Brooklyn’s own NYC Resistor has made it to the finals of the Red Bull Creation competition, being held Sunday in McCarren Park
McCarren Park
North 12th St. at Bedford Ave., Williamsburg
Sunday, July 10, free, 3:00 – 7:00
www.redbullusa.com
The future will unfold on Sunday afternoon as sixteen teams will gather in McCarren Park for the finals of the Red Bull Creation challenge. Each team, including Brooklyn’s own Buildface, NYC Resistor, and Alpha One Labs, has been given seventy-two hours to design something that can move a one-hundred-pound person from point A to point B, without the use of fossil fuels. The only other rules involve incorporating an Arduino controller and keeping the size of the creation somewhere between a bread box and a box truck. The bulk of the work is currently taking place in a hackerspace laboratory, with the results being displayed on Sunday between 3:00 and 7:00 in the former public pool and concert venue in Williamsburg. Judging how “useful, imaginative, and inspiring” each creation is will be Hackett, Simone Davalos, Flash Hopkins, and Glenn Derenie, deciding who goes home with cash and technological tools. The free event will also feature live performances from That 1 Guy at 4:50 and Eclectic Method at 6:20.
Loosely adapted from Maxim Gorky’s social realist play, The Lower Depths is yet another masterpiece from Japanese auteur Akira Kurosawa. Set in an immensely dark and dingy ramshackle skid-row tenement during the Edo period, the claustrophobic film examines the rich and the poor, gambling and prostitution, life and death, and everything in between through the eyes of impoverished characters who have nothing. The motley crew includes the suspicious landlord, Rokubei (Ganjiro Nakamura), and his much younger wife, Osugi (Isuzu Yamada); Osugi’s sister, Okayo (Kyôko Kagawa); the thief Sutekichi (Toshirō Mifune), who gets involved in a love triangle with a noir murder angle; and Kahei (Bokuzen Hidari), an elderly newcomer who might be more than just a grandfatherly observer. Despite the brutal conditions they live in, the inhabitants soldier on, some dreaming of their better past, others still hoping for a promising future. Kurosawa infuses the gripping film with a wry sense of humor, not allowing anyone to wallow away in self-pity. A staggering achievement, The Lower Depths is screening July 8-10 at 11:00 am as part of the IFC Center’s Weekend Classics: Kurosawa series, which continues July 15-17 with Dersu Uzala and July 22-24 with Ran.
During the early Tang Dynasty in the late seventh century, Wu Zetian (Carina Lau sporting some great hairdos) is about to become the first empress of China. In preparation for her ascendance to the throne, architect Shatuo (Tony Leung Ka Fai) is leading the construction of a two-hundred-foot Buddha statue with her face, a massive structure that is like its own city inside. But when people start spontaneously combusting after a pair of amulets in the statue are moved, Wu calls in Detective Dee (Andy Lau sporting some great facial hair), who has been in prison for eight years for previously opposing her, to find out who is behind the horrific deaths. Dee is teamed up with Wu’s right-hand woman, Shangguan Jing’er (Li Bingbing), and albino warrior Donglai Pei (Deng Chao) to get to the bottom of the killings, which many believe is a curse not being perpetrated by humans. As the unlikely threesome gets closer to the answers, they become enmeshed in a series of battles featuring unusual weapons and unexpected twists and turns, not knowing whom they can trust, their lives in constant danger. Nominated for the Golden Lion at the 2010 Venice Film Festival and winner of six Hong Kong Film Awards (including Tsui Hark for Best Director, Carina Lau for Best Actress, and Phil Jones for Best Visual Effects), Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame is a fun and exciting old-fashioned wuxia tale, with exciting if repetitive action scenes directed by Sammo Hung and sumptuous production design by James Chiu. The inner workings of the enormous statue is a thing of beauty that has to be seen to be believed. A mix of actual and invented characters — there really was a Judge Dee (Di Renjie), who was turned into a detective hero in a series of novels by Dutch author Robert van Gulik — the film is a thrilling historical mystery epic that could have used a little more back story but is still a return to form for Hark. Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame will be screening July 11 at 9:00 as part of the Wu Xia Focus at the New York Asian Film Festival at Lincoln Center, and as a special bonus director Tsui Hark will be on hand to talk about the film and receive the Star Asia Lifetime Achievement Award (at 8:30, with all ticket holders welcome).
The Incredibles, which nabbed the Best Animated Feature Oscar, is yet more fun from Pixar, John Lasseter’s remarkably creative studio that previously brought us Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Monsters Inc.., and Finding Nemo. After the crime-fighting family the Incredibles are sued into early retirement and given a new identity in harmless suburbia, Bob/Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) can’t stop protecting the world from evildoers, sneaking away from his suspicious wife, Helen/Elastigirl (Holly Hunter), to work with Lucius/Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson) in defeating evil. But he meets more than he bargained for in Syndrome (Jason Lee), a piece of his past resurrected to destroy him. Other recognizable voices include Wallace Shawn as Gilbert Huph, writer Sarah Vowell as Violet, John Ratzenberger as Underminer, and Elizabeth Peña as Mirage; writer/director Brad Bird (The Iron Giant) voices fashion designer Edna ‘E’ Mode. The Incredibles kicks off the big finale of MoMA’s Pixar Revisited series, which also includes the terrific Ratatouille (Brad Bird, 2007), screening with Gary Rydstrom’s short Lifted on July 8 at 8:00; the thrilling Up (Pete Docter, 2009), being shown with the Peter Sohn short Partly Cloudy on July 9 at 5:00; and the brilliant Wall-E (Andrew Stanton, 2008), screening with the Doug Sweetland short Presto on July 9 at 8:00.