MEMENTO MORI: INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS
Veronica Cartwright can’t take any more in chilling remake of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS
INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (Philip Kaufman, 1978)
Rubin Museum of Art
150 West 17th St. at Seventh Ave.
Friday, September 3, free with $7 bar minimum, 8:00
212-620-5000
www.rmanyc.org/cabaretcinema
Based on a magazine serial by Jack Finney, Don Siegel’s 1956 classic, INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, was the ultimate thriller about cold war paranoia. Twenty-two years later, in a nation just beginning to come to grips with the failure of the Vietnam War, Philip Kaufman (THE RIGHT STUFF, QUILLS) remade the film, moving the location north to San Francisco from the original’s Los Angeles. When health inspector Matthew Bennell (Donald Sutherland) and lab scientist Elizabeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams) suspect that people, while they sleep, are being replaced by pod replicas, they have a hard time making anyone believe them, especially Dr. David Kibner (Leonary Nimoy), who takes the Freudian route instead. But when Jack and Nancy Bellicec (Jeff Goldblum and Veronica Cartwright) seem to come up with some physical proof, things begin to get far mores serious — and much more dangerous. Kaufman’s film is one of the best remakes ever made, paying proper homage to the original while standing up on its own, with an unforgettable ending (as well as an unforgettable dog). It cleverly captures the building selfishness of the late 1970s, which would lead directly into the Reagan era. As an added treat, the film includes a whole bunch of cameos, including Siegel as a taxi driver, Robert Duvall as a priest, and Kevin McCarthy, who starred as Dr. Miles Bennell in the original, still on the run, trying desperately to make someone believe him. The sc-fi thriller is screening at the Rubin as part of the museum’s Memento Mori series, being held in conjunction with the exhibition “Remember That You Will Die,” and will be introduced by Georgia Clark.
CROSSING THE LINE 2010
Ryoji Ikeda’s “datamatics (ver. 2.0)” kicks off FIAF’s Crossing the Line festival on September 10-11
FIAF FALL FESTIVAL
French Institute Alliance Française and other locations
Florence Gould Hall, 55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Le Skyroom and FIAF Gallery, 22 East 60th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
September 10-27, free- $45
212-355-6160
www.fiaf.org/crossingtheline
The fourth annual Crossing the Line Festival, a multidisciplinary international celebration consisting of cutting-edge music, dance, film, theater, art, photography, lectures, and even a fair, will take place September 10-27 at FIAF as well as such other venues as the Joyce, the Invisible Dog Art Center, 3rd Ward, the Red Hook Community Farm, Dance Theater Workshop, Columbia University, the ISSUE Project Room, and Anthology Film Archives. Ryoji Ikeda kicks off the festival with “datamatics [ver. 2.0],” in which the Japanese artist and composer uses computer data, an electronic score, and strobes to present a visually dynamic performance; Ikeda’s multimedia installation “the transcendental” will be on view in the FIAF Gallery for free from September 11 through October 16. There will be a pair of exciting site-specific performance pieces, with locations to be announced, with Arthur Nauzyciel’s HETERO running September 11-14 and Daniel Pettrow’s THE SEA MUSEUM scheduled for September 18-19. Former Pina Bausch dramaturg Raimund Hoghe and Congolese dancer-choreographer Faustin Linyekula team up on September 16-18, Buddhist monk and teacher Matthieu Ricard sits down with Philip Glass on September 13 to engage in a “Conversation on Contemplation and Creativity,” and Willi Dorner will lead “Bodies in Urban Spaces,” a pair of free performance walks in Lower Manhattan scheduled for sunrise on September 27 and sunset on September 27. In addition, “Farm City: Where Are You Growing?” will explore urban agriculture around the city with a fair, film screenings, a farm tour, and an afternoon forum. The festival will also include performances and appearances by Jérôme Bel, Bertrand Bonello, Bouchra Ouizguen, Richard Garet, and Eliane Radigue. Tickets for the 2010 edition of Crossing the Line are on sale now; please note that some of the free events require advance RSVPs.
77BOADRUM
77BOADRUM (Jun Kawaguchi, 2010)
IndieScreen
285 Kent Ave. at Second St.
Wednesday, September 1, $10, 8:00
www.indiescreen.us
www.myspace.com/film77boadrum
Two years ago, on August 8, 2008, at 8:08 pm, we watched as 88 drummers, led by Gang Gang Dance, performed for 88 minutes in East River State Park along the Williamsburg Waterfront. It was a magically spiritual, wholly uplifting experience that would go on three hours later in California, led by Japanese noise specialists Boredoms, who had held a similar gathering thirteen months earlier. As we were leaving, we were kicking ourselves for having missed the previous year’s event, when Boredoms led 77 drummers playing for 77 minutes on July 7, 2007, at 7:07 pm in Brooklyn’s Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park. Thankfully, plenty of other people were there to witness it, and director Jun Kawaguchi has documented it all on 77BOADRUM, using original footage he shot as well as clips he found on YouTube and other sites. Combining the performance itself with behind-the-scenes action and interviews, Kawaguchi has created an eighty-nine-minute film that will make you feel like you were there too. In advance of the DVD release from Thrill Jockey on September 7, which will come with special photo postcards, the film will be shown for one night only at IndieScreen in Brooklyn. Part of the fun of watching the 8/8/08 event was being in the midst of a crowd, all being lifted by the beautiful percussive sounds floating through the air, so watching it in a theater with other like-minded people is the next-best thing.
CINEMA 16
Maya Deren’s WITCH’S CRADLE is among group of experimental films being screened at Smack Mellon
Smack Mellon Gallery
92 Plymouth St.
Thursday, September 2, 7:00
Suggested donation: $10
718-834-8761
www.smackmellon.org
www.cinemasixteen.com
Curator Molly Surno and Cinema 16, which is dedicated to communal avant-garde film experiences, have put together a special one-time-only program that will be held September 2 at Smack Mellon Gallery in DUMBO. Among the shorts being screened are WITCH’S CRADLE (Maya Deren, 1943), which features Marcel Duchamp and Maya Deren, whose films inspired the creation of Cinema 16 back in 1947; ALEPH (Wallace Berman, 1956-66), collage artist Wallace Berman’s only film; and DOJOJI TEMPLE (Kihachiro Kawamoto, 1976), a classic work of Japanese animation. Just for this event, Brooklyn’s Thomas Arsenault, aka Ablehearts, has composed a score, which he will perform live with composer, songwriter, and experimental guitarist Michael Beharie. We have a soft spot for Cinema 16, as it was founded by Amos and Marcia Vogel; we studied under Professor Amos Vogel, who wrote the seminal book FILM AS A SUBVERSIVE ART.
BAM NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL
Don’t get washed out of getting tickets to see Pina Bausch’s VOLLMOND at BAM (photo by Laurent Philippe)
Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, 30 Lafayette Ave.
BAM Harvey Theater, 651 Fulton St.
September 23 – December 19, $20-$85
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
Now in its twenty-eighth year, BAM’s Next Wave Festival is, as always, a terrific collection of productions scouted from around the world. Single tickets go on sale Monday, August 30, for Laurie Anderson’s phantasmagoric DELUSION and Pina Bausch’s VOLLMOND, an extremely strong one-two punch to get the season going, featuring a pair of longtime BAM favorites; we recently caught Anderson at (le) poisson rouge, and she’s still at the top of her game, while VOLLMOND is the final piece from the inventive, innovative, and endlessly entertaining Bausch, who passed away in June 2009, leaving behind a BAM legacy that included the thrilling BAMBOO BLUES, NEFÉS, and FUR DIE KINDER VON GESTERN, HEUTE, UND MORGEN, among other splendid shows. The rest of the series goes on sale September 7, with such highlights as Ralph Lemon’s HOW CAN YOU STAY IN THE HOUSE ALL DAY AND NOT GO ANYWHERE?, Stew’s BROOKLYN OMNIBUS, Julia Stiles in the Ridge Theater’s PERSEPHONE, Sasha Waltz’s GEZEITEN, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s version of Akira Kurosawa’s THRONE OF BLOOD, Thomas Ostermeier’s take on Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN, Gísli Örn Gardarsson and Nick Cave’s experimental exploration of Franz Kafka’s METAMORPHOSIS, and Mikel Rouse’s multimedia extravaganza GRAVITY RADIO. Subscription tickets are available right now; if you buy seats to four or more shows, you can save up to forty percent and receive such benefits as priority access to future seasons, flexible scheduling, and discounts for additional tickets.
GREATER NEW YORK/WARM UP
William Cordova’s “Laberintos (after octavio paz)” is set up like dominoes ready to come tumbling down at any moment (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
MoMAPS1
22-25 Jackson Ave. at 46th Ave.
Warm Up: Saturdays from 2:00 to 9:00 through September 4, $15 (free for Long Island City residents)
Greater New York: Thursday through Monday from 12 noon - 6:00 pm through October 18
Suggested donation: $10 (free with MoMA ticket within thirty days of MoMA visit)
718-784-2084
www.ps1.org
“pole dance” slideshow
MoMA PS1’s third quinquennial, their five-year survey of contemporary art in the metropolitan area, is an engaging and involving collection of multimedia work from approximately seventy artists. Taking on everything from environmentalism and racism to marketing and celebrity, the show moves along at a breezy pace. Various artists get their own relatively large galleries, including David Benjamin Sherry (yes, you can walk through the doors), Leidy Churchman, Vlatka Horvat, and Zipora Fried, while others get their own small rooms, like Conrad Ventur, who presents the history of Shirley Bassey singing “This Is My Life” as seen through rotating crystal prisms. David Brooks’s “Preserved Forest” installation comments on the deforestation along a new superhighway in Brazil, while Gilad Ratman’s two-channel video, “The 588 Project,” features a bubbling, muddy ooze seemingly coming alive. Visitors are encouraged to add colorful strips of tape to Franklin Evans’s “timecompressionmachine” and to play the strings of Naama Tsabar’s pair of speaker walls. One of the most powerful pieces is Hank Willis Thomas’s “Unbranded,” consisting of advertising photographs tailored to the African American community, organized chronologically from the 1960s to the present, in which all text and brand names have been removed, leaving just the central image to be judged on its own. In the same room, William Cordova’s “Laberintos (after octavio paz)” collects record sleeves from an Ivy League institution that borrowed 200 Inca artifacts from Peru in 1914 and refuses to return them; the albums are arranged in a perilous maze that appears likely to collapse at any moment. As usual, there’s art just about everywhere you look or listen at PS1; Nico Muhly’s specially commissioned sound piece loops in the elevator, and Aki Sasamoto collaborated with Saul Melman on “Skewed Lies / Central Governor” in the boiler room, where live performances are scheduled September 17-19 and October 15-17. Also downstairs, in the cinema, Ronald Bronstein’s FROWNLAND (2007) continues through August 30, with Bronstein discussing the film with Amy Taubin on August 28; future screenings include works by Dani Leventhal and Fern Silva as well as Tomonari Nishikawa and Redmond Entwistle, with upcoming performances by Andrew Lampert and Trisha Baga. In addition, Dutch artist Guido van der Werve will be presenting an orchestra performance October 2 & 9.
Solid Objectives — Idenburg Liu have installed the playful, interactive “Pole Dance” in the PS1 courtyard (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
The summer-long hot and sweaty Warm Up series has two Saturdays remaining, with Big Freedia, DJ Rusty Lazer, DJ Rashad, GHE20 GOTHIK DJs Venus X and Brenmar, and Traxx getting booties shaking on August 28, and House of House, DJ Mehdi, and a live set by Holy Ghost! ready to close out the season on September 4. The winner of this year’s Young Architects Program, Solid Objectives — Idenburg Liu (SO - IL), has filled the courtyard with large beach balls, overhead netting, hammocks, wading pools, and sand, where people can relax or toss around the balls while also getting sprayed with mist. Some of the poles in the section immediately to the right are linked to sound, so you can orchestrate your own concert or watch a show choreographed by Kyra Johannesen on August 28 at 2:30. You can also grab burgers, beer, and dogs at the regular Warm Up barbecue, but be prepared for some massive crowds. Summer Saturdays at PS1 have become a right of passage for New Yorkers, who are able to experience art, music, film, dance, food, sport, literature, and more, all in one fabulous setting.
HIGHWATER
Cameramen do whatever is necessary to capture thrilling surf competition in HIGH WATER
HIGHWATER (Dana Brown, 2008)
Angelika Film Center
18 West Houston St. at Mercer St.
Opens Friday, August 27
212-995-2000
www.vanssurf.com/highwater
www.angelikafilmcenter.com
Surfing is in Dana Brown’s blood. His father, Bruce, was a champion surfer who made such documentaries as SLIPPERY WHEN WET, SURF CRAZY, and the 1966 classic THE ENDLESS SUMMER. The elder Brown revisited that last film in 1994 in THE ENDLESS SUMMER 2, which he cowrote with Dana, who went on to make the exciting STEP INTO LIQUID in 2003. Dana has headed back to the beach for HIGHWATER, bringing along his son, Wes, to continue the family tradition. (Wes serves as associate producer and cowriter and coeditor with his dad.) The film ostensibly follows surfing’s Triple Crown on the North Shore of Hawaii in 2005, but it’s not really about winners and losers; it’s about the life — and, sometimes, the loss of life or limb — of the men and women who hop on surfboards and take on some of the most fearsome and beautiful waves ever seen. Brown, who proves as narrator that he’s never met a cliché he didn’t like, speaks with such champion surfers and up-and-coming stars as Kelly Slater, Sunny Garcia, Pat O’Connell, Rochelle Ballard, Carrissa Moore, and Pancho Sullivan, who talk about their personal relationship with the Seven Mile Miracle (along the North Shore) and their love of the water. The film is somewhat scattershot, giving relatively short shrift to the women and not explaining nearly enough to audiences, most of whom will probably need many more details about how the contests are scored and what the rules are. That said, cinematographer Steve Matzinger and his team of cameramen do a good job of capturing some great rides, risking their own safety to go after the perfect shot, just as the surfers are after the perfect wave. And the subplot involving Brown’s pursuit of the elusive, enigmatic Eric Haas is wonderfully wacky. HIGHWATER primarily preaches to the converted, but it does so with heart, especially when tragedy hits.
listings
- free summer dance 2010
- free summer movies 2010
- free summer music 2010
- free summer theater 2010
- this week in art
- this week in comedy
- this week in dance
- this week in fashion
- this week in film
- this week in food and drink
- this week in health and beauty
- this week in history
- this week in literature
- this week in music
- this week in photography
- this week in sports
- this week in the parks
- this week in theater
- this week in ticket giveaways
- twi-ny recommended events
- twi-ny talks
- twi-ny: archive of past events
