twi-ny recommended events

DR. MABUSE, DER SPIELER (DR. MABUSE, THE GAMBLER)

DR. MABUSE, THE GAMBLER is an epic document of its time

WEIMAR CINEMA, 1919-1933: DAYDREAMS AND NIGHTMARES
DR. MABUSE, DER SPIELER (DR. MABUSE, THE GAMBLER) (Fritz Lang, 1922)
MoMA Film
Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Monday, January 3, 7:30
Saturday, January 8, 7:00
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
212-708-9400
www.moma.org

Fritz Lang’s 1922 expressionist epic, DR. MABUSE, THE GAMBLER, is one of the most thrilling crime dramas ever made. Written by Lang and his wife, Thea von Harbou, based on the popular novel by Norbert Jacques, the film focuses on the title character (Rudolf Klein-Rogge), a criminal mastermind who is a sort of Nietzschean superman able to control his victims using hypnosis and psychoanalysis. Putting his evil gaze on such easy prey as the wealthy Edgar Hull (Paul Richter) and Count Told (Alfred Abel), Mabuse tries to ruin them through a series of card games he manipulates, with the help of nightclub singer Cara Carozza (Aud Egede-Nissen) and a motley crew of assistants that includes Spoerri (Robert Forster-Larrinaga), Georg (Hans Adalbert Schlettow), Hawasch (Charles Puffy), and Pesch (Georg John). Meanwhile, steadfast prosecutor Norbert von Wenk (Bernhard Goetzke) is on the case, attempting to track down and capture the mystery man who is leaving a trail of death and destruction behind him. Divided into two sections, “The Great Gambler, a Picture of Our Time” and “Inferno — A Play of People in Our Time,” DR. MABUSE is indeed a story of its time, a document of the state of mind of the German populace between the two world wars. Mabuse, representing both chaos and tyranny, is a master of disguise, portraying numerous middle-class figures fighting against the upper class and authority. The film is not only about one evil man’s grab for power but the power of cinema itself; just as Mabuse can change characters within the film, all of the characters are merely actors in costume, performing a fiction on stunning sets created by production designer Karl Vollbrecht and photographed by cinematographer Carl Hoffmann. In fact, at one point Mabuse stares directly into the camera, his face hurtling toward the viewer, attempting a kind of mass hypnosis that, presciently, can be said to predict the rise of Nazism in Germany. But most of all, DR. MABUSE, THE GAMBLER, which was followed by THE TESTAMENT OF DR. MABUSE in 1933 and THE THOUSAND EYES OF DR. MABUSE in 1960, is a film about fear — fear of the unknown, fear of technology, fear of psychoanalysis, and fear of what the future holds. The film is screening as part of MoMA’s Weimar Cinema, 1919–1933: Daydreams and Nightmares series, comprising eighty-one films made between World War I and World War II; upcoming screenings include G. W. Pabst’s PANDORA’S BOX, Richard Eichberg’s THE MASKED MANNEQUIN, Wilhelm (William) Dieterle’s SEX IN CHAINS / SEX IN FETTERS, Walther Ruttmann’s IN DER NACHT and MELODY OF THE WORLD, Ernst Lubitsch’s MADAME DUBARRY (PASSION) and THE OYSTER PRINCESS, and Slatan Dudow’s WHITHER GERMANY?

THE ROCK & ROLL CIRCUS

Under the Big Apple Circus Tent
Damrosch Park, Lincoln Center Plaza
Monday, January 3, free, 7:00
Tuesday, January 4, mezzanine $25, ringside $30, 7:00
www.rockandrollcircusparty.com

On December 11, 1968, the Rolling Stones hosted the Rock and Roll Circus, an unpredictable mix of music and mayhem with the Who, Marianne Faithfull, Jethro Tull, Taj Mahal, clowns, a fire eater, a flying trapeze act, and the one-night-only supergroup the Dirty Mac, consisting of John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Eric Clapton, Mitch Mitchell, and Keith Richards. Vance Garrett Productions, Jessica Resler of Muffin Cupcake, and visual artist Adarsha Benjamin are trying to recapture some of that old magic with a new three-ring extravaganza of music and acrobatics they are also calling the Rock and Roll Circus. On January 3 at 8:00, Japanther, the Pharmacy, Voxhaul Broadcast, the So So Glos, and Electric Tickle Machine will team up for a free concert under the Big Apple Circus tent in Damrosch Park, while Ariel Pink, Amazing Baby, Aska + Nick Zinner, and Saint Motel will be part of a ticketed show ($50) January 4 that will also include acrobats, contortionists, jugglers, balancing acts, and other performers from the Big Apple Circus, led by ringmaster Acid Betty, the Fiercest Hybrid Drag Queen in New York City. (OK GO were initially scheduled to headline Tuesday night but have been replaced by Ariel Pink, whose HAUNTED GRAFFITI disc has made many year-end top-ten lists.) Both nights will feature local food trucks, various specialized pop-up shops, sponsored bars, and other booths. While it might not quite be the Stones, the Who, and other musical legends, this Rock and Roll Circus 2.0 is a cool collection of hot indie bands worth checking out. The Big Apple Circus, comprising an international roster of acts from the United States, Bulgaria, China, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mongolia, and Russia, continues at Lincoln Center through January 9 before heading to Boston April 2 – May 15 and then coming to Queens May 21 – June 12.

JOHN BALDESSARI: PURE BEAUTY

John Baldessari, “The Duress Series: Person Climbing Exterior Wall of Tall Building / Person on Ledge of Tall Building / Person on Girders of Unfinished Tall Building,” digital prints with acrylic on Sintra, 2003 (Ringier Collection, Switzerland / © John Baldessari)

Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Exhibition Hall, second floor
1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd St.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 9 (open Monday, September 6)
Recommended admission: $20 adults, children under twelve free
212-535-7710
www.metmuseum.org

California-based artist and teacher John Baldessari helped put the capital “C” in Conceptual art. For more than half a century, the seventy-nine-year-old Baldessari has been creating a fascinating mélange of visual and text-based imagery, a vaunting vocabulary all his own incorporating paintings, found objects, photographs, videos, and an anarchistic philosophy into collages and installations that examine popular culture, sociopolitical ideology, and the making and perception of art itself. “Pure Beauty,” on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through January 9, is an engaging retrospective of more than one hundred works from throughout Baldessari’s continually evolving career. “Cremation Project” houses the ashes from early paintings that he purposely destroyed in a mortuary. In the short film “I Am Making Art,” Baldessari repeats the title over and over as he rearranges himself in different positions, while in “I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art” he writes the title statement again and again, and the exhibition supports both declarations. He appropriates images from the news and Hollywood and adds unique touches in such pieces as “Violent Space Series: Two Stares Making a Point but Blocked by a Plane (for Malevich),” “Heel,” and “The Duress Series: Person Climbing Exterior Wall of Tall Building / Person on Ledge of Tall Building / Person on Girders of Unfinished Tall Building.” In such works as “Kiss/Panic,” “Man and Woman with Bridge,” and “Pelicans Staring at Woman with Nose Bleeding,” Baldessari juxtaposes images from different sources, resulting in brand-new noirish narratives filled with Hitchcockian delight. He often adds color elements to black-and-white photographs and collages, as in “The Overlap Series: Jogger (with Cosmic Event),” while color becomes the primary subject in such works as “Six Colorful Inside Jobs” and “Prima Facie (Fifth State): Warm Brownie / American Cheese / Carrot Stick / Black Bean Soup / Perky Peach / Leek.” Even when Baldessari comes off as simply cheesy or silly, as in a series of framed pictures intentionally hung unevenly, it’s still fun to look at. “Artists are better at finding a way to kill their time,” Baldessari once said. There are a lot worse ways to kill some time by immersing yourself in this beguiling survey at the Met.

STOP, REPAIR, PREPARE: VARIATIONS ON “ODE TO JOY” FOR A PREPARED PIANO

Evan Shinners is one of six pianists who are performing Allora & Calzadilla’s moving “Stop, Repair, Prepare” in the MoMA atrium through January 10 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

PERFORMANCE 9: ALLORA & CALZADILLA
Museum of Modern Art
The Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium, second floor
Hourly starting at 10:30 or 11:30 am
Through January 10 (closed Tuesdays; Fridays free from 4:00 to 8:00)
Admission: $20 (includes same-day film screening)
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
performance 9 slideshow

Philadelphia native Jennifer Allora and Havana-born Guillermo Calzadilla have been collaborating since 1993 on multidisciplinary conceptual installations that question the very nature of art and authorship. For their latest piece, “Stop, Repair, Prepare,” the ninth in MoMA’s ongoing Performance Exhibition Series, which has previously featured such artists as Yvonne Rainer, Roman Ondák, Fischerspooner, Joan Jonas, and William Kentridge, Allora & Calzadilla have built a rather unique piano that will reside in the second-floor Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium through January 10. The piano has a hole in its center (with two octaves removed), where one of six pianists, every hour on the half hour, will enter from below and then play the Fourth Movement of Beethoven’s 1824 Ninth Symphony by leaning out over the keyboard, which they approach backward. In addition, the piano is on wheels, so the performer will also push the instrument around the atrium while playing the familiar piece, bearing the heavy weight of a work that comes with quite a history: The Fourth Movement, better known as “Ode to Joy” and based on a 1785 German poem written by Friedrich Schiller, has served as the national anthem for the European Union and Rhodesia, has been featured in such films as CLOCKWORK ORANGE and DIE HARD, was conducted by Leonard Bernstein at the tearing down of the Berlin Wall in 1989, was appropriated by the Nazis in concentration camps during WWII, and has been a longtime staple of New Year’s day concerts. In fact, on New Year’s Day, three of the six pianists — Jun Sun, Amir Khosrowpour, and Evan Shinners — performed the piece (the other three are Midori Yamamura, Mia Elezovic, and Terezija Cukrov), each following a different arrangement chosen especially for them. Juilliard graduate Shinners, who is the host of the online radio show “This Is E.S.,” a published poet, cofounder of the artists collective known as the New Cull, and leader of the band the Suits!, played a kind of classical punk version, banging at the keyboard while the audience surrounded him, taking photos and following him around the space. Afterward he gushed to twi-ny about how excited he is to be part of the project and how he feeds off the adrenaline rush of the crowd. Calzadilla, who with Allora will represent the United States at the fifty-fourth annual Venice Biennale later this year, has called “Stop, Repair, Prepare” a “moving experience,” and indeed it is, on several levels. Don’t get too caught up in trying to capture the performance with your camera; just get lost in the uniqueness of the event and try not to get hit by the piano as it heads right at you.

OSCAR WATCH: THE KING’S SPEECH

Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush excel in Tom Hooper’s thrilling THE KING’S SPEECH

THE KING’S SPEECH (Tom Hooper, 2010)
www.kingsspeech.com

Britain’s Royal Family is notoriously protective of their personal lives, and for many years they were somehow able to keep from the public the fascinating story of Prince Albert’s difficult battle against a severe stammer. A serious stutterer himself as a child, screenwriter David Seidler (TUCKER: THE MAN AND HIS DREAM), who looked to the man known as Bertie as a role model, uncovered the dramatic tale and even got permission from the Queen Mum herself to pursue a cinematic version, as long as it came out after her death. So after gestating for decades, THE KING’S SPEECH is now a reality, a thrilling film that follows the prince’s (a marvelously vulnerable Colin Firth) struggle to find his voice as his aging father, King George V (Michael Gambon), falls ill and the prince of Wales (a wonderfully snide Guy Pearce) jeopardizes the possibility of his wearing and keeping the crown by falling in love with flirtatious, twice-divorced socialite Wallis Simpson (Eve Best). After having explored numerous ways to cure him of his debilitating and embarrassing stutter, Bertie and his loyal wife, Elizabeth (the resplendent Helena Bonham Carter), turn to an odd, failed actor, Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue (a pitch-perfect Geoffrey Rush), who uses extremely unusual methods that eventually force Bertie to reexamine his childhood while also preparing for a future that could put him on the throne as the country goes to war. Director Tom Hooper (THE DAMNED UNITED, HBO’s JOHN ADAMS miniseries) keeps the tension mounting as Bertie gains more and more public responsibility and his stage fright grows; the scenes between Firth and Rush in Logue’s rather low-rent basement office are thoroughly mesmerizing, a pair of bravura performances built around the slightest mouth twitch from Firth and knowing looks from the craggy-faced Rush. The strong cast also includes Derek Jacobi as Archbishop Cosmo Lang, Jennifer Ehle as Logue’s wife, Myrtle, Timothy Spall as Winston Churchill, Anthony Andrews as Stanley Baldwin, and Claire Bloom as Queen Mary. The only drawback is Alexandre Desplat’s overly melodramatic score, which insists on squeezing unnecessary, treacly emotion from a story where words take center stage.

DARK MATTERS

THE ALTERNATIVE NEW YEAR’S DAY SPOKEN WORD AND PERFORMANCE EXTRAVAGANZA
Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery between Houston & Bleecker Sts.
Saturday, January 1, free, 2:00 pm – 12 midnight
212-614-0505
www.bowerypoetry.com
www.spokenwordextravaganza.org

The Bowery Poetry Club is hosting its seventeenth annual New Year’s Day alternative poetry reading, featuring more than 150 performers, including Hobo Bob, Steve Cannon, Steve Dalachinsky, Kathi Georges, Bob Holman, Richard Kostelanetz, Eve Packer, Tom Savage, Jackie Sheeler, Phillip Sherrod, Sparrow, Angelo Verga, George Wallace, Bruce Weber, Jeffrey Wright, and Zork, and there will be an open mic as well if you’d like to add your own contribution. Although the event is free, attendees are encouraged to bring paperbacks for Books Through Bars, which supplies reading material to prisoners, and canned goods for Urban Pathways, which collects food and other services for the homeless. This year’s theme, Dark Matters, relates to how an “invisible glue holds the universe together” much like “the arts hold all us disparate individuals together. . . . When the city, the country and the world split into fighting fragments, music, poetry, and dance keep us intact.”

NEW YEAR’S DAY FREE AT THE COOPER-HEWITT

Admission to the Cooper-Hewitt will be free on New Year’s Day (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum
2 East 91st St. at Fifth Ave.
Saturday, January 1, free, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-849-8400
www.cooperhewitt.org

As we said back around Labor Day weekend, the last time the Cooper-Hewitt offered free admission, we’ve never quite understood why the National Design Museum isn’t free all the time, like the National Museum of the American Indian downtown and all the Smithsonian museums in DC. But we don’t have to worry about that on New Year’s Day, when the institution once again will open its doors for free. (Admission is usually $15.) Currently the Cooper-Hewitt is finishing up its fourth National Design Triennial, “Why Design Now?” which continues through January 9. The exhibit focuses on such themes as energy, mobility, community, health, communication, and simplicity, looking at social housing, charging stations, cargo carriers, LED replacements, tableware, threshers, and the ripple effect. Also on view is “Ted Muehling Selects: Lobmeyr Glass from the Permanent Collection.”