Culture Hound

Welcome to Culture Hound, InsideHook’s deep dive into the month’s most important pop cultural happenings.

PERUSE: Dali: Les Diners de Gala
Turns out Salvador Dali and his wife Gala used to host lavish dinner parties, inspiring the artist to release a rather surreal, extremely hard-to-find cookbook. Thankfully, it’s finally getting a proper reprint. While curating the recipes from a variety of top French chefs, Dali himself used to his cooking tome to pontificate on the art of dinner conversation and aphrodisiacs … and offer up his own rather NSFW illustrations. (11/20)

WATCH: Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk
Academy Award-winning director Ang Lee tackles the politically tinged 2012 novel, transforming a scathingly funny and irreverent book into an actual spectacle: certain scenes were filmed at 120 frames per second in 3D at 4K resolution. It’s going to look insane, but early indications are that Lee’s managed to keep the script dramatic but grounded. (11/11)

EXPERIENCE: YNTEGRITY: DIVERSITY
More than a meal, you’ll be tapping into all the senses for this affair. The evening’s gastronomic delights will include electrolyzed 24-karat gold, but expect a multisensory experience that integrates food with psychology, music and theater. (11/4)

LAUGH: Mitch Hedberg: The Complete Vinyl Collection
Comedy Central is releasing the entire discography of the late comic’s unusual and highly quotable work (“I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too.”) as a four-record box set, which includes rare photos, new essays and some never-before-heard material. (11/4)

READ: Eleven Spring: A Celebration of Street Art
In December of 2006, an unlikely group of nearly 100 street artists from all over the world came together to participate in an art show called Wooster on Spring celebrating Eleven Spring Street. Featuring street art superstars like Shepard Fairey and Swoon as well as emergent acts like JR, Prune and Doze Green, the result was a potent three-day public viewing that brought the outdoors indoors, drew crowds in the thousands and kicked off an international art-world phenomenon. This new printed edition is a worthy firsthand dive into the experience.

GO: “Autoportrait”
Art and fashion mag VISIONAIRE partnered with award-winning international experience design company Tellart to unveil “AUTOPORTRAIT.” The exhibit features an automobile manufacturing robot portraiture named ADA0002 who assesses and draws guests through advanced algorithms and mechanic precision. ADA0002’s enigmatic style attempts to demonstrate a new portraiture for the digital age. By leveraging the bot’s ability to perceive and compute, attendees of the exhibition are examined, processed and synthesized back into physical artworks. Draw me like one of your French Girls, cyborg. (through 11/4)

BINGE: Lovesick
This British comedy used to be called Scrotal Recall, which unfortunately belied the show’s rather sweet nature (though it captured the humor just fine). Now renamed and moved to Netflix, the comedy follows one man’s mission to track down his previous romantic partners … after he’s tested positive for chlamydia (“That doesn’t sound positive.”). (11/17)

LISTEN: Our monthly Spotify playlist
The best new songs of the month, including bands old (Flaming Lips, Metallica), very old (Lee Fields, The Rolling Stones) and new (Jenny Hval, NxWorries).

ALSO: Michael Chabon takes a “fictional non-fiction” turn with Moonglow, which examines his grandfather’s death and serves more as a commentary on life in the twentieth century (11/22) … If you’re still in a nostalgic trip post-Stranger Things — but crave something lighter — Amazon’s ‘80s country club comedy Red Oaks returns for a second season (11/11) … Your escape-from-the-fam excuse on Thanksgiving arrives with Bad Santa 2 (11/23) … Call of Duty literally says “Screw it, let’s go to space” for the game’s umpteenth installment Infinite Warfare (11/4) … Metallica returns with Hardwired…to Self-Destruct, consciously going back to their trashier roots (11/18) … Before he tackles Blade Runner 2, director and budding auteur Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners, Sicario) take a more cerebral approach to an alien invasion — think more linguistics, less shooting with Arrival (11/11) … The Ron Howard-produced Mars is half present-day documentary, half fictional telling of the first mission to Mars (11/14).