Julia Child’s one hundredth birthday is being celebrated with special events around the city (photo courtesy PBS)
powerHouse Arena
37 Main St. at Water St., Brooklyn
Wednesday, August 15, free, 7:00
www.powerhousearena.com
August 13 marks the eighth anniversary of the passing of beloved chef Julia Child, who revolutionized home cooking through her series of popular cookbooks and television programs. But Wednesday, August 15, is what would have been her one hundredth birthday, and there are centenary celebrations going on around the country for Child, who won a National Book Award, three Emmys, and a Peabody during her illustrious career. One of the primary gatherings will be taking place at powerHouse Arena in DUMBO, where “Julia at 100” will feature appearances by Tamar Adler, author of An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace, Dave Crofton, co-owner of One Girl Cookies (One Girl Cookies: Recipes for Cakes, Cupcakes, Whoopie Pies, and Cookies from Brooklyn’s Beloved Bakery), Matt Lewis, co-owner of Red Hook’s Baked (Baked: New Frontiers in Baking and Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented), intimate blogger and Nutella lover Alyssa Shelasky (Apron Anxiety: My Messy Affairs in and out of the Kitchen), and Smitten Kitchen blogger Deb Perelman, whose first book, The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook: Recipes and Wisdom from an Obsessive Home Cook is due out October 31. There will be treats from Baked and One Girl, a trivia contest, free wine, and a bake-off; attendees who bring a baked good inspired by one of Julia Child’s recipes are eligible for prize packages. In addition, numerous restaurants are hosting special Julia Child menus, including Buvette, Aureole, Madison Bistro, Union Square Cafe, Marea, and Alison Eighteen. And tickets are now available for the October 28 presentation “On Julia Child at 100,” a discussion with Knopf editor Judith Jones and culinary historian Laura Shapiro at the 92nd St. Y, moderated by Alexandra Leaf.
Nearly fifty years after Masaki Kobayashi’s Harakiri won the Special Jury Award at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival, Takashi Miike’s magnificent 2011 remake was also entered into competition at the prestigious French event. During peaceful times in 1634 Edo, a masterless samurai named Hanshiro Tsukumo (Kabuki star Ebizo Ichikawa) comes to the Lyi clan, requesting permission to commit seppuku in the estate’s courtyard, seeking an honorable death. But clan retainer Kageyu Saito (Kōji Yakusho) and his right-hand man, Hikokuro Omodaka (Munetaka Aoki), believe he might be yet another penniless samurai using a suicide bluff in order to get either a job or money. Trying to discover if the man is serious about wanting to commit hara-kiri, the retainer tells him the horrific story of a young samurai named Motome Chijiiwa (Eita) who requested the same thing two months before. But soon Hanshiro has his own story to tell, one that turns everything around in surprising ways. Miike, who has directed more than eighty movies across a multitude of genres during his twenty-two-year career, including such masterworks as Audition, Ichi the Killer, and Thirteen Assassins, has made his most emotional, compassionate film yet with Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai. Ichikawa, taking on the role played in the original by Tatsuya Nakadai, is brilliant as Hanshiro, a deeply thoughtful samurai with a fierce dedication to honor and loyalty. As he stares into Yakusho’s eyes, the tension can be cut with a steel sword. Miike and cinematographer Nobuyasu Kita shot the film in 3D, but they chose not to get gimmicky with the effects, just making the film they wanted to as if it were in regular 2D. “There was no change to my approach other than I was able to go brag to the director shooting at the studio next door and say, ‘Huh? Yours is flat and level? Ours is bumpy and convexo-concave,’” Miike explains in the press notes. Although he adds, “I definitely anticipate making more 3D movies. Next, if I have the chance, I want to have things that shouldn’t come out of our bodies be hurled at the audience.” The 3D adds a beautiful depth to Akira Sakamoto and Kazuto Kagoo’s gorgeous sets, which are enhanced by Yuji Hayashida’s rich art direction, bathed in deep black, white, gray, and red. The 3D also makes it easier to read the subtitles, which pop off the screen, along with the snow. Hara-Kiri might be a thinking person’s samurai movie, but it is still a Miike film, so it also features one of the most brutal suicides ever depicted on celluloid, and it ends with one helluva fight scene.
Nominated for fourteen Academy Awards and winner of six, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay, All About Eve is one of Hollywood’s all-time greatest movies, a searing depiction of naked ambition set on the Great White Way. Based on Mary Orr’s 1946 short story “The Wisdom of Eve,” writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s flawless drama stars Anne Baxter as Eve Harrington, who is not exactly the mousey wallflower she at first appears to be. She quickly worms her way into an inner circle of Broadway vets populated by superstar Margo Channing (Bette Davis), her younger lover, Bill Sampson (Gary Merrill), playwright and director Lloyd Richards (Hugh Marlowe), and Richards’s wife, Karen (Celeste Holm), who takes Eve under her wing. Joining in on all the fun is powerful theater critic Addison DeWitt (Oscar winner George Sanders), who marvels at all the manipulation and backstage drama, much of which he wickedly orchestrates himself. “There never was, and there never will be, another like you,” DeWitt tells Eve in one of the film’s most poignant moments. All About Eve is filled with classic quotes, including the iconic “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night,” boldly proclaimed by Davis. In a movie about acting and the theater, Mankiewicz never shows anyone onstage; instead, he focuses on the characters and the intrigue with a sly flair that is deliciously entertaining. All About Eve is screening August 13 as part of the Bryant Park Summer Film Festival, which concludes August 20 with Raiders of the Lost Ark.
