Front Row - 06/11/2009

In a new film Cold Souls, which describes itself as a 'surreal comedy', Paul Giamatti plays a troubled actor called Paul Giamatti. He is suffering an existential crisis and to rid himself of his demons he visits a private lab where souls can be extracted and then traded as commodities. Critic Rachel Cooke gives her response to the offbeat concept. American author Paul Auster, best known for his New York Trilogy, discusses his latest book, Invisible, which follows the fortunes of a young aspiring poet in New York. Part of the Talking to Strangers exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in London is the French artist and photographer Sophie Calle's direct response to a challenge set by Paul Auster, who is a friend of hers. Auster told Calle to take over a public space in New York, decorate it, give food and cigarettes to the homeless and smile for no reason. Also on show is Take Care of Yourself, where Sophie Calle records the responses of 107 women to an email in which she is dumped by her lover, and The Address book, a recreation of the life of a man whose address book she found in Paris. Raymond Scott's music is better known than the man himself, for it was used in dozens of Warner Brothers cartoons. But in the last couple of years there has been a resurgence of interest in his life. A new recording of his compositions has just been released by the Scottish jazz group The Stu Brown Sextet, and Scott's son Stan Warnow has made a documentary about him. With the help of Stu Brown, Stan Warnow and some of Scott's own archive of recordings, Front Row learns that there was much more to Raymond Scott than just cheerful tunes for cartoons.