ALL TOMORROW’S PARTIES USA 2012
Pier 36
East River between Manhattan & Brooklyn Bridges
September 21-23, $60-$75 per day, three-day pass $199
www.atpfestival.com
At long last, after more than ten years, the ATP festival is finally coming to New York City. All Tomorrow’s Parties, the international music festival that has taken place in the UK, Australia, Asbury Park, and the Catskills, will be presenting I’ll Be Your Mirror this weekend at Pier 36 on the East River between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges. Past ATP festivals have been curated by the likes of Sonic Youth, Pavement, Portishead, Mogwai, the Breeders, Matt Groening, Modest Mouse, the Flaming Lips, and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds; taking the reins at IBYM 2012 is Greg Dulli, leader of the recently reunited Afghan Whigs, who has invited friends and colleagues to participate from all over the musical map. Things get going on Friday with Frank Ocean, Philip Glass and Tyondai Braxton, Janeane Garofalo, Lightning Bolt, Lee Ranaldo’s “Hanging Guitar,” Hannibal Buress, DJ Edan, and Kurt Braunohler. Saturday’s schedule includes the Afghan Whigs, the Roots, José González, the Mark Lanegan Band, Dirty Three, the Antlers, JEFF the Brotherhood, the Dirtbombs, Scrawl, Emeralds, Vetiver, Afterhours, Charles Bradley and the Extraordinaires, Joseph Arthur, and DJ Questlove, while Sunday’s roster consists of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the Make-Up, Hot Snakes, the Magic Band, Autolux, Thee Oh Sees, Lee Ranaldo, the Album Leaf, BRAIDS, Quintron and Miss Pussycat, Tall Firs, Blanck Mass, the Psychic Paramount, Endless Boogie, Demdike Stare, and DJ Jonathan Toubin. In addition, Criterion and Dulli have come up with a great selection of films that will be shown during the weekend, with Quadrophenia on Friday, The Night of the Hunter, Something Wild, The King of Marvin Gardens, and Dazed & Confused on Saturday, and Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me, Paul Fejos’s Lonesome, The Royal Tenenbaums, Eating Raoul, and Harold & Maude on Sunday. Dulli has also recommended a handful of books, some of which will be highlighted on the Lapham’s Quarterly Literary Stage: James Ellroy’s The Black Dahlia, Steve Toltz’s A Fraction of the Whole, Denis Johnson’s Nobody Move, Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love, and Joan Didion’s Play It as It Lays, with Evan Michelson and Mike Zohn of Oddities talking about Geek Love on Saturday and Julie Klausner of How Was Your Week discussing Play It as It Lays on Sunday. To get in the mood, you can check out Dulli’s festival mixtape here.
Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo continues his fascinating exploration of cinematic narrative in In Another Country, although this one turns somewhat nasty and tiresome by the end. After being duped in a bad business deal by a family member, an older woman (Youn Yuh-jung) and her daughter, Wonju (Jung Yumi), move to the small seaside town of Mohjang, where the disenchanted Wonju decides to write a screenplay to deal with her frustration. Based on an actual experience she had, she writes three tales in which a French woman named Anne (each played by an English-speaking Isabelle Huppert) comes to the town for different reasons. In the first section, Anne is a prominent filmmaker invited by Korean director Jungsoo (Kwon Hye-hyo), who has a thing for her even though he is about to become a father with his very suspicious wife, Kumhee (Moon So-ri). In the second story, Anne, a woman married to a wealthy CEO, has come to Mohjang to continue her affair with a well-known director, Munsoo (Moon Sung-keun), who is careful that the two are not seen together in public. And in the final part, Anne, whose husband recently left her for a young Korean woman, has arrived in Mohjang with an older friend (Youn), seeking to rediscover herself. In all three stories, Anne searches for a lighthouse, as if that could shine a light on her future, and meets up with a goofy lifeguard (Yu Jun-sang) who offers the possibility of sex, but each Anne reacts in different ways to his advances. Dialogue and scenes repeat, with slight adjustments made based on the different versions of Anne, investigating character, identity, and desire both in film and in real life. Hong wrote the film specifically for Huppert, who is charming and delightful in the first two sections before turning ugly in the third as Anne suddenly becomes annoying, selfish, and irritating, the plot taking hard-to-believe twists that nearly undermine what has gone on before. As he has done in such previous films as 
Every once in a while, a surprise movie comes along that just blows you away; Tsotsi is that kind of film. Based on the only novel by South African playwright and activist Athol Fugard, Tsotsi is set in the dangerous ghetto world on the outskirts of Johannesburg, where poverty goes hand in hand with violence. Presley Chweneyagae is simply remarkable as Tsotsi (South African for “thug” or “gangster”), the leader of a small group of hoods who pull off petty crimes — until they fatally stab a man on the subway, sending them into a dark and deadly tailspin. When Tsotsi shoots a woman and steals her car, he finds that there’s a baby in the backseat; he considers returning it or leaving it by the side of the road, but he instead brings it home, where he decides to take care of it himself — with the help of beautiful single mother Miriam (Terry Pheto). The baby triggers Tsotsi’s memories of his own horrific childhood, which writer-director Gavin Hood shows in brief but powerful flashbacks. Tsotsi struggles to keep the baby a secret from his cohorts, much the same as he tries to keep his past secret from everyone. But things soon come to a head, and Tsotsi must decide whether to reach inside his conscience — or for his gun. Chweneyagae dominates the screen from the very first moment, his intense stare filled with anger and hate, one of the most frightening you’ll ever see. Fortunately, Hood avoids any moments of sappy sentimentality or overemotional clichés, so you never know what’s going to happen next. The pulsing soundtrack of South African kwaito music comes from “Zola” Bonginkosi Dlamini, who also plays Fela. Reminiscent of such harrowing films about troubled children as Hector Babenco’s Pixote and Fernando Meirelles & Kátia Lund’s City of God, Tsotsi, which won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, is a devastating, unforgettable story that will drive itself deep into your heart and soul. Tsotsi is screening on September 24 as part of the new Signature Cinema series, being shown in conjunction with the Signature Theatre’s New York premiere of Fugard’s 