Yearly Archives: 2011

WQXR BEETHOVEN 32-PIANO SONATA MARATHON

The Jerome L. Greene Performance Space
44 Charlton St. at Varick St.
All-day pass: $50
Individual sessions: $11
646-829-4000
www.wnyc.org

As part of Beethoven Awareness Month on WQXR, the Greene Space is hosting an all-day marathon of each and every Beethoven sonata, divided into six two-hour sessions beginning at 11:00 am and continuing through 11:00 pm. Hosted by Terrance McKnight and Midge Woolsey, the event will include all thirty-two sonatas, played by such master pianists as Alessio Bax (Sonata No. 8 in C minor, Op. 13, “Pathétique,” 11:00 am), Evan Shinners (Sonata No. 11 in B-flat, Op. 22, 11:00 am), Inon Barnatan (Sonata No. 27 in E minor, Op. 90, 1:00; Sonata No. 6 in F, Op. 10, No. 2, 3:00), Benjamin Hochman (Sonata No. 23 in F minor, Op. 57, “Appassionata,” 3:00; Sonata No. 7 in D, Op. 10, No. 3; 5:00), Jonathan Biss (Sonata No. 12 in A-flat, Op. 26, “Funeral March,” 7:00; Sonata No. 5 in C minor, Op. 10, No. 1, 9:00), Jeremy Denk (Sonata No. 29 in B-flat, Op. 106, “Hammerklavier,” 7:00; Sonata No. 32 in C minor, Op. 111, 9:00), Joyce Yang (Sonata No. 18 in E-flat, Op. 31, No. 3, “The Hunt,” 7:00), and Juilliard students. An all-day bass comes with a gift bag and coffee and tea service. Born in 1770, Ludwig van gave his first public concert when he was seven, and was publishing his work by the time he was twelve. He began losing his hearing in 1801, causing him to write at a furious pace. He died in March 1827, leaving behind a legacy like no other, some of which will be on view all day today at the Greene Space.

THE CONTENDERS 2011: BRIDESMAIDS

Kristen Wiig will be at MoMA on November 21 discussing BRIDESMAIDS with costar Rose Byrne and director Paul Feig

BRIDESMAIDS (Paul Feig, 2011)
MoMA Film
Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Monday, November 21, 2011, 7:00 p.m
Series runs through January 26
Tickets: $10, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk beginning at 9:30 am
212-708-9400
www.bridesmaidsmovie.com
www.moma.org

First and foremost, don’t link Bridesmaids in with all those lousy Saturday Night Live one-note movies and the string of overrated and overhyped lowbrow trash streaming out of the Judd Apatow factory. And don’t assume it’s a silly chick flick either. As it turns out, Bridesmaids is one of the most consistently funny laugh-out-loud romps of this young century. Directed by Freaks and Geeks creator Paul Feig, Bridesmaids is an endlessly clever and insightful examination of love, loneliness, and friendship starring SNL’s Kristen Wiig, who cowrote the smart script with Groundlings member Annie Mumolo (who makes a cameo as a nervous flyer). Wiig shows surprising depth and range as Annie, a perennial screw-up whose closest childhood friend, Lillian (Maya Rudolph), is marrying into a very snooty upper-crust family. After agreeing to be Lillian’s maid of honor, Annie gets involved in a battle of wits with Lillian’s future sister-in-law, the elegant Helen (a radiant Rose Byrne), who is determined to outshine Annie in every way possible and steal Lillian away from her. Already a mess — she had to close her bakery, she shares an apartment with a bizarre pair of British siblings, she works in a jewelry store where she drives away potential customers with her sorry tales of woe, and she allows herself to be treated miserably as a late-night booty call for a self-centered businessman (Jon Lamm) — Annie experiences a series of hysterical, pathetic setbacks as she attempts to organize the bridal shower and bachelorette party, including a riotous potty-humor scene in a high-end boutique that is likely to go down in comedy history for its sheer relentlessness. The rest of the bridesmaids are quite a hoot — Becca (Ellie Kemper), the Disney-loving kewpie doll; Rita (Wendi McLendon-Covey), a foul-mouthed married mother who can’t wait to go crazy away from her family; and the groom’s burly sister, Megan (the hugely entertaining Melissa McCarthy), who lives life without a filter. Annie is so caught up in her own failures that she doesn’t recognize when something potentially good enters her life, in the form of state trooper Nathan Rhodes (Chris O’Dowd). Wiig gives the finest performance of her career as Annie, clearly a role that is very close to her heart. Despite the slapstick nature of many of the jokes, Bridesmaids is filled with heart and soul, making it one of the best comedies in years.

Bridesmaids is screening November 21 at the Museum of Modern Art as part of MoMA’s “The Contenders 2011,” with Wiig, Byrne, and Feig participating in a postscreening discussion. The series, which focuses on either underlooked films and/or those that MoMA believes will stand the test of time, continues through January 26 with such works as Terence Malick’s The Tree of Life, Nicholas Winding Refn’s Drive, David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method, and Karim Ainouz’s O Abismo Prateado (The Silver Cliff).

MEGAN REILLY AT THE LIVING ROOM

Megan Reilly will be featuring songs from her upcoming album at free downtown show (photo by Godlis)

The Living Room
154 Ludlow St.,
Sunday, November 20, free, 9:00
212-533-7237
www.livingroomny.com
www.meganreilly.com

Back in May, Memphis-born alt country folk rocker Megan Reilly previewed several songs from her upcoming album at twi-ny’s tenth anniversary party at Fontana’s. Joined by guitarist James Mastro, the Jersey girl played a haunting, heartfelt set, her sparkling new material filled with evocative love and longing. She was recently joined in the studio by the legendary Lenny Kaye, who contributed guitar to two tracks, boding well for the upcoming disc. Reilly, a mesmerizing live performer who gets lost in her powerful songs, will be at the Living Room on November 20 at 9:00 for a free show with a truly great band, consisting of Mastro (the Bongos, the Health & Happiness Show, Ian Hunter’s Rant Band), and drummer extraordinaire Steve Goulding (the Mekons, Garland Jeffreys, the Waco Brothers). They will be preceded by a Stories and Songs residency by Danny Lanzetta at 7:00 and hope hazy at 10:00. For our twi-ny talk with the delightful Reilly and Mastro, click here.

RICHARD SERRA: JUNCTION / CYCLE

Gagosian Gallery
555 West 24th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Saturday through November 26 (closed Thanksgiving Day), 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-741-1111
www.gagosian.com
junction/cycle slideshow

In the summer of 2007, MoMA hosted the terrific retrospective “Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years,” an exciting look back at the career of highly influential and often controversial conceptual artist Richard Serra. The exhibition included a number of Serra’s huge, freestanding sets of weatherproof steel plates, both inside and outside. Serra, who recently had a gorgeous show of his drawings at the Met, is back at the Gagosian in Chelsea with two new works, “Cycle” (2010) and “Junction” (2011), that fill the large space, creating numerous passageways that visitors can follow, the twisting concave and convex “walls” reaching more than thirteen feet high. The pieces loop in and out, narrow at some turns before opening into wider centers, almost like steel mazes. The technical aspects are mind-boggling, so be sure to take your time and let the many wonders envelop you. “Junction” and “Cycle” are unique enough that they don’t feel repetitive or simply more of the same from this always intriguing artist. Serra also has a show of small drawings, “Bight & Ballast,” at Gemini G.E.L. at Joni Moisant Weyl through December 22.

BEST FILM NOT PLAYING AT A THEATER NEAR YOU: THE REDEMPTION OF GENERAL BUTT NAKED

The bizarre story of the Liberian warlord known as General Butt Naked is told in stirring documentary

THE REDEMPTION OF GENERAL BUTT NAKED (Danielle Anastasion & Eric Strauss, 2011)
MoMA Film
Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Saturday, November 19, 3:30, and Sunday, November 20, 6:00
Tickets: $10, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk beginning at 9:30 am
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
www.generalbuttnakedmovie.com

Once again, the month of November is playing host to MoMA’s inventive “Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You” series. This program of American independent cinema, held in conjunction with the annual Gotham Independent Film Awards and the Independent Film Project, highlights five award-winning documentaries and features, with Q&A sessions with the filmmakers following selected shows. One of this year’s noteworthy selections is The Redemption of General Butt Naked, a documentary following the story and progression — as well as midlife crisis and career change — of brutal Liberian warlord Joshua Milton Blahyi. A figure infamous for an unimaginable resume of inhuman and genocidal atrocities, the eponymous general was known for leading an army of child soldiers into battle during his country’s long civil war, often wearing nothing more than boots and an AK-47 rifle, believing himself to be supernaturally immune to gunfire. The film examines his history and details his subsequent spiritual reawakening and self-reinvention as a charismatic Christian evangelist. Director-producers Danielle Anastasion and Eric Strauss will be on hand following the two screenings (November 19 at 3:30 and November 20 at 6:00) for a discussion of the film, which was cited for Excellence in Cinematography (Ryan Hill and Peter Hutchens) at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The series continues through November 21 with four other 2011 discoveries, Madeleine Olnek’s Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same, Sophia Takal’s Green, Blue Hadaegh and Grover Babcock’s Scenes of a Crime, and Mark Jackson’s Without. The Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You winner will be announced at the Gotham Independent Film Awards ceremony on November 28.

THE INFERNAL COMEDY: CONFESSIONS OF A SERIAL KILLER

John Malkovich plays a charming serial killer in THE INFERNAL COMEDY (photo by Nathalie Bauer)

BAM Next Wave Festival
Howard Gilman Opera House
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
November 17-19, $35-$175
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.theinfernalcomedy.org

Having toured around the world for a year and a half, The Infernal Comedy: Confessions of a Serial Killer ends its run with a four-show stand at BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House as part of the Next Wave Festival this week. Conceived by conductor Martin Haselböck, actor John Malkovich, and writer-director Michael Sturminger, The Infernal Comedy is a stage play with Baroque music that stars Malkovich as real-life Austrian serial killer Jack Unterweger, who spent fifteen years in prison for murdering a woman, wrote a bestselling autobiography (Purgatory) while behind bars, then became a cause célèbre in his home country, leading to his parole. Once back out on the street, he became a journalist, helped the police, wrote plays, and, well, he was a serial killer, after all, so…. The show’s conceit is that Unterweger has returned fifteen years after his death with a new book, which he is presenting to the audience in the form of a special event, a reading and discussion backed by the thirty-one-piece Orchester Wiener Akademie (conducted by Haselböck) and featuring a trio of elegantly dressed sopranos (Marie Arnet, Kirsten Blaise, Marlene Grimson) who sing arias by Mozart, Vivaldi, Gluck, Beethoven, Haydn, and others and pose as women from Unterweger’s life.

John Malkovich plays Jack Unterweger with devilish delight in THE INFERNAL COMEDY (photo by Nathalie Bauer)

Wearing white shoes, white slacks, a white jacket, and a dark shirt and sunglasses, Unterweger considers himself a ladies’ man, even walking into the audience to charm a few fans, asking them about their sex life. Women “have always been my determination, my world, my paradise, my desolation, and my fate,” he explains in his Austrian accent, later adding, “They can really make me lose my mind!” Searching for the truth, he also notes that a smile is a lie, and over the course of the evening, he smiles a lot. Despite being the star of the show, Unterweger is sometimes part of the audience as well, watching the supertitles as the women sing or bringing one of the sopranos a bouquet of flowers and a sacher torte. However, he also places a bra around their chests and simulates strangling them as everyone watches, not doing anything about it, much like what happened after he got out of prison. One of the most powerful moments occurs when one of the sopranos sings Vivaldi’s “Sposa son disprezzata” and Unterweger, who was just talking about his mother, who abandoned him, rests his head against the woman’s belly and reaches up to grab her breasts, a scene both titillating and frightening, getting right to the heart of Unterweger’s Madonna-whore complex. Malkovich is captivating as the smarmy, clearly deranged madman, embodying the role with extra relish. The music and singing are quite lovely; keep an eye on Haselböck, who often shares his feelings about what’s going on in front of him with simple and funny gestures. The Infernal Comedy is an intoxicating production from three talented men who are already in the midst of their next collaboration, The Giacomo Variations, in which Malkovich will star as Casanova, set to the music of Mozart.

GARBO: THE SPY

GARBO: THE SPY tells the bizarre tale of double agent Juan Pujol Garcia

GARBO: THE SPY (Edmon Roach, 2010)
Quad Cinema
34 West 13th St.
Opens Friday, November 18
212-255-2243
www.quadcinema.com
www.firstrunfeatures.com/garbothespy

Audiences are likely at first to think that Edmon Roch’s feature debut, Garbo: The Spy, is a mockumentary, a made-up movie supposedly about one of the craziest, most absurd characters of the twentieth century. But alas, it is all true. The extremely entertaining film tells the real-life tale of wacky double agent Juan Pujol Garcia, whom the British called Garbo, after the actress who played Mata Hari, and the Nazis referred to as Alaric, after the Germanic Visigoth king. Roch speaks with MI5 specialist Mark Seaman, intelligence and espionage expert Nigel West, WWII spy Aline Griffith (the countess of Romanones), journalist Xavier Vinader, who assisted Pujol in recounting his story, and various members of Pujol’s two families, who share fascinating tidbits about a rather unusual gentleman who was so determined to be a successful spy that he created a fake network of imaginary agents, duping the Germans and assuring the success of the Normandy invasion. In addition to archival and newsreel footage, propaganda material, cartoons, and photographs, Roch includes clips from such WWII and spy thrillers as Mata Hari (starring Greta Garbo), Pimpernel Smith, The Stranger, Mr. Moto’s Last Warning, Patton, The Longest Day, and Our Man in Havana, in which Alec Guinness plays a character inspired by Pujol, lending additional insight to the story. What’s perhaps most remarkable about it all is that despite more than fifty volumes of his own writings and several books about him, Pujol is not more well known, but perhaps that’s all part of the bizarre mystery surrounding him and his extraordinary exploits, which are brought to life here by writer-director-producer Roch and editor Alexander Adams, who culled through more than six hundred hours of interviews to come up with the ninety-minute documentary. And yes, it indeed a documentary, a hard-to-believe true story that, according to Roch, is only the tip of the iceberg of the strange story of Juan Pujol Garcia.