Top Picks: 'Red Horse' CD, style beyond fashion at 'The Sartorialist,' behind bottled-water doc, and more recommendations
'Red Horse' CD from three of folk music's warmest voices, 'The Sartorialist' – a blog for the fashion cognoscenti, an eye-opening documentary on the bottled-water industry, and more.
Taylor Weidman/Staff
Bottle shock
Bottled water may be advertising's greatest coup, getting us to pay in spades for what we can get free of charge. But "Tapped," an eye-opening documentary on the big business of bottled water, exposes the greater dangers: the pileup of unrecycled bottles, the health implications of the plastics, the lack of regulation, and the industry's draining of public aquifers. The award-winning film is now out on DVD.
'We' the community
A new national model for "people helping people" launched on Aug. 3 – the WE Movement, a nonprofit, nonpartisan coalition of partners, sponsors, the needy, and the endowed. Powered by a system designed by Ramsell Corporation's HELP4U to coordinate mental and physical health-care benefits for the uninsured, it will now include financial services, housing, legal guidance, youth programs, and education. The WE Movement (www.wemovement.org) says it can make a difference when helping one another has become the new norm. The organization's motto is: "Offer What You Can. WE Will Do the Rest."
Paper flap's swan song
Don't throw away those tear-off flaps for Netflix envelopes. With a little guidance from Netflixorigami.com, those bits of trash can become a crab, cube, frog, or even a swan.
Five years after Katrina
National Geographic Channel's "Witness: Katrina," airing Aug. 23 at 9 p.m., is a man-on-the-ground view of the eerie before, the turbulent during, and the disastrous after of the most devastating storm in US history. Less a straight narrative and more a kaleidoscopic home movie that ties together episodes from different reaches of the storm, this two-hour special documents the humility, the joy, the tears, and the horrors the storm induced. This portrait marks the fifth anniversary of Katrina.
Style beyond fashion
If the wafer-thin models and eye-popping price tags have left high fashion off your closet rack, take a look at a blog that has long been a favorite of the cognoscenti, the Sartorialist (http://thesartorialist.blogspot.com/). The passion project of former fashion insider-turned-photographer Scott Schuman looks for all the ways the out-of-reach has been adapted to the Everyman on the street. Loaded with photos of practical, real-world fashion, this is a site for sore eyes in these tough economic times.
Fabulous folk
Three of the warmest voices in folk music – those of Eliza Gilkyson, John Gorka, and Lucy Kaplansky – come luxuriantly intertwined on their new CD "Red Horse" (Red House Records, $17.98). The three cover one another's songs – the writers stepping into backup roles on their own works. Gorka's "Forget to Breathe" is a standout. Also well-rendered: Neil Young's "I Am a Child" and two other pieces. It's a songwriting showcase.