twi-ny recommended events

54/10 MUSIC MARATHON

Alice Lee, the Henry Millers, and Night Fevers play the Ars Nova 54/10 Music Marathon on August 4

Ars Nova
511 West 54th St. at Tenth Ave.
August 1-11, $5 in advance, 8:00
212-489-9800
arsnovanyc.com/5410

The third annual Ars Nova 54/10 Music Marathon features more than two dozen up-and-coming bands playing the Hell’s Kitchen venue August 1-11, in a mix of genres that should titillate adventurous music lovers. The Lobbyists and Jake Winstrom will get things going on Wednesday night, with the Pete Ayres Band, Roof Access, and Curtis & Reinhard taking the stage August 2 and Hawk and Dove, Kate Kilbane & the Cellar Doors, and the Bengsons scheduled for August 3. Among the other participants are the Henry Millers, Molly & the Class Acts, Lady Moon, Jaggery, and Miko and the Musket. The marathon comes to a close August 11 with the Weight Boys Band, Pigpen Theatre Co., and Die Roten Punkte. The above website includes a bio and sample song from each performer, revealing the diverse array of sounds, from country, bluegrass, indie and experimental pop, and retro Tin Pan Alley to jazz, folk, New Age, and techno. Advance tickets are only five bucks; the price goes up to $10 online and $15 at the door starting August 1.

SHUT UP AND PLAY THE HITS

James Murphy says farewell to LCD Soundsystem in multifaceted concert documentary

SHUT UP AND PLAY THE HITS (Dylan Southern & Will Lovelace, 2011)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at Third St.
July 27 – August 2
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.shutupandplaythehits.com

On April 2, 2011, after ten years of building a devoted following that was still growing, electronic dance-punk faves LCD Soundsystem played its farewell show at Madison Square Garden. Directors Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace, who previously documented the British band Blur in No Distance Left to Run, capture the grand finale in the often bumpy, sometimes revelatory concert film Shut Up and Play the Hits. The movie is divided into three distinct sections that take place before, during, and after the massive blowout, with Southern and Lovelace weaving between them. There is extensive footage of the event at the Garden, including performances of such LCD classics as “Dance Yrself Clean,” “All My Friends,” “Us v Them,” “North American Scum,” and “Losing My Edge.” Although the multicamera approach tries to make you feel like you’re there, onstage and backstage with front man Murphy, keyboardist Nancy Whang, bassist Tyler Pope, drummer Pat Mahoney, and various special guests, it lacks a certain emotional depth, and the sound, primarily during the first songs, is terrible, although that could have been the fault of the tiny theater at the IFC Center more than the film itself. The second section features music journalist Chuck Klosterman (Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto) interviewing Murphy at the Spotted Pig in the West Village a week before the concert, asking inane, annoying questions that Murphy strains to answer. But the most fascinating part of the film by far, and how it starts, involves Murphy the day after the show. He allows the camera to follow him everywhere, from waking up in his bed with his dog to carefully shaving with an electric razor to visiting the DFA offices for the first time in a year. It’s hard to believe that the night before he was a grandiose rock star but now he is walking his pooch, sitting on a bench in front of a coffee shop, and spending most of the day alone. The camera literally gets right into his face, showing every gray hair, zooming in on his puffiness and his deep-set, nearly dazed eyes. The film would have benefited from less time with Klosterman and more with Murphy as he contemplates his past, present, and future. It also would have been interesting to hear from the other members of the band, but Shut Up and Play the Hits is specifically about Murphy, who, at forty-one, suddenly doesn’t know what to do with his life, having left an extremely successful gig that was only gaining popularity.

CHIN CHIH YANG: KILL ME OR CHANGE

Chin Chih Yang’s “Kill Me or Change” will feature thirty thousand aluminum cans dropped on the artist in front of the Queens Museum

Queens Museum of Art
New York City Building, Flushing Meadows Corona Park
Saturday, July 28, and Sunday, July 29, free, 2:00
718-592-9700
www.queensmuseum.org

On Saturday and Sunday, Taiwanese artist Chin Chih Yang will bury himself under a barrage of thirty thousand aluminum cans, making a statement about art, the environment, recycling, and overconsumption. The longtime New Yorker will present “Kill Me or Change” in front of the Queens Museum in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, a follow-up to his 2007 installation in Union Square Park, “123PollutionSolution,” in which he collected thirty-five thousand cans and ten thousand MetroCards and placed them in a rectangular arrangement on the ground. While you’re at the museum, you should go inside as well, where a five-dollar suggested donation will let you see such special exhibits as “Ada Bobonis: Stages, Mountains, Water” and “Caribbean: Crossroads of the World” and such long-term shows as “A Watershed Moment: Celebrating the Homecoming of the Relief Map of the New York City Water Supply System” and the spectacular “Panorama of the City of New York.”

CATALPA VIDEO OF THE DAY: “GOODBYE SERENADE” BY THE REBEL LIGHT

Brothers Alan and Jarrett Steil, who grew up in Montauk and previously teamed up to form the duo Suddyn, have recruited drummer Brandon Cooke for the trio the Rebel Light. As the band prepares its debut EP, you can check out three groovy new anthemic indie tunes, “Wake Up Your Mind,” “My Heroes Are Dead,” and “Goodbye Serenade.” The Rebel Light will kick things off Saturday on the Second Stage at the Catalpa Festival on Randall’s Island, on a bill with the Sheepdogs, Zola Jesus, Hercules and Love Affair, TV on the Radio, the Black Keys, and others. To find out more about Catalpa, read our interview with the festival’s founder, Dave Foran, here.

SEE IT BIG! TO CATCH A THIEF

Cary Grant and Grace Kelly turn up the glamor quotient in Hitchcock thriller set on the French Riviera

TO CATCH A THIEF (Alfred Hitchcock, 1955)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Saturday, July 28, and Sunday, July 29, free with museum admission, 3:00
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us

Is he or isn’t he? In Alfred Hitchcock’s glamorous thriller set on the French Riviera, Cary Grant stars as John Robie, a famous burglar known as the Cat who has supposedly retired but is suddenly believed to be responsible for a rash of new jewelry thefts. Determined to prove his innocence and catch the real thief, he enlists the help of Lloyd’s of London insurance agent H. H. Hughson (John Williams), who supplies him with a list of women on the Riviera who have expensive baubles ripe for the taking. At the top of the list are the Americans Jessie Stevens (Jessie Royce Landis) and her gorgeous daughter, Francie (a radiant Grace Kelly), who teases Robie, hinting that she might in fact be the Cat — if he isn’t. As Robie avoids the cops and looks to his old friends in the French Resistance for further help, the tension heats up, leading to a climax that takes place on the rooftops of the French Riviera. Grant’s third of four outings with Hitchcock and Kelly’s third and final turn with the suspense master is an exciting “who’s doing it” featuring the dream pairing of two of Hollywood’s most beautiful and talented superstars, filled with just the right amount of comedy and romance in a glorious setting. Look for Alfie to make his appearance early on, causing Grant to do a double take in the back of a bus. To Catch a Thief is screening July 28 & 29 in a new DCP restoration at the Museum of the Moving Image as part of the institution’s continuing See It Big! series.

NEWFEST

Swedish romance KISS ME is part of NewFest at Lincoln Center

NY’S PREMIER LGBT FILM FESTIVAL
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
July 27-31, $12-$50
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com
newfest.org/wordpress

The twenty-fourth annual NewFest gets under way today at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, kicking off five days of screenings examining and celebrating the LGBT community. The opening-night selection is Brooklyn-based director Joshua Sanchez’s Four, about four people, including a young white man (Emory Cohen) and an older black man (Wendell Pierce) who meet online, faced with some hard personal choices; members of the cast and crew will attend the screening, which will be followed by an after-party. Other highlights include Andrea Esteban’s Born Naked (MLB), about a young lesbian couple traveling through Europe; Travis Mathews’s I Want Your Love, a graphic look at a man and his ex-boyfriend in San Francisco; Thom Fitzgerald’s Cloudburst, in which Olympia Dukakis and Brenda Fricker play a longtime lesbian couple; Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’s About Face: Supermodels Then and Now, with Carol Alt and Pat Cleveland joining the famed photographer for a Q&A; Kieran Turner’s Jobriath A.D., a documentary about the first openly gay rocker; and the closing-night film, Marialys Rivas’s Young & Wild, which follows a teenager’s sexual coming-of-age. Other docs look at such figures as Joe Brainard, Arthur Russell, and Bishop Gene Robinson. Special events include “Careers in Focus: A Conversation with Charles Busch,” with free tickets available here

AI WEIWEI: NEVER SORRY

Ai Weiwei lets the camera follow him everywhere in revealing documentary about art and activism

AI WEIWEI: NEVER SORRY (Alison Klayman, 2011)
IFC Center, 323 Sixth Ave. at Third St., 212-924-7771
Lincoln Plaza Cinema, 1886 Broadway at 63rd St., 212-757-2280
Opens Friday, July 27
aiweiweineversorry.com

“I consider myself more of a chess player,” Ai Weiwei says at the beginning of Never Sorry, Alison Klayman’s revealing documentary about the larger-than-life Chinese artist and dissident. “My opponent makes a move, I make a move. Now I’m waiting for my opponent to make the next move.” Over the last several years, Ai has become perhaps the most famous and controversial artist in the world, primarily since he participated in the design of Beijing National Stadium, known as the Bird’s Nest, for the 2008 Summer Olympics, then denounced the Games on political grounds. Ai gives director, producer, and cinematographer Klayman, making her first full-length film, remarkable access to his personal and professional life as he gets physically abused by Chinese police, prepares to open major exhibits in Munich and London, and visits with his young son, Ai Lao, the result of a tryst with Wang Fen, an editor on his underground films. Klayman speaks with Ai Weiwei’s devoted wife, Lu Qing, an artist who publicly fought for his freedom when he disappeared in 2011; his mother, Gao Ying, who spent time in a labor camp with her dissident-poet husband, the late Ai Quing; and such fellow Chinese artists and critics as Chen Danqing, Feng Boyi, Hsieh Tehching, and Gu Changwei, who speak admiringly of Ai’s dedication to his art and his fearless search for the truth. A round man with a long, graying bear, Ai is a fascinating, complicated character, a gentle bull who openly criticizes his country because he loves it so much. He is a social media giant, making documentaries that are available for free on the internet and revolutionizing the way Twitter and the blogosphere are used. Ai risks his own freedom by demanding freedom for all, calling for government transparency before and after he is secretly arrested, not afraid of the potential repercussions. And he is also a proud cat lover — more than forty felines regularly roam around his studio — eagerly showing off one talented kitty that has a unique way of opening a door. Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry shows Ai to be an honorable, supremely principled human being who has deep respect for the history of China and a fierce determination to improve its future, no matter the personal cost. Klayman will be on hand at the IFC Center for half a dozen screenings opening weekend, July 27-29, to talk about the film and her extraordinary subject. (To find out more about Ai Weiwei’s art, specifically his recent projects in New York City, please follow these links: “Sunflower Seeds,” “Circle of Animals: Zodiac Heads,” “Ai Weiwei: New York Photographs 1983-1993,” and “1001 Chairs for Ai Weiwei.”