Outside the Box

It's Getting Haute in Here

The Complete Book of Oscar Fashion wears velveteen, a cover whose shelflife (not Shelf-Life) will shorten each time it squeezes between books. Thus, this cool & fuzzy tome demands coffee table placement, and sadly thus in our house, coffee ring enhancement.

Though not swagged literally -- 'twas Variety Christmas Party parting-gifted -- we thought it was only fair to offer a wholly objective peephole into swaggness in blogland. Without measuring it by any standard but swag (though our mind reels imagining the Industry Xmas Treacle circulating this town. Anyone?), this Pulitzer-destined tome is just perfect in every way imaginable in human experience. Like V Pages through history, sorta, in a little black dress.

Ironies noted: Fashion tome's namesake Oscar, his-statuesque-self, is naked and book's fotos of skinny people provide its heft.
Did we mention the tactiliciousness of the cover?; it requires a lint brush.

Focus on Fotos

What's jpg'ed here isn't swag for the "The Clinton Years" sequel to "Catch Me If You Can" (or even "Catch Me If You Can"); no, it's a two-page spread of pix by Martin Schoeller from among the jaw dropping crop of photography swagged in the "Full Frame" edition of "Crop," the Corbis photo agency's foto catalog of major proportions, each page a hugeifying 24"x36".

Tack sharp printing on matte paper with unbound pages creased into a sophisticated heavy card stock cover, evoking a portfolio case of lithographs, it's distinct from their other stock services as this is a harvest from their crop of news and feature work, for example, fotogs in Baghdad at the literal and figurative fall of Saddam Hussein, before and after. Amid their bounty: Large solos like this "Fargo"-esque shot to artfully chosen couplets paired -- oftentimes -- to show obvious differences in similar things or obvious similarities in different things. Photo essays too.

The best of it & the worst of it: A+ & D-; Too big to share a coffee table with a cup of coffee. Unrealistic size -- despite the unmanagable loose sheets -- makes us want it as much as prevents having it. Damn them.

Nov 24, 2003 at 03:33 PM by James Hames in Books | Permalink | Comments (0)