twi-ny recommended events

KENT JONES’S DREAM DOUBLE FEATURE: RIO BRAVO

Dean Martin and John Wayne have their hands full in Howard Hawks’s Rio Bravo

RIO BRAVO (Howard Hawks, 1959)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Friday, April 5, 7:00
212-660-0312
metrograph.com

Howard Hawks’s anti-High Noon is a surprisingly sensitive, extremely clever exploration of interpersonal relationships disguised as a Western genre picture. John Wayne stars as Sheriff John T. Chance, a big, bold small-town Texas lawman who arrests local bully Joe Burdette (Claude Akins) for committing cold-blooded murder. The cocky Burdette doesn’t expect to be in jail long, not with his brother, Nathan (John Russell), being the most powerful — and potentially dangerous — man in Rio Bravo, and what with Chance’s deputies being useless drunk Dude (Dean Martin) and an old cripple known as Stumpy (Walter Brennan). Despite offers of help from such friends as businessman Pat Wheeler (Ward Bond), Chance is determined to go it with just Dude and Stumpy as they attempt to hold Joe until the federal marshal arrives. But Nathan and his hired band of bounty hunters are just as determined to free Joe, whatever the cost. Chance is not so foolish as to think that he can take Burdette’s crew on just by himself; he actually doesn’t want anyone else to die for something he considers his responsibility. Meanwhile, he is keeping his eyes on Feathers (Angie Dickinson), a tough-talking young woman with a sordid past, and Colorado (Ricky Nelson), a sharpshooting young stud only out for himself.

The set-up is merely an excuse for Hawks to delve into some serious male bonding and potential romance as Dude, called Borrachón (“Drunk”), tries to put down the bottle, Feathers attempts to prove that she’s not all bad, and Colorado eventually replaces his guns for a few minutes with a guitar to sing with Dude and Stumpy. Wayne plays it all marvelously, portraying Chance as a complex individual who understands the fears and desires, limitations and possibilities inherent in everyone he meets, yet always remaining cool. Appropriately enough, the local hotel, run by the always helpful Carlos (Pedro Gonzalez-Gonzalez) and his wife, Consuela (Estelita Rodriguez), is named the Alamo, not boding well for Chance and his meager team. Even at its 141-minute running time, Rio Bravo feels far more intimate than epic. Rio Bravo is being shown April 5 at 7:00 on an IB Technicolor Print at Metrograph on the Lower East Side, the second part of “Kent Jones’s Dream Double Feature,” selected by filmmaker and New York Film Festival director Kent Jones; the first part was Monte Hellman’s The Shooting.

AMOR TOWLES IN BROOKLYN: A GENTLEMAN IN NEW YORK

gentleman in moscowjpg

Who: Amor Towles
What: Books Are Magic author event
Where: First Unitarian Congregational Society, 119 Pierrepont St.
When: Friday, April 5, $14-$21, 7:00
Why: Massachusetts native Amor Towles will be in Brooklyn on April 5, celebrating the release of the paperback edition of his bestselling novel A Gentleman in Moscow (Penguin Books March 26, $17). In the court transcript that opens the book, Secretary Ignatov asks, “I have no doubt, Count Rostov, that some in the galley are surprised to find you charming; but I am not surprised to find you so. History has shown charm to be the last ambition of the leisure class. What I do find surprising is that the author of the poem in question could have become a man so obviously without purpose.” Towles’s follow-up to 2011’s Rules of Civility is set in 1922, when Count Alexander Rostov is sentenced to house arrest in a hotel across from the Kremlin. General admission tickets for the author event at the First Unitarian Congregational Society are $21 including a copy of the book and $14 without.

LATE NITES AT METROGRAPH: ANTI-PORNO

Ami Tomite stars in Sion Sono’s bizarre, beguiling, anarchistic Anti-Porno

ANTI-PORNO (ANCHI PORUNO) (アンチポルノ) (Sion Sono, 2016)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
April 4-6, 3:00 & 10:30
212-660-0312
metrograph.com
www.nikkatsu-romanporno.com

“I’m a virgin. A virgin, but a whore,” successful novelist, painter, and fashion designer Kyoko (Ami Tomite) says at the beginning of Sion Sono’s bizarre, deliciously candy-colored, and anarchic Anti-Porno, screening April 4-6 in the “Late Nites at Metrograph” series. You never know what to expect from Siono, whose previous films include the wild and wacky Love & Peace, the wild and crazy Why Don’t You Play in Hell? and the strangely beautiful and touching Himizu. Anti-Porno is part of Nikkatsu’s Roman Porno Reboot Project, a celebration of the forty-fifth anniversary of the studio’s Japanese softcore films, which began in 1971 with Shōgorō Nishimura’s Apartment Wife: Affair in the Afternoon and continued through 1988 with Daisuke Gotō’s Bed Partner. In true Sono style, he honors the format by confusing fiction with reality, star characters with minor newbies, and the past with the present in ways that are as exhilarating as they are confounding.

Anti-Porno offers a candy-colored look at sex and power

The story takes place primarily in a spectacular apartment decked out in bright yellows, blues, and reds, with large-scale paintings and a lushly alluring open bathroom. Kyoko is a self-obsessed terror who abuses her dedicated assistant, Noriko (Mariko Tsutsui) — or is it the other way around? “I want to be a whore like you,” Noriko begs. There’s fetishism galore, plenty of nudity, a lizard trapped in a bottle, incest, an audience of girls in Sailor Moon outfits, sycophantic hangers-on, a mysterious sex film, and then a man yells, “Cut!” Soon you’re not sure who’s in charge, who’s the lead, and whether you’re watching a movie, a movie-within-a-movie, or a novel-within-a-movie-within-a-movie. “This isn’t my life!” Kyoko screams. Or is it? Sono, who also wrote the script, uses the porn format to question ideas of sexuality, misogyny, freedom, abuse, feminism, exploitation, dominance, art, power, and pornography itself, resulting in a rousing, er, climax. The gorgeous production design is by Takashi Matsuzuka, with striking cinematography by Maki Ito, raunchy costumes by Kazuhiro Sawataishi, and an inventive, wide-ranging score by Susumu Akizuki. “Late Nites at Metrograph” continues Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings with such other unusual fare as Stuart A. Staples’s Minute Bodies: The Intimate World of F Percy Smith, Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, and Bertrand Bonello’s House of Tolerance.

MARTHA GRAHAM DANCE COMPANY: THE EVE PROJECT

Martha Graham’s Chronicle is part of “The EVE Project” at the Joyce

The Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Ave. at 19th St.
April 2-14, $10-$60
212-691-9740
www.joyce.org
marthagraham.org

Martha Graham Dance Company honors the centennial of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment with “The EVE Project,” running April 2-14 at the Joyce. The season consists of three programs that celebrate female empowerment. Program A features Graham’s seldom-performed 1962 Secular Games, her 1944 Herodiade, the world premiere of Maxine Doyle and Bobbi Jene Smith’s Deo, and Annie-B Parson’s I used to love you. Program B includes the men’s section of Secular Games, the New York premiere of Pam Tanowitz’s Untitled (Souvenir), Graham’s 1936 Chronicle and 1941 El Penitente, and Lucinda Childs’s duet Histoire. Program C comprises Deo, Untitled (Souvenir), Chronicle, and Graham’s 1947 Errand into the Maze. “Martha Graham revolutionized the way women are represented onstage. Choreographing the mind and reconfiguring iconic characters, she conjured complex, powerful women acting both inside and outside of society’s expectations,” artistic director Janet Eilber said in a statement. “We hope that ‘The EVE Project’ will offer diverse and evocative ways of considering female power.”

On April 6 at 2:00, the annual University Partners Showcase presents university and high school dancers performing Graham’s Panorama, Celebration, Chronicle, and excerpts from The Rite of Spring and Appalachian Spring. A portion of the admissions for the Pink Ribbon Program on April 6 will go to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. On April 9, the Gala Program lineup features Errand into the Maze, an excerpt from Deo, Graham’s 1948 Diversion of Angels, and Graham’s 1933/2017 Ekstasis, with special guest Sara Mearns. There will be a Curtain Chat at the April 10 show. And Women’s Leadership Night on April 13 includes Errand, Untitled (Souvenir), Chronicle, and the talkback “Women CEOs Speak.” The members of the company, which was founded in 1926, are So Young An, Alyssa Cebulski, PeiJu Chien-Pott, Alessio Crognale, Laurel Dalley Smith, Natasha M. Diamond-Walker, Lloyd Knight, Charlotte Landreau, Jacob Larsen, Lloyd Mayor, Cara McManus, Marzia Memoli, Anne O’Donnell, Lorenzo Pagano, Ben Schultz, Anne Souder, Leslie Andrea Williams, and Xin Ying.

BEATLES REUNION TOUR 2019

Cutting-edge technology will allow Fab Four to come together for world tour

The impossible is happening: The Beatles are getting back together. In a surprise announcement at the Liverpool Street Station in London, surviving members Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr said that the Fab Four would be reuniting for the whirlwind “Fool on the Hill” tour, using cutting-edge holographic technology to make it appear that John Lennon, who was shot and killed in December 1980 in New York City at the age of forty, and George Harrison, who died from lung cancer in 2001 at the age of fifty-eight, are live onstage. Concerts featuring such late icons as Prince, Elvis Presley, and Michael Jackson have had mixed results, but Dennis O’Dell, cofounder of Holo Again Imaging, explained in a statement that the next barrier has been crossed. “The simulation now is so seamless, you’ll fully believe that John, Paul, George, and Ringo are back together, playing their hits like they did at Shea Stadium, on Ed Sullivan, and at the Cavern Club.”

Beatles reunion tour includes monthlong Broadway residency

It’s a family affair this time around, with Ringo’s son, Zak Starkey, playing drums, George’s son, Dhani Harrison, on guitar, and John’s sons, Sean Ono Lennon and Julian Lennon, supplying backing vocals, along with Paul’s son, James McCartney. Paul’s daughter, Stella McCartney, will design the costumes, while John’s widow, Yoko Ono, will design the set. “We couldn’t be more excited,” Paul said after emerging with Ringo from a train styled like the one the Beatles rode in A Hard Day’s Night. “Ringo and I have performed a lot together over the years, but for the four of us to reunite like this, it’s really a dream come true.” Ringo added, “We’re looking forward to spreading peace and love around the world. This music is boundless. I can’t wait.”

The tour opens July 1 at Wembley Stadium and will conclude in December with a monthlong residency on Broadway, where tickets will be available by lottery only and will range in price from $200 to $5,000. “I’m thrilled that we are able to work this out,” Paul said as he put his arm around Ringo. “A splendid time is guaranteed for all!” More information can be found on the official tour website here.

ALBERTINE PRIZE 2019

The nominees and winner of the 2019 Albertine Prize will be announced on April 3 at the Payne Whitney mansion

Albertine
972 Fifth Ave. at 79th St.
Wednesday, April 3, free with advance RSVP, 6:30
www.albertine.com

On April 3, the Cultural Services of the French Embassy will be presenting the third annual Albertine Prize, a reader’s choice award given to a French book translated into English. The evening will feature live readings by professional actors from the five nominated works throughout the first three floors of the Payne Whitney mansion on Fifth Ave., concluding with a cocktail reception in the Venetian Room. Admission is free with advance RSVP. The 2017 winner was Nelly Alard and Adriana Hunter’s Couple Mechanics, followed by Anne Garréta’s Not One Day in 2018. We know the nominees, but if we told you, we’d have to, well, you know….

THIRD RAIL PROJECTS: OASIS

Madison Krekel is one of five performers in Third Rail Projects’ site-specific Oasis at the Winter Garden

Brookfield Place
230 Vesey St.
April 1-5, 8-12, free, 12:00 & 1:00
Friday, April 12, free, 7:30
thirdrailprojects.com
bfplny.com/stories/oasis

Brooklyn-based immersive theater experts Third Rail Projects returns to the Winter Garden at Brookfield Place for its latest presentation, Oasis. On weekdays from April 1 to 12, the company behind such productions as Then She Fell, Ghost Light, and The Grand Paradise will stage free, specially commissioned pop-up performances in the expansive, palm-tree-lined space as part of Arts Brookfield’s thirtieth anniversary. Designed by architect César Pelli, the Winter Garden, in what was then known as the World Financial Center, opened in 1988 and was rebuilt following the terrorist attacks on 9/11. Oasis is set in the 1980s, as four overworked men and women dream of a better life, imagining the Winter Garden as a respite from all the madness. Conceived, directed, and choreographed by Jennine Willett, designed by Dan Daly, and performed by Julia Kelly, Madison Krekel, Edward Rice, Jessy Smith, and Ryan Wuestewald, the play will consist of ten ten-minute lunchtime vignettes taking place at noon and 1:00; on April 12 at 7:30, the episodes will be brought together as a full-length experience. Admission is free, and no advance RSVP is necessary.