Yearly Archives: 2011

WEEKEND CLASSICS — KUROSAWA: DERSU UZALA

Maksim Munzuk gives a beautifully understated performance in Kurosawa’s DERSU UZALA

DERSU UZALA (Akira Kurosawa, 1975)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
July 15-17, $13, 11:00 am
Series continues through September 11
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com

In the stunning Dersu Uzala, director-cowriter Akira Kurosawa has fashioned one of cinema’s greatest characters, a worldly-wise, deceptively simple charming man who understands life, nature, responsibility, and helping others. Tuvan actor Maksim Munzuk gives a marvelously understated performance as the title character, a hunter who is suddenly taken out of his quiet life of solitude when Russian army troops come to Siberia. Based on the 1923 memoir of Russian explorer Vladimir Klavdiyevich Arsenyev, the dazzling achievement focuses on the friendship between Uzala and Arsenyev (Yuri Solomin) as they battle the elements from Siberia to the city of Khabarovsk. Winner of the 1975 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Dersu Uzala will be screening at 11:00 am on July 14, 15, and 16 as part of the IFC Center’s Weekend Classics — Kurosawa series, which continues with Ran (July 22-24), Dreams (July 29-31), and Rhapsody in August (August 5-7); ticket sales benefit Japan Society’s Earthquake Relief Fund.

EPIX MOVIE FREE FOR ALL: THE WARRIORS

The Warriors are ready to come out and play in Tompkins Square Park on July 14

Tompkins Square Park
Tenth St. between Aves. A & B
Thursday, July 14, free, 8:00
www.filmsintompkins.com
www.epixhd.com

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. The Warriors is screening July 14 in Tompkins Square Park as part of the EPIX Movie Free for All series and will be preceded by live performance from unsigned local band Dog Soldier. In addition, EPIX will be giving away an iPad and four $100 Visa gift certificates at the event.

MUSIC AT CASTLE CLINTON: PATTI SMITH

Patti Smith will be joined by her band for free July 14 show at Castle Clinton (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

RIVER TO RIVER FESTIVAL
Castle Clinton, Battery Park
Thursday, July 14, free, 7:00
212-835-2789
www.rivertorivernyc.com
www.pattismith.net

It’s been quite a year for Patti Smith. The New York City-based writer, poet, musician, and always captivating ethereal presence won the National Book Award for her moving, revealing memoir, Just Kids, which focused on her relationship with visual artist Robert Mapplethorpe, and in May she won Sweden’s prestigious Polar Music Prize. “By devoting her life to art in all its forms, Patti Smith has demonstrated how much rock ‘n’ roll there is in poetry and how much poetry there is in rock ‘n’ roll,” the award committee said in a statement. Over the last year, she’s given a series of intimate performances, including celebrating the fortieth anniversary of her seminal 1971 show at the Poetry Project by returning to the venue with Lenny Kaye and presenting a special program at the Morgan Library in conjunction with the exhibition “William Blake’s World: A New Heaven Is Begun.” She even recently guest-starred on an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent. But she’ll be returning to her rock-and-roll roots on July 14 as she plays a free show with her band at Castle Clinton in Battery Park; tickets will be given out starting at 5:00 for the 7:00 concert, but you’re going to have to get there early if you want to grab one of the limited, coveted seats. Smith will also be participating in the Escape to New York three-day festival in Southampton on August 5 ($100, with Best Coast, Chairlift, Lissy Trulie, the Postelles, and the Static Jacks), and there are still some tickets left ($40) for “Patti Smith: Artist and Muse,” her December 2 tribute to Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O’Keeffe at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she’ll be performing with her daughter, pianist Jesse Smith. But there’s nothing quite like seeing her with her full band, rocking out to such classic songs as “Gloria,” “Because the Night,” “Frederick,” “Dancing Barefoot,” “Wicked Messenger,” “Waiting Underground,” “Peaceable Kingdom,” and “People Have the Power.”

WHITE HILLS RECORD RELEASE PARTY

Dave W. and White Hills will celebrate release of their latest album at Union Pool on July 14 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Union Pool
484 Union Ave. at Meeker
Thursday, July 14, $8, 9:00
www.myspace.com/whitehills
www.unionpool.blogspot.com

White Hills are hopping mad. Frustrated by corporate control over government, the New York City-based space-rock trio blast away against the status quo on their latest record, the explosive H-p1 (Thrill Jockey, June 2011). Guitarist Dave W., bassist Ego Sensation, and drummer Lee Hinshaw let loose all over the disc, recorded in a two-day flurry in Williamsburg, joined by such special guests as Shazzula Nebula on synthesizers (seven tracks), Antronhy on drums and electronics (two), and Kid Millions on drums (two). Powering through a sea of psychedelic madness using a distortion box instead of a compressor and influenced by the Abstract Expressionists, While Hills surges through the subtly screeching twelve-minute “Paradise,” the hard-driving neo-classic rock of “Upon Arrival,” the ten-minute space-age “No Other Way.” Hard-to-decipher lyrics show up in three of the songs, floating in the background like another instrument. The album is bookended by the propulsive “The Condition of Nothing” and the massive title track, a seventeen-minute opus of rage and fury. “We can barely pay our rent each month but we are willing to pull out our credit cards and go into debt each time a new iPhone promises a better connection. The joke is on us,” explains Ego. “H-p1 is symbolic of the simplification of complex ideas to keep the masses from questioning the system.” A dark, exciting live band that often features Ego and Dave W. in wild costumes and face makeup, White Hills will be celebrating the release of H-p1 on July 14 at Union Pool with Man Forever (with Kid Millions) and Weird Owl. Prepare to be taken away into another galaxy.

MANHATTANHENGE 2011: PART 2

Manhattanhenge is back for a return engagement July 13 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

SUNSET ON THE MANHATTAN GRID
East side of Manhattan
Wednesday, July 13, 8:00 – 8:25 pm
Admission: free
www.haydenplanetarium.org
manhattanhenge may 30 slideshow

On May 30, New Yorkers got a gorgeous example of Manhattanhenge, and it’s back for a return engagement on July 13. Between approximately 8:00 and 8:30, the sun will align with Manhattan’s off-center (by thirty degrees) grid to send spectacular bursts of sunlight streaming across the streets. Coined by master astrophysicist and Hayden Planetarium director Neil deGrasse Tyson in 2002, Manhattanhenge takes place twice a year; for 2011, those dates are May 30 and July 13, when the sun will create “a radiant glow of light across Manhattan’s brick and steel canyons, simultaneously illuminating both the north and south sides of every cross street of the borough’s grid,” Tyson explains on the planetarium website. “A rare and beautiful sight. These two days happen to correspond with Memorial Day and Baseball’s All Star break. Future anthropologists might conclude that, via the Sun, the people who called themselves Americans worshiped War and Baseball.” Photographers will once again line up along the city’s wider thoroughfares on the east side, including Twenty-third, Thirty-fourth, Forty-second, and Fifty-seventh Sts., risking their physical safety against oncoming traffic as the try to capture that exact moment when the sun is half above the horizon, half below it. Wrongly called the Manhattan Solstice, the event “may just be a unique urban phenomenon in the world, if not the universe,” Tyson explains. We experienced the May 30 edition, and it was well worth rearranging our schedule for. You should do it to with this second chance.

SEASIDE SUMMER CONCERT SERIES: JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS

Joan Jett and the Blackhearts will strut her impressive stuff at free Seaside Summer Concert Series in Coney Island on Thursday night

West 21st St. & Surf Ave.
Thursday, July 14, free, 7:30
Series continues Thursday nights through August 18
718-222-0600
www.brooklynconcerts.com
www.joanjett.com

Since she was a teenager in Maryland, Joan Jett has been showing how much she loves rock and roll, turning her Suzi Quatro obsession into a nearly forty-year career that has featured some of pop and punk’s most endearing classics. First with the Runaways and then with the Blackhearts, Jett has powered her way through a memorable collection of originals and covers, from “Cherry Bomb” and “Bad Reputation” to “Do You Wanna Touch Me (Oh Yeah)” and “Crimson and Clover,” from “Fake Friends” and “Everyday People” to “Little Liar” and “I Hate Myself for Loving You,” from “Light of Day” and “Love Is Pain” to “Bits and Pieces” and “Change the World.” Live she’s a bundle of furious energy, sweating it up in a bikini top that reveals her taut figure. Although she’s released only one studio album since 1995, the 2006 record Sinner, which included such tracks as “Naked” and “Androgynous” (and several collaborations with riot grrrl Kathleen Hanna), she never feels like a mere retro act, giving it all she’s got night after night. One of the legendary women of rock, Jett will be kicking off Marty Markowitz’s free Seaside Summer Concert Series this Thursday night with Girl in a Coma at 7:30 at West 21st St. & Surf Ave., next to the Brooklyn Cyclones’ MCU Park in Coney Island. The series, which has moved from its previous location in Brighton Beach’s Asser Levy Park because of problems with the local community, continues through August 18 with such groups as the Monkees, the Spinners, and Cheap Trick.

NYAFF 2011: THE CHASER

The chase is on in South Korean thriller loosely based on the exploits of a real-life serial killer

THE CHASER (CHUGYEOGJA) (Na Hong-jin, 2008)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Thursday, July 14, $13, 3:15
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com
www.subwaycinemanews.com

A huge hit in South Korea, Na Hong-jin’s The Chaser is a tense, gripping thriller that is both extremely violent and deeply emotional. Kim Yun-suk stars as Jung-ho, a disgraced former cop now working as a pimp. Angry that several of his high-class prostitutes have left him, he demands that Kim Min-ji (Seo Young-hee) take on a client even though she is feeling ill. Soon after, he uncovers evidence that leads him to believe that the client he just sent Min-ji to is selling off his girls, so he sets out to find her, but he winds up caught in the middle of what could be a gruesome serial-killer case as he is continually thwarted by the mysterious john and would-be killer, Young-min (Ha Jung-woo). With Min-ji missing, Jung-ho tries to use his policing skills — he gets little help from the local cops, a group of lazy bunglers more interested in protecting the mayor of Seoul from another feces attack — to track her down while also suddenly feeling responsible for the young daughter (Kim Yoo-jeong) he didn’t know she had. Loosely based on the exploits of real-life serial killer Yoo Young-cheol, The Chaser, which is being remade in English by Warner Bros., does a good job of getting inside the head of a troubled man whose world is unraveling before his eyes and might not be able to stop it. The film is screening July 14 at 3:15 as part of the Sea of Revenge Focus at the New York Asian Film Festival at Lincoln Center, with director Na in attendance.