twi-ny recommended events

CANADIAN FRONT, 2010: SUCK

Jennifer finds a novel way to get a drink in rock and roll vampire comedy SUCK

SUCK (Rob Stefaniuk, 2009)
MoMA Film
Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Friday, March 19, 7:15
Monday, March 22, 7:00
Series continues through March 22
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
www.suckthemovie.com

Writer, director, songwriter, and star Rob Stefaniuk (PHIL THE ALIEN) was well aware that he was daring critics and audiences to attack his sophomore effort by titling the vampire rock-and-roll horror comedy SUCK. Well, it doesn’t. SUCK is a playful little piffle about the Winners, a loser of a group that is taking its last shot at the big time, going on a road trip from Toronto to New York City for a supposed CMJ showcase gig set up by their pitiful manager, Jeff (Kid in the Hall Dave Foley). But when bass player Jennifer (Jessica Paré) gets seduced and turned by master vampire Queeny (Dimitri Coats), the band starts getting popular, much to the chagrin of lead singer and songwriter Joey (Stefaniuk), who is not sure this is the best way to make it. Drummer Sam (Mike Lobel), guitarist Tyler (Paul Anthony), and Renfield-as-roadie Hugo (Alex Lifeson) have different ideas, as does afraid-of-the-dark vampire hunter Eddie Van Helsig (Malcolm McDowell). With teeth in neck – er, tongue in cheek – SUCK spoofs several genres in silly but fun ways, throwing in a little ROCKY HORROR here, some THIS IS SPINAL TAP there, and a dash of GET CRAZY over there, with hysterical guest appearances by Alice Cooper as a demonic bartender, Iggy Pop as a suburban record producer, Henry Rollins as an annoying radio host, and well-known vegan Moby as Beef Bellows, the lead singer of the Buffalo-based punk-rock band the Secretaries of Steak.

SUCK is part of MoMA’s seventh annual Canadian Front festival, consisting of some of the best Canadian fiction and nonfiction films of the past eighteen months. Upcoming screenings include Sherry White’s debut coming-of-age CRACKIE, Bernard Émond’s drama THE LEGACY, Brigitte Berman’s documentary HUGH HEFNER: PLAYBOY, ACTIVIST, AND REBEL, Émile Gaudreault’s gangster comedy FATHERS AND GUNS, and Denis Villeneuve’s fact-based POLYTECHNIQUE, about a Columbine-like shooting spree in Canada.

NEIL YOUNG TRUNK SHOW

Neil Young lets it all hang out in latest concert film (photo by Larry Cragg)

NEIL YOUNG TRUNK SHOW (Jonathan Demme, 2009)
Landmark Sunshine
143 East Houston St.
Opens Friday, March 19
212-330-8182
www.trunkshowmovie.com
www.landmarktheatres.com

In April 2005, Neil Young underwent brain surgery for an aneurysm. Four months later, he gathered together friends for two special nights at Nashville’s historic Ryman Auditorium, captured on film by Oscar-winning director Jonathan Demme, who has previously helmed such fab music docs as STOP MAKING SENSE and STOREFRONT HITCHCOCK. NEIL YOUNG: HEART OF GOLD was an intimate portrait of man who looked death in the face and survived; the film featured acoustic songs primarily from Young’s beautiful PRAIRIE WIND album. But the Godfather of Grunge wasn’t about to let a little thing like a brain aneurysm stop him from rocking in the free world. As he continued his long-term project of reaching deep into his past for his archival box sets, he released CHROME DREAMS II in October 2007, a sequel to an unreleased 1977 album that was rumored to include such future Young classics as “Pocahontas,” “Like a Hurricane,” “Homegrown,” and “Powderfinger.” For CHROME DREAMS II, Young strapped on the electric guitar and held nothing back, joined by longtime partners in crime Ralph Molina on drums, Rick Rosas on bass, and Ben Keith on guitars and keyboards.

Young took the show on the road, playing small clubs across the country, where each song was announced by a live painting by Eric Johnson. Demme captured two searing performances at the Tower Theater in Pennsylvania, filming them guerrilla-style with eight cameras, mostly handheld, that get right up in Young’s face. While the actual concerts were divided into two separate sets, first solo acoustic, then electric with the band, which also featured backup vocals by wife Pegi Young and Anthony “Sweetpea” Crawford, Demme mixes them up in NEIL YOUNG TRUNK SHOW, an exhilarating music documentary that limits behind-the-scenes patter and instead concentrates on the powerful music. Young has been at this game for nearly fifty years, but he plays with a young man’s abandon in the film, his eyes deep in thought on such gorgeous acoustic gems as “Harvest,” “Ambulance Blues,” “Sad Movies,” and “Cowgirl in the Sand” while really letting loose with extended jams on the new “Spirit Road” and “No Hidden Path” before tearing everything apart on “Like a Hurricane.” The sixty-two-year-old Canadian legend even includes an instrumental from his high school days with the Squires, “The Sultan,” complete with Cary Kemp banging a gong. As with most Young concerts, TRUNK SHOW is not about the greatest hits; to truly enjoy it, just let the music take you away – and make sure the theater has the volume turned up loud. This is the second in a proposed Neil Young / Jonathan Demme trilogy; we can’t wait to see what they come up with next.

VINCERE

Ida Alser (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) and Benito Mussolini (Filippo Timi) have a tumultuous relationship in VINCERE

VINCERE (Marco Bellocchio, 2009)
Opens Friday, March 19
IFC Center, 323 Sixth Ave. at Third St., 212-924-7771
Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, 1886 Broadway at 63rd St., 212-757-2280
www.ifcfilms.com/films/vincere
www.ifccenter.com
www.lincolnplazacinema.com

In the historical romantic drama VINCERE (WIN), Italian master filmmaker Marco Bellocchio delivers the little-known real-life story of Ida Alser (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), Benito Mussolini’s (Filippo Timi) first wife and the mother of Il Duce’s first-born son, Benito Albino (Fabrizio Costella). Alser and Mussolini first meet in Milan in 1907, when she is a fashion and beauty entrepreneur and he is a newspaper journalist championing a religion-free Socialist. They feel an immediate connection and have passionate meetings. Soon they have a child and are married. But as Mussolini’s power in the Fascist movement grows, he takes a more traditional wife (Michela Cescon) and has another child, disavowing any relationship with Ida and young Benito and going to any lengths to cover up their very existence. Set amid the swirling turmoil that pervaded Italy during the two World Wars, VINCERE, featuring an epic score by Carlo Crivelli, is a beautifully shot melodrama, able to focus on two strong, unrelenting characters who know what they want – and what they don’t. Bellocchio (FISTS IN THE POCKET, DEVIL IN THE FLESH) interweaves archival newsreel footage, lending the film not only more reality but firmly placing it in historical context. Mezzogiorno is brilliant as Alser, a modern-day woman ahead of her time who fought for what she believed in and what she deserved, even if it meant going up against one of the most powerful men in the world.

SOUNDS FROM THE BLACK BOX

Philip Miller and Ensemble Pi team up with William Kentridge at free show at the World Financial Center (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

THE MUSIC OF PHILIP MILLER FOR THE FILMS OF WILLIAM KENTRIDGE
World Financial Center Winter Garden
200 Vesey St.
Sunday, March 21, and Monday, March 22, free, 8:00
212-945-0505
www.artsworldfinancialcenter.com

The celebration of South African multimedia artist William Kentridge continues on March 21-22 with two free screenings of his latest animation work at the World Financial Center, with Philip Miller’s score performed live by Ensemble Pi. Kentridge’s abstract narrative films are made through a series of charcoal drawings on the same paper, with erasures and additions to create the appearance of motion. The majority of his work has focused on the story of industrialist Soho Eckstein and common man Felix Teitlebaum, who is having an affair with Mrs. Eckstein. In June 2005, Kentridge’s “9 Drawings for Projection,” featuring all of his Eckstein/Teitlebaum shorts, was screened for free in both Prospect Park and Central Park to adoring crowds, with Miller’s score performed live by pianist Jill Richards, the Sontonga Quartet, trumpeter Adam Howard, and vocalist Tumelo Moloi. This time around the music is being handled by the nonprofit eight-piece Ensemble Pi, led by artistic director and pianist Idith Meshulam, along with Miller and singer Tshidi Manye. Kentridge’s subtle, surreal films are beautiful to look at, filled with imagination and resonating with meaning, its primarily black, white, and gray color scheme sparked with splashes of blue and occasional reds. The ninety-minute program at the Winter Garden consists of a dozen Kentridge films, including the rarely screened “Medicine Chest,” “Hot-el,” and the Black Box duo of “Dance of the Rhino” and “Priest’s Lament.” If you’ve seen his terrific retrospective at MoMA, you must catch this as well — not all of these works are part of the museum show — while you’ll be running over to MoMA to take in everything you can if this serves as your introduction to the genius that is William Kentridge.

SCRIPT TO SCREEN CONFERENCE

Oscar-nominated writer-director Terry George (HOTEL RWANDA, THE BOXER) is one of the featured guests at annual Script to Screen Conference at 92YTribeca

92YTribeca
200 Hudson St.
Weekend Pass: Members $150, Nonmembers $200
($150 with the discount code FREE2010)
www.conference.ifp.org

Looking to be the next Geoffrey Fletcher or Mark Boal, both of whom won screenwriting Oscars earlier this month for independently produced films? (Fletcher won for PRECIOUS, Boal for THE HURT LOCKER.) The Independent Filmmaker Project will be holding its annual Script to Screen Conference at 92YTribeca this weekend, featuring two days of panel discussions, in-depth conversations, workshops, networking opportunities, and more with award-winning screenwriters, producers, casting directors, film festival programmers, executives, and other industry insiders and outsiders. Among the participants at last year’s conference, the first after a five-year hiatus, were Lee Daniels, James Schamus, Nelson George, Ramin Bahrani, and Ted Hope, with such seminal figures as Paul Schrader, Allison Anders, James Toback, Gale Ann Hurd, and Tom Fontana having attended in previous years.

Saturday (9:00 am – 4:30 pm) is devoted to “Launching Your Next Project,” with such events as “Development Demystified,” with Sophie Barthes, Anne Carey, and Jonathan Shukat, moderated by Susan Lewis, and “The Art of Selling & Storytelling,” with Rodney Evans, John Hadity, and Jenny Schweitzer, moderated by Monty Ross, in addition to DAILY SHOW head writer Steve Bodow in conversation with Filmmaker magazine’s Jason Guerrasio. Sunday’s theme is “Sustaining Your Filmmaking Career,” beginning at 2:00 with Terry George (HOTEL RWANDA, IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER) in conversation with Filmmaker’s Scott Macaulay and followed by “Writing for a New Landscape: New Media & Cross-Platform Opportunities,” with Keith Bunin, Lena Dunham, Ryan Bilsborrow-Koo, and Zack Lieberman, moderated by Christian Vesper; “Now What? A Screenwriting Career with Peter Hedges,” with Hedges (PIECES OF APRIL, WHAT’S EATING GILBERT GRAPE) discussing his work with moderator Adam Brooks (ALMOST YOU, DEFINITELY, MAYBE); and concluding with Brian Koppelman (ROUNDERS, SOLITARY MAN) in conversation with film critic Elvis Mitchell. Weekend passes are $150 for IFP members and $200 for nonmembers, but nonmembers can get the member price with the discount code FREE2010.

THE NOSE

THE NOSE is making its long-awaited Met debut this month, directed by William Kentridge and conducted by Valery Gergiev

The Metropolitan Opera, Lincoln Center
Between West 62nd & 65th Sts. and Columbus & Amsterdam Aves.
March 18 & 25, $15 standing room – $375
212-362-6000
www.metoperafamily.org

Prior to the March 11 performance of THE NOSE at the Metropolitan Opera House, artist and mensch William Kentridge could be seen in the Met lobby greeting friends and fans as everyone awaited the second night of his production of THE NOSE, which had made its highly anticipated Met debut on March 5. Kentridge brings that same mensch spirit to his absurdist version of Dmitri Shostakovich’s absurdist opera, based on Nikolai Gogol’s absurdist short story about a young man who wakes up one day to discover that his nose has disappeared. The story, which deals with political hierarchy, social division, and the perils of bureaucracy, is set in 1830s St. Petersburg, but it also relates to Kentridge’s native South Africa under apartheid. Kentridge’s multimedia production features black-and-white animation, lofty sets that suddenly appear well off the ground or are dragged around by characters, and a Russian constructivist collage that serves as a backdrop for much of the action.

Kentridge, who designed the stunning sets with Sabine Theunissen, infuses the opera with the same playful humor evident in Shostakovich’s controversial score, which ranges from classical to folk to polka and includes a three-minute percussion intermezzo, all under the inventive baton of Valery Gergiev. Paulo Szot, who won a Tony for his role as Emile De Becque in Lincoln Center’s production of SOUTH PACIFIC, plays the noseless Kovalyov, but it is often difficult to hear his too-soft delivery. The cast of more than seventy also includes Andrei Popov as the police inspector, Vladimir Ognovenko as barber Ivan Yakolevich, and Gordon Gietz as the Nose. The English subtitles are projected onto the bottom of the set, sometimes hard to read or blocked by the performers, although they are also occasionally blasted onto the backdrop collage in unusual ways. THE NOSE is an unconventional opera, with unconventional sets, an unconventional score, and an unconventional length, clocking in at a mere 104 minutes, and it is playing to an unconventional audience of regular opera aficionados as well as fans of Kentridge, whose work is being celebrated all over the city this month, with a retrospective at MoMA, a drawing show at Dieu Donné, screenings with live music at the World Financial Center, and other special events and appearances. Be sure to stop by Gallery Met before the show to see “Ad Hoc,” a small display of Kentridge’s preparatory sketches, notes, costume cutouts, and a three-dimensional sculpture of Shostakovich.

CANADIAN FRONT, 2010: FATHERS AND GUNS

Fathers and sons do physical and emotional battle in French Canadian action comedy

DE PÈRE EN FLIC (FATHERS AND GUNS) (Émile Gaudreault, 2009)
MoMA Film
Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Wednesday, March 17, 7:30
Saturday, March 20, 1:00
Series runs March 17-22
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

A huge hit in its native Quebec – the film was so successful that Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall will be producing an English-language remake for Sony next year – FATHERS AND GUNS is a goofy action comedy set in the world of cops and gangsters. When one of their agents, Jeff Tremblay (Hubert Proulx), is captured by an anarchistic biker gang, experienced hero cop Jacques Laroche (Michel Côté) is determined to get him back, preferably without the help of his son, Marc (baby-faced comedian Louis-José Houde), a young police sharpshooter who was unable to protect Jeff in the first place. Jacques continually abuses Marc, especially in front of the other officers, who include Geneviève (Caroline Dhavernas), who is in the process of breaking up with Marc. The team decides the only way to get Jeff back is to find a snitch, so they go after the bikers’ powerful lawyer, Charles Bérubé (Rémy Girard), who is about to head off on an adventure retreat to reconnect with his troubled son, Tim (Patrick Drolet). Much to his dismay, Jacques is ordered to attend the same retreat with his son, both undercover, where they are expected to share their feelings and do other things together that rile Jacques and his overt manliness. But it soon looks like they’re not the only father-son team with a different agenda. Directed by Émile Gaudreault (MAMBO ITALIANO), who cowrote the script with Ian Lauzon, FATHERS AND GUNS is sort of a Canadian ANALYZE THIS, with psychotherapy working its way into the lives of a pair of strong, proud men having difficulties with their sons. It’s a pleasing little film that never quite goes over the top, though it does come close, and it does feature one of the strangest scenes of the year, involving nipples, but enough said….

FATHERS AND GUNS is part of MoMA’s seventh annual Canadian Front, consisting of some of the best Canadian fiction and nonfiction films of the past eighteen months. The series gets under way March 17 with Sherry White’s debut coming-of-age CRACKIE and includes Bernard Émond’s drama THE LEGACY, Brigitte Berman’s documentary HUGH HEFNER: PLAYBOY, ACTIVIST, AND REBEL, the very odd rock-and-roll vampire musical SUCK, and Denis Villeneuve’s fact-based POLYTECHNIQUE, about a Columbine-like shooting spree in Canada.