temporary viewing stands and flaunt its sleeker “legacy mode” form; the Basketball Arena, which popped up in Olympic Park like an airy block of meringue, will completely disassemble when the games are over.

The designed impermanence of London’s Olympic Park speaks to a growing trend in cities around the world, one that associates the temporary with the sustainable. But some of the greatest architectural strides toward sustainability this year were actually designed to outlast the Olympic Flame. London’s latest infrastructural additions serve as supporting actors to the flashy new stadia parked in Stratford for the summer. But when the games come to a close, this year’s thoughtfully designed energy centers and pumping stations will continue to serve East London, reviving the heroism of the civic projects that brought glory to Great Britain in the 19th century.

One such project, the Olympic Primary Substation, designed by NORD Architecture, is a massive electricity substation commissioned to power Olympic Park and the neighboring athletes’ village. Clad entirely in dark brick, the Primary Substation gracefully articulates the spaces of three transformers and a shared control room with immense, cubic volumes. The upper sections of the façade display an increasingly complex pattern of brickwork, designed to ventilate the transformers within.

Meanwhile, the John McAslan + Partners-designed Olympic Energy Centre offers a leaner take on modernism embellished with the Koolhaas-esque flair of a bright red exterior stairwell. Clad in steel sheets, coated with a warm, rusted metal finish, and marked with an asymmetrical chimney, the Olympic Energy Centre is a striking addition to the Stratford skyline. And the critics have taken notice: as architecture writer Jay Merrick wrote for The Independent, the Olympic Energy Centre exhibits a "diagrammatic clarity" and "gives power generation an almost literal visibility."

Just beyond the perimeter of Olympic Park sits a tastefully designed new wastewater recycling facility — the largest in the United Kingdom — designed by Lyall Bills & Young. The architects utilized stone and crushed concrete, packed into cages known as gabion baskets to create industrial structures that double as ready-made plant habitats. Green roofs and wood cladding also work to blend some of the buildings in with their wooded surroundings. Nearby, a new pumping station designed by the same UK-based firm channels groundwater into an immense network of toilets and plant irrigation systems organized for the summer games. By day, the structure brandishes a facade imprinted with technical drawings by Victorian sewer works engineer Joseph Bazalgette; by night, its chimney-top light box shines like a beacon, and vibrant pink spotlights illuminate the station's industrial steel drums.

While the prefab arenas and detachable spectator stands in Stratford reflect a radical new approach to the Olympic build-out, the new infrastructure, designed to sustain the projected growth of East London, speaks to Great Britain’s longstanding legacy of great infrastructural works. A recent article in Next American City addressed the confusion most Americans struggled with when Danny Boyle’s Opening Ceremony included a scene extoling the contributions of 19th-century civil engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-1859). As Boyle’s vision seems to suggest, Brunel, known as the man who built modern Britain, is as beloved (or at least as popularly recognized) as Mary Poppins and James Bond.

Since the Industrial Revolution, infrastructure has carried enormous weight in British cultural memory, evidenced more recently in the battle to preserve the 1930s Battersea Power Station. As this year’s summer games have proven, even in the age of collapsible stadia and Tweeted medal counts, some things never change.

To see pictures of  London's Olympic infrastructure, click the slide show.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 1

The Jam, at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects 6 - 8 PM
208 Forsyth Street, East Village / Lower East Side

Bill Claps "Sum of the Parts," at Art for China Foundation 6 - 9 PM
40 Exchange Place, 5th Floor, West Wing, Financial District

Last Day: Christian Marclay’s “The Clock,” at David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center, 8 AM - 10 PM
61 West 62nd Street, Upper West Side

** ARTINFO RECOMMENDS ** Les Rogers "Summer Swells," at Half Gallery 6 - 8 PM
208 Forsyth Street, Lower East Side

“The painter of big, brash nudes reveals his softer side in a show of ethereal batik-like paintings on wood panels.” - Chloe Wyma   

** ARTINFO RECOMMENDS ** Girl of the Golden West, at New Ohio Theatre 7 PM
154 Christopher Street #1e, West Village

“Experimental theater wunderkinds Rady&Bloom give this spaghetti western-cum-Puccini Opera a postmodern facelift.” - Chloe Wyma

“Looks Delicious,” at the World Financial Center
220 Vesey Street, Financial District

 "Lost Mirrors," at Con Artist, 8 PM
119 Ludlow, Basement, Chinatown

Elad Lassry: “WOMEN,” on the High Line
High Line, Chelsea

Carlos N. Molina, at Michael Mut Gallery 6 - 8 PM
97 Avenue C, Lower East Side  

Screening: Claude Sautet’s “The Things of Life,” at Film Society of Lincoln Center, 6:15 PM 
Lincoln Center, Upper West Side

Panel Discussion: Benjamin Armstrong, Jennifer Tee, Motoko Dobashi, Pedro Barbeito, at C24 Gallery 6 - 8 PM
514 West 24th Street, rsvp at info@c24gallery.com,

“Meditate On,” by Sri Chinmoy: A Word and Image Exhibit, at the Grand Central New York Public Library, 10 AM - 6 PM
135 East 46th Street, Midtown

** ARTINFO RECOMMENDS ** Artist Talk: "Tell Me How You REALLY Feel: Diaristic Tendencies," at Center for Book Arts 6:30 PM
28 West 27th Street, floor 3, Chelsea

“Part of a larger exhibition exploring artwork inspired by memoirs, graphic novels, and travel journals, artists will discuss the impact of diaristic media on their visual artistic practice.” - Sara Roffino

“My Mind is Like an Open Meadow,” at 59E59 Theatres, 7:30 PM
59 East 59th Street, Upper East Side

Artist Talk: Ana Cordeiro, Eileen Arnow-Levine, Shana Agid, Thomas Parker Williams, at Center for Book Arts 6:30pm
28 West 27th Street, floor 3, Chelsea

Screening: “Senna,” at Socrates Sculpture Park, 7 PM
32-01 Vernon Boulevard, Astoria

Lecture: Jeffrey Wolf "Bill Taylor," at American Folk Art Museum 6 PM
2 Lincoln Center, Columbus Avenue at 66th Street, Upper West Side

Aleksandr Kosenkov, Aleksey Korotenko, Anastasia Bazanova, Dina Bogusonova, Galina Khailu, Olga Bueva, Ruben Monakhov, Valery Valran "Russian Art Today: A Summer Group Show" curated by Laurie Sanderson, at Ten43 Gallery 6 - 8 PM
1043 Madison Avenue, Upper East Side

Music Marathon, at Ars Nova, 7:30 PM
511 West 54th Street, Hell’s Kitchen

 "Art and Social Activism," at Nicholas Cohn Art Projects  6-9 PM
26-15 Jackson Avenue, Queens

Camille A. Brown & Dancers with Imani Uzuri, at SummerStage 2012, 8 - 10 PM
Rumsey Playfield, Central Park

THURSDAY, AUGUST 2

 “Slightly Strange,” at Powerhouse Arena, 7 - 9 PM
37 Main Street, Dumbo

Artlog’s Lower East Side Art Crawl, begins at Allegra LaViola Gallery, 6:30 - 8:30 PM
179 East Broadway, Lower East Side, $20, RSVP essential  

One Year Later: Part II, at Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, 6 - 8 PM
323 West 39th Street, Midtown

Victoria Selbach "Grace In The Light," at Dacia Gallery, 6 - 10 PM
53 Stanton Street, Lower East Side

"Housing Works," at Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, 6 - 8 PM
26 Wooster Street, Soho

The Video Store, at the Museum of Arts and Design, 12 PM to 8 PM
2 Columbus Circle, Columbus Circle

Anthony Campuzano, Bessma Khalaf, Chris Mottalini, Christian Marclay, Emily Jacir, Esperanza Mayobre, Jean-Luc Moulene, Malick Sidibe, Mariah Robertson, Nick von Woert, Odili Donald Odita, Tyler Rowland, "HiJack!" at Jack Shainman Gallery, 6 - 8 PM
513 West 20th St, Chelsea

Erica Love, Joao Enxuto, Jon Rafman, Lindsay Lawson, Mark Tribe, Stephen Prina, "The Skin We're In" at Yossi Milo Gallery, 6 - 8 PM
245 Tenth Avenue, Chelsea

Metropolitan Opera Summer Recital Series: Deanna Breiwick, Alexander Lewis, Edward Parks, Vlad Iftinca, at Clove Lakes Park, 7 PM
Slosson Avenue, Victory Boulevard, and Clove Road, Staten Island

Alex Gingrow, "All the money IS in the label" at Mike Weiss Gallery, 6 - 8 PM
520 West 24th St, Chelsea

"Summer Exhibitions" at Agora Gallery, 6 - 8 PM
530 West 25th St, Chelsea

Philip Kelsey, "New England Walks With Marcia: Landscapes And Seascapes,” at Blue Mountain Gallery, 5 - 8 PM
530 West 25th St, 4th Floor, Chelsea

“Annual Juried Exhibition," at Bowery Gallery, 5 - 8 PM
530 West 25th St, 4th Floor, Chelsea

 David Cerulli, Emily Rich, Marilyn Sontag, "3 at 307" at Gallery 307 at Carter Burden Center for the Aging, 5 - 7 PM
307 Seventh Avenue., Ste. 1401, Chelsea

** ARTINFO RECOMMENDS ** “Terreform Summer Lecture Series: Bill Washabaugh,” at 3rd Ward, 7:30 - 9:30 PM
195 Morgan Avenue, Bushwick, Brooklyn

“Ed Helms look-alike Bill Washabaugh has put his crossover skills in art, music, and engineering to building robotic furniture, invent musical instruments, and set up a 360 moving cylindrical video system for U2. At 3rd Ward, he’ll be speaking about his design background and future projects in interactive physical structures.” - Reid Singer

Book launch: Stefan Ruiz "The Factory of Dreams" at Aperture Foundation, 7 - 10 PM
547 West 27th St, 4th Floor, Chelsea

"HULLABALLOO COLLECTIVE: Joie de Vivre" at PSPS (Paul Seftel Project Space)
6 - 9 PM, 548 West 28th Street, 3rd Floor, Chelsea

"Righteous Perpetrators" at A.I.R. Gallery, 6 - 9 PM
111 Front Street, #228

** ARTINFO RECOMMENDS ** Priyanka Dasgupta Transparent Studio, at Bose Pacia Gallery, 6 - 9 PM
163 Plymouth Street, Dumbo

“For her residency at Bose Pacia, Dasgupta constructs a life-sized shadow puppet to work in conjunction with photography and video to emphasize the contrast between digital and sculptural works, while exploring the dichotomy between the tangible and the ephemeral.” - Sara Roffino

Weegee-Inspired Film Noir Series: “My Favorite Brunette,” at the International Center of Photography, 6 PM
1133 Avenue of the Americas, Midtown

Gabriel Serpa, Hannah Holshouser, Harry Swartz-Turfle, Mark Farris, Paul Howe "in the open," at Kesting/Ray, 7 - 9 PM
257 Boerum Street, Bushwick

Tour: Spencer Finch "Full Moon Tour of Lunar (2011)" curated by Nora Lawrence, at Storm King, 9 PM
Old Pleasant Hill Road, Mountainville, RSVP Essential

Franco Zeffirelli’s “Romeo and Juliet,” at the Prospect Park Bandshell, 7:30 PM
Prospect Park, Brooklyn  

FRIDAY, AUGUST 3

** ARTINFO RECOMMENDS ** “Accordion Wrestling,” at Lincoln Center Out of Doors, 8:30 PM
Damrosch Park Bandshell, Lincoln Center

“‘Accordion Wrestling might sound totally bizarre, with accordionist Kimmo Phojonen frenetically playing while tumultuous grappling matches writhe around him. In fact, Pohjonen is reviving a now-dormant tradition of Finnish wrestling, which had its matches soundtracked with the winding sounds of the accordion. Phojonen takes this idea and creates an aggressive musical multimedia performance, with microphones embedded in a custom wrestling mat to capture the thuds of the Helsinki wrestles, to go along with his uniquely physical electronic accordion music. He even gets involved in some of the action himself.” - Allison Meier

Carousel Cartoon Slide Shows, at Soloway, 8pm
348 South 4th Street, Williamsburg  

** ARTINFO RECOMMENDS ** Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller: “The Murder of Crows,” at the Park Avenue Armory, 12 - 7 PM
643 Park Avenue, Upper East Side

Closing reception: "Conspire," at Bluestockings, 7 PM
172 Allen Street, Lower East Side, $5 suggested donation

Wassaic Project Summer Festival, at the Wassaic Project, 12 PM - 12 AM
37 Furnace Bank Road, Wassaic, New York

Reading: Gregg Bordowitz at Golden, 7 PM
120 Elizabeth, Ground Floor, Lower East Side

"Signs of the Apocalypse,” at myplasticheartnyc gallery, 6 - 9 PM
210 Forsyth Street, Lower East Side

"Night Of The Vampyre,” at Orchard Windows Gallery, 7 - 9 PM
37 Orchard Street, Lower East Side

** ARTINFO RECOMMENDS ** Artist Talk: Tony Ingrisano, at Lesley Heller Workspace, 6:30 PM
54 Orchard Street, Lower East Side, 6:30pm

“Ingrisano’s colorful, intricate approach to collage draws on highways and power grids to make exceedingly fertile art about relationships organic and man-made. He’ll be at the gallery talking about his studio practice and work as an art teacher.” - Reid Singer

"Visualized Soul," at Tenri Cultural Institute, 6 - 8 PM
43 W. 13th Street, Greenwich Village

Naoko Saito, Shoko Kikuta, Sui Anri, at AG Gallery, Time TBA
107A North 3rd Street, Williamsburg

“Lost in the Stars,” at Glimmerglass Festival, 7:30 PM
Cooperstown, New York

"...Is This Free?,” at NURTUREart Gallery, 7 - 9 PM
56 Bogart Street, Bushwick

“Ghosts of Manhattan,” at  Fort Tryon Park, 8 - 9:15 PM
1 Margaret Corbin Drive, Washington Heights

Fritz Welch: "Breakfast Bombs the Inevitable," at helper, 7 - 9 PM
495 Rogers Avenue, Brooklyn

Performance: Asparagus Piss Raindrop, at helper, 3 PM & 8 PM
495 Rogers Avenue, Brooklyn

Target Passport Fridays: West Indies, at Queens Museum of Art, 6:30 - 10 PM
NYC Building, Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Queens

Rooftop Films: “Inocente,” at MetroTech Commons, 8 - 11 PM
Bridge Street, Downtown Brooklyn

"Pop-Up Art Show," at 112 Kraft Avenue, 6:30 - 10 PM
112 Kraft Avenue, Bronxville, New York

Opening Night Screening for Rural Route Film Festival: “Baraka,” at the Museum of the Moving Image, 7 PM
36-01 35th Avenue, Astoria

“2010: Our Hideous Future,” at Triskelion Arts, 8 PM
118 North 11th Street, Williamsburg

Jack Davidson, Meg Lipke: "yellow makes a sound," at Imogen Holloway Gallery, 6 - 9 PM
81 Partition St, Saugerties, New York

Whiz Khalifa, at Nikon at Jones Beach Theater, 5:30 PM
Ocean Parkway, Wantagh, New York

SATURDAY, AUGUST 4

MAZE Closing Party (You Are Here Festival), at Secret Project Robot
389 Melrose Street, Bushwick  

“Telettrofono,” at stillspotting nyc: staten island, 12 - 7 PM
St. George Ferry Terminal, Staten Island

Jack Quartet, at the Rite of Summer Classical Music Festival, 1 - 3 PM
Governors Island, New York Harbor

Bryan el Castillo, Maxi Cohen, Ron Haviv, Sam Abell, Torben Ulrik Nissen "Amazon Rainforest, Paradise/Paradox" curated by James Cavello, at Westwood Gallery
Soho: 568 Broadway, suite 501, (time not confirmed, check with gallery)

PS1: Warm Up: Jamie xx, Pearson Sound, Lemonade, Sinjin Hawke, Zora Jones, at MoMA PS1, 3 PM
22-25 Jackson Avenue, Long Island City

Performance: Aki Onda, Franco Falsini, Future Blondes, Jason Martin, Jonas Reinhardt "E.S.P. TV #21," at E.S.P. TV (Present Company) 8 - 11 PM
29 Wythe Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Target First Saturday, at the Brooklyn Museum, 5 - 11 PM
200 Eastern Parkway, Prospect Heights, Brooklyn

"Summer Babe,” at Heavy Refuge, 6 PM - 11:30 PM
77 Irving Avenue, Bushwick, Brooklyn

"Small Works," at Brooklyn Art Space (formerly Brooklyn Artists Gym) 6 PM
168 7th Street, floor 3, Gowanus, Brooklyn

Frank Russo, Joanna Mulder "Midnight Monster Meltdown," at MF Gallery 7-10 PM
213 Bond Street, Boerum Hill

Ryan McGinness "Women: Sun-Stained Symbols," at Glenn Horowitz Bookseller 6-8 PM
87 Newtown Lane, East Hampton

The King in Spite of Himself (Le roi malgré lui), at Bard SummerScape, 7 PM
Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York

"I Don't Have Time For This Sh&t!" curated by Carrie Mackin, Karen Bookatz, at QF Gallery East Hampton,  6-10 PM
98 Newtown Lane, East Hampton

Rooftop Films: Patron Saints, on the Old American Can Factory, 8 PM - 12:30 AM
232 Third Street, Gowanus, Brooklyn

"Best of the Best," at Grenning Gallery, 6 PM
17 Washington Street, East Hampton  

Grounded, at Airplane, 6 - 10 PM
70 Jefferson Street, Bushwick

SUNDAY, AUGUST 5

“Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film,” at Anthology Film Archives, 7 PM
32 2nd Avenue, East Village

Reading: Anthony Elms, Timothy Porges, at Golden 7 PM
120 Elizabeth, Ground Floor, Chinatown

International Contemporary Ensemble: “Oiseaux Exotiques,” at the Mostly Mozart Festival, 5 PM
Rose Theater, Lincoln Center, Upper West Side

“Ballet in Cinema: La Bayadère,” at Big Cinemas, 11 AM
239 East 59th Street, Upper East Side

“A Heart in Winter,” at Film Society Lincoln Center, 1:45 - 2:30 PM
165 West 65th Street, Upper West Side

Slavic Spirit, at Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, 6:30 PM
Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church, Bridgehampton,

MONDAY, AUGUST 6

Chris Smith "Underbody" at site95, 6 - 8 PM
373 Broadway, 6th floor, Soho

** ARTINFO RECOMMENDS **  “Mobile Shakespeare Unit: Richard III,” at the Public Theatre, 7 PM
425 Lafayette Street, Noho

“The Mobile Shakespeare Unit’s production of Shakespeare's violent and brooding ‘Richard III’ is opening at the Public Theater for a limited three week run, but it’s already been staged across the five boroughs, albeit in less formal settings, with performances at prisons, army bases, homeless shelters, centers for the elderly, and other venues that are often artistic voids. The unit, founded by the same Joseph Papp who started the Public and the free Shakespeare in the Park productions, was revived last summer after around 40 years of inactivity, with the riveting Ron Cephas Jones leading the nomadic cast as the ruthless Richard.” - Allison Meier

"Juried Student Show" at SVA (Eastside Gallery), 5 - 7 PM
209 East 23rd Street, Gramercy

Sandro Figueroa Sen 2 Figueroa "Live, Breathe And Write" curated by Fernando Ruíz Lorenzo at Emperial Gallery, 6 - 9 PM
2241 First Avenue, East Harlem

Lucinda Williams at Bowery Ballroom, 9 - 10:30 PM
6 Delancey Street, Lower East Side

Arbitration Rock Festival, at The Vander Ende Onderdonk House, 5 PM - 1 AM
1820 Flushing Avenue, Ridgewood

TUESDAY, AUGUST 7

Matthew Ostrowski “The Host," at The Clocktower, 6 - 8 PM
108 Leonard Street, 13th Floor, Soho

"Two Worlds," at Ouchi Gallery, 7 - 10 PM
170 Tillary Street, Suite 507, Brooklyn

Peter Bynum, at Littlejohn Contemporary, 10 - 6 PM
547 West 27th Street, Suite 207, Chelsea

Gary Hustwit, Jon Pack “The Post Olympic City,” at Storefront for Art and Architecture, 7 - 9 PM
97 Kenmare Street, Soho

”Heartless” by Sam Shepard, at Signature Theatre Company’s Diamond Stage, 7:30 PM
480 West 42nd Street, Hell’s Kitchen

At age three, your children are too young to play the Modern Architecture Game or assemble the LEGO version of Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater — all those tiny pieces make both of them starchitectural choking hazards. Age three is not too young, however, for your child to start training to be the precocious architect you've always dreamed of raising, and the Frank Lloyd Wright Designs Memory Game gives 'em a head start. Cards decorated with the geometries of Wright's kaleidoscopic art-glass windows, carpets, and other decorative flourishes start sharpening those architectural recognition and memory skills well before preschool — and they also promise to keep on entertaining for the next 100 years (or at least that’s what the phrase "ages 3 to 103" written on the box would have us believe). 

The art world has gotten the short end of the stick when it comes to reality television. There are shows pitting artists against each other in creative contests and shows infiltrating the rarified society of the gallery world, but what about the real public drama of visual art, the buying and selling, auction bidding, and the addiction of collecting? While the current crop of art reality TV shows flounder, a set of decidedly less highbrow series have become popular with a wide-ranging audience by appealing to the basic desire to possess interesting objects. 

These shows take on the thrill of the hunt, the suspense of the appraisal, and the pursuit of just the right piece. But rather than the perfect late Picasso, the participants of series like A&E's "Storage Wars," History Channel's "American Pickers," and PBS's "Market Warriors" (plus its venerable predecessor, "Antiques Roadshow") are looking for gaudy costume jewelry, rusted gas station signs, and vintage furniture. It may not have the lofty air of Christie's, but there's a lot for art lovers to appreciate in these shows, and the mania surrounding them (Sotheby's auctioneer Tobias Meyer doesn't have a t-shirt with his slogans on it, does he?) demonstrates that the appeal of collecting is universal.

These weird and wild shows, starring closet hoarders, pawn shop junkies, and thrift-store owners, already attract more viewers than art auctions ever will. Below, ARTINFO presents a guide to five of the best, with added advice on who in the art world will particularly enjoy each one. 

MARKET WARRIORS

Channel: PBS

Who: Four experienced treasure finders, ranging from a professional picker to designers and appraisers.

Premise: In this show, from the same producers as the beloved "Antiques Roadshow," our four heroes get a pile of cash and a mission: find the best thing they can, while spending the least money. After their hunt is over, they bring their prizes to an auction appraiser, who tells them if their find will turn a profit or if they came out in the red. 

The Objects: Costume jewelry, vintage furniture, lamps from the ‘70s.

Art-World Audience: Gallery-goers and hungry collectors looking for the next great deal. 

STORAGE WARS

Channel: A&E

Who: Motor-mouthed auctioneer Dan Dotson, plus teams of buyers ranging from tank-topped and tattooed Darrell Sheets and son Brandon to thrift store kingpin Dave Hester.

Premise: You know those omnipresent storage rental places? Well, sometimes renters don’t always keep up with their fees, and the company takes possession of their lockers (see the cautionary tale of Anthony Haden-Guest). In "Storage Wars," buyers bid on the contents of lockers, but they’re not allowed to poke around inside, just stand outside and look. The lockers could contain riches, or total garbage — there’s no way of knowing which besides winning the auction. As one buyer said in a recent episode,  “This locker’s not whispering to me, it’s yelling at me — DON’T BUY IT!”

The Objects: Fencing costumes, theater-prop swords, tubs of clothing, old gym equipment, Victorian sofas. 

Art-World Audience: Anyone obsessed with artists' estates and the possibilities of finding treasures in strange places. 

AMERICAN PICKERS

Channel: History Channel

Who: All-American dudes Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz, from their home base shop Antique Archaeology in LeClaire, Iowa.

Premise: The partners travel American, hunting out homes that look like they might hold a collector or some aging treasures ripe for the picking (a coinage that means sifting through junk for anything valuable). Wolfe and Fritz then attempt to explore the collections they find, offering cash on the spot for the objects they deem worthy. Sometimes, the obstinate hoarders refuse to hand over their hard-won goods, but other winners — like a lovely canoe, for $400 — are sold without rancor. When going out picking, a wide-eyed Wolfe says, “You’re finding your inner self... what you are passionate about, what do you like,” which seems like an apt description of many obsessive art collectors.

The Objects: Rusted-over signs, old gas station advertising props, dusty mechanical farming gear.

Art-World Audience: Auction experts who travel to collectors' homes and convince them to sell their stashes. 

FINAL OFFER

Channel: Discovery

Who: Host Michael Kalish and a crew of four dealers: New York antique dealer Billy Roland, luxury Beverly Hills pawnbroker Jordan Tabach-Bank, international explorer Jake Chait, and blinged-out Los Angeles art dealer Patrick Painter.

Premise: The dealers here are actually the buyers. Ordinary collectors bring their prized possessions to the show to sell them, first explaining what they have, where they got it, and how much they expect to get for it. After the dealers take a look, the collector meets with each one individually, and the dealers make offers in cash, on the spot, for the object. If the seller agrees, great, if not, the offer is lost forever, and they move on to the next dealer.

The Objects: A 1928 baseball signed by Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, a civil war signal cannon, a 350-year-old painting that just might be a Titian, and the sunglasses from the Blues Brothers movie set.

Art-World Audience: Narcissistic dealers who fantasize about being on TV. 

WORLD COLLECTION

Channel: Beijing Television

Who: Host Wang Gang, a popular actor who starred in a period drama about the Qianlong emperor, celebrity judges, normal collectors.  

Premise: The market for Chinese antiquities is notoriously fickle given the prevalence of high quality fakes, but this show, a smash hit in China, lends a new terror to accidentally picking up a replica. Collectors bring in their porcelain treasures, and a panel of expert and celebrity judges debate if the piece is authentic or not. As the debate comes to a head, host Wang gets out his “Treasure-Protecting Hammer” and, if he deems the object a fake, smashes it into bits. That’s one way to maintain the historical record! 

The Objects: Antique porcelain and contemporary fakes. 

Art-World Audience: Appraisers who want to get revenge on all the would-be antiquities collectors who have wasted their time. 

Click on the slide show to see more of the collecting reality TV shows featured above. 

Since April 2010, when the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art launched the first ever museum iPad app, most major museums and some galleries (read: Gagosian) have also launched apps to complement their real life collections. When institutions first began releasing mobile apps in 2009, they were mostly digitalized museum guides that contained information like current exhibitions, location etc. Now, the larger scale of tablets is allowing institutions to engineer bigger, better, more creative apps that do everything from replace exhibition catalogues to function as artworks in and of themselves. Here are ARTINFO’s thoughts on 10 notable museum iPad apps.

Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh
The Warhol: DIY Pop, $0.99

This app allows users to create a digital silkscreen inspired by Andy Warhol’s classic pieces using their own photos. The app doesn’t simply add blocks of color, but allows users to go through a multi-step process (film positive, underpainting, screening) that sheds light on the actual silk-screening process. Users have a pretty advanced degree of creative control over the image —you can adjust hue, saturation, brightness, and brush size in the underpainting stage to decide if you want to make friends look like Marilyn or Elvis. 

The Guggenheim Museum, New York
Maurizio Cattelan: All, $3.99

This highly-praised app is the Guggenheim’s first app for the iPad, created to accompany Maurizio Catellan’s much-talked-about 2011 retrospective in which his artworks were hung jumbled together in the museum’s rotunda. The app is a well designed, comprehensive guide meant to detangle the chaotic exhibition. Users are able to see the hanging objects from four angles, zoom in and out, and tap individual pieces to read snippets about them. Keeping with the Cattelan spirit, the app is weird and playful, with John Waters as app “emcee.” Waters provides an intro video at the beginning and stands in as the voice of the artist himself. This app set a high standard for exhibition apps to come. 

The Design Museum, London
The Design Museum Collection for iPad, Free

London’s Design Museum app presents works from the collection in a 4-by-6 grid that users can scroll through, Rubik’s cube-style. Objects of architecture, furniture, graphics, product, and transport each have an informational blurb and a short video from museum director Deyan Sudjic. If you’re interested in design, this is a fun app to browse everything from the classic red 1936 English telephone box to the first Sony Discman.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles
Art Swipe, Free

LACMA veers from a traditional exhibition app format in this kid-friendly exquisite corpse-inspired app designed by artist Jody Zellen for exhibition "In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States." The users scroll through images of artworks split into three parts (head, body, legs) to create jumbled, genre-spanning corpse collages. You can use images from LACMA’s collection as well as photos from your own camera. The app is a fun (and free) way to play with LACMA’s collection.

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Met Buncheong, Free

The Met’s first iPad app was created as an exhibition catalogue preview to 2011’s “Poetry in Clay: Korean Buncheong Ceramics.” For Asian ceramics buffs this “interactive e-publication” is a great accompaniment to the exhibit and includes a video from the curator and great images of the objects. However, the format is bland and it is unclear why the Met chose a ceramics exhibition as the subject of their only iPad app.

Museum of Modern Art, New York
Art Lab, $4.99

MoMA’s first iPad release was for the museum's “AB EX NY” show in 2011. Since then they have also launched an exclusive online marketplace for their books called MoMA Books App. Their newest app, released in June, is MoMA Art Lab, an app for children to create their own abstract art with activities inspired by MoMA’s collection, like creating a chance collage in the style of Jean Arp. Users can select from a pallet of colors and shapes to create abstract canvasses and the ideas section of the app provides plenty of inspiration for kids like, “Draw for ten seconds without lifting your finger. Color in any shapes that were created.” It’s fun, though truth be told this educational app will probably appeal more to MoMA-going parents than their kids.

SFMOMA
Rooftop Garden, Free

In April of 2010, SFMOMA was the very first museum to release an app for the iPad with their Rooftop Garden App, which previously existed for iPhone. The app, lackluster by 2012 standards, is basically a tour of the artworks that populate the garden with commentary about the sculptures, an interview with the architects, and a weirdly moody music video of shots of the garden interspersed with music by saxophonist George Brooks. Just so they can say they did, SFMOMA is also the first museum to release it’s annual report for the 2011 fiscal year in a free app called Story of a Year. The app presents the facts and figures alongside multimedia features like animations of their upcoming expansion and a video interview with artist Stephanie Syjuco.

Tate Modern, London
The Unilever Series at Tate Modern, $6.99
Tate Guide to Modern Art Terms, $2.99

Before they got into the iPad game, the Tate led with several fun and free iPhone apps including the Muybridgizer and the Magic Tate Ball. On June 23, they released an app to celebrate the 13th anniversary of the museum’s Unilever series, and the opening of Tino Seghal’s newest installation “These Associations.” The app catalogues past Unilever series projects including Olafur Eliasson’s “The Weather Project” and Ai Weiwei’s “Sunflower Seeds” with gorgeous installation shots and texts by curators and artists. Earlier this year, the Tate also released the Tate Guide to Modern Art Terms, a concise dictionary that pairs over 300 art terms with explanatory works—i.e. Duchamp’s “Fountain” is paired with “dada.” 

Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Figures & Fictions, $16.99

The V&A has released a few iPad apps to accompany their exhibitions, but the app for “Figures & Fictions,” an exhibition of 17 contemporary South African photographers, is by far the most expensive at a whopping $16.99. While it is on the pricier side, the app contains the complete exhibition catalogue, which if you purchased in paper would be $58. High-quality videos and images make the iPad version more dynamic than the print catalogue, with an introductory video that features curator Tamar Garb in Cape Town discussing how growing up in Apartheid-era South Africa inspired the exhibition. The app also contains audio and video interviews with the artists and the exhibition’s audio guide. 

Whitney Museum, New York
Tripolar, $1.99

Interactive media artist Scott Snibbe was originally commissioned by the Whitney to create Tripolar in 2002 for the museum’s "CODeDOC" exhibition, but it was rereleased in January as an iPhone and iPad app. The simple app is meant to animate “the tangled, abstract, and ever-changing forms a pendulum makes as it swings over a magnetic base.” That translates to a tangled black string that moves rapidly with the stroke of a finger. When you stop touching the screen, the figure freezes, and the work is labeled “‘Untitled’ by you” at the bottom of the screen. Compared to some of Snibbe’s other apps like Gravilux, which allows users to create galaxies of stars, this app doesn’t seem worth the download price, which is modest.

Gymnastics is one of the most popular sports of the Summer Olympic Games, and part of the fun remains in the colorful and creative leotards worn by the athletes. ARTINFO has chosen some of the most eccentric uniforms from the past three decades of Olympic women’s gymnastics, from the minimalist metallic trends of the current London 2012 games to the in-your-face patriotism of the 1984 Los Angeles competitions. Click through the slide show to see our ranked list, complete with scores from our staff judges. 

Visit Artinfo.com/fashion for more fashion and style news.

— Christo Postpones "Over the River" Indefinitely: In light of the string of lawsuits and resilient local opposition that has kept Christo and Jeanne-Claude's enormous "Over the River" project from moving forward, the artist duo's surviving member announced this week that the project is on hold, but did not specify a new completion date. "I am fully committed to ‘Over The River’ just as Jeanne-Claude and I have always envisioned it,” Christo said, “and I look forward to having these legal hurdles behind us so we can realize this temporary work of art in Colorado’s Arkansas River Valley." [Denver Post]

— Poland's Lost Raphael Found in a Vault: "Portrait of a Young Man" (ca. 1513-14), a painting by Raphael that was feared destroyed when it disappeared in 1945 after being seized in 1939 by the Nazis from the Crakow collection of the Czartoryski family, has been found in a bank vault in an undisclosed location. "Most importantly, the work was not lost in the turmoil of the war," a spokesman for the Office for the Restitution of Cultural Goods of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. "It has not been burnt or destroyed. It exists. It is safely waiting in a region of the world where the law favours us." [TAN]

— Iran's World-Class Modern Art Collection Revealed: The former queen of Iran, Farah Pahlavi, who fled the country in 1979 during the Islamic revolution, assembled a museum-caliber collection of modern and contemporary art — including works by Richard Hamilton, Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist, Jim Dine, Jackson Pollock, and Marcel Duchamp — that has been hidden in the basement of Tehran's Museum of Contemporary Art for more than three decades. Now, many of them are finally making their Iranian debuts in a new exhibition at the museum. "It is a national asset and I hope they preserve it well," Pahlavi said. "It's the most valuable collection of western modern art outside Europe and the US." [Guardian]

— Will DIA Be Saved From "Death Spiral"?: The Detroit Institute of Arts's director Graham Beal says that if the institution's mileage tax proposal doesn't pass on Tuesday the museum will go into "a death spiral" and he will have to lay off 70 staffers immediately, close every weekday except Friday, shutter several galleries, cease all education programs. But according to a new poll suggests that won't be necessary, as 69 percent of surveyed residents of Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb counties said they would vote in favor of the tax. [WSJ, Detroit Free Press]

— Art Basel Miami Beach Gets 70-Foot Gator: With the help of engineer Waddy Thompson and local historian Cesar Becerra, Miami-based artist Kenneth Rowe plans to float a 70-feet-long, 30-feet-wide sculpture of an alligator through Biscayune Bay during December's Art Basel Miami Beach art fair. The giant reptilian float, dubbed "Gator in the Bay," will even have a moving mechanical jaw, all the better to scare partying Basel-goers. [HuffPo]

— SFMOMA Honors New Media Artist Jim Campbell: On October 23 the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art will bestow a lifetime achievement award on local artist Jim Campbell — whose large light installation "Exploded Views," similar to his 2010 sculpture in Manhattan's Madison Square Park, currently hangs above the museum's lobby — during the annual Bay Area Treasure Award ceremony. The gala event, where Campbell will speak with the museum's media arts curator Rudolf Frieling and fellow media artist Scott Snibbe, will benefit SFMOMA's exhibition and education programs. [ArtDaily]

— Milan's Picasso Show a Pre-Sale Blockbuster: An exhibition of 250 works from Paris's Musée National Picasso at Milan's Palazzo Reale doesn't open until September 20, and already the traveling show's only European stop is setting attendance records, with 88,000 tickets already sold for the Italian city's presentation of "Pablo Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso in Paris." "We certainly expected a lot of attention — Picasso is Picasso," said Natalina Costa, director of 24 Ore Cultura, the group co-organizing the show, "but we were still surprised by the pre-sales." [TAN]

— Malian Archaeological Treasures Threatened: Mali's Djenne-Djenno, one of the richest archaeological dig sites in Sub-Saharan Africa, is a leading source of the type of artifacts that have become the focus of recent repatriation disputes as African countries demand the return of looted objects from western institutions — most recently Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. Adding to the site's woes are the region's increasing instability, particularly in light of the risks posed by Islamist vandals who have destroyed shrines in the Malian capital Timbuktu. [NYT]

— London Gets Gold Medal in Survey of Global Arts Capitals: Yesterday the results of the World Cities Culture Report 2012 were published, comparing the cultural offerings in 12 major metropolises, and revealing that the British capital and Olympic Games host city has more museums than any other. It also leads the way in restaurants, parks, and night clubs. London mayor Boris Johnson, who commissioned the presumably impartial report, will meet with representatives of the other cities — Berlin, Istanbul, Johannesburg, Mumbai, New York, Paris, Sao Paulo, Shanghai, Singapore, Sydney, and Tokyo — to discuss the results. [Guardian]

— RIP Mary Louise Rasmuson, Alaskan Philanthropist, at 101: Mary Louise Rasmuson, major philanthropist who between her family foundation and her personal donations to the Anchorage Museum and the Alaska Native Heritage Center, gave more than $200 million to Alaskan nonprofits — and whose contributions to Washington, D.C.'s Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian resulted in its auditorium being named the Elmer and Mary Louise Rasmuson Theater — died at her home in Anchorage on Monday according to a Rasmuson Foundation spokesperson. "I have yet to find someone more gracious or someone who cared for Alaska — especially Native Alaskans — as much as Mary Louise did," said representative Don Young, R-Alaska. "Alaska lost a giant." [AP]

VIDEO OF THE DAY

Jim Campbell explains his "Exploded Views" commission for SFMOMA:

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After a confident 50-year run as the greatest film of all time in Sight and Sound magazine’s once-a-decade poll, Orson Welles’s “Citizen Kane” has been dislodged by Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo.” It’s enough to make an old man drop a snow globe.

The results of the 2012 poll of 846 critics, programmers, academics,and distributors, which was published by the British Film Institute yesterday, revealed that Hitchcock’s masterwork had eclipsed Welles’s by “a whopping 34 votes, compared with the mere five that separated them a decade ago,” wrote the film scholar Ian Christie.

It's not quite the shock it at first seemed. Hitchcock’s 45th feature entered the poll at joint seventh in 1982, ascended to fourth in 1992, and to second place in 2002. Given “Kane”'s five-decade domination, “Vertigo” is only the third film to have claimed top spot in the poll’s 60-year history. The inaugural poll of 1952 was topped by Vittorio De Sica’s “Bicycle Thieves,” which has now sunk to thirty-third. “Kane” didn’t feature at all that year; its subsequent domination was probably attributable to the Cahiers du Cinema critics of the fifties and the evolution of film studies.

“So what does it mean?” Christie mused on “Vertigo”’s triumph. “Given that ‘Kane’ actually clocked over three times as many vote this time as it did last time, it hasn’t exactly been snubbed by the vastly larger number of voters taking part in this new poll, which has spread its net far wider than any of its predecessors.

“But it does mean that Hitchcock … has risen steadily in esteem over the course of 30 years.” The crowning of “Vertigo” couldn’t have better timing for the BFI, which is in the midst of a comprehensive three-month retrospective of his work at its Southbank theaters and has just published the book “39 Steps to the Genius of Hitchcock.” But you have to look to number 35 for the next highest Hitchcock film on the list – “Psycho” – and that’s his only other entry in the top 50, which is published here. 

Christie lamented Welles’s eclipse, noting that he uniquely “had two films ('The Magnificent Ambersons' as well as 'Kane') in the list in 1972 and 1982, but now 'Ambersons' has slipped to 81^st place in the top 100.”

The rest of the 2012 top ten was made up by:

3. Yasujiro Ozu’s “Tokyo Story” (fifth in 2002)

4. Jean Renoir’s “La Règle du je” (third)

5. F.W. Murnau’s “Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans” (joint seventh)

6. Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” (sixth)

7. John Ford’s “The Searchers” ( - )

8. Dziga Vertov’s “Man With a Movie Camera” ( - )

9. Carl Dreyer’s “The Passion of Joan of Arc” ( - )

10. Federico Fellini’s “8 ½” (ninth)

Francis Coppola’s “The Godfather” and “The Godfather, Part 2,” judged as a single work, sat fourth in 2002, but have slipped to joint twenty-first (“The Godfather”) and joint thirty-first (“The Godfather, Part 2”); Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” has leapfrogged them to 14. Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver” came in joint thirty-first, but “Raging Bull” (joint second in 1992) was not placed.

Sergei M. Eisenstein’s “Battleship Potemkin” has slipped from seventh to eleventh. Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly’s “Singin’ in the Rain” has tumbled from tenth to twentieth.

The highest position for a film made in recent years is Wong Kar-wai’s “In the Mood for Love,” which placed twenty-fourth. It had been anticipated by some critics that David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive” would crack the top ten, but it finished twenty-eighth.

Conspicuous by their absence from the top 50 are Alexander Dovzhenkho’s “Earth” and any films directed by Josef von Sternberg and the team of  Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.

As a participant in the poll, I made the following selection:

1. "Shoah" (directed by Claude Lanzmann)

2. "Citizen Kane"

3. "L’Atalante" (Jean Vigo)

4. "La Règle de jeu"

5. "Metropolis" (Fritz Lang)

6. "Vertigo"

7. "Ugetsu Monogatari" (Kenji Mizoguchi)

8. "Pandora’s Box" (G.W. Pabst)

9. "The Searchers"

10. "A Matter of Life and Death" (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger) 

Yeasayer may be an established indie band after two critically acclaimed and relatively popular albums, but that's not stopped them from coming up with a novel (and attention-grabbing) way of promoting their new album, “Fragrant World.” The Brooklyn-based group is giving fans a chance to listen to the album three weeks before it August 21 release date -- they're just making them put in a little work, with an internet scavenger hunt.

Using their Twitter account (and that of their label Secretly Canadian) the band has released clues as to the whereabout of video vignettes for each of the album's 11 tracks. The clips are scattered across a slew of sites, covering everything from music (Rolling Stone) to technology (Wired) to comedy (Tim & Eric). The clips, all by artist Yoshi Sodeoka, are collectively being called “Preemptive Self-Commissioned Yeasayer Vortellung or Track Visualizer.” Each one has a ethereal and psychedelic feel that fits both the music and the overall quasi-futuristic mystic vibe the band has been cultivating since 2010's "Odd Blood."

But forget the hunt. We've embedded each of the 11 videos below. One note: The album preview is only available until tomorrow evening, with each video being pulled from its site at 8pm EST.

1. "Fingers Never Bleed"

2. "Longevity"

3. "Blue Paper"

4. "Henrietta"

5. "Devil and the Deed"

6. "No Bones"

7. "Reagan's Skeleton"

8. "Demon Road"

9. "Damaged Goods"

10. "Folk Hero Schtick"

11. "Glass of the Microscope"

Last weekend, Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte, — American hero, Vogue cover model, and diamond-studded grill aficionado — stepped out in the Olympic Village wearing an eye-catching pair of shoes. This not a surprise. The guy is an unabashed sneakerhead of the highest order. “I think I have about, a total of 130 pairs of shoes,” Lochte told the New York Times. “So you can say I like shoes.”

So, what kicks did he bring out the other day? Perhaps he went with Air Yeezy IIs, as they are perhaps the footwear obsessive’s pair of of choice? But no – he went with a star-spangled, red, white, and blue pair of the new sneakers from designer Jeremy Scott and Adidas.

Scott’s style is gleefully over-the-top, with all sorts of appendages tacked on shoulders and bursts of fuschias and pinks. Adidas seems to have not held him back in the least bit. Some are high-tops that don’t really diverge too much from your standard Adidas kicks. Others are replete with clashing neons and feature wings that trail off the back. One shoe has a gorilla head popping out of the top. The rapper 2 Chainz is a fan.

A collection like this can’t be released without an ad campaign that’s correspondingly insane. So, Scott recruited Nicki Minaj, the rapper Big Sean, Chicago Bulls point guard Derrick Rose, and the celebrated K-pop group 2NE1 to star in a globetrotting TV spot for the shoes. It jumps from Paris to Tokyo to Chicago to Rio to Nolita, where Minaj is walking out of La Esquina and into an impromptu fashion show on Kenmare Street. The singer Sky Ferreira — who’s a fixture at Scott’s runway shows — also shows up in an unexplained cameo.

The whole thing is loud, fun, and perfectly representative of Scott’s approach to fashion. Next time, though, he should enlist a different cast of characters: Ryan Lochte and his pile of Olympic medals. 

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