Museyon’s Guide to the Weekend

Listen: Sufjan Stevens surprised the music world this morning when he released an eight song ep via BandCamp entitled, All Delighted People. The ep is available to download for $5 and to stream to your heart’s content here while it won’t be available in a physical copy until later this year. Sufjan’s 2005 album Illinois was named the “Best Album of the Decade” by Paste Magazine.
 
Watch:
The Switch– Based (loosely, apparently) on a short story by Jeffrey Eugenides, The Switch follows friends Wally and Kassie as Kassie decides to find a sperm donor and have a child. Seven years later, she reunites with her best friend, who has been living with a secret: he replaced her preferred sperm sample with his own.
 


A Film Unfinished – At the end of WWII, 60 minutes of raw film, having sat undisturbed in an East German archive, was discovered. Shot by the Nazis in Warsaw in May 1942, and labeled simply “Ghetto,” this footage quickly became a resource for historians seeking an authentic record of the Warsaw Ghetto. However, the later discovery of a long-missing reel, inclusive of multiple takes and cameraman staging scenes, complicated earlier readings of the footage. A FILM UNFINISHED presents the raw footage in its entirety, carefully noting fictionalized sequences (including a staged dinner party) falsely showing “the good life” enjoyed by Jewish urbanites, and probes deep into the making of a now-infamous Nazi propaganda film.
 

 
Read: Based Upon Availability by Alix Strauss – Chronicles the lives of eight different women who pass through Manhattan’s historic Four Seasons Hotel.
 
Juliet by Anne Fortier – Did you know that Romeo and Juliet were actual people who lived in Siena and not Verona? This wonderful, fast-paced, history laden book, takes readers on an adventure through late medieval Italy where we meet the real families involved in the tragedy as well as famed painter Ambrogio Lorenzetti. The true (or mostly true) medieval story is mirrored by the fictional account of an American woman who finds out she is a descendent of Juliet and must break the family curse and right centuries old wrongs.
 
Two books this week by author Myron Uhlberg to check out, both of which explore the history and sites of New York City for kids, Flying Over Brooklyn and Dad, Jackie, and Me. The books are masterfully illustrated and in the case of Dad, Jackie, and Me, provides a sensitive look at a difficult time in America’s past.