Multiple locations
August 26 – September 5
Admission: free for most events
www.2011wpfg.org
The New York City Police Department and the Fire Department City of New York, as well as the Port Authority Police Department and the New York City Department of Corrections, have been battling it out for years in many ways, so this year they are going to do it in style at the fourteenth biannual World Police & Fire Games. Held in conjunction with the tenth anniversary of 9/11, some sixteen thousand athletes from more than seventy nations will descend on Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, New Jersey, Long Island, and Connecticut, participating in approximately seventy sports, from archery, bowling, golf, and ice hockey to softball, squash, surfing, and wrestling, from cycling, handball, volleyball, and racquetball to rowing, horseshoes, soccer, and badminton. Also on the schedule are baseball, the biathlon, pistol and rifle shooting, skeet, trap, rugby, darts, and dodgeball. Among the most unique and specialized contests include muster, ultimate firefighter, police service dogs, and toughest competitor alive. The events will take place at such venues as Lehman College, Fort Totten, Icahn Stadium, Eisenhower Park, Bethpage State Park, Van Cortlandt Park, Liberty State Park, and the Javits Center, which is serving as home base for the Games and also is hosting an expo through August 28. In addition, there will be a pipe band competition on Randalls Island on August 27. The Games, which were held in British Columbia in 2009 and will move on to Calgary in 2013, get under way with the opening ceremonies on Friday. While all events are free, tickets are needed for the opening and closing ceremonies and the candlelight vigil at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine at the end of the Games, a nonprofit gathering that seeks to “remember those lost and express gratitude for the support received from around the world.”
Akira Kurosawa’s thrilling police procedural, Stray Dog, is one of the all-time-great film noirs. When newbie detective Murakami (Toshirō Mifune) gets his Colt lifted on a bus, he thinks he will be fired if he does not get it back. But as he searches for it, he discovers that it is being used in a series of robberies and murders that he feels responsible for. Teamed with seasoned veteran Sato (Takashi Shimura), Murakami risks his career — and his life — as he tries desperately to track down his gun before it is used again. Kurosawa makes audiences sweat as postwar Japan is in the midst of a heat wave, with Murakami, Sato, prostitute Harumi Namiki (Keiko Awaji), and others constantly mopping their brows, dripping wet. Inspired by the novels of Georges Simenon, Stray Dog is a dark, intense drama shot in creepy black and white by Asakazu Nakai and featuring a jazzy soundtrack by Fumio Hayasaka that unfortunately grows melodramatic in a few key moments — and oh, if only that final scene had been left on the cutting-room floor. Stray Dog will be screening on August 27 at Symphony Space as part of the “Kurosawa” series, consisting of special presentations of the master’s films shown on the big screen in HD for the first time ever; the series concludes August 28 with Rashomon.
Akira Kurosawa’s marvelous reimagining of Macbeth is an intense psychological thriller that follows one man’s descent into madness. Following a stunning military victory led by Washizu (Toshirô Mifune) and Miki (Minoru Chiaki), the two men are rewarded with lofty new positions. As Washizu’s wife, Asaji (Isuzu Yamada, with spectacular eyebrows), fills her husband’s head with crazy paranoia, Washizu is haunted by predictions made by a ghostly evil spirit in the Cobweb Forest, leading to one of the all-time classic finales. Featuring exterior scenes bathed in mysterious fog, interior long shots of Washizu and Asaji in a large, sparse room carefully considering their next bold move, and composer Masaru Sato’s shrieking Japanese flutes, Throne of Blood is a chilling drama of corruptive power and blind ambition, one of the greatest adaptations of Shakespeare ever put on film Throne of Blood is screening August 26-28 at 11:00 am as part of the IFC Center’s “Weekend Classics — Kurosawa” series, which continues through September 11.
