The U.S. Open will turn on the lights for this year’s qualifying tournament August 23-27 — and admission is free (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Billie Jean King National Tennis Center
Flushing Meadows Corona Park
Qualifying tournament: August 23-27, free
Arthur Ashe Kids’ Day: August 28, $10-$44
U.S. Open Championship: August 29 – September, $52 – $1,013
www.usopen.org
www.nywatertaxi.com/tennis-ferry
The draws are just about to be announced for the 2011 U.S. Open, which runs August 29 through September 11, but you don’t have to wait until then to see some fine tennis. The qualifying tournament gets under way today at 11:00 am and continues through Friday, with 128 men and 128 women from around the world trying to play their way into the annual championship, and admission is free, a far cry from the lofty prices for the real deal beginning next week. You can also get ready by attending Saturday’s sixteenth annual Arthur Ashe Kids’ Day, with special children’s activities, autograph sessions, tennis clinics, and appearances by tennis stars as well as actor Bradley Cooper and Knicks forward Carmelo Anthony and musical performances by Jason Derulo, Cody Simpson, Diggy Simmons, Jessica Jarrell, Mindless Behavior, Girls Nite Out, Action Item, Jacob Latimore, and others. And on Sunday, the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center will be open for free, allowing fans to walk the grounds and check out the players getting in their final practices before the tournament gets under way on Monday. To continue the less expensive side of the U.S. Open, Delta has teamed up with New York Water Taxi to offer free Tennis Taxi rides from the South Street Seaport and East 35th St. throughout the championship (August 29 – September 11), leaving twice a day, at 9:30/9:45 and 5:30/5:45, with large-screen TVs on board and special cocktails available. (If you want to guarantee a seat, you can reserve a ticket online for a $1 fee.)
Writer-director Brad Bird won Oscars for his animated features The Incredibles (2004) and Ratatatouille (2007), but the Simpsons veteran first made his mark with the charming 1999 sci-fi cartoon The Iron Giant. Based on the 1968 book The Iron Man by Ted Hughes, the animated film is set during the Cold War, with the general populace and the military fearful of a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union. So when rumors that a fifty-foot-tall iron giant (voiced by Vin Diesel) has fallen from the sky, the government wants to destroy it, but it is being hidden by young Hogarth Hughes (Eli Marienthal), who has saved its life. Hogarth keeps his new best friend a secret from his mother (Jennifer Aniston) and federal agent Kent Mansley (Christopher McDonald) with the help of the town beatnik, Dean McCoppin (Harry Connick Jr.), who takes a liking to Hogarth’s mom. The screenplay, written by Tim McCanlies (Secondhand Lions), plays with various genre clichés just enough to avoid being clichéd itself, instead making The Iron Giant a delightful, nearly flawless twist on the E.T. mythos, mixed in with a little Androcles & the Lion, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and even Frankenstein and King Kong. The film, which also features the voices of Cloris Leachman (Mrs. Tensedge), John Mahoney (General Rogard), and M. Emmet Walsh (Earl Stutz), is a treat for children and adults. Bird, meanwhile, has graduated to live action; his next movie will be Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol, starring Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, and Simon Pegg. The Iron Giant is screening for free on August 23 at dusk as part of the Red Hook Summer Movies series in Valentino Pier, which continues August 30 with Pump Up the Volume (Allan Moyle, 1990), September 6 with Highlander (Russell Mulcahy, 1986), and September 13 with the viewers choice selection, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (Tim Burton, 1985).
“You’ve got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?” Clint Eastwood created a cinematic legend, cool, calm Bay Area cop Harry Callahan, in Don Siegel’s genre redefining 1971 thriller, Dirty Harry. Callahan, confidence radiating out of every pore, has a penchant for getting himself into trouble, leaving mayhem and chaos behind him as he polices the mean streets of San Francisco. The first film of the series is by far the best of the bunch, as Harry is on the hunt for a crazed serial killer who goes by the name Scorpio (Andy Robinson). The underappreciated Harry Guardino is Callahan’s boss, Al Bressler, Reni Santoni plays Callahan’s rookie partner, Chico Gonzalez, and John “Dean Wormer” Vernon is the mayor who does not approve of Callahan’s rather violent tendencies. But the real star of the film might just be Harry’s .44 Magnum, “the most powerful handgun in the world and would blow your head clean off.” Dirty Harry led to the sequels Magnum Force (1973), The Enforcer (1976), Sudden Impact (1983), and The Dead Pool (1988), each one essentially at least one major step down in quality. We know what you’re thinking: In all this excitement, did he fire six shots, or only five? You can find out Monday night as Dirty Harry closes out the 2011 Bryant Park Summer Film Festival.