On their 2010 full-length debut, Burning Bush Supper Club, Brooklyn-based indie four-piece Bear Hands explored guns, violence, and lost love in a relatively personal way. But on their new three-track EP, Songs from Utopia Volume I — which was released for free on Independence Day — singer-guitarist Dylan Rau, guitarist Ted Feldman, bassist Val Loper, and drummer TJ Orscher take on bigger issues, examining some of the most embarrassing moments in recent American history. “It takes a warrior to kill fifteen men / It takes a gentleman to apologize,” Rau sings on “What I’ve Learned,” which looks at U.S. military involvement in Japan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Mexico, and Iraq. Now sporting a much tighter do that his previous, wilder hairstyles, he continues, “I’d like to see the red sun rising in Japan / Recall the glory days of dying like a man / With every death is born a brand-new life / Master of double speak make everything all right.” On “Bullshit Saviour Complex,” the band explores American policy in Africa, while “Disaster Shy” excoriates the government for its failure to react to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina. Bear Hands will be kicking off their latest tour at the Knitting Factory in Brooklyn on July 20 ($15, 9:00) with Fort Lean and the Judas Knife. The EP, which features a mix of genres from rap and reggae to funk and techno, can be downloaded for free here. As this is called “Volume I,” we’re hoping there’s more to come, and soon.
Yearly Archives: 2012
CREST HARDWARE ART SHOW
Tools are not always what they seem at Crest Hardware (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Crest Hardware & Urban Garden Center
558 Metropolitan Ave. between Lorimer & Union
Daily thorugh August 31, free, Monday – Saturday 8:00 – 7:00, Sunday 10:00 – 5:00
718-388-9521
www.cresthardwareartshow.com
crest hardware art show slideshow
The annual Crest Hardware Art Show is an exhibit like none other, a fun, lighthearted display spread throughout the Brooklyn store, which is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year. More than one hundred artists have works on the shelves, down the aisles, hanging from the ceiling, and out in the garden, most of which are made of and/or comment on objects available at the popular hardware store. Priced from $10 to $8,888, with most works between $100 and $500, the show is like a treasure hunt, with a majority of the pieces artfully “hidden” as if they are regular hardware items. Chelsea Bahr uses toilet seats in “All the Things I’ve Read on the Pot.” Bernadette Scelta paints a paintbrush painting in “Paint a Wall and Clear Your Mind,” which evokes Magritte as it hangs among the paintbrushes. A pair of rats with a broom are not happy in Peter Pracilio’s “Damn Housing.” Aya Rosen and Ruti Dan create offbeat faces using unusual materials in “Where the Midnight Summer’s Dreams.” Jilly Ballistic places gas masks on Marilyn Monroe and a would-be subway rider that resemble nearby safety goggles and paint odor respirators in “Seven Year Itch à la Jilly Ballistic” and “E Train to World Trade Center.” Joseph Silva’s “50 Shades of Gray” features fifty squares of different shades of the color gray as if they were paint swatches. Jude Ferencz uses wires to create such Tim Burton-inspired works as “Crucified Copper” and “Copper Skate Punk.” Damien Olsen’s “Bill Murray” tells the bizarre tale of a hungry alligator and an unfortunate person. And visitors are encouraged to put on the headphones and groove to Kayrock’s self-DJ’d “Emergency Synthesizer Tool Box.” Other pieces incorporate power drills, hammers, watering cans, ladders, wrenches, chain saws, flashlights, nuts, bolts, locks, spray paint, pliers, lamps, screws, rat traps, duct tape, and other hardware elements in inventive ways. The Crest Hardware Art Show is a great way to spend a few hours when one of you wants to see art while the other is getting ready to do some home improvement. Sales from the works benefit the City Reliquary, the museum and civic organization down the street on Metropolitan Ave.
SUMMER MOVIE SERIES: STAR TREK
J. J. Abrams’s reboot of the Star Trek franchise beams onto the Intrepid on July 20 for free screening
STAR TREK (J. J. Abrams, 2009)
Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum
Pier 86, 12th Ave. & 46th St.
Friday, July 20, free, doors open at 7:30
www.intrepidmuseum.org
www.startrek.com
Just as Kirk has his Khan, Spock gets his Nero in J. J. Abrams’s immensely entertaining time-traveling Star Trek movie. Abrams (Lost) goes back to the very beginning, with the tumultuous birth of one James Tiberius Kirk (Chris Pine), whose father was a legendary member of Star Fleet. Soon he winds up aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise, surrounded by a crew that includes a logical Vulcan named Spock (Zachary Quinto); Uhura (Zoe Saldana), a hot language specialist; Leonard “Bones” McCoy (Karl Urban), a goofy doctor; seventeen-year-old helmsman Pavel Chekov (Anton Yelchin); engineer extraordinaire Montgomery Scott (Simon Pegg); and rookie pilot and swordsman Hikaru Sulu (John Cho). In this sort-of Star Trek Babies tale, the young cadets are suddenly thrust into action with Captain Pike (Bruce Greenwood), on a mission that involves evil villain Nero (Eric Bana), a rogue Romulan with an ax to grind. Star Trek fans will love all the little homages to the series and the previous films, with both obvious and obscure references every step of the way as we learn how this famous crew first met one another and developed their extremely familiar relationships. Star Trek is screening July 20 on board the flight deck of the Intrepid as part of the museum’s free summer movie series, which continues with The Muppets on July 27, Jurassic Park on August 3, and The Goonies on August 17.
JAPAN CUTS: 13 ASSASSINS
Kôji Yakusho sidebar at Japan Cuts festival includes Takashi Miike’s brilliant 13 ASSASSINS
FOCUS ON KOJI YAKUSHO: 13 ASSASSINS (JÛSAN-NIN NO SHIKAKU) (Takashi Miike, 2010)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Saturday, July 21, $12, 8:20
Japan Cuts series continues through July 28
212-715-1258
www.13assassins.com
www.japansociety.org
Japanese director Takashi Miike’s first foray into the samurai epic is a nearly flawless film, perhaps his most accomplished work. Evoking such classics as Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, Mizoguchi’s 47 Ronin, Aldrich’s The Dirty Dozen, and Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter, 13 Assassins is a thrilling tale of honor and revenge, inspired by a true story. In mid-nineteenth-century feudal Japan, during a time of peace just prior to the Meiji Restoration, Lord Naritsugu (Gorô Inagaki), the son of the former shogun and half-brother to the current one, is abusing his power, raping and killing at will, even using his servants and their families as target practice with a bow and arrow. Because of his connections, he is officially untouchable, but Sir Doi (Mikijiro Hira) secretly hires Shinzaemon Shimada (Kôji Yakusho) to gather a small team and put an end to Naritsugu’s brutal tyranny. But the lord’s protector, Hanbei (Masachika Ichimura), a former nemesis of Shinzaemon’s, has vowed to defend his master to the death, even though he despises Naritsugu’s actions. As the thirteen samurai make a plan to get to Naritsugu, they are eager to finally break out their long-unused swords and do what they were born to do. “He who values his life dies a dog’s death,” Shinzaemon proclaims, knowing that the task is virtually impossible but willing to die for a just cause. Although there are occasional flashes of extreme gore in the first part of the film, Miike keeps the audience waiting until he unleashes the gripping battle, an extended scene of blood and violence that highlights death before dishonor. Selected for the 2009 Cannes Film Festival and nominated for the Silver Lion at the 2010 Venice Film Festival, 13 Assassins is one of Miike’s best-crafted tales; nominated for ten Japanese Academy Prizes, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay (Daisuke Tengan), Best Editing (Kenji Yamashita), Best Original Score (Koji Endo), and Best Actor (Yakusho), it won awards for cinematography (Nobuyasu Kita), lighting direction (Yoshiya Watanabe), art direction (Yuji Hayashida), and sound recording (Jun Nakamura). 13 Assassins is screening at Japan Society on July 21 at 8:20 as part of the Japan Cuts sidebar “Focus on Kôji Yakusho” and will be introduced by the actor; the July 20-21 mini-festival also includes such other Yakusho vehicles as his directorial debut, Toad’s Oil, as well as Shuichi Okita’s The Woodsman and the Rain, the New York premiere of Masato Harada’s Chronicle of My Mother, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure, and Masayuki Suo’s original Shall We Dance?
RICHARD AVEDON: MURALS & PORTRAITS
Richard Avedon, “The Mission Council,” silver gelatin prints, five panels mounted on linen, printed 1975, © The Richard Avedon Foundation (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Gagosian Gallery
522 West 21st St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Monday – Friday through July 27, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-741-1717
www.gagosian.com
www.richardavedon.com
Born and raised in New York City, photographer Richard Avedon began taking pictures at the YMHA when he was twelve, eventually honing his craft while serving in the Merchant Marine during WWII and studying at the New School. Renowned for his fashion photography, Avedon, who died in 2004 at the age of eighty-one, also specialized in silver gelatin portraits that explored the sociopolitical climate of America, particularly between 1969 and 1971. “My photographs don’t go below the surface,” he once said. “I have great faith in surfaces. A good one is full of clues.” Extended through July 27 at Gagosian’s Twenty-first St. gallery, “Richard Avedon: Murals & Portraits” features spectacular murals and intimate portraits that have beautiful surfaces indeed while providing plenty of clues about the state of the nation. Spread out in an awe-inspiring space designed by David Adjaye that holds surprises around every corner, the smaller portraits and massive murals — which run as high as ten feet and as long as thirty-five — feature such seminal counterculture figures as the Chicago Seven, Allen Ginsberg and his family, and Andy Warhol and such Factory denizens as Paul Morrissey, Candy Darling, Joe Dallesandro, Viva, Taylor Mead, and Gerard Malanga in addition to members of the Mission Council, a group of war administrators who influenced U.S. involvement in Vietnam. There are also smaller portraits of writers Brendan Behan, Julius Lester, and Jean Genet, activist Julian Bond, the sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky naked, civil rights lawyers Leonard Weinglass, William Kunstler, and Florynce Kennedy, Nixon secretary Rose Mary Woods, and Vietnamese survivors of napalm attacks that put the pro- and antiwar movements and the sexual revolution in perspective, supplemented by vitrines containing paraphernalia relating to the nearby photographs and specific subject matter. Made before the era of digital manipulation and Photoshop, the large-scale murals, which include some subjects twice in the same series of panels, hang loosely behind sheets of plexiglass in an almost nonchalant way that adds to their mystique. The lighting also affects the murals, casting shadows of the men and women across the floor and even reflecting the mural opposite; although it was most likely accidental, it is quite intriguing to look at the eleven men of the Mission Council with a small, subtle reflection of nude factory members ghosted over them.
MOVIES WITH A VIEW: SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE
A very dangerous love blossoms in Oscar-winning SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE
SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE (Danny Boyle, 2008)
Brooklyn Bridge Park, Harbor View Lawn
Thursday, July 19, free, 6:00
www.brooklynbridgepark.org/a>
www.foxsearchlight.com
In modern-day Mumbai, Jamal Malik (Dev Patel) is being brutally interrogated by a police inspector (Irrfan Khan) who is certain that Jamal is cheating on the popular game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? The cop won’t even consider that a young, uneducated chaiwalla, a lowly tea server at a call center, could possibly know enough to be successful on the program. But through a series of harrowing flashbacks, Jamal recounts his difficult, miserable life growing up on the streets with his brother, Salim (Madhur Mittal), explaining how his experiences with extreme poverty, bigotry, child abuse, and gang violence led him to know certain answers in fascinating, bizarre, and mostly sad ways. As he approaches the final question, everything he’s ever loved and believed in hangs in the balance. Slumdog Millionaire is extremely well directed by Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, 28 Days Later), with a smart script by Simon Beaufoy (The Full Monty) based on Vikas Swarup’s novel Q and A. Freida Pinto makes a strong debut as Latika, the girl who comes between the two brothers, and Bollywood star Anil Kapoor is wonderfully smarmy as Prem Kumar, the Indian Regis Philbin. A mesmerizing, edge-of-your-seat tale, Slumdog Millionaire was the sleeper hit of 2008 until it won four Golden Globe awards and went on to take home eight Oscars, including Best Original Score, Best Original Song, Best Cinematography, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Picture. Slumdog Millionaire is screening for free on July 20 in Brooklyn Bridge Park as part of the summer Movies with a View series, preceded by a DJ set by Emch Subatomic and Àlex Lorca Cercos’s short film Odysseus’ Gambit.
TWI-NY TALK: CATALPA FOUNDER DAVE FORAN
Dave Foran partied with Snoop Dogg at Vivo Rio last September and will do so again later this month on Randall’s Island
Catalpa Festival
Randall’s Island
Saturday, July 28, and Sunday, July 29
Weekend passes $179.99, day passes $99.99
www.catalpanyc.com
Dave Foran is hoping to achieve what no previous event promoter has done before in New York. Over the years, such outdoor music gatherings as the Fleadh, Lollapalooza, Across the Narrows, and All Points West have each failed to maintain a lasting presence, something the Dublin-born Foran is planning on doing with the Catalpa Festival. Taking place July 28-29 on Randall’s Island, the two-day inaugural festival boasts a diverse lineup of live acts, including the Black Keys, TV on the Radio, Umphrey’s McGee, Hercules and Love Affair, and Zola Jesus on Saturday and Snoop Dogg, Girl Talk, Matt and Kim, Cold War Kids, and Matisyahu on Sunday, among many other groups. In addition, Catalpa will host such special installations as Arcadia’s fire-shooting “Afterburner” and the Silent Disco Tent, where people can dance to wireless music beamed into their headphones. A former professional rugby player whose father was a promoter as well, the twentysomething Foran started his promotional company, Frisky, in 2010, with the goal of putting together “mind-blowing events.” The University of Sydney graduate recently discussed the genesis of Catalpa with us as the festival grew near.
twi-ny: What was the selection process like to come up with the roster of musical and visual artists participating in the festival?
Dave Foran: I didn’t want to pigeon-hole Catalpa in its first year and really wanted to create a diverse and slightly eclectic assortment of artists that I really feel had quite a bit of substance, their own style, and collectively a personality for the festival that I hope will be attractive. I did not set out to create a pop festival at all, but you do need some big names to get everyone interested. The Black Keys were my first-choice band for Catalpa. I really think they are amazing, and their recent explosion has been built on a solid foundation of developing a following year on year from creating incredible blues-rock; to me that is the epitome of what I would like Catalpa to represent.
Dave Foran started Frisky in 2010 with the goal of throwing “mind-blowing events”
twi-ny: How did the decision to hold it on Randall’s Island come about?
Dave Foran: There really are not that many large green-field sites in NYC that can hold a suitable capacity and which are tried and trusted. In my view it really is the best of the bunch. Governors Island is landlocked and a logistical nightmare. Liberty State Park is in Jersey and that has its own problems with getting people over there from Manhattan and Brooklyn; people don’t like going across that water too much!!! Liberty State Park is also an old landfill with terrible drainage, and I think that is where a lot of problems with All Points West came from, as they were very unlucky with the weather.
twi-ny: What is the most difficult part of putting together a festival like Catalpa in New York City?
Dave Foran: The hardest things I have found so far is trying to make noise about a new event like this in a place so busy and difficult to get heard like NYC. You either need to be very clever about it or be willing to shovel over huge amounts of cash to get your brand out there. Also, booking a first-year festival as a relatively minor event producer from Ireland is not easy at all. I am not Live Nation or AEG, and a lot of talking was necessary to get some of the big artists I wanted.
twi-ny: Over the years, New York City has seen a slew of outdoor festivals come and go. What do you think the key is to make Catalpa work where others have failed?
Dave Foran: I am aiming for Catalpa to have a much more eclectic, left-field, and experience-based slant to it than other regular bar and stage events. I really believe that what keeps people remembering a good festival is not just the live acts they saw but also the subsidiary experiences they had. I am trying to bring this heightened dimension to Catalpa through elements such as Frisky’s Church of Sham Marriages, where a pimp pastor will marry couples, groups, threesomes, whatever, in an outrageous ceremony. There are also things like the Silent Disco and the High Times Reggae Stage, surrounded by hammocks where famous HT writers will be giving speeches on related topics. There are a lot of art installations, various site artistry, the world’s smallest nightclub (you need to see this!) etc. In my view it is these elements which also give a festival a life of its own and ultimately lead to its longevity.