SUNSHINE AT MIDNIGHT: THE WARRIORS
The Warriors will be making their way to the Lower East Side for a pair of midnight screenings at the Landmark Sunshine
THE WARRIORS (Walter Hill, 1979)
Landmark Sunshine Cinema
143 East Houston St. between First & Second Aves.
Friday, May 24, Saturday, May 25, and Sunday, May 26, $10, 12 midnight
212-330-8182
www.landmarktheatres.com
www.warriorsmovie.co.uk
At a huge gang meeting in the Bronx (actually shot in Riverside Park), the Warriors are wrongly accused of having killed Cyrus (Roger Hill), an outspoken leader trying to band all the warring factions together to form one huge force that can take over the New York City borough by borough. The Warriors then must make it back to their home turf, Coney Island, with every gang in New York lying in wait for them to pass through their territory. This iconic New York City gang movie is based on Sol Yurick’s novel, which in turn is loosely based on Xenophon’s Anabasis, which told of the ancient Greeks’ retreat from Persia. Michael Beck stars as Swan, who becomes the de-facto leader of the Warriors after Cleon (Dorsey Wright) gets taken down early. Battling Swan for control is Ajax (Sex and the City’s James Remar) and tough-talking Mercy (Too Close for Comfort’s Deborah Van Valkenburgh). Serving as a Greek chorus is Lynne (Law & Order) Thigpen as a radio DJ, and, yes, that young woman out too late in Central Park is eventual Oscar winner Mercedes Ruehl. Among the cartoony gangs of New York who try to stop the Warriors are the roller-skating Punks, the pathetic Orphans, the militaristic Gramercy Riffs, the all-girl Lizzies, the ragtag Rogues, and the inimitable Baseball Furies. Another main character is the New York City subway system itself. There’s nothing quite like The Warriors; be sure to come out and play at these Memorial Day weekend midnight screenings.
NYC 1993: EXPERIMENTAL JET SET, TRASH AND NO STAR
Charles Ray, “Family Romance,” painted fiberglass and synthetic hair, 1992-93 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
New Museum of Contemporary Art
235 Bowery at Prince St.
Friday - Sunday through May 26, $12-$16
212-219-1222
www.newmuseum.org
Where were you in 1993? Thirty years ago, we were toiling for the Evil Empire, hoping that the Rangers would win their first Stanley Cup in more than half a century, seeing Springsteen on tour without the E Street Band, and looking for a new apartment after having just gotten married. But in general, 1993 found itself in the midst of a rather nondescript decade highlighted by the tempestuous presidency of William Jefferson Clinton and perhaps best exemplified by the Y2K nonproblem. The New Museum turns its attention on that one specific year in “NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star.” Taking its name from the 1994 album by legendary New York underground giants Sonic Youth (the album was recorded in 1993), the show gathers together works created around 1993 by a rather distinguished group of artists, including Matthew Barney, Larry Clark, Martin Kippenberger, John Currin, Nan Goldin, David Hammons, Todd Haynes, Derek Jarman, Mike Kelley, Annie Leibovitz, Elizabeth Peyton, Cindy Sherman, Wolfgang Tillmans, Gillian Wearing, and Hannah Wilke. There are many stand-out pieces, from Robert Gober’s “Prison Window,” wonderfully placed near an “Exit” sign, Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s “Untitled (Couple),” a string of lightbulbs dangling from the ceiling, and Lorna Simpson’s “7 Mouths,” consisting of close-ups of seven mouths on photo-linen panels, to Devon Dikeou’s lobby directory boards, Charles Ray’s “Family Romance,” depicting a naked fiberglass family of four, all the same height, and Paul McCarthy’s “Cultural Gothic,” in which a man seems proud that his son is doing a goat. And visitors get to walk on Rudolf Stingel’s carpet on the fourth floor and in the elevators.
Pepón Osorio, “The Scene of the Crime (Whose Crime?),” detail, mixed mediums, 1993 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
However, the show is not quite the time capsule curators Massimiliano Gioni and Gary Carrion-Murayari sought; not all of the work is actually from 1993 (Sarah Lucas’s simple but elegant 1991 “The Old Couple,” Jack Pierson’s 1991 four-letter, multicolored “STAY,” Kiki Smith’s 1992 life-size bronze “Virgin Mary,” Andres Serrano’s 1992 prints from the Morgue series), while others deal with events that occurred prior to 1993 (Lutz Bacher’s “My Penis,” in which William Kennedy Smith repeats that phrase over and over in a six-and-a-half-minute video loop; Glenn Ligon’s “Red Portfolio” references a 1989 direct-mail letter from Pat Robertson). Some of the older works, especially those not by New Yorkers, might have first been shown in New York in 1993, including at the Whitney Biennial, but it doesn’t feel all of a piece, the specific groupings making more sense to art insiders than to the general public. Still, “NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star” is a fun sampling of the art of the early ’90s, even if it doesn’t make any grand social, cultural, or political statements.
RICHARD BUTLER: AHATFULOFRAIN
Richard Butler, “thelastauguriesofjuanitadelacruz,” oil on linen, 2013
Freight + Volume
530 West 24th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Through Saturday, May 25, free, 11:00 am - 6:00 pm
212-691-7700
www.freightandvolume.com
www.richardbutlerstudio.com
Before becoming a rock-and-roll star, leading the Psychedelic Furs to such 1980s hits as “Pretty in Pink,” “Love My Way,” “Forever Now,” and so many more, followed by his ’90s stint with Love Spit Love, Richard Butler studied painting at the Epsom School of Art and Design in England. As it turns out, the elegant English singer handles both the microphone and the paintbrush rather adeptly, as displayed at last fall’s excellent Psychedelic Furs show at the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester and his current exhibition at Chelsea’s Freight + Volume, “ahatfulofrain.” Once again featuring his daughter in many of the works — “Some ninety percent of the paintings I make are based upon images of my daughter, usually distorted in one way or another,” he explains in a press-release interview. “She has become a cipher for me, an every man/woman.” — the Beacon-based Butler creates dark portraits with abstract geometric elements covering parts of his subjects’ faces or hovering in midair. Featuring such intriguing titles as “confessionalsinner,” “devilsbreath,” “whenisaidiloveyouilied,” and “yourheroestoowillbeforgotten,” the canvases combine melancholy with a surreal, dreamlike state bathed in a kind of eerie silence. “Inside you the time moves and she don’t fade / The ghost in you she don’t fade,” Butler sang on the Furs’ 1984 album, Mirror Moves, a chorus that can also be applied to this fine show.
BEFORE MIDNIGHT
Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) are back together again in Richard Linklater’s BEFORE MIDNIGHT
BEFORE MIDNIGHT (Richard Linklater, 2013)
Angelika Film Center, 18 West Houston St. at Mercer St.
Loews Lincoln Square, 1998 Broadway at 68th St.
Opens Friday, May 24
www.sonyclassics.com/beforemidnight
Unable to resist revisiting the characters who first fell in love in 1995’s Before Sunrise and again in 2004’s Before Sunset, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy reprise their roles as Jesse and Celine, respectively, in Richard Linklater’s absolutely wonderful Before Midnight. The couple first met on a train to Vienna in 1994, talking at length about their hopes and desires and planning on getting together in six months’ time, but they don’t reconnect for another nine years, when Celine comes to one of Jesse’s book signings in Paris. In real time, they walk around the City of Light, catching up on what has happened in their lives as Jesse prepares to take a plane back home to his wife and son. And now another nine years have passed, and Jesse and Celine are living together, the parents of twins (Charlotte and Jennifer Prior). As the film opens, the divorced Jesse is putting his teenage son, Hank (Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick), on a plane after having spent the summer together in Greece. What follows is a marvelous fourteen-minute scene of Jesse driving down a mountain road as he and Celine essentially let the audience know what has occurred over the last nine years: They have twin girls (sleeping in the back), Celine has been offered an important environmental job, and Jesse is considering moving to Chicago to be closer to Hank. They return to a country estate owned by Patrick (award-winning cinematographer Walter Lassally, making his acting debut at the age of eighty-six), who is hosting an outdoor lunch with a group of friends (including French actress Ariane Labed, coproducer and filmmaker Athina Rachel Tsangari, and Xenia Kalogeropoulou, who came out of retirement to appear in her first picture since 1985). They all talk of life and love, with Celine being particularly charming. But when Jesse and Celine go off to a hotel room for what is supposed to be a romantic rendezvous, some things are said and truths revealed that complicate things.
Cowriters Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke explore life and love in Greece in third film about Celine and Jesse
As with the first two films, Before Midnight consists of long takes of Jesse and Celine discussing their past, present, and future as cowriters Linklater (Slacker, Dazed and Confused), Delpy, and Hawke, who were nominated for an Oscar for their script for Before Sunset, continue to explore these engaging characters; both the dialogue and the acting have matured with an intelligent grace and elegance that are captivating. The couple wanders around Messinia examining their lives as only fortysomethings can, trying to figure out whether what they have is what they want. The central focus, though, once again is time, whether it is the years Jesse and Celine have spent together, the time they have left, time as a concept in Jesse’s semiautobiographical novels, or Jesse making a joke about being a time traveler. It’s been eighteen years since we first met Jesse and Celine, and we’ve grown eighteen years older too, lending fascinating perspectives that can’t help but force us to take a look at our own lives as well. The trilogy is America’s version of François Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel series, filled with humor, lyricism, and an inherent understanding of twenty-first-century realities. Will there be a fourth film in nine years? As of now, the principals aren’t saying because they just don’t know, but Before Midnight ends on just about the perfect ambiguous note.
DANCEAFRICA 2013
The Bronx-based Harambee Dance Company is part of 2013 DanceAfrica festival at BAM (photo by Derrek Garret)
Brooklyn Academy of Music
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
May 24-27, free - $50
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
Last week, the incomparable Baba Chuck Davis, the founder and artistic director of BAM’s annual DanceAfrica festival, was one of the grand marshals of the seventh New York Dance Parade, the theme of which was “Unity Through Dance.” That same theme can apply to Davis and DanceAfrica, which this year brings three international companies to the Howard Gilman Opera House stage. Zimbabwe’s Umkhathi Theatre Works will perform the tribal dance Isitshikitsha, the hunting-and-gathering dance Chinyambera, the Shangani tribal dance Muchongoyo, and the social gathering Setapa, joined by the BAM/Restoration DanceAfrica Ensemble. Atlanta’s Giwayen Mata’s program will include Perseverance: In My House, set to DJ Fresca’s “Amaphoyisa,” and the Lamban Dansa. Harambee Dance Company, which hails from the Bronx, will present the historical and spiritual journey Reflections, the partying Midnight in the City, and the musical piece “You Goin’ Get This Work.” As a special treat, Washington, DC’s Sweet Honey in the Rock will sing “Sabumoya,” “I Remember I Believe,” “Wholly Wholly,” and “Let There Be Peace.” As always, Davis will provide his welcoming address (“Ago!” “Amée!!”), introduce the Council of Elders, and honor those who are no longer with us. Meanwhile, BAMcinématek’s FilmAfrica will screen such movies as Taghreed Elsanhouri’s Our Beloved Sudan, Clemente Bococchi’s Black Africa White Marble, Charlie Vundla’s How to Steal 2 Million, and Rémi Bezançon and Jean-Christophe Lie’s animated Zarafa. BAMcafé Live continues the African celebration with a pair of free concerts: Abdou Mboup and Waakaw on May 24 and a Late Night Dance Party with Ralph McDaniels and Video Music Box on May 25. And the always fun DanceAfrica Bazaar will set up shop along Lafayette Ave. and Ashland Pl. Saturday through Monday, a global marketplace with great food, clothing, fashion, arts & crafts, and much more.
BUNTY BERMAN PRESENTS…
The New Group goes back to 1950s Bollywood in BUNTY BERMAN PRESENTS… (photo by Monique Carboni)
Acorn Theatre, Theatre Row
410 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Monday - Saturday through June 1, $61.25
212-239-6200
www.thenewgroup.org
When its lead actor, Erick Avari, hurt himself right as previews were beginning, Bunty Berman Presents… turned to its creator to keep it going, much as the title character is willing to do just about anything to keep his Bombay movie studio in business in this middling musical comedy from the New Group. With Avari out of the production on doctor’s orders, Ayub Khan Din, who wrote the book and lyrics and cowrote the music with Paul Bogaev, stepped in to take over the role of Bunty Berman. Set in 1950s Bollywood, Bunty Berman Presents... follows the trials and tribulations of director and dreamer Berman as he struggles to complete his latest low-budget quickie with aging has-been hero but still diva Raj Dhawan (Sorab Wadia). The first act is a disappointing farce that feels unfinished, echoing the movie they’re desperately trying to make. While Raj primps and preens, Berman, his right-hand man, Nizwar (Sevan Greene), and loyal assistant, Dolly (Gayton Scott), struggle to come up with financing, eventually turning to a local gangster, Shankar Dass (Alok Tewari), who insists that his son, Chandra (Raja Burrows), star in the film. The backstage intrigue also zooms in on lead actress Shambervi (Lipica Shah), who has a secret only tea boy Saleem (Nick Choksi) knows about. Things improve significantly in the second act, which contains more slapstick and is much funnier, particularly in how writer Din and director Scott Elliott use Raj’s head in several scenes. Khan Din, one of the stars of Sammy and Rosie Get Laid and the writer of the autobiographical play and film East Is East, cuts an amiable-enough figure as Berman as the British-born Pakistani pays tribute to the old Indian films his father loved as well as Hollywood classics by the Marx Brothers, but the music, dancing, and drama never quite gel. The only song that really registers is the show’s signature tune, “Let’s Make a Movie,” which you might actually find yourself singing as you leave the theater. However, Bunty Berman Presents… relates all too well to it, as it could have been renamed “Let’s Make a Musical.” (The night we went, two people were handing out leaflets protesting the show’s “violent transphobia” and “cultural appropriation and misrepresentation”; not only do they seem to have not watched the same musical comedy we did while completely missing a major plot point, but they gave away the ending, so beware.)
SEE IT BIG! THE MASTER
Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman form a unique bond in Paul Thomas Anderson’s THE MASTER
THE MASTER (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2012)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Friday, May 24, 7:00, and Saturday, May 25, 2:00, free with museum admission
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us
www.themasterfilm.com
One of America’s most daring and adventurous filmmakers, California native Paul Thomas Anderson, who has dazzled, amazed, challenged, and confused audiences with such previous gems as Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love, and There Will Be Blood, has done it again with his latest, The Master. The film is built around the fascinating relationship between Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix), a WWII vet struggling to fit into the real world after seeing so much violence and death overseas, and the Master (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the leader of a cultlike organization known as the Cause that believes in past-life regression and invasive questioning known as Processing to help people deal with personal trauma. The Master essentially adopts Quell, intrigued by his distorted outlook on life, making him a member of the family, which also includes his wife, Peggy (Amy Adams), his son, Val (Jesse Plemons), and his daughter, Elizabeth (Ambyr Childers). Inspired by the real-life tale of L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology — and incorporating war stories he was told by Jason Robards on the set of Magnolia, elements from the life of John Steinbeck, and discarded scenes from the script for There Will Be Blood — Anderson crafts a, dare we say, masterful cinematic experience built around a pair of extraordinary performances. Phoenix absolutely inhabits the role of Quell, staggering about with an awkward gait, with impossibly deep lines on his face and eyes that seem to be able to look through lead. Hoffman is his equal as the much cooler and calmer spiritual leader, until he is faced with sudden turmoil. The scenes in which the two men sit across from each other, going through a Processing session, are mesmerizing, the most powerful moments to be found onscreen last year. (Both Phoenix and Hoffman received Oscar nods, along with Adams.) But despite the title, the focus remains on Quell, a lost soul searching for somewhere to belong in a changing postwar America. Anderson’s first film in four years, The Master is a bold, audacious work that is as unsettling as it is exhilarating. The Master is screening May 24 at 7:00 and May 25 at 2:00 as part of the Museum of the Moving Image series “See It Big!,” which continues into June with such other great films as Akira Kurosawa’s Ran, Roberto Rossellini’s Journey to Italy, and Nicholas Ray’s Bigger Than Life.
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