twi-ny recommended events

NORWEGIAN WOOD

Naoko (Rinko Kikuchi) and Watanabe (Ken'ichi Matsuyama) search for love in NORWEGIAN WOOD

NORWEGIAN WOOD (NORUWEI NO MORI) (Tran Anh Hung, 2010)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Thursday, January 12, $16, 8:00
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.norwegianwoodmovie.com

First it took a long time for French-Vietnamese writer-director Tran Anh Hung (Ths Scent of Green Papaya) to convince Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami to let him adapt his 1987 novel, Norwegian Wood — Tran had been interested in turning the book into a movie ever since he first read it in 1994, but Murakami notoriously does not allow his novels to become films — and then, once the film was made and played at prestigious festivals in Venice, Toronto, and Dubai, still took more than a year to find a U.S. distributor. Currently running at the IFC Center, Norwegian Wood is a moving, faithful adaptation of Murakami’s elegiac novel about unrequited love, romantic communication, and death. After his best friend, Kizuki (Kengo Kora), commits suicide, Watanabe (Death Note’s Ken’ichi Matsuyama) and Kizuki’s girlfriend, Naoko (Babel’s Rinko Kikuchi), who previously were part of an inseparable trio with Kizuki, go their separate ways. After a short time, they meet up accidentally in Tokyo, where Watanabe is attending university and Naoko is trying to get over her loss. But an event on her twentieth birthday causes Naoko to take off again, this time seeking professional help at a sanitarium. Watanabe can’t stop thinking about Naoko, jeopardizing a possible relationship with the aggressive, sexually open Midori (Kiko Mizuhara), who already has a boyfriend but is extremely interested in Watanabe. Meanwhile, Watanabe disapproves of how his friend Nagasawa (Tetsuji Tamayama) continually cheats on his girlfriend, Hatsumi (Eriko Hatsune), who is devoted to him. With the student riots of the late 1960s swirling around them, Watanabe, Naoko, Midori, Nagasawa, Hatsumi, and Naoko’s roommate, Reiko (Reika Kirishima), take long, hard looks at what they want out of life and love, and they don’t always like what they find. Beautifully shot by Mark Lee Ping Bin (In the Mood for Love) and featuring a subtle score by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood (There Will Be Blood), Norwegian Wood is a slow-paced, psychologically intense drama. Watanabe and Naoko are often shown walking amid vast natural landscapes of green forests and snow-covered mountains, but they are tied up tight within themselves, trapped in their own memories. The carefully composed sex scenes give depth and intelligence to the main characters without overplaying their emotions. The story itself might be relatively slight — it lacks the range of Murakami’s later books — but Tran has done a fine job bringing it to the screen.

PAULA HAYES: LAND MIND

Paula Hayes’s “Land Mind” provides a beautiful oasis in Midtown Manhattan (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Lever House
390 Park Ave. at 54th St.
Through January 27
Admission: free
www.leverhouseartcollection.com
www.paulahayes.com
land mind slideshow

Last winter, New York-based environmental artist and landscape designer Paula Hayes installed “Nocturne of the Limax maximus” in MoMA’s lobby, a pair of terrariums — the horizontal, biomorphic “Slug” and the vertical “Egg” — that brought colorful life to the space. This winter the Massachusetts-born Hayes, who was raised on a farm in upstate New York, has done the same in the Lever House lobby gallery just a few blocks east of MoMA with “Land Mind.” On view through January 27 in the large, glassed-in lobby, “Land Mind” consists of cast silicone and EPDM rubber planters, some in the shape of dumplings, that hold tropical trees and plants; “Slug,” which is filled with succulents; and “Aquarium,” a gorgeous 240-gallon, nearly six-foot-high cast acrylic saltwater tank that is home to such fish as Bartlett’s Anthias, Black Ocellaris Clownfish, Green Chromis, Sixline Wrasse, and Yellow Coris Wrasse, such invertebrates as Blood Red Shrimp, Cleaner Shrimp, Blue Linchia Starfish, and Banded Serpent Starfish, and such corals as Neon Green Toadstool Leather Coral, Yellow Leather Coral, and Rose Bubble Tip Anemone, surrounded by a beaded “Garden Necklace” and with a “Lighting Hood” dangling above it. Hayes has installed the ecosystem so that the working parts that keep pumping clean, fresh water and shining lights into the aquarium are visible, emphasizing the living aspects of the piece while making clear how its survival requires mechanical intervention, a delicate balance between nature and humans. “Land Mind” is an oasis in Midtown Manhattan, a charming, beautiful respite that will make you forget about the concrete and asphalt madness around you. And Lever House is the perfect place for it, as the glass building is somewhat of a terrarium itself, just filled with people instead of plants and aquatic creatures.

VIDEO OF THE DAY — STEVE EARLE: NPR MUSIC TINY DESK CONCERT

STEVE EARLE & ALLISON MOORER RESIDENCY
City Winery
155 Varick St. at Vandam St.
Monday nights through February 6, $45-$65
212-608-0555
www.citywinery.com
www.steveearle.com

The always charming Steve Earle and his wife, Allison Moorer, continue their Monday-night residence at City Winery through February 6, joined on January 16 by Charlie Mars, January 23 by Mike Doughty, January 30 by the Mastersons, and February 6 by the Dust. Earle had a strong 2011, releasing the Grammy-nominated I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive (New West, April 2011) in addition to a same-titled novel (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, May 2011) and appearing in the second season of the HBO series Treme. We’ve seen Earle many times over the years, solo, with a band, and with special guests, and he always puts on a helluva show, filled with fun stage patter and both serious and wild and crazy songs.

MLK DAY 2012

MLK Day features a host of special events and community-based service projects throughout the city (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Multiple venues
Monday, January 16
www.mlkday.gov

In 1983, the third Monday in January was officially recognized as Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, honoring the birthday of the civil rights leader who was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968. Dr. King would have turned eighty-three today, and you can celebrate his legacy tomorrow by participating in a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service project or attending one of several special events taking place around the city. BAM’s twenty-sixth annual free Tribute to MLK includes a keynote speech by education chancellor Denis M. Walcott, the community art exhibition “Picture the Dream,” a musical performance by Toshi Reagon and BIGLovely and the Institutional Radio Choir C.O.G.I.C. of Brooklyn, and a screening of the stirring documentary The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975. The JCC in Manhattan will be holding a blood drive and a food-service project during the day, then team up with Symphony Space for “Moving Ideas: A Conversation Between Choreographers Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and Liz Lerman,” including excerpts from Zollar’s Give Your Hands to Struggle and Lerman’s The Matter of Origins, which were both partially inspired by Dr. King and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel; a concert by Daniel Kahn and the Painted Bird; Zalmen Mlotek’s “Soul to Soul: A Celebration of African-American and Jewish Song” with Elmore James, Tony Perry, and Cantor Magda Fishman; and a screening of Nick Parker and Jazmin Jones’s documentary The Apollos. The Museum of the Moving Image will be honoring King with a screening of Michael Roemer’s seminal Nothing But a Man, in which Ivan Dixon and Abbey Lincoln play a young couple battling racism in 1960s Alabama. The Children’s Museum of Manhattan will teach kids about King’s legacy with its “Make a Difference Pledge” and performances by the Harlem Gospel Choir, while the Brooklyn Children’s Museum has “Let’s Join Hands,” a “Historical Snapshot” talk with civil rights activist Yolanda Clarke, and a living legacy collage and hand wreath workshop. And Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola is hosting Jazz at Lincoln Center’s annual “Dr. Martin Luther King Celebration” with the Warren Wolf Quintet, with Tim Green, Christian Sands, Kriss Funn, and Billy Williams.

COIL: UNTITLED FEMINIST SHOW

The cast of UNTITLED FEMINIST SHOW takes it all off at the 2012 Coil festival (photo by Blaine Davis)

Baryshnikov Arts Center, Jerome Robbins Theater
450 West 37th St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Extended through February 4, $25
www.bacnyc.org
www.ps122.org

Commissioned by the Walker Art Center for its “Out There 2012: Global Visionaries” series, Young Jean Lee’s Untitled Feminist Show is indeed way out there. The Brooklyn-based Guggenheim Fellow and OBIE winner, who begins each new project by searching inside herself for the worst idea possible, this time came up with a sixty-minute production in which six women from different performing-arts disciplines blow the lid off gender expectations by singing and dancing completely naked — no clothes, no pasties, no makeup, and no specific hair styling. Actress Becca Blackwell, burlesque legend the World Famous *BOB*, cabaret comedienne Amelia Zirin-Brown (Lady Rizo), dancers Hilary Clark and Regina Rocke, and performance artist Katy Pyle engage in a series of events on a white floor surrounded on three sides by black curtains, a horizontal white monolith dangling above them on which occasional video images are projected. The women, who feature a wide range of body types and sizes, several of which audiences are not used to seeing nude onstage, act out a fairy tale, twirl about with pink umbrellas, get into a slow-motion fight, enjoy a little cannibalism, sing wordless songs, pantomime sex acts, rock out to hard-driving heavy metal, and dance a lovely pas de deux. But Untitled Feminist Show, choreographed by Faye Driscoll, Morgan Gould, and Lee with the participation of the performers, is not a mere celebration of womanhood, an angry show about female empowerment, an examination of contemporary sexual mores, or a political statement about gender identity; instead it is a hugely entertaining, extremely intelligent, and downright energizing tribute to individuality and the freedom to be who you are. Part of the Coil festival, Untitled Feminist Show is likely to be one of the most exciting, engaging, and liberating productions you’ll see all year — and if you’ve been shut out of getting tickets so far to this sizzling-hot event, you’re in luck, because the show has just been extended through February 4, with tickets going on sale today.

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO

Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara team up in English-language remake of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (David Fincher, 2011)
Now in theaters
www.dragontattoo.com

David Fincher knows how to make movies. The director of such standout films as Fight Club, Zodiac, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and The Social Network has scored another critical and popular success with the hotly anticipated English-language remake of Swedish author Stieg Larsson’s 2005 posthumously published runaway bestseller, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. And “remake” is the key word, as Fincher’s film, adapted by Steven Zaillian (Schindler’s List, American Gangster), feels like it was based more on Niels Arden Oplev’s 2009 Swedish version than the book itself, but no matter, it’s still a highly entertaining, if overly long, thriller with elements all its own. Daniel Craig stars as Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist who loses a high-profile case, accused of slandering a powerful businessman. Blomkvist is hired by wealthy patriarch Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer), who believes Blomkvist was right, to search through the dysfunctional Vanger clan and find out who murdered young Harriet forty years earlier. Blomkvist is soon joined by investigator Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), a ward of the state who is being horrifically abused by her new guardian (Yorick van Wageningen), as they combine cutting-edge technology with old-fashioned detective legwork to get to the bottom of the mystery. Craig plays Blomkvist with a stark vulnerability, letting Mara drive the film with her quiet, unassuming power that’s ready to explode at any moment — and when it does, well, watch out. The soundtrack, by Trent Reznor (look for the Nine Inch Nails T-shirt in the movie) and Atticus Ross, who also composed the score for The Social Network, opens with a cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song,” sung by Karen O, that is played over a bizarre title sequence that looks like it was meant for the next James Bond adventure. The first of Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is an exciting psychological drama that sets the stage for the follow-ups, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, with Craig and Mara reprising their roles.

CRACKER / CAMPER VAN BEETHOVEN

Johnny Hickman and David Lowery are set to have another blast at Cracker / Camper Van Beethoven show at the Highline Ballroom (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Highline Ballroom
431 West 16th St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Saturday, January 14, $22-$25, 7:00
212-414-5994
www.myspace.com/crackerhatesmyspace
www.highlineballroom.com

In what has become a very welcome annual event, David Lowery will be doing double duty on January 14 as he brings both Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven to the Highline Ballroom. The evening generally begins with a rousing look back at the history of seminal indie rockers CVB, dominated by Lowery’s politically tinged lyrics and Jonathan Segel’s virtuosic violin playing. Expect such favorites as “Take the Skinheads Bowling,” “Eye of Fatima,” and “Joe Stalin’s Cadillac,” along with some cool covers, including the Status Quo’s “Pictures of Matchstick Men,” which was an MTV hit for CVB more than twenty years ago. Then Lowery switches gears for the more amiable, freewheeling Cracker, the Virginia-based band that has scored such hits as “Teen Angst,” “Low,” “Get Off This,” “Turn on Tune in Drop Out with Me,” and one of the great live songs of all time, “Euro-Trash Girl.” Lowery will tell some funny stories, guitarist and cofounder Johnny Hickman will look resplendent, and then the two groups will jam out on an interstellar finale. Nothing but good times, guaranteed.