Will Rawls, I make me [sic], TBA Festival, 2017 (photo by Maggie Heath)
Who: Will Rawls
What: High Line Performance Art
Where: On the High Line at Seventeenth St., Sunken Overlook
When: Tuesday, July 10, through Thursday, July 12, free with RSVP, 6:00 – 8:00 pm
Why: Brooklyn-based choreographer, curator, writer, and performer Will Rawls will present the site-specific Will Rawls, Uncle Rebus on the High Line in the Sunken Overlook at Seventeenth St. and Tenth Ave. on July 10-12 from 6:00 to 8:00; admission is free, but advance RSVP is required. Rawls, who has performed with Shen Wei, Marina Abramović, Nicholas Leichter, Maria Hassabi, Tino Sehgal, Jérôme Bel, Noemie LaFrance, and others and is half of the performance art duo Dance Gang (with Kennis Hawkins), reimagines the controversial Uncle Remus narrator and his Brer Rabbit tales, joining Trinity Bobo, Stanley Gambucci, and Jasmine Hearn, in costumes by Eleanor O’Connell, as they use a custom keyboard to tell a rather different story in the form of a choreographed meditation on language, race, tradition, and the human body.
Director Rupert Wyatt and writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver reimagine Pierre Boulle’s original Planet of the Apes story in the exciting and inventive reboot Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Taking elements from the first five Apes films, especially the fourth flick, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, the blockbuster is a more science-based thriller that delves into the evolutionary (and devolutionary) nature of humans and animals. James Franco stars as Will Rodman, a scientist working on the anti-Alzheimer’s drug ALZ-112 for Gen-Sys, a big pharmaceutical company run by Steven Jacobs (David Oyelowo). After a demonstration for potential investors goes terribly wrong, Jacobs orders all of the ALZ-112 test subjects to be destroyed, but the baby of the primary subject survives and is brought home by Will, who raises Caesar (a motion-captured Andy Serkis) as if the chimpanzee were his own child, with the help of his scientist girlfriend, Caroline (Slumdog Millionaire’s Freida Pinto) and his father (John Lithgow), who was suffering from Alzheimer’s but is seeing remarkable improvement as Will secretly treats him with the controversial drug. As Caesar grows up, he gains insight into the state of the world, especially how apes are forced to literally live like caged animals, and soon he is ready to do something about it. Rise of the Planet of the Apes is no mere remake or summer popcorner capitalizing on the fame of the series (for that, see Tim Burton’s terrible 2001 disaster); instead, it is a moving, thoughtful study of the development of mammalian intelligence and the very basic need to be free. Wyatt (The Escapist) moves things along at a slow pace in the first half of the film, allowing Caesar’s character to blossom, leading to a believable revolution that culminates in an action-packed showdown on the Golden Gate Bridge. Serkis, who previously played such motion-capture characters as Gollum and King Kong, breathes remarkable life and emotion into Caesar, so much so that there was Oscar buzz around his performance. 
Hong Kong-born filmmaker Oxide Pang Chun has his work cut out for him in The Big Call, a thriller about phone scams somewhat more complicated than the classic Nigerian cons. “It’s a war with keyboards,” one character proclaims, and indeed, much of the film is spent showing people on their smartphones and typing at computers, trying to explain the often inexplicable plot, which is riddled with ridiculous twists and turns yet still has its compelling moments and, ultimately, foot and car chases, torture, and violence. After his high school teacher commits suicide because of a scam, young cop Ding Xiaotian (Cheney Chen) begins investigating a ring of high-tech thieves who trick and/or threaten people in order to drain their bank accounts. Run by lovers Lin Ahai (Zhang Xiaoquan) and Liu Lifang (Gwei Lun-mei), the operation recruits women and essentially imprisons them in Thailand, where they make the calls in a carefully orchestrated system that rarely fails. They have been infiltrated by Xu Xiaotu (Jiang Mengjie), an ambitious officer who went to the academy with Ding, who has joined the Anti-Telecommunication Fraud Centre, where he butts heads with Inspector Tan Sirong (Zhang Zhaohui). When Lin Xiaoqin (Peng Xinchen), Lin’s sister, gets scammed and Taiwan mastermind Lu Chixiong (Luo Dahua) makes an aggressive bet with Lin Ahai, the risks rise and the blood-spilling ratchets up.
