twi-ny recommended events

THE ROLLING STONES — 50 YEARS ON FILM: PERFORMANCE

Mick Jagger’s performance in PERFORMANCE is one of the highlights of Stones film festival at MoMA

PERFORMANCE (Donald Cammell & Nicolas Roeg, 1970)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Friday, November 23, 7:30, and Saturday, November 24, 5:00
Series runs through December 2
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

A British gangster on the run hides out with a psychedelic rock star in this strangely enticing film from Donald (The Demon Seed) Cammell and Nicolas Roeg (making his big-screen directorial debut). James Fox didn’t know what he was getting into when he signed on to play Chas, a mobster who finds sanctuary with mushroom-popping rock-diva has-been Turner, played with panache by Mick Jagger. Throw in Anita Pallenberg, a fab drug trip, and the great “Memo to Turner” scene and you have a film that some consider the real precursor to MTV, some think a work of pure demented genius, and others find to be one of the most pretentious and awful pieces of claptrap ever committed to celluloid. We fall somewhere in the middle of all of that. Performance is screening November 23-24 as part of the MoMA tribute “The Rolling Stones: 50 Years on Film,” celebrating the group’s golden anniversary, which includes appearances in New Jersey and Brooklyn next month. Throughout their career, the Stones have gotten some of the world’s greatest directors to make live concert films of their shows, most of which are part of this series, which continues through December 2 with such other films as Hal Ashby’s Let’s Spend the Night Together, Martin Scorsese’s Shine a Light, Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin’s Gimme Shelter, and Jean-Luc Godard’s Sympathy for the Devil in addition to Kenneth Anger’s Invocation of My Demon Brother and more.

CHUCK AMUCK

Chuck Jones’s RABBIT OF SEVILLE helped revolutionize and redefine the cartoon industry

CHUCK JONES SHORTS
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Program 1: Friday, November 23, 2:00 & 6:50
Program 2: Saturday, November 24, 2:00 & 6:50
Program 3: Sunday, November 25, 2:00 & 6:50
Series runs November 23-26
212-415-5500
www.bam.org

“I suppose it would be nice if I knew the age and social structure of my audience,” Chuck Jones explained in his 1989 memoir, Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist, “but the truth is, I make cartoons for me.” Perhaps that was the secret of his success in a storied career that comprised more than three hundred films, from 1938’s The Night Watchman to 1980’s Duck Dodgers and the Return of the 24½ Century. Jones created such Warner Bros. stars as Pepé Le Pew, Henery Hawk, Marvin Martian, Sniffles the cat, Ralph Wolf, Sam Sheepdog, and both Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote while also helping develop such favorites as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, and Porky Pig, mixing in sight gags with classical music (and other genres) in revolutionary ways, giving life to unique animal characters while commenting on the state of the nation and the human condition. Jones, who passed away ten years ago at the age of eighty-nine, would have turned one hundred this year, and BAMcinématek is celebrating the centennial of his birth with the holiday weekend festival “Chuck Amuck,” highlighted by three programs of Jones shorts in 35mm along with screenings of Robert Zemeckis’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Jean-Pierre Gorin’s Routine Pleasures, and Joe Dante’s Gremlins 2: The New Batch and Looney Tunes: Back in Action. The November 23 Jones program includes such greats as Robin Hood Daffy, Rabbit Fire, Duck Dodgers in the 24½ Century, Ali Baba Bunny, For Scent-i-mental Reasons, and the amazing, surreal Duck Amuck. The hits just keep on coming on Saturday, with such shorts as Abominable Snow Rabbit, A Star Is Bored, Bear for Punishment, Rabbit Hood, Stop! Look! Hasten!, Duck! Rabbit! Duck!, and the epic Rabbit of Seville. And Sunday’s lineup rolls right along with The Scarlet Pumpernickel, Little Beau Pepé, Rabbit Seasoning, No Barking, the ingenious One Froggy Evening, and one of the greatest cartoons ever made, What’s Opera, Doc?

WAVERLY MIDNIGHTS: DR. STRANGELOVE, OR HOW I STOPPED WORRYING AND LEARNED TO LOVE THE BOMB

Peter Sellers has some grand plans for the end of the world as Dr. Strangelove in classic Kubrick cold war comedy

AMERICA, F*** YEAH! DR. STRANGELOVE, OR HOW I STOPPED WORRYING AND LEARNED TO LOVE THE BOMB (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
November 21-24, $13.50, 12:15 am
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com

Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb is one of the grandest satires ever made, the blackest of black comedies. With the threat of nuclear annihilation looming over the United States and the Soviet Union, General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) has a meltdown, becoming obsessed with protecting the country’s “precious bodily fluids” and threatening to launch the bombs. While President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers) tries to make nice with the Soviets, General Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott) gets caught up in all the military excitement, Colonel Bat Guano (Keenan Wynn) defends the Coca-Cola Company, Group Captain Lionel Mandrake (Sellers) can’t get anyone to listen to him, and Major T. J. “King” Kong (Slim Pickens) prepares for the ride of his life. Based on Peter George’s novel Red Alert and written by George, Kubrick, and Terry Southern, Dr. Strangelove is hysterically funny and wickedly prescient, an absolute hoot from start to finish, featuring razor-sharp dialogue, inspired slapstick, and just enough truth to scare the hell out of you. (Be sure to watch for Peter Bull not being able to stop laughing as Sellers goes crazy in a wheelchair at the end.) The film is screening November 21-24 as part of the IFC Center’s Waverly Midnights series, which is currently in the midst of an “America, F*** Yeah” presentation that includes such other military favorites as They Live, M*A*S*H, and The Manchurian Candidate in coming weeks.

MACY’S THANKSGIVING DAY PARADE AND BIG BALLOON BLOW-UP

Hello Kitty will fly into New York City this week, making her Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade debut

77th St. & Central Park West to 34th St. & Seventh Ave.
Thursday, November 22, free, 9:00 am – 12 noon
212-494-4495
www.macys.com

In 1924, a bunch of Macy’s employees joined forces and held the first Macy’s Christmas Parade, as it was then known. This year Macy’s celebrates the eighty-sixth edition of this beloved American event. (For those of you going crazy trying to figure out how 1924 to 2012 makes 86, the parade was canceled from 1942 through 1944 because of World War II.) The 2012 lineup features such new giant balloons as Hello Kitty, Papa Smurf, and Elf on the Shelf and such new floats as Sprout, Pepperidge Farm Goldfish, Gibson’s Music Is Our Life, and 75 Years of March Madness alongside such returning favorites as Kermit the Frog, Spider-Man, Julius, the Kool-Aid Man, Uncle Sam, the Pillsbury Doughboy, Snoopy’s Dog House, and Big Man Santa, all making their way through a new route that will take the parade down Sixth Ave. from Central Park South to Herald Square. Among the Broadway shows that will present lip-synching floats are Annie, Bring It On, Cinderella, Elf, and Nice Work if You Can Get It in addition to live performances by Carly Rae Jepsen, Flo Rida, the Wanted, Karmin, Neon Trees, Cody Simpson, Jimmy Fallon & the Roots, Jennette McCurdy, Chris Isaak, and Don McLean. Other special guests include Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Whoopi Goldberg, Geoffrey Zakarian, Colbie Caillat, Mannheim Steamroller, Trace Adkins, Miss USA Olivia Culpo, and Olympic gold medalists Gabby Douglas, McKayla Maroney, Aly Raisman, Kyla Ross, and Jordyn Wieber. The parade will feature 11 marching bands, 16 giant balloons, 28 floats, 19 novelty balloonicles, 20 marching bands and cheerleading groups, 30 clown troupes, and more.

To get a start on the parade, head on over to Central Park West and Columbus Ave. between 77th & 81st Sts. the day before, November 21, from approximately 3:00 to 10:00 to check out the Big Balloon Blow-up. Watching the annual inflation-eve blow-up of Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons is a growing tradition, with crowds getting bigger and bigger every year, but it’s still a thrill to see the giant characters raised from the ground, reborn every Thanksgiving to march in a parade viewed by millions and millions of people around the world. (For further information, you can get the official parade app here.)

ONTHEFLOOR WITH THE DANCE CARTEL

Liberty Hall at the ACE Hotel
20 West 29th St. at Broadway
Tuesday nights at 9:00 through December 18 (no show November 20), $15-$20
www.thedancecartel.com

After spending about an hour and a half with the Dance Cartel, you might not know exactly quite what hit you, but you are likely to feel energized and exhilarated. The night opens with short, odd, off-kilter performance pieces but swiftly turns into a whirlwind of exuberant, electrifying movement. Held in the dark basement known as Liberty Hall in the Ace Hotel, OntheFloor begins with a curated series of extremely low-budget pieces of performance art that can range from very silly videos to an awful first-time comedian to an auction of remnants of artworks supposedly gathered off the streets of a Hurricane Sandy–rattled Chelsea. But then the Dance Cartel takes over, a group of costumed men and women who look and move like survivors from Pat Benatar’s “Love Is a Battlefield” video. Alexandra Albrecht, Aziza Barnes, Emily Bass, nicHi Douglas, Josh Palmer, Justin Perez, Ryan Ross, and choreographer and codirector Ani Taj Niemann make their way throughout the space, followed by the audience, as familiar bass-heavy rap, hip-hop, and pop songs vibrate off the walls, courtesy of DJs Max Pearl and Average Jo. Vadim Ledvin’s lighting goes from frenetic and emotional to cool and mysterious as the dancers take center stage, then run off into corners, hump walls, writhe on the ground, and gyrate against one another. MCs Chinaza Uche and Cyndi Perczek rev up the crowd as things get fast and furious, the dancers getting right in everyone’s face, eventually leading to a free-for-all finale. Codirected by Sam Pinkleton, the show also features video by Harrison Boyce and Stephen Arnoczy and live music by Rose Blanshei and BatalaNYC. People are encouraged to come early, stay late, and buy drinks at the bar; they also receive instructions asking them not to stand in front of any lights, to stay off cell phones unless tweeting or texting about the show, to get out of the way of flying bodies, and “If you want to dance, dance. If you want to jump, jump. If you want to sit over there, that’s lame but fine.”

THE TWENTY-SEVENTH MAN

Four imprisoned Yiddishists contemplate their fate in gripping new play by Nathan Englander (photo by Joan Marcus)

Anspacher Theater at the Public Theater
425 Lafayette St. below Astor Pl.
Extended through December 16, $75-$85 ($35 if you use the promotion code “friend”)
212-967-7555
www.publictheater.org

Inspired by actual events, Nathan Englander’s The Twenty-Seventh Man is a powerful, Kafka-esque drama about totalitarianism, freedom of speech, and the impending death of Yiddish literature. Expanded from his short story in the 1999 collection For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, the gripping one-act play is set in 1952 in a dank Soviet cell where Moishe Bretzky (Daniel Oreskes), Yevgeny Zunser (Ron Rifkin), and Vasily Korinsky (Chip Zien) have been imprisoned. Three of the seminal Yiddish writers of their time, Bretzky the poet is a big bear of a man, Zunser the novelist is a quiet, humble thinker, and Korinsky is a brash shill for the state who is certain an error has been made and that Joseph Stalin himself will free him. The three men are soon joined by a mysterious boy named Pinchas Pelovits (Noah Robbins), the twenty-seventh man arrested. Pelovits seems to know a lot about the other writers, but they have no idea who he is or why he is part of this elite, endangered group of Yiddishists. As the four men explore literature, politics, and Jewish identity under Stalin’s brutal regime, Korinsky demands to see the agent in charge (Byron Jennings) despite the guard’s (Happy Anderson) physical threats and own fears. Directed by Public Theater Shakespeare veteran Barry Edelstein, The Twenty-Seventh Man is superbly acted, each man bringing unique qualities to their very different roles. Michael McGarty’s set of hardened steel is claustrophobic despite being open on three sides, as if the possibility of freedom is within the victims’ grasp. Englander’s (The Ministry of Special Cases) skillful, incisive dialogue is a wonder of economy, keeping the audience on the edge of their seats while avoiding becoming pedantic or overly sentimental, proving him to be as adept a playwright as he is a novelist and short story writer.

THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT

Goofy chemist Sid Stratton (Alec Guinness) is looking to revolutionize the textile industry in the Ealing classic THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT

THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT (Alexander Mackendrick, 1951)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
November 16-22
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

Alexander Mackendrick’s splendid 1951 Ealing comedy The Man in the White Suit is a hysterical Marxist fantasy about corporations, unions, and the working man that doesn’t feel dated in the least. Alec Guinness stars as Sidney Stratton, a brilliant scientist relegated to lower-class jobs at textile mills while he works feverishly on a secret product that he believes will revolutionize the industry — and the world. After being fired by Michael Corland (Michael Gough) at one factory, Sid goes over to Birnley’s, run by Alan Birnley (Cecil Parker, whose voiceover narration begins and ends the film). As Sid develops his groundbreaking product, he also develops a liking for Birnley’s daughter, Daphne (Joan Greenwood), who is preparing to marry Corland. Meanwhile, tough-talking union leader Bertha (Vida Hope) also takes a shine to the absentminded chemist, who soon finds himself on the run, chased by just about everyone he’s ever met, not understanding why they all are so against him. Guinness is at his goofy best as Sid, a loner obsessed with the challenge he has set for himself; his makeshift, Rube Goldberg-like chemistry sets are a riot, bubbling over with silly noises like they’re in a cartoon. But at the heart of the film lies some fascinating insight on the nature of big business that is still relevant today. Nominated for an Oscar for Best Screenplay, The Man in the White Suit is an extremely witty film, expertly directed (and cowritten) by Mackendrick, who would go on to make such other great pictures as The Ladykillers and Sweet Smell of Success and would have turned one hundred this year. It’s easy to imagine that if someone in a textile mill today came up with a similar invention as Stratton’s, the same arguments against it would arise, suppressing progress in favor of personal interest and preservation.