“Well, come with me to a place by the sea / If your ship breaks down you can always find me and Dirty J chillin’ underneath a shady tree / Our fans are always welcome with our friends and family,” the Dirty Heads sing on the title track to their sophomore album, Cabin by the Sea (Five Seven Music, June 2012), continuing, “And if you wish you could stay, as long as you please / Just lend a helping hand to build our cabin by the sea / Where every day is beautiful, the sun, the sand, the breeze / And everybody lives together here in harmony.” The song might be the centerpiece of their long-awaited follow-up to 2008’s alternative hit Any Port in a Storm, but it also can sum up their upcoming appearance at the Catalpa Festival on Randall’s Island on July 29. (They will also be playing the Paramount in Huntington on July 23.) Currently on tour with Matisyahu, who will also be at Catalpa on July 29 (along with Cold War Kids, Matt and Kim, Girl Talk, headliner Snoop Dogg, and others), SoCal’s Dirty Heads once again feature their unique brand of reggae-influenced hip-hop, rap, and indie pop on Cabin by the Sea, which opens with the tender “Arrival” before turning into a Jamaican party with such special guests as Ky-Mani Marley, Rome (of Sublime with Rome), Del the Funky Homosapien, and Matisyahu joining front man Jared “Dirty J” Watson, vocalist-guitarist Dustin “Duddy B” Bushnell, percussionist Jon Olazabal, drummer Matt Ochoa, and bassist David Foral. Blasts of horns combine with lyrics filled with confidence, braggadocio, positive energy, and shout-outs to themselves and hero Bob Marley on the new record, highlighted by such tunes as “Disguise,” “Spread Too Thin,” “Mongo Push,” “We Will Rise,” and “Hipster,” on which they sing, “So endlessly, we will carry on through your energy /Every song we sing creates a memory I wouldn’t change for anything / Music is eternity and lives in me eternally / Endlessly, we will come together like a symphony / And everything you do feels like it’s meant to be.” The two-day art and music Catalpa Festival begins on July 28 with the Black Keys, TV on the Radio, Umphrey’s McGee, Hercules and Love Affair, Zola Jesus, and others; for an interview with the festival’s founder, Dave Foran, go here.
Yearly Archives: 2012
UNIVERSAL 100: SCARLET STREET
Femme fatale Joan Bennett gets her claws into meek amateur painter Edward G. Robinson in Fritz Lang’s psychological film noir SCARLET STREET (courtesy Photofest)
SCARLET STREET (Fritz Lang, 1948)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Sunday, July 22, and Monday, July 23
Series continues through August 9
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org
Director Fritz Lang and screenwriter Dudley Nichols’s adaptation of Jean Renoir’s 1931 La Chienne, based on the novel by Georges de La Fouchardière, is a transplanted German street film moved to New York City. Edward G. Robinson stars as Christopher Cross, one of the all-time-great saps in the history of cinema. A henpecked cashier at a large clothing store where he has just been given his twenty-five-year gold watch, Cross instantly falls in love with a floozy he meets on a rainy night, Kitty March (Joan Bennett), who is soon conspiring with her sleazy boyfriend, Johnny (Dan Duryea), to bilk Cross, thinking that he is a wealthy painter whose canvases go for upwards of fifty grand apiece. Meanwhile, Cross continues to think that Kitty is a good girl who will marry him if he were free. But as Chris’s suspicions about Johnny grow, so does the tension, leading to a classic noir finale. Filmed on Hollywood sets designed to resemble Greenwich Village and Brooklyn, Scarlet Street is a dark, somber psychological thriller built around a mark and a femme fatale, reminiscent of Josef von Sternberg’s 1930 tale The Blue Angel, in which Emil Jannings is willing to sacrifice everything for Marlene Dietrich. Robinson, so good at playing tough gangsters, shows a surprisingly vulnerable, tender side as Cross, who refuses to see the truth staring him in the face, just as his paintings lack proper perspective. Duryea has a field day as Johnny, while Bennett is appropriately shady as the deceitful moll. Scarlet Street is screening July 22-23 with John Farrow’s 1948 thriller, The Big Clock, starring Charles Laughton and Ray Milland, as part of Film Forum’s Universal 100, a wide-ranging celebration of the studio’s centennial that continues with such other double features as Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life and All That Heaven Allows, James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein and Edgar G. Ullmer’s The Black Cat, and Stanley Donen’s Charade and Michael Gordon’s Pillow Talk.
THE DARK KNIGHT RISES
The Bat Man might have met his match in the villainous Bane in THE DARK KNIGHT RISES
THE DARK KNIGHT RISES (Christopher Nolan, 2012)
Opens Friday, July 20
www.thedarkknightrises.com
Christopher Nolan’s dazzling Dark Knight Trilogy comes to a rousing conclusion with The Dark Knight Rises. It’s been eight years since the death of Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), and things have been relatively quiet in Gotham City under a new prison initiative enacted by Commissioner Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman). The Bat Man has disappeared, believed to have gone into hiding after being accused of murdering Dent in cold blood, with the real story kept buried by Gordon. Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) has become a Howard Hughes-like recluse, limping around stately Wayne Manor with a cane and refusing to see anyone as his grand fortune wastes away. But the sudden appearance of a new master criminal, the Darth Vader-esque Bane (Tom Hardy), a crafty cat burglar named Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway), and a potential hostile takeover of Wayne Industries brings the Bat Man back to try to save the city against seemingly impossible odds. The Dark Knight Rises is the darkest Batman movie yet, as Wayne searches even deeper into his soul to find his reason for being and to determine his future — and that of his beloved city. He is joined by financial wizard Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard), Wayne Industries technical mastermind Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), and determined cop John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) in a race against time, something they have precious little of. Various plot elements and imagery evoke such previous movie series as Star Wars, Star Trek, and Mad Max while, to the film’s detriment, also calling up the 9/11 terrorist attacks and even the Occupy Wall Street movement. But the film gets past those faults as it rises up to an absolutely breathtaking, sensational finale. Nolan wraps things up brilliantly, even bringing back Ra’s Al Ghul (Liam Neeson) and giving a cool cameo to Cillian Murphy (a veteran now of all three movies), but it’s Bale’s complex performance as a man in search of his identity that is the driving force behind what has been a magnificent trilogy.
Heath Ledger gives a spectacular performance as the Joker in THE DARK KNIGHT
THE DARK KNIGHT (Christopher Nolan, 2008)
www.thedarkknight.warnerbros.com
Christopher Nolan’s follow-up to his 2005 hit Batman Begins is one of the most brilliant superhero films ever made. Christian Bale is back as billionaire bachelor Bruce Wayne, who spends his evenings fighting crime in Gotham City, which is under siege, victim to a brutal crime spree led by the vicious Joker (Heath Ledger in a massive, Oscar-winning performance). As the madman with the wild hair and evil clown face starts knocking off public officials, mob bosses, ordinary citizens, and even his own minions, Wayne is also beset by the blossoming relationship between Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhall), the woman he loves and who knows his secret, and the new DA, Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), who has come into his high-profile job with both arms swinging, determined to make Gotham City safe. The Bat Man is joined once again by his faithful butler, Alfred (Michael Caine), Wayne Industries exec Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), and police lieutenant Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman); the film also features Anthony Michael Hall as a television talk-show host who finds himself in danger, Eric Roberts as a smooth-talking gangster, and Cillian Murphy as Scarecrow in a brief cameo. The Dark Knight is a carefully constructed tale of good and evil, love and death, and everything in between, working as both a thrilling action movie as well as a psychoanalytic examination of what lurks deep in the soul. Although there are special effects aplenty, it is primarily a very intimate, personal film about one man’s tortured existence. In a summer of the high-octane superhero flick (Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Hellboy II, Hancock), The Dark Knight towers above them all.
Christopher Nolan puts a new twist on the Caped Crusader’s origin story in BATMAN BEGINS
BATMAN BEGINS (Christopher Nolan, 2005)
batmanbegins.warnerbros.com
Christopher Nolan takes over the Bat controls with spectacular results in this thrilling examination of the origins of the Bat Man, written by David S. Goyer and Nolan. Like his previous efforts, Memento and Insomnia, Nolan takes a psychological approach in telling the story of Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), a wealthy young man fighting deep-seated fears from his past, including the violent murder of his parents. Determined to get justice and revenge — he is selected for special training by Ducard (Liam Neeson), a Qui-Gon Jinn-like character whose master is the mysterious Ra’s Al Ghul (Ken Watanabe). When Wayne finally returns home, he goes on a one-man mission to save Gotham, with the help of Sgt. Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman), assistant DA Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes), old-timer Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), and the dependable and loyal Alfred (Michael Caine), as they do battle against the likes of mobster Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson) and Dr. Jonathan Crane (Cillian Murphy). Bale plays Wayne/Batman as a tormented, troubled soul, lost in a dark, dangerous world, a more realistic hero than those previously portrayed by Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, George Clooney, and Adam West. And for the first time in a live-action Batman flick we get to really see Arkham Asylum as Nolan lays the groundwork for a pair of sequels. Sci-fi fans will get an extra kick out of all the Blade Runner influences, including the casting of Rutger Hauer as the head of Wayne Industries.
HARLEM BOOK FAIR: FROM HARLEM, WITH LOVE
West 135th St. between Malcolm X Blvd. & Frederick Douglass Blvd.
Saturday, July 21, free, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
www.qbr.com
Kicking off with the inaugural Literacy Across Harlem march, in which participants carry their favorite book, the Harlem Book Fair features a full day of activities celebrating the written word. Taking place at such venues as the Countee Cullen Library, the Langston Hughes Auditorium and the American Negro Theater in the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the main stage outdoors on West 135th St., the fair will include live performances and readings by Lynn Pinder, Mitzi Carrasquillo, Elijah Brown, Sadequ Johnson, Danny Simmons, Renarda Huggins, Atiba Wilson & the Befo’ Quotet, Eleanor Wells, and others. Among the panel discussions and lectures are “Decision 2012: Race, Democracy, and the New Jim Crow” with Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Cornel West, Fredrick C. Harris, and Sonia Sanchez, moderated by Peniel Joseph; “Black to the Future: Why We No Longer Die First in Science Fiction Movies,” with Shykia Bell, Joelle Sterling, R. Kayeen Thomas, and Gregory “Brother G” Walker, moderated by Harlem Book Fair founder Max Rodriguez; and “The End of Anger: Teen Book Talk with Author Ellis Cose.” There will also be a special tribute to Sekou Molefi Baako, with musical guests Mzuri Moyo and Jazz Trio, the Atiba Kwabena Trio, and the NuyoRican School Poetry Jazz Ensemble featuring Americo Casiano Jr. with Edy Martinez, Ray Martinez, & Yunior Terry in addition to poets E. J. Antonio, Cypress Jackson Preston, Tony Mitchelson, and Ed Toney.
NEW MUSEUM BLOCK PARTY
Experimental composer Sxip Shirey will be performing at 2:45 at the New Museum Block Party in Sara D. Roosevelt Park on July 21
New Museum of Contemporary Art, 235 Bowery at Prince St.
Sara D. Roosevelt Park, Chrystie St. between Delancey & Broome Sts.
Saturday, July 21, 12 noon – 5:00
212-219-1222
www.newmuseum.org
The sixth annual New Museum Block Party takes place on the Lower East Side on Saturday in nearby Sara D. Roosevelt Park as well as the museum itself. There will be live outdoor performances by experimental artists Chris Giarmo/Boys Don’t Fight, Yvonne Meier, Sxip Shirey, and High Priest of Antipop Consortium, a Bowery Artist Tribute in which visitors can remix and recontextualize poems that have ties to the neighborhood, a digital archive of New Museum catalogs (in which you can create your own mix-and-match mini-catalog), an Op art workshop, a Lower East Side photo show, an interactive paper workshop led by Nicolás Paris, an alternate-color demonstration, and free admission to the museum (with tours every hour at a quarter past), where you can check out the exhibitions “Ghosts in the Machine,” “Pictures from the Moon: Artists’ Holograms 1969 – 2008,” “The Parade: Nathalie Djurberg with Music by Hans Berg,” and “Carlos Motta: We Who Feel Differently.”
SUPER SÁBADO! EL MUSEO’S BLOCK PARTY
The Welfare Poets will perform at annual El Museo Block Party on Saturday
FREE THIRD SATURDAYS
El Museo del Barrio
1230 Fifth Ave. at 104th St.
Saturday, July 21, free, 11:00 am – 8:00 pm
212-831-7272
www.elmuseo.org
El Museo del Barrio’s monthly free celebration of art, music, dance, and food heads outdoors on July 21 for a family-friendly summer block party on 104th St. Most of the special events take place in the late afternoon, with the Welfare Poets, domino tables, a pop-up photo booth, art workshops, A Lo Afro-Colombiano and KR3Ts dance classes, DJ EX spinning soulful tunes, and El Barrio’s Freshest 2012 breakdancing competition. The museum’s galleries are open as well, so you can beat the heat by going inside and checking out the exhibitions “Caribbean: Crossroads of the World” and “Voces y Visiones: Gran Caribe.”
SUNSHINE AT MIDNIGHT: BROADWAY DANNY ROSE
Woody Allen has trouble explaining his gesture to Mia Farrow in BROADWAY DANNY ROSE
BROADWAY DANNY ROSE (Woody Allen, 1984)
Landmark Sunshine Cinema
143 East Houston St. between First & Second Aves.
Friday, July 20, and Saturday, July 21, 12 midnight
212-330-8182
www.landmarktheatres.com
We don’t mean to be facetious or didactic, but Broadway Danny Rose is one of Woody Allen’s most consistently entertaining movies, and we say that with all due respect. In the hysterically frantic mob comedy, a group of old-time Borscht Belt comedians, including Sandy Baron, Corbett Monica, Jackie Gayle, Morty Gunty, Will Jordan, and Howard Storm (in addition to longtime Allen producer Jack Rollins), have gathered at the Carnegie Deli and are sharing legendary stories about Danny (Allen), with Baron claiming to have the best one of all, which is then told in flashback. Rose, a small-time New York talent agent who represents such minor-league acts as the Impresario of the Musical Glasses (Gloria Parker) and hapless ventriloquist Barney Dunn (Herb Reynolds), gets involved with local gangsters when one of his clients, has-been nightclub singer Lou Canova (Nick Apollo Forte), asks him to serve as a beard for his girlfriend, Tina Vitale (Mia Farrow), a gum-chewing, tough-talking moll whose former beau is a very jealous mobster. Danny and Tina are soon on the run, at one point finding themselves in a warehouse filled with Thanksgiving Day parade balloons, leading to one of the funniest laugh-out-loud scenes of Allen’s career. A character-driven comedy with a marvelous blend of slapstick and romance, Broadway Danny Rose is Allen at his very best, as actor, writer, and director. And if we might interject a concept at this juncture, just remember: star, smile, strong!