twi-ny recommended events

SCI-FI THANKSGIVING: SOLARIS

Chris Kelvin (Donatus Banionis) knows something is not quite right in Russian sci-fi classic

BAMcinématek
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Sunday, November 27, $12, 2:00, 5:30, 9:00
212-415-5500
www.bam.org
www.kino.com

Natalya Bondarchuk and Donatus Banionis star in Solaris, the Russian 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which something strange is going on in outer space that is unexplainable to both the characters in the film and the people in the audience. Banionis plays Chris Kelvin, who is sent to the Solaris space station to decide whether to put an end to the solaristics project that Burton (Vladislav Dvorzhetsky) complicated twenty years before. What he discovers is one death, two possibly insane men, and his supposedly dead wife (Bondarchuk). Ambiguity reigns supreme in this gorgeously shot (in color and black and white by cinematographer Vadim Yusov) and scored (by Eduard Artemyev) film that, while technically science fiction, is really about the human conscience, another gem from master Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky (Ivan’s Childhood, Andrei Rublev, Nostalghia). See it whether or not you checked out Steven Soderbergh’s underrated remake with George Clooney and Natascha McElhone. Solaris is screening on November 27 as part of BAMcinématek’s “Sci-Fi Thanksgiving” series, which previously showed, appropriately enough, Stanley Kubrick’s classic 2001: A Space Odyssey.

WEEKEND CLASSICS — AKI KAURISMÄKI: THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST

THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST is part of Kaurismäki series at IFC Center

THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST (Aki Kaurismäki, 2002)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Sunday, November 27, $13, 11:00 am
Series continues through December 18
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.sonyclassics.com

Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki’s touching, funny, dark, satiric The Man Without a Past deservedly won the 2002 Grand Jury Prize at Cannes. In the brutal opening, an unidentified character gets severely beaten and dies, then wakes up with amnesia. M (Markku Peltola) is soon taken in by a desperately poor family who lives in a shack they call a container. He meets Irma (Kati Outinen, in a small role that won her Best Actress at Cannes), and their potential romance is both sweet and absurd. Kaurismäki wrote, produced, and directed this splendid example of the offbeat nature of his work, which is always intelligent, challenging, and rewarding. It is screening at the IFC Center in conjunction with the recent theatrical release of Le Havre as part of the ongoing Weekend Classics series, which will keep showing Kaurismäki gems through December 18.

SHEN WEI DANCE ARTS AT THE PARK AVENUE ARMORY

RITE OF SPRING kicks off Shen Wei triptych at the Park Avenue Armory (photo by Stephanie Berger)

Park Avenue Armory
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
November 29 – December 4, $35, 7:30
212-933-5812
www.armoryonpark.org
www.shenweidancearts.org

Since its founding ten years ago, Shen Wei Dance Arts has been touring around the world, in traditional venues as well as unique indoor and outdoor locations. Based in New York City, SWDA has performed at the Joyce and the Lincoln Center Festival while also staging site-specific pieces for Judson Memorial Church, the Guggenheim Rotunda, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Engelhard Court, and, last fall, a two-day marathon of Re-(Part III) in Duffy Square, Grand Central Terminal, several parks, outside the New York Public Library, at Columbia, and in the 42nd St. subway station. This week they return to the Park Avenue Armory, where in 2009 artistic director Shen Wei created Behind Resonance, an exciting, involving work set in and around Ernesto Neto’s massive “Anthropodino” sculptural installation. As part of its tenth anniversary celebration, SWDA will perform 2003’s Rite of Spring (with music by Igor Stravinsky), 2000’s Folding (set to music by John Tavener along with Tibetan Buddhist chants), and the new site-specific multimedia commission Undivided Divided (scored by Sō Percussion), created specifically for the armory’s Wade Thompson Drill Hall. All choreography is by Shen Wei and lighting by Jennifer Tipton, with ten lead dancers (Cecily Campbell, Sarah Lisette Chiesa, Evan Copeland, Andrew Cowan, James Healey, Kate Jewett, Cynthia Koppe, Sara Procopio, Joan Wadopian, and Brandon Whited) and nearly two dozen additional dancers (including Shen Wei). Shen Wei favors slow, precise movement and elegant nudity, resulting in intoxicating works that lure you in with their sheer beauty. She Wei’s performances are the first of a triple play of dance at the Park Avenue Armory, followed December 14-22 by STREB’s Kiss the Air and concluding December 29-31 with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s grand finale, a series of site-specific Events that will mark the last performances ever by the noted company.

FOLDING brings origami to life in elegant dance (photo by Stephanie Berger)

Update: As he did with Behind Resonance two years ago, New York City-based dancer-choreographer Shen Wei again turns the Park Avenue Armory’s massive Wade Thompson Drill Hall into an intimate gathering that celebrates his unique movement language, presenting two repertory works and a new site-specific piece as part of Shen Wei Dance Arts’ tenth anniversary. The evening begins with a restaging of 2003’s Rite of Spring, set to Fazil Say’s version of Stravinsky’s 1913 ballet, in which as many as sixteen dancers make their way in and around a crooked chalked grid, running to the edges, moving in formation, pausing for long moments of inactivity, and rolling on the floor, their black and gray costumes streaked with white. That is followed by 2000’s Folding, in which the dancers first appear in long red skirts and odd head extensions (evoking Robert Wilson and Matthew Barney), gliding slowly across a white reflective surface, soon evolving into duets with the performers in black, their powdered bodies folding into each other, leading to a finale that recalls, of all things, Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

UNDIVIDED DIVIDED is sure to get the audience’s undivided attention (photo by Stephanie Berger)

After a thirty-minute intermission in which the audience must leave the drill hall, everyone returns for the grand finale, the specially commissioned Undivided Divided, a whirlwind tour-de-force featuring thirty topless male and female dancers situated throughout the space, rolling around in paint on a long canvas, throwing themselves against the walls of a plexiglass box, climbing atop and inside a set of plastic cubes, performing intimate duets confined to a small rectangular area, amid other unique and unusual set-ups enhanced by visual projections on the floor. The audience can remain in their seats but are encouraged to remove their shoes and walk up and down pathways that allow them to come face-to-face with the dancers as they writhe about, some making eye contact, others lost in fantasy, like living sculptures in a museum. Undivided Divided is an exhilarating experience, seemingly for the dancers as much as for the crowd, an exuberant display of physicality that goes beyond mere sexuality and voyeurism, offering an energizing and thrillingly different relationship between audience and performer.

SUNSHINE AT MIDNIGHT: THE BIG LEBOWSKI

The Dude will abide at Landmark Sunshine midnight screening

THE BIG LEBOWSKI (Joel & Ethan Coen, 1998)
Landmark Sunshine Cinema
143 East Houston St. between First & Second Aves.
Saturday, November 26, 12 midnight
212-330-8182
www.landmarktheatres.com

One of the ultimate cult classics and the best bowling movie ever, the Coen brothers’ The Big Lebowski has built up such a following since its 1998 release that fans now gather every year for Lebowski Fest, where they honor all things Dude. In this intricately weaved gem, Jeff Bridges is awesome as the Dude, a laid-back cool cat who gets sucked into a noirish plot of jealousy, murder, money, mistaken identity, and messy carpets. Julianne Moore is excellent as free spirit Maude, Tara Reid struts her stuff as Bunny, and Peter Stormare, Flea, and Torsten Voges are a riot as a trio of nihilists. Also on hand are Philip Seymour Hoffman, David Huddleston, Aimee Mann, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, David Thewlis, Sam Elliott, Ben Gazzara, Jon Polito, and other crazy characters, but the film really belongs to the Dude and his fellow bowlers Jesus Quintana (John Turturro, who is so dirty he is completely cut out of the television version), Donny (Steve Buscemi), and Walter (John Goodman), who refuses to roll on Shabbos. And through it all, one thing always holds true: The Dude abides.

CARSTEN HÖLLER: EXPERIENCE

The line for the slide can wrap completely around the carousel at New Museum’s Carsten Höller retrospective (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

New Museum of Contemporary Art
235 Bowery at Prince St.
Wednesday – Sunday through January 15, $12-$16 (free Thursdays 7:00 – 9:00 pm)
212-219-1222
www.newmuseum.org
experience slideshow

Just because Carsten Höller’s first-ever New York City retrospective, “Experience,” includes the optional “Upside-Down Goggles,” an optical device that flips everything you see, doesn’t mean the German artist is trying to turn the art world upside down. A former scientist who was born in Brussels and lives and works in Stockholm, Höller has transformed the New Museum into a laboratory / amusement park, complete with merry-go-round, slide, aviary, and wave pool, each with a sly twist. Examining doubt and duality, disorientation and displacement, confusion and confrontation, and, perhaps most critically, perception and participation, Höller has created a mind-bending interactive, experimental journey that requires viewer involvement in order to be successful. If you’re just interested in looking at weird things, then this show might not be quite what you expect. “Höller has provided stimulus to erotic encounters and to hallucinatory or intoxicating experiments,” Lynne Cooke writes in “Amanita Blue,” her essay in the exhibition catalog. “Bliss, ecstasy, and transport are equally subject to his curiosity and appreciation, and, ultimately, come to seem less altruistic than necessary.” Gary Carrion-Murayari puts it even more succinctly in his catalog contribution, “Entertainment”: “Carsten Höller creates works that can provide joy or terror in equal measure,” while in “Panic” Massimiliano Gioni explains, “Carsten Höller’s work brings on attacks of the heebie-jeebies and moments of panic.” But don’t worry; there’s really no need to be frightened of Höller. “Experience” turns out to be a helluva lot of fun.

Slide zooms past “Psycho Tank” at interactive exhibit at New Museum (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The survey begins just past the lobby with “Giant Triple Mushrooms,” a series of colorful large-scale fungi that reference both Alice in Wonderland as well as psychedelic shrooms, especially since some of them have already had bites taken out of them, hinting toward an oncoming acid trip. You’ll want to continue your journey on the fourth floor, where you might have to wait as long as an hour and a half to go through “Untitled (Slide),” a stainless-steel pneumatic tube that will send you twisting down to the second floor. While waiting on line, take an excruciatingly slow spin on “Mirror Carousel,” a horseless merry-go-round with swings as seats, Höller toying with your expectations since swings usually rise up high and carousels generally move significantly faster. You can also pick up one of the three phones on the wall and make a long-distance call, which will be reused as an answering-machine message as part of “What Is Love, Art, Money?,” and listen to the live birds flitting around in cages dangling from above in “Singing Canaries Mobile.” Stop off in the Shaft Project Space on the stairs between the third and fourth floors for a cup of water and a gelatin capsule from “Pill Clock” as you make your way to “Giant Psycho Tank,” a calming, meditative sensory deprivation tank in which you float on a few inches of heavily salted water and let the slight current carry you away. If you didn’t bring a bathing suit, you’ll have to go in naked, and if you’re extremely shy, you should know that your privacy is not completely guaranteed, despite the presence of a security guard monitoring the proceedings. When we sat down on the bench in the back of the pool, we could clearly see two guys outside staring in at us, and later, while we were floating so beautifully, the woman on line after us started talking to us from the doorway, not seeming to mind that we were in nothing but our birthday suit. “Psycho Tank” was originally meant for more people at one time, but the Board of Health said no; in other countries, as many as six can join in together, so just shed your American Puritan inhibitions and let it all hang out. Also be on the lookout for the two-monitor video “One Minute of Doubt,” the funhouse-mirror-like “Infrared Room,” videos in each elevator, “Aquarium” (in which you lie down and place your head inside a viewing tank), and other works that make “Experience” as entertaining and involving an experience as you want it to be.

THE CONTENDERS 2011: MIDNIGHT IN PARIS

Writer Gil Pender (Owen Wilson) waits to mingle with the Lost Generation in Woody Allen’s MIDNIGHT IN PARIS

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS (Woody Allen, 2011)
MoMA Film
Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Sunday, November 27, 2:00
Series runs through January 26
Tickets: $10, 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
www.sonyclassics.com/midnightinparis

In 1979, Woody Allen and master cinematographer Gordon Willis made love to New York City architecture in gorgeous black and white in the stunning opening section of Manhattan set to George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” Allen’s latest, Midnight in Paris, begins with Allen and cinematographer Darius Khondji getting intimate with the City of Light in lush color, scanning familiar Parisian landmarks to Cole Porter’s “Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love.” In this beautifully shot love letter to Paris, Owen Wilson stars as Gil Pender, a Hollywood hack screenwriter working on his first novel, about a nostalgia dealer. He and his fiancée, Inez (Rachel McAdams), are vacationing in Paris with her parents, the wealthy, ultraconservative John (Kurt Fuller) and Helen (Mimi Kennedy), who think their daughter can do much better. Gil and Inez bump into their friends Carol (Nina Arianda) and Paul (Michael Sheen), the latter a pedantic know-it-all who begins many an observation with “If I’m not mistaken” and whom Gil can’t stand. Gil is hoping Paris will get his creative juices flowing, and that’s exactly what happens late one evening when he is walking the streets alone at midnight and is invited into an old-fashioned car and taken to what appears to be a throwback party — until he meets F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston and Alison Pill), Cole Porter (Yves Heck), Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll), and fashion designer and Picasso muse Adriana (Marion Cotillard). Suddenly he feels more at ease in the swinging ’20s than the 2010s, heading out each night to the same spot, hoping to hang out more with the Fitzgeralds, Hemingway, Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), Picasso (Marcial Di Fonzo), and, most importantly, Adriana. Nostalgia for the past and the promise of the future collide as Gil searches deep inside himself, trying to discover just what it is that he wants and needs out of life. Combining elements of such previous films as The Purple Rose of Cairo, Alice, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex*, and Everyone Says I Love You with a rather standard Twilight Zone-esque setup and a nod to his mid-’60s Lost Generation joke — in which he hangs out with Hemingway, the Fitzgeralds, Picasso, and Stein talking about art and literature, with a series of punch lines involving Allen getting punched in the mouth — Midnight in Paris is a charming, if at times overwrought and just plain silly, romantic fantasy that evokes Allen’s own fondness for nostalgia and the past. As more and more famous artists keep showing up, it gets more than a tad ridiculous, although it is also kinda fun. Midnight in Paris, which opened the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, follows four Allen films set in London (Match Point, Scoop, Cassandra’s Dream, and You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger), one in Barcelona (Vicky Christina Barcelona), and only one in New York (Whatever Works) as Allen continues to travel the world after experiencing a dwindling audience and scandal back home. Wilson is excellent as the nostalgic writer, playing him with an edgy uncomfortablilty that makes him endearing, and Cotillard is sexy and alluring as the quintessential artistic muse. And in an inspired bit of casting, French first lady Carla Bruni plays a tour guide who butts heads with the smarmy Paul when discussing Rodin’s “The Thinker.”

Midnight in Paris is screening November 27 at the Museum of Modern Art as part of MoMA’s “The Contenders 2011” series, which focuses on either underlooked films and/or those that MoMA believes will stand the test of time. The series continues through January 26 with such works as Alexander Payne’s The Descendants (followed by a discussion with the director), David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method, and Rupert Wyatt’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

GRAND CENTRAL HOLIDAY TRAIN SHOW

Grand Central Holiday Train Show is back for its tenth year (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

New York Transit Museum Gallery Annex
Grand Central Terminal Shuttle Passage
Shuttle Passage next to the Station Masters’ Office
Open daily through January 16, free, 8:00/10:00 am – 6:00/7:00/8:00 pm
Admission: free
718-694-1600
www.mta.info
www.grandcentralterminal.com

The Transit Museum’s tenth annual holiday train show in Grand Central is, as always, a sheer delight. Created by Lionel and TW Design, the display features such city monuments as the Empire State Building (complete with King Kong), Philip Johnson’s AT&T/Sony building, and Grand Central itself, surrounded by a gaggle of little shops. The streets around the buildings and the lighted Christmas tree are filled with shoppers, cabs, policemen, buses, and commuters, all preparing for the holiday season. There’s also some cool track work going on, as well as a special dockside delivery. As a sign of the times, there’s also an Emergency Rescue Unit red train. At the back of the display, Santa and his reindeer fly over a snow-covered mountain as the North Pole Central roars on. Finally, along the walls, the museum has reached into its permanent collection, pulling out such classic gems as the 1928 Pocahontas, the 1938 Broadway Limited, the 1954 Emperor Chief, the 1975 Hiawatha, the 1927 American Legion Limited, the 1927 Lone Scout, and the 1936 Blue Comet. And as a bonus this year, there are also more than two dozen New Yorker magazine covers depicting the winter season. Part of the fun of the Holiday Train Show is that it turns everyone, no matter what age, into a little kid again, their eyes wide with joy. And while in Grand Central, be sure to stop by the Grand Central Holiday Fair, which continues through December 24 and features more than seventy-five vendors selling alternative art, jewelry, ornaments, winter accessories, home décor, and many other items. And after skipping last year because of budget cuts, the Kaleidoscope Light Show is back, sending playful seasonal images onto the Grand Central ceiling December 1 – January 1 every half hour from 11:00 am to 9:00 pm.