twi-ny recommended events

HALLOWEEN WEEKEND: THE SHINING

All work and no play makes Jack Nicholson far from a dull boy in THE SHINING

THE SHINING (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Saturday, October 29, free with museum admission, 7:00
Series runs October 28-30
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us

The classic horror story The Shining has been back in the news of late, first with a wrongly rumored special screening that was said to include the two-minute finale that Stanley Kubrick cut out immediately after the film opened in 1980 — one that we thought we had imagined seeing for many years until we discovered the truth, which also involved the iconoclastic director riding his bicycle to various theaters, armed with a pair of scissors — and then with Stephen King’s “announcement” that he was writing a sequel to the original 1977 book, this time focusing on a grown-up Danny Torrance. Anyway, Kubrick’s film is one of the all-time-great frightfests, a truly scary movie about a writer named Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson at his overacting best) who has agreed to become the caretaker of the old Overlook Hotel in Colorado during the snowy winter when the enormous mountain resort closes down for the season. He is joined by his perpetually nervous wife, Wendy (Shelley Duvall), and their young son, Danny (Danny Lloyd), who seems to have brought along his invisible friend, Tony, who speaks through Danny’s finger. Between taking care of the Overlook and working on his novel, Jack finds a whole bunch of other folks to hang out with, people who have populated the place during the ritzy establishment’s golden age, including a strange woman in room 237. Kubrick plays with horror conventions as he seeks to scare the crap out of the audience, something he accomplishes time and time again as Jack grows more disturbed, Wendy’s shrieks become more and more ear piercing and annoying, and Danny’s visions get more and more bloody. No matter how many times you’ve seen it, it still gets you, even when you know exactly what’s lurking around that corner. The Shining is screening on Saturday night at 7:00 as part of the Museum of the Moving Image’s Halloween Weekend programming and the “See It Big!” series, which also includes Ridley Scott’s Alien on Friday night at 7:00 and Sunday afternoon at 4:00. (You might not want to see that one on a full stomach.) On Saturday at 1:00 & 4:00 and Sunday at 1:00, Frank Oz’s Little Shop of Horrors will be shown, in conjunction with the “Henson Screenings and Programs” series, and on Sunday afternoon at 2:30, “Movie Monsters and More: A Master Class with Special Effects Makeup Artist Mike Marino” will be held. The weekend concludes Sunday night at 7:30 with an eightieth anniversary screening of Frankenstein (James Whale, 1931) with Sara Karloff, Boris’s daughter, who will discuss her father’s life and career and show home movies.

HELL AT THE HALL

Webster Hall
125 East 11th St. between Second & Third Aves.
Saturday, October 29, $20, 6:00
www.websterhall.com
www.vice.com

One of the craziest live bands of the twenty-first century, Atlanta’s Black Lips have earned their reputation by putting on shows powered by great songs and plenty of mass destruction. From tearing up boats to taking part in fierce toilet paper wars to dancing with fans onstage who broke down security barricades, you never quite know what you’re gonna get at a Black Lips show, but you can always count on its being memorable. On October 29, the bad boys will be headlining Hell at the Hall, an evening of insane partying at Webster Hall, with Cole, Jared, Ian, and Joe being joined by appropriately named Puerto Rican punk rockers Davila 666, who kicked ass at this summer’s 4Knots Festival with a raucous set that included a Spanish-language cover of the Nerves’ / Blondie’s “Hanging on the Telephone,” and Brooklyn psychedelic goths Xray Eyeballs, who are afraid of nothing. Vice, who is throwing this wild shindig, strongly encourages costumes and plenty of TP; in addition, if you want to win a pair of free tickets, e-mail the best / worst / strangest / sickest / weirdest Halloween trick you ever pulled to Vice, who advise, “If you send us a story about actually beating up a child for candy, you will not win these tickets, and we hope you don’t win anything. Ever. Stories about egging people who give out walnuts are totally fine though. Fuck those people.”

BLAME IT ON BECKETT

General manager Mike Braschi (Mark Doherty) and dramaturg Jim Foley (Warren Kelley) are at odds in BLAME IT ON BECKETT (photo by Anthony J. Merced)

Dorothy Strelsin Theatre
Abingdon Theatre Arts Complex
312 West 36th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Through October 30, $25
www.abingdontheatre.org

Just what is a dramaturg anyway? In John Morogiello’s Blame It on Beckett, Warren Kelley stars as Jim Foley, a jaded, cynical dramaturg for a regional New England theater who spends his days not answering his phone and rejecting works by new playwrights based on their titles or how they’re bound. He gets unwanted help in the form of box-office girl Heidi Bishop (Lori Gardner), a bright-eyed and innocent theater major who dreams of being a dramaturg, convincing slick, smarmy general manager Mike Braschi (Mark Doherty) to let her work for free as a part-time intern for Foley, who is sickened by her youthful enthusiasm and drive. Heidi and Jim are soon butting heads over a six-page monologue in a play by the company’s last best hope, Tina Fike (Anne Newhall), setting in motion sexual intrigue, scandal, betrayal, and other nasty business. While Morogiello and director Jackob G. Hofmann, who previously teamed up on the Abingdon Theatre Company’s widely praised Engaging Shaw, cover fairly familiar territory, essentially moving All About Eve from the stage to the back room, they do so with an energetic wit and engaging characters. They include plenty of inside jokes, the Abingdon itself being a nonprofit theater company hoping their productions make it to the big time. Andrew Lu’s set features a desk, a few chairs, coffee cups strewn about, large piles of unread scripts, a bust of Shakespeare blindfolded — to protect the Bard from seeing what has become of his beloved profession — and various other theatrical paraphernalia, with the audience seated almost claustrophobically on three sides. With solid performances all around, surprisingly lively action, and some very funny lines, Blame It on Beckett is an insightful little comedy about ambition that, oddly, does not list a dramaturg in its program.

ELECTRIC SIX: HELLO, DESTRUCTOR!!!!

Bowery Ballroom
6 Delancey St. between Bowery & Chrystie St.
Friday, October 28, $18-$20, 8:00
212-533-2111
www.boweryballroom.com
www.electricsix.com

Leaning more on the synth-heavy dance rock that has long made them a party-band favorite— who doesn’t love “Gay Bar”? — genre-melting Detroit funk-pop rockers Electric Six are back with an explosive new disc, Heartbeats and Brainwaves! (Metropolis, October 11, 2011). Their eighth studio album oozes hot sex, rife with single and double entendres while channeling Nick Cave, Prince, Roxy Music, David Bowie, Ozzy Osbourne, and even Phil Collins. “Bodies bouncing on the floor / Everybody getting’ wild / Gonna show my dirty style / You better show me what that body’s for / You’re born to beguile / Hit the volume on your dial / Yeah, the dime is dropping on ya,” bandleader Dick Valentine sings on “It Gets Hot,” while on “Interchangeable Knife” he proclaims, “I’m gonna make you howl like a trailer-park wife / on the first day of her new life.” On “The Intergalactic Version” he might repeat “We write the same song over and over again,” but that is far from the case, with all six band members — vocalist Dick Valentine, drummer Percussion World, guitarists Johnny Na$hinal and the Colonel, bassist Smorgasbord, and synth master Tait Nucleus? — contributing to the songwriting process, which ranges from demonic goth rock and raucous heavy metal to ’80s MTV power pop and bootie-shaking funk. Electric Six brings its high-energy Hello, Destructor!!!! tour, named for a line in “Hello! I See You!” (“Hello, destructor! I’m yours for the destroying”), to Bowery Ballroom on Friday night, with Kitten and New York Rivals also on the bill. Perhaps Valentine says it best in this piece of promo copy about Heartbeats and Brainwaves!: “It manages to be so entertaining that you completely forget that your limits of time/space comprehension render you completely unable to answer why you are really here.”

OLAF BREUNING: THE ART FREAKS

In “The Art Freaks,” Olaf Breuning combines painting, photography, and art history in entertaining ways (photo courtesy Olaf Breuning / Metro Pictures)

Metro Pictures
519 West 24th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Through October 29, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-206-7100
www.metropicturesgallery.com

For his latest show at Metro Pictures, New York-based Swiss artist Olaf Breuning has taken large-scale photographs (74 3/8 x 34 1/8 inches) of nearly two dozen models who have been painted in the style of some of the most famous and important artists of the twentieth century. In “The Art Freaks,” Breuning re-creates iconic works on the naked bodies of men and women, honoring such seminal figures as Edvard Munch, Yves Tanguy, Joseph Cornell, Frida Kahlo, Piet Mondrian, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Damien Hirst, Takashi Murakami, Andy Warhol, On Kawara, Jackson Pollock, and others. As always with Breuning’s work, his playful sense of humor shines through as he gives a unique art history lesson; we strongly suggest you first walk through the upstairs gallery space trying to identify the referenced artists yourself before confirming it by checking the photos’ titles.

RESIDUE: AN INSTALLATION BY EIKO & KOMA

Eiko & Koma take a look back at their life and career in “Residue” (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, Vincent Astor Gallery
40 Lincoln Center Plaza, 111 Amsterdam Ave. between 64th & 65th Sts.
Through Saturday, October 29, free, 12 noon – 6:00 or 8:00
www.eikoandkoma.org/residue
www.nypl.org

It’s been quite a year for Japanese dance couple Eiko & Koma here in their home base of New York City. Celebrating their fortieth anniversary together, Eiko Otake and Takashi Koma Otake performed the postapocalyptic dance installation Naked at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in the spring, went for a dip in the Paul Milstein Pool on Lincoln Center’s Hearst Plaza for the mesmerizing Water this summer, and held numerous local talks and workshops. And, as part of their three-year Retrospective Project, they’re taking a look back at their career in the unique gallery installation “Residue,” on view at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts through October 29. Designer Eric Bissell has transformed the Vincent Astor Gallery into a dark, hypnotic space featuring paraphernalia from throughout Eiko & Koma’s career, including costumes, sets, a series of white rectangular wells screening videos at the bottom, and a central structure similar to the Naked wall where visitors can walk in, sit down, and watch Naked on a monitor on the floor. “Residue” highlights such works as Hunger, River, White Dance, Thirst, Grain, Wind, Tree, and Offering, organic pieces in which Eiko and Koma are often naked, performing in the outdoors or on stark sets. “It is very clear nothing lasts,” Koma says in the exhibition brochure. “So this installation too is not an attempt to last or save what we have done,” Eiko responds. “We just look at the ‘dust’ and enjoy that we can look at it for now.” Visitors will be able to look at and enjoy the dust of Eiko and Koma’s continuing adventurous career through the end of the week, and as an added treat the duo will be at the gallery on Saturday from 4:00 to 6:00 to meet and greet everyone who stops by.

NEW YORK FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS PRESENTS: AN EVENING WITH JAMES CASEBERE

JAMES CASEBERE IN CONVERSATION WITH HAL FOSTER
Barnes & Noble
150 East 86th St. at Lexington Ave.
Wednesday, October 26, free, 7:00
212-369-2180
www.barnesandnoble.com
www.jamescasebere.net

Born in Michigan and living in Fort Greene since the late 1990s, James Casebere has spent the last thirty years making constructed photographs, creating table-sized architectural landscapes and turning them into haunting large-scale photographs of suburbia, the American West, prisons, and eighteenth-century America. His work has now been collected in James Casebere: Works 1975-2010 (Damiani, October 31, 2011, $80), a midcareer survey of his fascinating oeuvre. Edited by Okwui Enwezor, the book includes essays by Hal Foster and Toni Morrison as well as a talk between Enwezor and Casebere. “Rocking our sense of security and danger, James Casebere probes domestic and public spaces in order to expose the porous borders between them,” Morrison writes in the foreword. “He introduces foreign elements, manipulating light and our visual expectations of the sacred and profane; the safe haven versus confinement; privacy versus secrecy; wilderness versus shelter. He estranges the familiar and warps the conventional in hospitals, church-inflected architecture, ordinary home furnishings, corridors, and prisons.” In celebration of the book’s publication, the New York Foundation of the Arts is presenting the free event “James Casebere in Conversation with Hal Foster,” October 26 at the East 86th St. Barnes & Noble, in which the photographer sits down with the noted art critic, followed by a book signing.