THE LIFE VICARIOUS

All that and for less than the cost of his cologne.

If you're not going to see Last Days of Disco at MoMA tonight...

Fear not. (Although, why not?) Film Comments Selects will be screening it on August 27th. Tickets are $11, Whit Stillman will once again be in the house, and a late disco dance party will follow where classic disco era cocktails like Stella Artois will be served. (Beer, really? And they're drinking Heineken in the movie.) Of course there's still time to get tickets to tonight's screening which will be serving real drinks.

The Last Days of Disco with cocktails at MoMA beforehand...

...is of course a riff on The Last Days of Disco With Cocktails at Petrossian Afterwards, the novel sequel to Whit Stillman's last film. It's also our way of telling you it's being screened as part of the next MoMA Poprally on August 5th. The film will be preceded by a cocktail party and proceeded by a Q&A with Stillman and his underused leading man, Chris Eigeman. And tickets are only $8.

What lies beneath The Smile?

Yesterday we discovered what lies beneath The Smile - the new mixed-use cafe boutique at 26 Bond Street - as we visited Scott Campbell (laboring, left) there in the basement at the new Manhattan branch of Saved Tattoo. Over our time spent under the needle topics ranged from Dan Barber to Tom Waits, mega yachts in Monaco to 19th Century whaling ships but all the best parts are just too good to give up; we're not about to repeat a word of it. If you want to hear those stories, you should suffer yourself, the conversation such a pleasant distraction you won't feel a thing. We'll only say this: He's responsible for the nicest anecdote about Marc Jacobs we've heard maybe ever. And despite his love for tattooing lettering and his talent for laser etching, he's actually not responsible for the custom engraved Laguiole cutlery diners enjoy upstairs.

Need more? Our tattoo's origin and a look inside the cafe's forbidden basement after the jump.

Kris Kringle, Cozy Room all you need for a Hoboken staycation.

 (HIFF Director Del Vecchio and Charles Durning on the set of Three Chris's.)

Living in Jersey City we used to have options. The Hoboken International Film Festival and the Tribeca Film Festival were once both moments away by PATH. But God does not want Hannah Howard to knock me on top of Charles Durning this year. Why? All the highlights of this year's HIFF have been moved to Teaneck, NJ. Whether you want to see the world premiere of "the year's most controversial film" O.B.A.M Nude, Three Chris's written by festival director Kenneth del Vecchio and starring Charles Durning as Santa Claus, or the gala ceremony honoring Cloris Leachman with a lifetime achievement award, you'll have to pay between $15 and $100, plus tolls.

The good news? Tickets for the remainder of the festival which takes place in town are only $9 each, although that general line-up won't be announced until May 1st. Those screenings will revisit both Pier A Park and vegetarian mecca The Melting Pot just down the block from the new W Hoboken which - if this all reads like the makings of an early summer staycation to you - is now offering discounted rates to Hoboken residents.

Hoboken film and television food news you can use.

Yesterday, via Guest of a Guest, we learned Cloris Leachman, this year's Hoboken International Film Festival honoree, is a lifelong vegetarian. (And new PETA spokeswoman as pictured.) Shortly after that we discovered, much to our surprise, the official hotel of the HIFF is the Doubletree in Jersey City and not the W Hoboken - if only they didn't have a steakhouse inside it! (Zylo is open now, and we'll write more about it Monday.) The good news is, Leachman being a vegetarian there should be little problem honoring her at riverfront fondue spot The Melting Pot as has become custom.

Onto meatier news, if you've ever seen the Sandwich Day episode of 30 Rock, you may have wondered the name of the real deli that fed the fictional Teamsters so well they kept it a secret until Kenneth drank them under the table with his predilection for Hillbilly Milk. Serious Eats got to the bottom of it and the answer is actually in Hoboken, Fiore's Deli at 414 Adams Street, which unlike the long-suspected Defonte's, really does provide dipping sauce.

Coldplay outdoors in Jersey City, but will the W Hoboken host Cloris Leachman?

  

Two big announcements this week. First there's that whole All Points West thing. Yes by far the best ever concert to take place outside our bedroom window will be taking place this year from July 31st to August 2nd. The Beastie Boys, Vampire Weekend, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Q-Tip, Arctic Monkeys, Crystal Castles, Yelle, Lykke Li, MGMT, that's who we're most excited about. But don't count out Hoboken who kicks off the area's summer festival season with the Hoboken International Film Festival on May 29th.

This year's honoree? Cloris Leachman! She'll be following in the footsteps of last year's lifetime achiever, Lando Calrissian. The full line-up won't be announced for a few more weeks, but we're going to take a wild guess and say her newest film, Inglorious Bastards, will not be debuting here. Although we can't tell you how excited we'd be to have Hoboken prove us wrong. We're going to keep our dreams small for now and hope at the very least they make use of the newly opened W Hoboken. We don't know how the HIFF survived this long without a place to put up its star power but now that the W just opened its doors down the block from the fondue restaurant that hosted last year's festivities, we can't wait to see Cloris Leachman swinging from the ceiling in the Chandelier Room.

Of course you need not be an octogenarian actress or married to a girl named GOOP to trash a stylish hotel room. The W quietly opened this past weekend with a $189 introductory rate. All but the aforementioned Chandelier Room is operational and the official grand opening date has been set for April 23rd.

Less terrifying ways to wake up to Morrissey and Marc Jacobs this morning.

 

If you've ever wondered what we do, when we've got nothing better to do, here's a retro '80s way to spend the day:

This morning at 10am the presale begins to buy tickets for Morrissey at Bowery Ballroom on March 21st. Tickets are $75 and the presale should be all over by 10:01am at which time you could already have found a buyer for your pair on Craigslist for two or three times face value. Assuming you're not seeing the concert with your friends. And if you're not...

You can use that money you're going to make to head down to the Louis Vuitton SoHo store which opens at 11am, transformed into some sort of Stephen Sprouse day-glo graffiti mausoleum. The new postmortem collaboration launches tomorrow with the sale of $2850 graffiti print skateboards and a limited edition of 70 rose printed tee shirts at $250 each. If you want to double-down you can then take that tee shirt home and sell it on eBay for $500.

So let's say you bought four Morrissey tickets, you'll have spent $300. Sell three and you've got one ticket for yourself and at least $150 profit. Spend $500 on two shirts, keep one for yourself, sell the other for $500, and you're basically up one concert ticket, one tee shirt to wear to said concert and $150 cash all for just taking an early lunch hour. There are worse ways to spend a January morning, like waking up to Morrissey holding your baby or Marc Jacobs wanting you to check his luggage.

Such a better scene is the one above, from one of the too few contemporary Merchant-Ivory pictures, the 1989 film Slaves of New York, in which Steve Buscemi plays Sprouse. (And not once is it mentioned on the We Love Sprouse website Vuitton has up!) You can see him take the stage at the end of the fashion show in which Sprouse's clothes were used.

Christmas Shopping Part IV: Give someone the right to vote. For Best Picture.

Back in August we were going to title this post, "Jealousy breeds content." We were reading the calendar feature on Guest of a Guest over the summer, when we saw listed an advance screening of Vicky Christina Barcelona. Well, we love Woody Allen and we were posting a lot about that film, the soundtrack, and the nature of UHBs at large, and damn it, we wanted to go to an advance screening of Vicky Christina Barcelona too. We never did track down the screening they attended, but something good came from it, another free advance screening of the film through IFP. And not since the 2005 Bordeaux Futures has paying for a piece of paper on the internet made for such a novel Christmas gift to give and share.

IFP stands for, Independent Film... um, IFP is somehow connected to the independent film community. The P may as well stand for possibilities. What's possible? We learned that for $155 one could buy a dual membership to a vaguely professional organization that not only would get us into an early screening of Vicky Christina Barcelona, but allow us to attend current industry screenings as well as screeners of Spirit Award nominees and not only that! We would have rights to vote on Independent Spirit Award nominaions. You know that funny show the night before the Oscars where everyone looks like they''re straight out of The L Word and John Waters leaves the Brigadoon of Baltimore to become relevant for one night a year? Well now you can put on your best Comme des Garcons for H&M and sit on the couch with a bowl of curry-coconut popcorn and a glass of some sparkling California wine, relish your ruthless judgments for a few hours and come your friend's Oscar parties the next night tell them how you don't just predict winners, you elect them. (Um, and let us know how that works out.)

We should point out you need to work in independent film to be a member. We for one have an undeveloped script in our head, (the true story behind which we think we're going to pitch here instead.) If your friend wants to hear about your idea though, sounds to us like you've got a production company! And just like that, even better than being guests, you're both members.

CMJ Music Marathon Day 1: Crossing the Hudson to Sweden.

Before we found our way to our badge we stopped for a morning coffee at Kaffe 1668, the new Swedish cafe at 275 Greenwich Street, which like all great modern coffee shops - Zibetto, Fika - is so understated it practically hides in plain sight. Unlike them however, there is room inside to breathe, considerable seating, free public wifi - though not their own - and undeniably authentic Scandinavian details you can't help but appreciate from the baristas unironically discussing Swedish horror films, the Vipp trashcan, and the bus your own dishes service reminiscent of an Ikea cafeteria.

In our brief experience as a Terzi-trained barista we learned the magic behind the alchemy of transforming steamed milk into a frothy cream wholly absorbing the espresso. We learned the time and skill involved in each individual cup and it was so transcendent when it worked and so disappointing when it failed to the level of what Starbucks calls quality that we couldn't help but think, "fuck us, we're not going to do this everyday." Well, here, they do this everyday. It was our good fortune then the ice machine was broken and our drink was served hot. The food too, while not quite Swedish - only the smoked salmon and avocado looks like something off the AQ Kafe menu, though that's not saying much - was as fresh and tempting as we could hope for. Today we attempted the proscuitto, tomato and mozzerella, ($8,) and we envision ourself working through the menu as the week wears on.

Kaffe 1668 located at 275 Greenwich Street, is likely not staffed by vampires and is open now. Let the Right One In, the Swedish vampire film, opens this Friday at the Angelika.