Yearly Archives: 2012

FIST AND SWORD — THE RAID: REDEMPTION

Pencak Silat master Iko Yuwais faces a seemingly impossible task in THE RAID: REDEMPTION

THE RAID: REDEMPTION (SERBUAN MAUT) (Gareth Huw Evans, 2011)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Friday, July 27, $12, 8:00
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us
www.sonyclassics.com

The Raid: Redemption is a nonstop claustrophobic thrill ride through a fifteen-story apartment complex where danger lurks around every corner and behind nearly every door. The gated, heavily protected building is run by Tama (Ray Sahetapy), a well-connected drug lord who enjoys terrorizing and killing traitors and enemies. Early one morning Jaka (Joe Taslim) leads his elite special forces unit on a raid of the complex, ordered to get Tama and end his brutal reign. As Jaka’s team falls one by one, it is left to a determined young rookie, Rama (Iko Uwais), to complete the mission, which is not quite what it appears to be. Written, directed, and edited by Welsh-born Gareth Huw Evans, The Raid: Redemption is a furious, testosterone-heavy action flick filled with breathtaking scenes of ultraviolence countered by moments of intense, quiet drama where one wrong move will be a character’s last. Primarily shot with a handheld camera that puts the audience in the middle of the battle, the film uses a variety of weapons in the well-choreographed fight scenes, from machine guns and pistols to serrated knives and machetes, while focusing on the martial art of Pencak Silat. Uwais, a former truck driver and Silat champion who was discovered by Evans while the director was researching a documentary on the martial art — the two previously teamed up on 2009’s Merantau — is outstanding as Rama, a father-to-be who might have met his match in Mad Dog (Yayan Ruhian), one of Tama’s chief operatives and a killer who prefers using his hands, fists, and feet to eliminate his opponents. (Uwais, Ruhian, and Evans collaborated on the action choreography.) Buoyed by a pulsating score by Joseph Trapanese and Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda and evoking elements of the first Die Hard, Assault on Precinct 13, and New Jack City, The Raid: Redemption is a pulse-pounding, wildly successful film that has kicked off a franchise, with two sequels in the works. (Here’s hoping the translator does a better job in the next two movies, taking a much-needed crash course in punctuation.) Even the credits are awesome, with dozens of characters listed as Hole Drop Attacker, Riot Van Shooter, Carrying Bowo Fighter, Machete Gang, AK47 Attacker, Panic Man, Tortured Man, and Junkie Guy. “I deal in blood and mayhem,” Evans, who has been based in Indonesia since 2007, states in the film’s production notes. Indeed he does. The Raid: Redemption is screening July 27 at 8:00 as part of the Museum of the Moving Image’s monthly Fist and Sword series, which continues August 18 with Te-Sheng Wei’s Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale and September 22 with Thanakorn Pongsuwan’s Fireball.

RIVER FLICKS FOR KIDS: HUGO

Asa Butterfield stars as a homeless orphan on a mission in Martin Scorsese’s first movie for kids

HUGO (Martin Scorsese, 2011)
Hudson River Park
Pier 46 at Charles St.
Friday, July 27, free
www.hugomovie.com
www.riverflicks.com/RFkids.html

Martin Scorsese wears his cinematic heart on his sleeve in his first family-friendly film, Hugo. Based on Brian Selznick’s Caldecott-winning 2007 illustrated historical-fiction novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret, the movie follows the adventures of the title character, a homeless orphan boy (Asa Butterfield) who survives by his wits in a Paris train station in the early 1900s. He spends his days stealing small bits of food, winding the big clock, avoiding Inspector Gustav (Sacha Baron Cohen), and trying to find parts for an automaton he is rebuilding, hoping it will have a message for him from his father (Jude Law). He soon makes his only friend, a girl named Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz) who is being raised by her godparents, the bitter Papa Georges (Ben Kingsley) and his wife, Mama Jeanne (Helen McCrory). When it turns out that Papa Georges is the one and only Georges Méliès, who made the world’s first science-fiction film, A Trip to the Moon, among hundreds of others, then was thought to have died in obscurity, all of his work destroyed, Hugo and Isabelle, along with the help of film historian René Tabard (Michael Stuhlbarg), are determined to resurrect Papa Georges and his reputation. Gorgeously shot by Robert Richardson and featuring marvelous period sets by Dante Ferretti, Hugo is beautiful to look at, the camera roaming through the immense train station and up the tall clock tower like in a Jules Verne story. Such side plots as the budding romances between a café owner (Frances de la Tour) and the newspaper seller (Richard Griffiths) and between Gustav and a shy flower girl (Emily Mortimer) feel forced, and the main narrative meanders its way into treacly territory as all the parts slowly come together. At its heart, Hugo is a movie about the love of movies, paying tribute to the early cinema of Méliès, Harold Lloyd, and others but it gets too stuck on the underlying theme of the preservation of old films, one of Scorsese’s driving forces. Still, Hugo is a visual treat, particularly in the first half, before things get a little too sticky (and slickly) sweet, even for a children’s film. Hugo is being shown on Pier 46 in Hudson River Park on July 27 as part of the free River Flicks for Kids series, which continues August 3 with Puss in Boots, August 10 with Rango, August 17 with Back to the Future, and August 24 with The Smurfs.

CHELSEA ART WALK 2012

Artist Patrick Lundeen will play with his band, the Oblique Mystique, at Mike Weiss Gallery as part of Thursday night’s Chelsea Art Walk (Lundeen’s solo show, “Good for You Son,” continues at the gallery through July 28)

Multiple locations in Chelsea
Thursday, July 26, free, 5:00 – 8:00
artwalkchelsea.com

More than eighty galleries and some two dozen artist studios will remain open until 8:00 on July 26 for the third annual Chelsea Art Walk. Although summer is of course the time for group shows (not that there’s anything wrong with that), there are a handful of solo exhibits worth looking out for, including “Jake Berthot: Artist Model, Angels Putti, Poetry Visual Prose, works on paper” at Betty Cuningham, “Zoe Strauss: 10 Years, A Slideshow” at Bruce Silverstein, “Luca Pizzaroni: Bianco Trash” at Fred Torres Collaborations, Shawn Barber’s “Memoir: The Tattooed Portraits” at Joshua Liner, “Patrick Lundeen: Good for You Son” at Mike Weiss (including a set by the artist’s band, the Oblique Mystique, at 7:00), “Holly Zausner: A Small Criminal Enterprise” at Postmasters, and “Jim Marshall: The Rolling Stones and Beyond” at Steven Kasher. Among the special events are tours at 6:00 & 7:00 led by “fledgling theater company” Rudy’s Meritocracy (meet at Tenth Ave. & Twenty-first St.), a book signing with William Steiger and Rainer Gross at Margaret Thatcher Projects, and visitors to Ultra Violet Studios can have a Polaroid portrait taken of them, among numerous other gallery and artist talks and tours and opening and closing receptions.

CATALPA VIDEO OF THE DAY: “LET’S GO” BY MATT AND KIM

Nobody throws an outdoor party quite like Matt Johnson and Kim Schifino. The perpetually smiling Pratt couple better known simply as Matt and Kim have been making fun, infectious music since 2005, including their eponymous 2006 debut album, 2009’s Grand, and 2010’s Sidewalks. Onstage they are an utter delight, Kim pounding away on her drum kit — when not standing on top of it — and Matt banging on the keyboards and taking lead vocals. They’ve stirred up the crowd at McCarren Park Pool, the Siren Festival in Coney Island, and RiverRocks on Pier 54, and now they figure to do the same this Sunday when they play the Catalpa Festival on Randall’s Island, on a bill with Girl Talk, Matisyahu, the Dirty Heads, City and Colour, Snoop Dogg, and others. Look for the crazy kids, who once famously ran naked through Times Square for a music video, to feature songs from their upcoming album, Lightning, which is scheduled for release on October 12. To find out more about Catalpa, read our interview with the festival’s founder, Dave Foran, here.

UNACCOMPANIED MINORS: PIXOTE

Hector Babenco’s PIXOTE is a heartbreaking look at an extraordinary young boy

VIEWS OF YOUTH IN FILMS FROM THE COLLECTION: PIXOTE (Hector Babenco, 1981)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Friday, July 27, 8:00, and Monday, July 30, 4:30
Series runs through August 14
Tickets: $12, 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

Hector Babenco’s gripping, heart-wrenching docudrama is set in São Paulo, where a group of young boys struggle to survive on the streets and in a reform school that is more like a prison. When four of them bust out, they get caught up in a dangerous life of drugs, prostitution, and guns. Marília Pêra won numerous international awards for her performance as a prostitute, but the film belongs to eleven-year-old Fernando Ramos da Silva, who plays the title character; you won’t be able to take your eyes off him, except to wipe away the tears. Unable to get his life together after the film, Fernando was later killed by police under suspicious circumstances when he was only nineteen. The Argentine-born Babenco went on to make such films as Kiss of the Spider Woman, Ironweed, and At Play in the Fields of the Lord, but Pixote is his masterpiece. Pixote is screening July 27 and 30 with Orlando Mesquita’s 2001 short, The Ball, as part of the MoMA film series “Unaccompanied Minors: Views of Youth in Films from the Collection,” being held in conjunction with the new exhibit “Century of the Child: Growing by Design, 1900-2000.” Running through August 14, the festival includes such other compelling films about childhood as Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves, François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, Djibril Diop Mambéty’s The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun, Laslo Benedek’s Sons, Mothers, and a General, and Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: TRIASSIC PARQ

Musical spoof offers a new take on Crichton and Spielberg’s JURASSIC PARK (photo by Carol Rosegg)

TRIASSIC PARQ: THE MUSICAL
SoHo Playhouse
15 Vandam St.
Through August 5, $69.50 – $79.50 ($39.50 with discount code TPREDFF here or at 212-352-3101)
triassicparq.com

Sharing the award for Overall Production/Musical at the 2010 Fringe Festival, Triassic Parq is a playful adult parody of Michael Crichton’s 1990 novel and Steven Spielberg’s 1993 film, Jurassic Park, which was followed by two sequels, with a third long in the works. Written by composer and director Marshall Pailet, Steve Wargo, and Bryce Norbitz and choreographed by Kyle Mullins, Triassic Parq: The Musical has fun with interspecies fornication and other elements that Crichton and Spielberg only hinted at. The current production stars Lindsay Nicole Chambers as the Velociraptor of Science, Wade McCollum as the Velociraptor of Faith, Alex Wyse as the Velociraptor of Innocence, Brandon Espinoza as Mime-a-saurus, Shelley Thomas as T-rex 1, Claire Neumann as T-rex 2, music director Zak Sandler as Pianosaurus, and Lee Seymour as narrator Morgan Freeman. The show also involves a certain amount of audience interaction, especially for those seated on the stage.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: Triassic Parq: The Musical runs through August 5 at the SoHo Playhouse, and twi-ny has three pairs of tickets to give away for free. Just send your name, daytime phone number, and all-time favorite dinosaur movie to contest@twi-ny.com by Thursday, July 26, at 12 noon to be eligible. All entrants must be twenty-one years of age or older; three winners will be selected at random.

ASIAN AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

Michael Kang’s KNOTS will close the thirty-fifth Asian American International Film Festival

Clearview Chelsea Cinemas (and other venues)
260 West 23rd St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
July 25 – August 5, $13 ($75 gala, $18 centerpiece, $20 closing night)
212-989-0017
www.aaiff.org/

The thirty-fifth Asian American International Film Festival, which annually explores the Asian diaspora as portrayed in film, gets under way July 25 with a gala event at Asia Society that features the opening-night presentation of Daniel Hsia’s romantic comedy Shanghai Calling, followed by a reception, tasting tables, an open bar, live and silent auctions, and a gift bag. The festival continues with daily screenings at the Clearview Chelsea Cinema through August 5, including such films as Eliaichi Kimaro’s A Lot Like You, H. P. Mendoza’s I Am a Ghost, Deepa Dhanraj’s Invoking Justice, and Lily Mariye’s Model Minority. The centerpiece selection is Simon Yin’s $upercapitalist, which is set in the Hong Kong business world, while the closing-night film is Michael Kang’s Knots, about a young woman looking for love in all the wrong places. Both the centerpiece and closing-night screenings will be followed by after-parties. In addition, there will be a special LGBTQ Cinema Night at the Clearview on July 27, the Museum of Chinese in America will host a collection of “For Youth by Youth” shorts on August 4 at 1:30, and White Rabbit will screen music videos by Asians and Asian Americans on August 4 at 10:00.