No, California Wives is not the latest reality show about a group of self-obsessed women living in West Coast luxury and airing all their dirty laundry in public. Instead, California Wives is a Chicago-based quartet that has just released its debut full-length, Art History (September 4, Vagrant), which is currently streaming for free on their website. However, they do have something to say about Valley vanity. “I know your deep past / I watch you walk with the wrong crowd / I watch you fake it to the end / And you’ve been waiting for so long / On the day you wore the dress,” lead vocalist and keyboardist Jayson Kramer sings on “Los Angeles,” continuing, “You wore a flower to impress / A little more, a little less / Socialites now they talk, talk.” Started in 2009 by child classical pianist and former premed student Kramer, California plays smooth-flowing, sweet-sounding indie pop with lilting guitars, layered harmonies, rising synths, and infectious hooks that reveal an ’80s sensibility on such tracks as “Blood Red Youth,” “Purple,” “Tokyo,” and “Marianne.” Kramer, guitarist Graham Masell, bassist Dan Zima, and drummer Joe O’Connor will be celebrating the release of Art History on September 22 in the Grand Ballroom at Webster Hall on a bill with Stars and Diamond Rings.
twi-ny recommended events
FILM AFTER FILM: CLOVERFIELD
A monster is on the loose in the big city in CLOVERFIELD
CLOVERFIELD (Matt Reeves, 2008)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Sunday, September 23, free with museum admission, 7:00
Series continues through September 30
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us
www.cloverfieldmovie.com
A surprise going-away party turns into a nightmare in Matt Reeves’s highly anticipated Cloverfield. Michael Stahl-David stars as Rob, a young man who has accepted a promotion that will send him to Japan. Although he is in love with his best friend, Beth (Odette Yustman), he is unable to tell her. But everything changes when the ground starts to shake, buildings begin to collapse, and people are on the run, attempting to escape from an enormous monster on the loose in post 9/11 Manhattan. And when Rob discovers that Beth, who had left the party early, might still be alive, he decides to risk his life and head uptown to save her. He is joined on the dangerous journey by his brother, Jason (Mike Vogel); Jason’s girlfriend, Lily (Jessica Lucas); Lily’s friend Marlena (Lizzy Caplan); and Hud (T. J. Miller), who serves as the comic relief. The entire film is seen through the lens of a video camera that Hud was entrusted with at the party, giving the film the feel of The Blair Witch Project, mixed with such Gotham horror stories as King Kong, The Day After Tomorrow, and the ridiculous 1998 Godzilla remake. Cloverfield, which has an ever-widening back story growing online (similar to that of Lost, which is also the creation of J. J. Abrams), doesn’t try to be anything more than it is — a monster movie set in New York City. The creature is kept hidden for most of the film, which doesn’t try to make any grand statements about science, humanity, or, really, anything except true love — and brutal death. And yes, there is a secret message hidden in the brief sound clip at the end of the credits. Cloverfield is screening on September 23 as part of the Museum of the Moving Image’s “Film After Film” series, a collection of works selected by J. Hoberman focusing on how digital technology is changing the way movies are both made and viewed.
TERENCE KOH: ONE PERSON AT A TIME
A silent “guard” is part of Terence Koh’s latest immersive installation (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
1133 Broadway, Suite 1626
Through Saturday, September 22, free, 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
www.terencekoh.com
New York-based rock-star artist Terence Koh has become famous for creating unique installations and performances filled with mystery and attended by all the right people. Last year the artist formerly known as asianpunkboy staged “nothingtoodoo,” in which, over the course of several weeks, he spent eight hours a day slowly circling a forty-seven-ton, eight-foot-high, twenty-four-foot-wide mound of salt at the Mary Boone Gallery in Chelsea. Koh’s Asia Song Society has now collaborated with rock-star gallerist Sean Kelly for “One Person at a Time,” an intriguing, fun experience in the Flatiron District. Koh has transformed several rooms on the sixteenth floor of 1133 Broadway into an immersive exploration of, well, to say too much would give it away, but it has to do with body parts, the Freedom Tower, and Koh’s trademark obsession with the color white. From 7:00 to 9:00 at night through September 22, visitors wait on line for their chance to walk (“no shoes pleased,” as it says on Koh’s website) through the rooms by themselves, where they are encouraged to look in every cabinet, open every drawer, leaf through every book, and peer through every hole. A silent “guard” who sits outside the entrance will show you all the rules; he’ll also watch you via surveillance cameras, so try not to do anything too weird while you’re inside. “One Person at a Time” is another fab journey into the whitewashed mind of one of today’s most enigmatic and entertaining artists.
HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE
HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE provides a fascinating inside look at AIDS activists fighting the power
HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE (David France, 2012)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Friday, September 21
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.surviveaplague.com
Contemporary activists stand to learn a lot from the gripping documentary How to Survive a Plague. For his directorial debut, longtime journalist David France, one of the first reporters to cover the AIDS crisis that began in the early 1980s, scoured through more than seven hundred hours of mostly never-before-seen archival footage and home movies of protests, meetings, public actions, and other elements of the concerted effort to get politicians and the pharmaceutical industry to recognize the growing health epidemic and do something as the death toll quickly rose into the millions. Focusing on radical groups ACT UP and TAG (Treatment Action Group), France follows such activist leaders as Peter Staley, Mark Harrington, Larry Kramer, Bob Rafsky, and Dr. Iris Long as they attack the policies of President George H. W. Bush, famously heckle presidential candidate Bill Clinton, and battle to get drug companies to create affordable, effective AIDS medicine, all while continuing to bury loved ones in both public and private ceremonies. France includes new interviews with many key activists who reveal surprising details about the movement, providing a sort of fight-the-power primer about how to get things done. The film also shines a light on lesser-known heroes, several filled with anger and rage, others much calmer, who fought through tremendous adversity to make a difference and ultimately save millions of lives. France will be at the IFC Center to talk about How to Survive a Plague at numerous screenings on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of opening weekend.
FILM AFTER FILM: AVALON
AVALON is a tender, poignant examination of family and generational battles
AVALON (Barry Levinson, 1990)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Saturday, September 22, free with museum admission, 7:00
Series continues through September 30
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us
Barry Levinson’s poignant drama follows the trials and tribulations of the Krichinsky family, Polish immigrants trying to make a life in America. The third in Levinson’s Baltimore series (following 1982’s Diner and 1987’s Tin Men and preceding 1999’s Liberty Heights), Avalon is heart-wrenchingly beautiful, led by a sweet, innocent performance by Armin Mueller-Stahl as Sam Krichinsky, the family patriarch, and Aidan Quinn as the son who has different dreams. The outstanding cast also includes Elijah Wood, Elizabeth Perkins, Kevin Pollak, Joan Plowright, and the great Lou Jacobi as Gabriel Krichinsky, who has a hysterical Thanksgiving Day fight with his brother Sam. One of the most tender and moving multigenerational dramas of the last few decades, Avalon is screening on September 22 as part of the Museum of the Moving Image’s “Film After Film” series, a collection of works selected by J. Hoberman focusing on how digital technology is changing the way movies are both made and viewed.
HAPPINESS IS . . . ANNIE HALL
Alvy Singer and Annie Hall discuss the horrible, the miserable, and the search for happiness in ANNIE HALL
CABARET CINEMA: ANNIE HALL (Woody Allen, 1977)
Rubin Museum of Art
150 West 17th St. at Seventh Ave.
Friday, September 21, free with $7 bar minimum, 9:30
212-620-5000
www.rmanyc.org
“I feel that life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. That’s the two categories,” says Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) in Annie Hall. “The horrible are like, I don’t know, terminal cases, you know, and blind people, crippled. I don’t know how they get through life. It’s amazing to me. And the miserable is everyone else. So you should be thankful that you’re miserable, because that’s very lucky, to be miserable.” Allen’s classic 1977 Oscar-winning film — which had the working title “Anhedonia,” a medical term referring to the inability to experience pleasure — is one of the funniest, most-quoted romantic comedies in film history, a pure delight from start to finish. It’s ostensibly a luuuuuurve story about a nebbishy Jew and the ultimate WASPy goy (Diane Keaton as the title character), but it’s really about so much more: large vibrating eggs, right turns on red lights, television, Existential Motifs in Russian Literature, California, slippery crustaceans, driving through Plutonium, dead sharks, Freud, Hitler, Leopold and Loeb, religion, cocaine, Shakespeare in the Park, Buick-size spiders, planet Earth, and, well, la-di-da, la-di-da, la la. The film is screening on September 21 as part of the new Rubin Museum series “Happiness is…,” which consists of movies with a somewhat different idea of joy, including Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces, Federico Fellini’s 8½, and Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers. Part of the larger Rubin program “Happy Talk,” the screening will be introduced by Columbia associate professor and filmmaker Dan Kleinman. Alvy Singer: “Here, you look like a very happy couple. Um, are you?” Woman on the street: “Yeah.” Alvy Singer: “Yeah? So, so, how do you account for it?” Woman on the street: “Uh, I’m very shallow and empty and I have no ideas and nothing interesting to say.” Man on the street: “And I’m exactly the same way.” Alvy Singer: “I see. Wow. That’s very interesting. So you’ve managed to work out something.” Yes, Annie Hall is also about the search for happiness. And isn’t that what we’re all after?
COSÌ
Louis Nowra’s COSÌ examines love and madness in the theater in wacky ways (photo by Samir Abady)
Urban Stages
259 West 30th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Through September 23, $!8
212-868-4444
www.urbanstages.org
www.australianmadeentertainment.com
For its inaugural production, Australian Made Entertainment, a New York City-based organization founded by husband-and-wife performers Kathleen and Matthew Foster to promote Australian plays in the United States, has chosen both carefully and wisely: award-winning playwright Louis Nowra’s semiautobiographical 1992 work Così, a very funny examination of theater, madness, love, and the fine line between illusion and reality. Adam Zivkovic stars as Lewis, a recent theater graduate who has accepted a job directing a show in a Melbourne asylum, where it’s hoped that the patients will come out of their shells by participating. While his girlfriend, Lucy (Olivia Etzine), and best friend, Nick (Zach Bubolo), think he’s crazy for taking on such a job and instead devote their time preparing for a professional production of Brecht’s Galileo and joining the growing Australian ant-Vietnam War movement, Lewis immerses himself in the trials and tribulations of a wacky band of characters, consisting of manic-depressive wannabe opera star Roy (Matthew Foster), OCD-riddled Ruth (Laura Iris Hill), sex-obsessed Cherry (Annie Worden), pyromaniac Doug (Clint Zugel), silent lawyer Henry (Stuart Williams), medicine-dependent piano player Zac (Duke Anderson), and drug addict Julie (Kathleen Foster). Even though none of them can sing or knows Italian, Roy insists they put on Mozart’s Così fan tutte, and mad hijinks ensue as they prepare for opening night. Christopher Thompson’s dank, gray set wonderfully equates the stage with a room in a mental ward, as if the two are one and the same. Matthew Foster is loud and boisterous as Roy, celebrating the myriad possibilities that theater can offer, while the rest of the cast offers more subtle support, particularly Zugel as Doug, who threatens danger at every turn, and Worden as Cherry, who nearly steals the show with hysterical herky-jerky movements and riotous little tics. Fluidly directed by Jesse Michael Mothershed without getting heavy-handed, Così — which was also made into a 1996 film starring Toni Collette, Colin Friels, Rachel Griffiths, and Colin Hay — is a delightful beginning to the Fosters’ new company. The two-hour play, which has general admission seating, runs through September 23 at Urban Stages; be sure to stop by the concession table, where you can pick up such Australian treats as Dub Pies and salted caramel bites to further the Down Under experience.