Yearly Archives: 2011

FILMS ABOUT NOTHING: THE SEARCHERS

In iconic Western, Jeffrey Hunter and Ethan Edwards search for Natalie Wood, with very different motives

THE SEARCHERS (John Ford, 1956)
Rubin Museum of Art Cabaret Cinema
150 West 17th St. at Seventh Ave.
Friday, February 4, free with $7 bar minimum, 9:30
212-620-5000
www.rmanyc.org/cabaretcinema

That’ll be the day when someone tries to claim there’s a better Western than John Ford’s ethnocentric look at the dying of the Old West and the birth of the modern era. Essentially about a gunfighter’s attempt to find and kill his young niece, who has been kidnapped and, ostensibly, ruined by Indians, THE SEARCHERS is laden with iconic imagery, inside messages, and not-so-subtle metaphors. Hence, it is no accident that John Wayne’s son, Patrick, plays an ambitious yet inept officer named Greenhill. The elder Wayne stars as Ethan Edwards, a tough-as-nails Confederate veteran seeking revenge for the murder of his brother’s family; he’s also out to save Debbie from the Comanches, led by a chief known as Scar (Henry Brandon), by ending her life, because in his world view, it’s better to be dead than red. Joining him on his trek is Debbie’s adopted brother, Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter), who wants to save her from Edwards. The magnificent film balances its serious center with a large dose of humor, particularly in the relationships between Ethan and Martin and Ethan with his Indian companion, Look (Beulah Archuletta). And keep your eye on that blanket in front of the house. THE SEARCHERS is screening on February 4 as part of the Rubin Museum’s Films About Nothing series, being held in conjunction with the exhibition “Grains of Emptiness: Buddhism-Inspired Contemporary Art,” and will be introduced by Italian writer, director, professor, and journalist Antonio Monda.

NEW SOUNDS LIVE SILENT FILM SERIES: SPEEDY

Harold Lloyd has a crazy time in Coney Island in SPEEDY

SPEEDY (Ted Wilde, 1928)
World Financial Center Winter Garden
220 Vesey St.
Thursday, February 3, free, 7:00
212-417-7050
www.artsworldfinancialcenter.com

Much like the end of the silent film era itself, the last horse-drawn trolley is doomed in Harold Lloyd’s final silent film. Big business is playing dirty trying to get rid of the trolley and classic old-timer Pop Dillon. Meanwhile, Harold “Speedy” Swift, a dreamer who wanders from menial job to menial job (he makes a great soda-jerk with a unique way of announcing the Yankees score), cares only about the joy and wonder life brings. But he’s in love with Pop’s granddaughter, Jane, so he vows to save the day. Along the way, he gets to meet Babe Ruth. Ted Wilde was nominated for an Oscar for Best Director, Comedy, for this thrilling nonstop ride through beautiful Coney Island and the pre-depression streets of New York City. SPEEDY is being screened for free February 2 at 7:00 as part of the New Sounds Live Silent Film Series at the World Financial Center, with a live score played by the Alloy Orchestra. For more on the series, read our twi-ny talk with festival curator John Schaefer here.

TWI-NY TALK: BUTT JOHNSON

Butt Johnson, “Starchitects,” ballpoint pen on 2ply Bristol, 2009-10

BUTT JOHNSON: THE NAME OF THE ROSE
CRG Gallery
548 West 22nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Saturday through February 19, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-229-2766
www.crggallery.com
www.buttjohnson.com

As we made our way last Saturday through Butt Johnson’s exquisite display of remarkably detailed drawings at CRG Gallery in Chelsea, an older couple was marveling at the show, using the gallery-supplied magnifying glasses to peer deeply into such enchanting and engaging ballpoint-pen-on-paper works as “Starchitects,” “Various Controllers, Maps, and a Robotic Accessory,” “The Ambassadors,” and a series of roses. The woman then wondered aloud, “What kind of name is Butt Johnson?” Indeed, what kind of name is Butt Johnson? The title of the RISD graduate’s first solo show, “The Name of the Rose,” was inspired by the last line of Umberto Eco’s 1980 novel: “Yesterday’s rose endures in its name; we hold empty names,” which Eco explains in the postscript means that “in this imperfect world, the only imperishable things are ideas.” The pseudonymous artist, who is also a graphic designer, gallery owner, and recipient of a 2010 Pollock-Krasner Fellowship, agreed to talk to twi-ny about his name and his imperishable ideas under one condition — that we keep his real name a mystery, at least for now.

twi-ny: Your first solo show features stunning works that mix historical motifs and pop-culture references, evoking old master drawings, obsessive outsider art, and modern technology. What specifically attracts you to to the ballpoint-pen-on-paper format? Would you consider yourself an obsessive artist, given the amount of detail that appears in your work, which takes years to complete?

Butt Johnson: I’ve been drawing with ballpoint pens since I was a kid, mostly in the margins of school notebooks . . . but in my last year in college I reached a kind of threshold with the material where I realized if I handled the ink right I could actually mimic the language of old master drawings/engravings. Since then I have been honing the craft and learning how to draw from some of my favorite old (and new) masters. I think I’m getting better, but every time I see a Dürer or a Piranesi engraving I know I have a lifetime more of learning ahead of me. I have tried ballpoint on other surfaces besides paper, such as Mylar and Formica; it does interesting things and warrants further exploration, I think, but paper contextualizes the work within a tradition, which is nice.

As for obsessiveness, I actually don’t consider myself obsessive and may take issue with the term. While the drawings do take a good amount of time to complete, I think they are very focused on specific themes and arrangements. For me the term obsessive connotes a kind of naïveté (and not necessarily in a negative way), but I think if I compare my drawings to the kind of language that I am aping, it doesn’t even hold a candle to the amount of skill and concentration that existed in previous eras. Maybe in our lightning-speed contemporary culture it may seem like it would take obsession to make this kind of work, but honestly I spend much of my day dicking around on the internet just like everyone else.

Butt Johnson could have called his show “A Rose by Any Other Name…”

twi-ny: On the CRG website, your face is blurred out, and your name is clearly a pseudonym. Why have you decided to keep your identity in the dark? And why choose such a humorous name for such ostensibly serious work?

BJ: My identity is kind of only half in the dark. . . . I don’t try to keep it absolutely hidden, but at the same time I enjoy the anonymity that both the pseudonym and the blurred-out face afford. The name Butt Johnson was a joke I pulled out of the air back in undergrad, but I found it useful in terms of how I see both the idea of authorship and the branding of works of art, so I decided to keep it.

twi-ny: In another part of your life, you run a New York City gallery. What are some of the main differences in how you approach art from those two varying perspectives?

BJ: Ha! I do indeed run an art gallery (with two wonderful partners), and approach it in a very different manner than the ways in which I produce my own work. I love doing studio visits with other artists, and the gallery helps me leave behind my drawings as a filter through which to view other works of art. In this way I can keep my mind open and curious and engage in a very direct level with artists whom I support and can work towards furthering their careers. And as a bonus, it gets me out of the house.

“The Name of the Rose” continues at the CRG Gallery through February 19. Johnson is also part of the group show “Cover Version LP” at BAM through March 20, a collection of reimagined album covers by more than two dozen artists, including Johnson’s take on Terry Snyder and the All Stars’ 1960 smash, PERSUASIVE PERCUSSION VOLUME 2.

FRITZ LANG IN HOLLYWOOD: MINISTRY OF FEAR

Wrong-man Ray Milland gets caught up in mystery and intrigue in MINISTRY OF FEAR (courtesy Photofest)


MINISTRY OF FEAR (Fritz Lang, 1944)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Friday, February 4, and Saturday, February 5, 1:00, 4:40, 8:20
Series continues through February 10
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

Based on the 1943 novel by Graham Greene, Fritz Lang’s MINISTRY OF FEAR is a classic Hitchcockian noir about an innocent man caught up in a dangerous web of mystery and intrigue. Ray Milland stars as Stephen Neale, a man who, as the film opens, is being released from an asylum after serving time related to the death of his wife. His freedom doesn’t last long, as he stops at a local fair and visits the fortune-teller, who accidentally helps him win a guess-the-weight cake that some very bad people want to get their hands in. Out on the run, his only friends are Willi (Carl Esmond) and Carla (Marjorie Reynolds), foreign siblings who run the charity organization the Mothers of Free Nations, the sponsor of the fair. Throw in a séance, the Blitz, an old blind man, an alcoholic private investigator, a book called THE PSYCHOLOGY OF NAZISM, a disbelieving Scotland Yard detective, and wonderfully shadowy camerawork and the result is a tense, exciting spy tale filled with plenty of twists and surprises. MINISTRY OF FEAR is screening with Lang’s 1941 thriller MAN HUNT, starring Joan Bennett and Walter Pidgeon, as part of Film Forum’s Fritz Lang in Hollywood series, which continues through February 10 with such other great twin bills as CLASH BY NIGHT (1952) and RANCHO NOTORIOUS (1952) on February 6-7 and YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE (1937) and YOU AND ME (1938) on February 9-10.

40th ANNIVERSARY EVENT: JOHN WATERS PRESENTS!

John Waters will introduce camp classic at Anthology Film Archives on February 4

KITTEN WITH A WHIP (Douglas Heyes, 1964)
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Ave. at Second St.
Friday, February 4, 7:30
212-505-5181
www.anthologyfilmarchives.org

Anthology Film Archives might spend most of its time showing the serious side of the history of cinema, focusing on underground, avant-garde, and fiercely independent international programming, but every once in a while it lets its pants down, and when it does, it does so in a big way. As part of its continuing fortieth anniversary celebration, Anthology will be showing Douglas Heyes’s 1964 camp classic KITTEN WITH A WHIP, starring Ann-Margret, John Forsythe, Peter Brown, Patricia Barry, and Richard Anderson. Based on the pulp novel, the low-budget hoot, which has been playfully hammered by the folks over at Mystery Science Theatre 3000 and the Golden Raspberry Awards, will be introduced by John Waters, who should have some delicious things to say about this sordid tale of sex, juvenile delinquency, S&M, jailbait, and other wonderfully seedy delights. Anthology Film Archives was founded in 1969 by Jonas Mekas, Jerome Hill, P. Adams Sitney, Peter Kubelka, and Stan Brakhage as “an international center for the preservation, study, and exhibition of film and video”; among the other films being presented this month are F. W. Murnau’s SUNRISE (1927), Jean Renoir’s THE RULES OF THE GAME (1939), Abbas Kiarostami’s CLOSE-UP (1990), Vsevolod I. Pudovkin’s MOTHER (1926), and Yasujiro Ozu’s THERE WAS A FATHER (1942), so KITTEN WITH A WHIP should feel right at home.

COLIN STETSON

Colin Stetson will be performing tracks from his dazzling new album at the Stone and the New Museum this month

Thursday, February 3, the Stone, Ave. C at Second St., 8:00
Thursday, February 17, the New Museum, 235 Bowery, $12, 7:00
www.myspace.com/colinstetsonmusic
www.thestonenyc.com
www.newmuseum.org

Stellar sax sideman Colin Stetson has played with Arcade Fire, the Sway Machinery, Laurie Anderson, the Belle Orchestre, Tom Waits, Antibalas, TV on the Radio, and others, but for his second solo album and tour, he’s front and center, highlighting songs from his dazzling new album, NEW HISTORY WARFARE VOL. 2: JUDGES (Constellation, February 22, 2011). The Montreal-based musician brought his alto, tenor, and bass saxophones to Hotel2Tango in his hometown, where producer Shahzad Ismaily and engineer Efrim Menuck set up twenty-four microphones throughout the studio, each one capturing different elements of Stetson’s unique abilities. The recordings were then sent to Greenhouse Studios in Reykjavik, where master mixer Ben Frost transformed them into fourteen soundscapes that boggle the mind. Although it often feels like Stetson is playing with a full band, it’s just him and his saxes, with the only overdubs French horn on one song and Anderson and My Brightest Diamond’s Shara Worden contributing vocals to several tracks. The songs range from the spacey “Awake on Foreign Shores” and “The Stars in His Head (Dark Lights Remix)” to the beautifully cacophonous “From No Part of Me Could I Summon a Voice,” “Clothed in the Skin of the Dead,” and “The Righteous Wrath of an Honourable Man” to the mysterious finale, “In Love and in Justice.” Worden adds whispery vocals to Blind Willie Johnson’s “Lord I Just Can’t Keep from Crying Sometimes,” while Anderson does her trademark talk-singing on “All the Colors Bleached to White (ILAIJ II)” and “Judges,” with both women featured on “Fear of the Unknown and the Blazing Sun.” On “A Dream of Water,” Anderson intones, “There were those who knew the rules.” On NEW HISTORY WARFARE VOL. 2: JUDGES, the rules are thrown out, resulting in a hypnotic suite of electrifying songs that incorporate avant-jazz, classical, minimalism, folk, blues, and more into a whole new sonic experience. Stetson will be performing solo February 3 at the Stone, followed by drummer Ryan Sawyer and bassist Ismaily, and February 17 at the New Museum as part of the Get Weird series, with percussionist Jon Mueller.

REELABILITIES: NY DISABILITIES FILM FESTIVAL 2011

JCC in Manhattan (and other venues)
334 Amsterdam Ave. at 76th St.
February 3-8
646-505-4444
www.jccmanhattan.org
www.reelabilities.org

The third annual ReelAbilities NY Disabilities Film Festival returns to the JCC in Manhattan and other locations throughout the city February 3-8, “dedicated to promoting awareness and appreciation of the lives, stories, and artistic expressions of people with different disabilities.” The 2011 lineup includes eleven feature films and documentaries that examine Down syndrome (Marcos Carnevale’s ANITA and Antonio Naharro and Álvaro Pastor’s ME TOO), brain damage (Paul Nadler’s BRAIN DAMADJ’D . . . TAKE II), mental illness (Ken Paul Rosenthal’s CROOKED BEAUTY), blindness (Lu Yang’s MY SPECTACULAR THEATER), manic depression (Ofir Trainin’s WANDERING EYES), war injuries (Craig and Brent Renaud’s WARRIOR CHAMPIONS), and autism (Geraldine Wurzburg’s WRETCHES & JABBERERS), among other psychological and physical ailments. All screenings will be followed by discussions with the filmmakers, experts, and/or subjects, in addition to such special panels as “Diversity on Sesame Street,” with writer Emily Perl Kingsley, whose son was born with Down syndrome, as well as concerts by Flame and the FREE Players, a performance by Heidi Latsky Dance, “Navigating Disability” and “Seeing with Photography” art exhibits, an interactive Music for Autism program, a presentation by the Our Time Theater Company, and an American Sign Language tour of “Charles LeDray: workworkworkworkwork” at the Whitney.

Daniel (Pablo Pineda) and Laura (Lola Dueñas) develop a unique relationship in YO, TAMBIÉN

YO, TAMBIÉN (ME, TOO) (Antonio Naharro & Álvaro Pastor, 2009)
Saturday, February 5, JCC in Manhattan, 9:15
Sunday, February 6, Cinema Arts Centre, Huntington, 1:00
www.yotambienlapelicula.com

Written and directed by first-time feature filmmakers Antonio Naharro and Álvaro Pastor, ME, TOO is a beautifully told story about a man with Down syndrome trying to make it in the so-called normal world. When Daniel (Pablo Pineda) first shows up for work at a government disability agency in Sevilla, Laura (Lola Dueñas) mistakes him for someone who has come seeking help, not the person who will be occupying the desk next to hers on a daily basis. Daniel does not see himself as a victim, and he is clearly not a charity case; instead, he has earned a university degree and refuses to allow his disease — or, more important, the way his disease is viewed by others — to limit the things he can accomplish in life. Soon Daniel and Laura grow very close, but she is unable to let their relationship reach the next level, regardless of how much they care for each other — and how many times she instead goes to a local bar and picks up strangers. Meanwhile, Luisa (Lourdes Naharro) and Pedro (Daniel Parejo), who both have Down syndrome and are members of the Danza Mobile dance company, which works with people suffering from intellectual disabilities, have fallen in love, but they feel free to express it, even in public, which gets them in trouble with Luisa’s mother (Catalina Lladó). The contrast between the two romances, one of which is “mixed” but both of which are complicated, is well handled by Naharro (who also plays Daniel’s older brother in the film) and Pastor, steering clear of the kind of sappy melodrama that could have compromised the film’s point of view. They deal with the issue of the infantilization and stereotyping of people with Down syndrome with just the right amount of honesty and subtlety to avoid becoming a pedantic message movie. Both Dueñas, an Almodóvar regular, and Pineda, making his cinematic debut, won Silver Shells for their acting at the 2009 San Sebastian Film Festival. Pineda is in fact the first person with Down syndrome in Europe to earn a major university degree, and he is endearing in the lead role, never overly sentimental, and the script avoids treacly moments, as does Guille Milkyway’s soundtrack. ME, TOO will be screening as part of the ReelAbilities NY Disabilities Film Festival on February 5 at the JCC in Manhattan and on February 6 at the Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington.