At last year’s CMJ Music Marathon, Lily and the Parlour Tricks were touring behind their just-released, self-titled debut EP, a splendid collection of a half dozen enticing songs that harken back to the past while also being placed firmly in the present. On such tracks as “Poison Song,” “Little Angel,” and “Murder Song,” lead singer Lily Claire, drummer Terry Moore, bassist Brian Kesley, guitarist Angelo Spagnolo, and background vocalists Morgane Moulherat and Darah Golub take listeners on a harmonic musical journey filled with delights that only get better when the songs are performed live. Lily and the Parlour Tricks will be doing CMJ double duty on October 19, playing the Big Picture Media showcase at Sullivan Hall at 10:00 and the Press House / Imagem Music showcase at Rockwood Music Hall at 12:30 am. If you miss them this week, you can catch them October 25 at the Knitting Factory with Lucy Michelle and the Velvet Lapelles and He’s My Brother, She’s My Sister.
Yearly Archives: 2012
THE FLAT
Director Arnon Goldfinger discovers a lot more than he bargained for in intensely personal documentary THE FLAT
THE FLAT (HA-DIRA) (Arnon Goldfinger, 2011)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Friday, October 19
212-924-7771
www.sundanceselects.com
www.ifccenter.com
After his grandmother’s death at the age of ninety-eight, filmmaker Arnon Goldfinger (The Komediant) brought a camera to her Tel Aviv apartment to document going through the things she left behind and delve into Gerda Tuchler’s long life, which included growing up in Germany prior to WWII and escaping to Palestine in the 1930s. While opening drawers and closets, Goldfinger discovers a stack of Nazi propaganda magazines, soon learning a secret about Gerda and her parents that shocks him and his family. And in investigating further, he finds out yet more about this fascinating yet troubling relationship that has direct links to the highest levels of the S.S., coming upon intriguing details that he must decide whether to reveal or keep buried, well aware how they could affect other people’s lives and memories. The Flat is a compelling research procedural that Goldfinger spent five years putting together, with no intention of stopping, despite the potential hurt it could bring to his friends and family, particularly his mother. But it is not cruelty or revenge so much as a thirst for knowledge and the truth that drives him, no matter the cost, as he explores his Jewish grandparents’ questionable ties to their German roots. Goldfinger was named Best Director of a Documentary at the Jerusalem Film Festival for The Flat, with the jury noting, “This is a beautifully composed film about uncomfortable truths and the challenge of confronting them. Mr. Goldfinger undertakes expert research and leads us through his findings in a way that is not only gentle and sensitive, but also compelling and creative.” The Flat, which was shown at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival and opens theatrically on October 19, is indeed all of those things and more. Goldfinger will be at the IFC Center to discuss the film at the 7:30 and 9:45 screenings on Friday and Saturday night.
CMJ MUSIC MARATHON 2012: DAY FOUR
Brian Suarez, better known as Allies for Everyone, will be at Ella Lounge on Friday night for a CMJ showcase gig
Multiple venues
October 16-20
www.cmj.com/marathon
Friday is by far the biggest day of this year’s CMJ Music Marathon, with a host of great shows starting in the afternoon and continuing well past midnight. We’ve been limiting our highlights to five bands a day, but we couldn’t stop for Friday, listing eleven must-see groups and one showcase, featuring a bunch of bands that have been featured in twi-ny over the last few years. So we’ll be running all around the Lower East Side and Brooklyn to catch as many of these as we can, and so should you.
Friday, October 19
The Press House and Imagem Music Showcase: Gareth Dunlop (11:30 am), Anna Krantz (12 noon), Shel (1:00), Jilette Johnson (2:00), Zulu Pearls (3:00), Wakey! Wakey! (4:00), French Horn Rebellion (5:00), Rockwood Music Hall
Eternal Summers, Cameo Gallery, 3:30
Turbo Fruits, Piano’s, 4:00
Allies for Everyone, Ella Lounge, 7:00
The Front Bottoms, Santos Party House Basement, 8:00
Anni Rossi, Fontana’s, 8:15
JC Brooks & the Uptown Sound, Marlin Room at Webster Hall, 9:00
Free Energy, Brooklyn Bowl, 10:00
Takka Takka, Grand Victory, 10:00
Turbo Fruits, Public Assembly, 11:10
Zerobridge, Trash, 12 midnight
The Death Set, the Paper Box, 1:00
SUNSHINE AT MIDNIGHT: THE SHINING
All work and no play makes Jack Nicholson far from a dull boy in THE SHINING
THE SHINING (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)
Landmark Sunshine Cinema
143 East Houston St. between First & Second Aves.
Friday, October 19, and Saturday, October 20, 12 midnight
212-330-8182
www.landmarktheatres.com
All work and no play makes Jack a not-so-quite dull boy in Stanley Kubrick’s classic horror story, based on the Stephen King novel. One of the all-time-great frightfests, The Shining is a truly scary movie about a writer named Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson at his overacting best) who has agreed to become the caretaker of the old Overlook Hotel in Colorado during the snowy winter when the enormous mountain resort closes down for the season. He is joined by his perpetually nervous wife, Wendy (Shelley Duvall), and their young son, Danny (Danny Lloyd), who seems to have brought along his invisible friend, Tony, who speaks through Danny’s finger. Between taking care of the Overlook and working on his novel, Jack finds a whole bunch of other folks to hang out with, people who have populated the place during the ritzy establishment’s golden age, including a strange woman in room 237. Kubrick plays with horror conventions as he seeks to scare the crap out of the audience, something he accomplishes time and time again as Jack grows more disturbed, Wendy’s shrieks become more and more ear piercing and annoying, and Danny’s visions get more and more bloody. No matter how many times you’ve seen it, it still gets you, even when you know exactly what’s lurking around that corner. Only those who went to the film during its opening weekend, as we did, got to see the two-minute finale that Kubrick cut out immediately thereafter, which involved the iconoclastic director riding his bicycle to various theaters, armed with a pair of scissors. The Shining is screening on Friday and Saturday at midnight as part of Landmark Sunshine Cinema’s Sunshine at Midnight series, which continues October 26-27 with Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn and November 2-3 with the underground cult classic The Miami Connection.
DOOMSDAY FILM FESTIVAL & SYMPOSIUM
Hajime Sato’s GOKE, BODY SNATCHER FROM HELL sees dark days ahead
92YTribeca
200 Hudson St. at Canal St.
October 19-21, $12
212-415-5500
www.92y.org
www.doomsdayfilmfest.com
Despite the endless proclamations by a Facebook friend of ours that the world was going to end on September 21, 2012, it seems that we’re still here. But that doesn’t mean the end won’t eventually come, though hopefully not as predicted by the works that make up the annual Doomsday Film Festival & Symposium, running at 92YTribeca October 19-21. The three-day gathering promises to “explore our collective fascination with the apocalypse in film, art, and culture,” beginning with a group art show curated by Jenny He that looks at the end of days, with works by Rachel Abrams, Caitlin Bates, Holly Kempf, Allicette Torres, and others. The festival opens Friday night at 7:30 with Aaron D. Guadamuz’s short Yuichi: The Beginning of the End and Hajime Sato’s 1968 low-budget extraterrestrial mélange Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell, followed by a panel discussion focusing on Japan and the apocalypse with Grady Hendrix, Travis Crawford, and Linda Hoaglund, moderated by Marc Walkow. (In addition, as part of 92YTribeca’s Friday Night Dinner series, Rabbi-in-Residence Dan Ain and historian Stéphane Gerson will discuss “Nostradamus and Prophecies of Doom” at 7:00, with wine, cocktails, and a meal prepared by chef Russell Moss.) At 10:00, John Boorman’s psychotic 1974 fantasy, Zardoz, starring a naked Sean Connery, will be preceded by trivia from copresenter Arrow in the Head. On Saturday at 6:00, James Cameron’s revolutionary The Terminator will be screened, followed by a panel examining artificial intelligence with Steven Levy, Dennis Shasha, Manoj Narang, and Molly Sauter, moderated by Malcolm Harris. At 9:00 the festival celebrates the tenth anniversary of Danny Boyle’s awesome 28 Days Later, with discounted tickets if you come dressed as a zombie. Sunday kicks off at 1:30 with Walon Green and Ed Spiegel’s Oscar-winning documentary The Hellstrom Chronicle, introduced by star Lawrence Pressman and followed by a panel discussion entitled “Prophecies of Science” as well as a live insect-handling demonstration by Margaret Stevens. At 4:00, ten shorts of fifteen minutes or less will precede Peter Watkins’s forty-eight minute BBC film The War Game, about a nuclear attack on Britain. At 5:30, Kim Rosenfield, Aaron Winslow, Trisha Low, Lanny Jordan, and Andy Sterling will read “Apocalyptic Poetry” in the art gallery. The Doomsday fest meets its own end Sunday night at 6:00 with Deborah Stratman’s These Blazeing Starrs! [Comets] leading into Geoff Murphy’s 1985 postapocalyptic tale The Quiet Earth, for those few survivors left out there.
WAVERLY MIDNIGHTS — TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE
South Park dudes Trey Parker and Matt Stone employ puppets to lay waste to international terrorism in TEAM AMERICA
TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE (Trey Parker, 2004)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Friday, October 19, and Saturday, October 20, 12:15 am
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.teamamericamovie.com
Nothing is off limits for South Park dudes Trey Parker and Matt Stone in this marionette musical actioner that mixes Top Gun, Mission: Impossible, and The Matrix with that old classic television puppet show Thunderbirds. Kim Jong Il is determined to unleash his weapons of mass destruction on an unsuspecting world, and it is up to Team America and its newest member, actor Gary Johnston, formerly of the hit musical Lease, to stop the North Korean leader’s heinous plan. But Team America is a reckless bunch that has a tendency to destroy major cities and landmarks (the Eiffel Tower, the Sphinx) as it attempts to take out terrorists. Meanwhile, love threatens to complicate the success of their mission. Parker and Stone skewer international politics, the military, celebrity, and the media in this very dirty, very funny flick; among their victims are Alec Baldwin, Susan Sarandon, Sean Penn, Peter Jennings, Hans Blix, George Clooney, and, mercilessly, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. There’s lots of blood and gore, a very hot puppet sex scene, and the best description ever about the three kinds of people in the world. Although it often misses its target or goes way too far — it could have been a classic like South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut — it’s still a good way to spend a late night out at the movies. Team America: World Police is screening in 35mm at 12:15 am on Friday and Saturday night as part of the IFC Center’s Waverly Midnights series, which continues October 26-27 with Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers and November 2-3 with Todd Solondz’s Election.
THOMAS HIRSCHHORN: CONCORDIA, CONCORDIA
Thomas Hirschhorn installation keeps visitors on the outside of capsized ship (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Gladstone Gallery
530 West 21st St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Through October 20
www.gladstonegallery.com
concordia, concordia slideshow
On January 13 of this year, the Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia hit a reef, ran aground, and capsized, resulting in the death of thirty-two passengers. Although the captain, Francesco Schettino, was blamed for the disaster and has been labeled a coward for abandoning ship — at one point he referred to the crash as a “banal accident” — his crew ended up being named Seafarers of the Year for their heroism in helping to save more than 4,000 passengers. Swiss-born, Paris-based artist Thomas Hirschhorn has re-created the inside of the ship in the large-scale installation “Concordia, Concordia,” which continues at the Gladstone Gallery in Chelsea through Saturday. Hirschhorn has painstakingly reconstructed the inside of the vast ocean liner, leaning over on its side, filling the space with upturned chairs, life preservers, dishes, tables, a neon beer sign, a flat-screen monitor, and other elements, but the work is oddly cold and dispassionate, a kind of overly controlled chaos. In many of his past pieces, visitors were able to walk in for a more intimate and up-close experience (“Cavemanman” “Superficial Engagement”), but here one must stand outside of it, looking in as if it were a wreck by the side of the highway. “I want to do a Big work to show that the saying ‘Too Big to Fail’ no longer makes any sense,” Hirschhorn explains in his official statement about the project. “On the contrary, when something is Too Big, it must Fail — this is what I want to give Form to.” In conjunction with “Concordia, Concordia” and his upcoming Gramschi Monument, the DIA Art Foundation on West 22nd St. is showing Hirschhorn’s “Timeline: Work in Public Space” through November 3.