twi-ny recommended events

AN EVENING CELEBRATING JOHNNY HALLYDAY

French pop icon Johnny Hallyday stars as an alternate version of himself in Jean-Philippe

French pop icon Johnny Hallyday stars as an alternate version of himself in Laurent Tuel’s Jean-Philippe

French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Monday, January 22, $14, 7:30
212-355-6160
fiaf.org

On December 5, 2017, singer and actor Johnny Hallyday, known as the French Elvis, died of lung cancer at the age of seventy-four after eight years of serious health problems. “We all have a piece of Johnny Hallyday inside every one of us. The public today is in tears, and the whole country mourns,” President Emmanuel Macron said in a statement. More than a million people lined the streets of Paris for the funeral procession of the national hero, who sold more than one hundred million records and was married five times to four women. On January 22, FIAF will pay tribute to the motorcycle-loving Hallyday, born Jean-Philippe Smet, with the special program “An Evening Celebrating Johnny Hallyday.” The tribute begins with a screening of Laurent Tuel’s 2006 film, Jean-Philippe, in which the pop icon portrays a fictional version of himself, just a regular person, opposite Fabrice Luchini. The screening will be followed by a wine reception with live performances of some of the Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur’s many hits.

REPRESENTATION: BLAME

Quinn Shepard is a sextuple threat in sexy, hard-hitting teen drama Blame

BRUNCH MOVIE: BLAME (Quinn Shephard, 2017)
Nitehawk Cinema
136 Metropolitan Ave. between Berry St. & Wythe Ave.
Saturday, January 20, and Sunday, January 21, 11:45 am
718-384-3980
nitehawkcinema.com
www.samuelgoldwynfilms.com/blame

Twenty-two-year-old Quinn Shephard proves herself to be a sextuple threat in the daring, sexy teen thriller Blame. The New Jersey native wrote, directed, edited, produced, and stars in the film, in addition to writing the lyrics for several songs performed by Peter Henry Phillips. Her mother, Laurie Shephard, also produced and cast the movie, which takes place in a New Jersey high school where Abigail Grey (Quinn Shephard) has returned after a mysterious psychotic incident. She is immediately targeted by mean-girl leader Melissa Bowman (Nadia Alexander) and her trusted bestie, Sophie Grant (Sarah Mezzanotte), while the third member of the clique, Ellie Redgrave (Tessa Albertson), might be on the outs for showing sympathy for Abigail. Melissa sics her boyfriend, T.J. (Owen Campbell), and Sophie’s beau, Eric (Luke Slattery), on Abigail, taunting and teasing her, calling her Sybil, after the book and movie about a woman with multiple personalities. When Jeremy Woods (Chris Messina) takes over their drama class, he switches the play they’re presenting from Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie to Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, casting Abigail as protagonist Abigail Williams, who might be involved with witchcraft, and Eric as John Proctor, a married man she might be having an affair with. Melissa, who wanted the lead role, is furious when she is named Abigail’s understudy. When Eric doesn’t take things seriously, Jeremy steps in to play John, angering Melissa further as Abigail gets to spend more time with the rather attractive teacher, especially as she watches Abigail and Jeremy grow very close. And Melissa doesn’t like to lose.

Quinn Shepard, wrote, directed, produced, edited, stars in, and composed lyrics for for her feature-film debut, Blame

Blame is a carefully crafted, intimate tale of lust, jealousy, and obsession, capturing the complicated zeitgeist of high school life, the fear and trepidation along with the experimentation and confusion. In shifting from The Glass Menagerie to The Crucible, Shephard equates mental illness with witchcraft as seen through a feminist lens as her story parallels Miller’s, much as Amy Heckerling’s Clueless follows Jane Austen’s Emma (only without the laughs) and Roger Kumble’s Cruel Intentions is based on Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s Les Liaisons dangereuses. The scenes between Shephard (Hostages, The Miseducation of Cameron Post) and Messina (The Mindy Project, Damages) are sizzling hot as teacher and student teeter on the edge of a major taboo. Shephard, who appeared in a high school production of The Crucible, also gets to show off her fab eyebrows, which are a character unto themselves. She is one talented filmmaker deserving of attention in an industry that must do a much better job cultivating, acknowledging, celebrating, and rewarding films by and about women. Blame is screening January 20 and 21 at 11:45 am in the Nitehawk series “Representation,” which focuses on films by female directors, continuing January 27-28 with Maysaloun Hamoud’s In Between and February 1 with Alex H. Fischer and Rachel Wolther’s Snowy Bing Bongs Across the North Star Combat Zone and Catherine Fordham’s Best Thing You’ll Ever Do, followed by a Q&A with Fordham, Fischer, and Best Thing star Monica West and a live performance by Tallie Medel, Sunita Mani, and Eleanore Pienta, who all appear in Snowy Bing Bongs.

THE CHILDREN

Old friends Rose (Francesca Annis) and Hazel (Deborah Findlay) reunite in Lucy Kirkwood’s The Children (photo © Joan Marcus 2017)

Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West 47th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through February 4, $60-$149
www.manhattantheatreclub.com
thechildrenbroadway.com

Amid all the splashy musicals, wacky comedies, and star-driven vehicles currently on Broadway, the British import The Children stands apart, a breath of fresh air in this winter season. Well, maybe that’s not the best way to classify this fiercely taut drama, which takes place shortly after a devastating nuclear accident on the East Coast of Britain. The fictional event appears to have even rattled the stage at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, which is severely tilted, creating a bit of an uphill or downhill climb when the characters move to the right or left. The play opens as Rose (Francesca Annis) pays a surprise afternoon visit to her old friend and colleague, Hazel (Deborah Findlay), who is living with her husband, Robin (Ron Cook), in a small cottage just outside the contaminated exclusion zone. “We heard you’d died!” Hazel announces; it’s been thirty-eight years since the two women, both nuclear engineers, last saw each other. While Hazel has settled into the domestic life of a retiree, with four children and four grandchildren, Rose has been gallivanting around the world, never settling down or getting married. When Rose asks Hazel why they haven’t moved farther away from the radiation, Hazel responds, “It’s just that little bit extra but it makes a world of difference to our peace of mind. . . . I would’ve felt like a traitor. Besides, retired people are like nuclear power stations. We like to live by the sea.” They are soon joined by Robin, who goes to their old farm every day, tending to the cows, even though it’s in the exclusion area. Where Hazel is very direct and to the point, Robin is more rambunctious and freewheeling, cracking jokes, asking Rose for a squeeze, and offering her some of his homemade wine. But when Rose reveals the reason she has returned — and secrets emerge — the trio has to reexamine their purpose in life and their future.

Robin (Ron Cook), Hazel (Deborah Findlay), and Rose (Francesca Annis) remember the good old days in U.S. premiere at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Broadway house (photo © Joan Marcus 2017)

Originally produced at the Royal Court Theatre, The Children is brilliantly written by Olivier Award winner Lucy Kirkwood (Chimerica, Mosquitoes), who has created three complex characters who are genuine and unpredictable. The play takes a hard look at ageing and death, examining the responsibility the old have to the young. “How can anybody consciously moving towards death, I mean by their own design, possibly be happy? People of our age have to resist — you have to resist, Rose,” Hazel says. “If you’re not going to grow: don’t live.” It is also about blood, both literally and figuratively. When Rose first enters the house, a shocked Hazel turns defensively and hits Rose, giving her a bloody nose. One of Hazel and Robin’s children suffers from mental illness, thinking she is a bloodsucking vampire. And, of course, radiation poisons the blood. James Macdonald, who has directed numerous works by Caryl Churchill (Escaped Alone, Top Girls) and Sarah Kane (4.48 Psychosis, Blasted), among others, keeps things balanced even as the actors have to deal with Miriam Buether’s angled set, which is framed as if a tilted picture on a wall come to life. Olivier nominee Annis (Cranford, Troilus and Cressida), Olivier winner Findlay (Stanley, Coriolanus), and Olivier nominee Cook (Juno and the Paycock, Faith Healer) reprise their roles from the London production, all three delivering warm, heartfelt performances, with a special nod to Cook for having to ride a tricycle uphill despite a bad back. And Max Pappenheim’s sound design stands out as well, from a Geiger counter to church bells. Despite its title, The Children is the most adult show in New York City right now, a marvelously resonant, intelligent, and engaging play that continually defies expectations as the plot twists and turns while something threatening hangs just past the horizon.

PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON x 6: INHERENT VICE

Reese Witherspoon and Joaquin Phoenix reveal that opposites attract in Inherent Vice

INHERENT VICE (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Friday, January 19, 3:45
Series runs through January 25
212-660-0312
www.inherentvicemovie.com
metrograph.com

It makes sense that award-winning writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson, who has made such complex, challenging films as Magnolia, There Will Be Blood, and The Master, has made the first cinematic adaptation of a novel by reclusive, iconoclastic author Thomas Pynchon, who has written such complex, challenging books as Gravity’s Rainbow, V., and Vineland. It also makes sense that the book he chose to adapt is Inherent Vice, probably the most lighthearted and breezy of Pynchon’s tomes. But it also makes sense that the film itself is complex and challenging — and downright confusing. Walking out of the theater, we were pretty sure we liked what we had just seen, even if we didn’t completely understand what had happened. (As Jena Malone said of the making of the film, “The logic becomes the chaos and the chaos becomes the logic.”) The neonoir takes place in 1970 in the fictional Valley town of Gordita Beach (based on Manhattan Beach, where Pynchon lived for a long time). Joaquin Phoenix stars as Larry “Doc” Sportello, a mutton-chopped ex-hippie who is now a private gumshoe working out of a health clinic. One day his ex, Shasta Fay Hepworth (a transplendent Katherine Waterston), shows up to ask him to get her out of a jam involving her billionaire boyfriend, Mickey Wolfmann (Eric Roberts), who has gone missing, perhaps at the hands of Wolfmann’s high-society wife, Sloane (Serena Scott Thomas). Meanwhile, Doc is also hired by Hope Harlingen (Malone) to determine whether her supposedly dead husband, surf-sax legend Coy (Owen Wilson), is actually alive. As Pynchon himself says in the book trailer, “At that point, it gets sort of peculiar,” and peculiar it does indeed get, as Doc becomes immersed in a web of lies and deceit, dealing with a dangerous cult known as the Golden Fang (where Martin Short plays a sex-crazed dentist with a wild abandon), a curious health facility called the Chryskylodon Institute run by Dr. Threeply (Jefferson Mays), and Det. Bigfoot Bjornsen (Josh Brolin), a “renaissance cop” who has no time for any of Doc’s hippie crap, as the Manson murders hover over everything. Well, at least that’s what we think the plot is about.

Doc (Joaquin Phoenix) and Bigfoot (Josh Brolin) don’t agree on much in Paul Thomas Anderson adaptation of Thomas Pynchon novel

As with all Anderson films, Inherent Vice looks and sounds great; cinematographer Robert Elswit, who has shot most of Anderson’s works, bathes the quirky drama in hazy, syrupy colors, while Jonny Greenwood’s score is accompanied by songs by Can, Sam Cooke, Minnie Riperton, the Marketts, and Neil Young. (In fact, Young’s Journey through the Past experimental film served as an influence on Anderson when making Inherent Vice, as did David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker’s Police Squad and Naked Gun series, Robert Altman’s 1973 Philip Marlowe movie The Long Goodbye, and Howard Hawks’s 1946 version of Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep.) It all has the feel of the Coen brothers’ The Big Lebowski as reinterpreted by Anderson and Pynchon — who might have been on-set during at least some of the shooting and supposedly makes a cameo in the picture. The film is littered with absurdist jokes and oddities, from the way Bigfoot eats a chocolate-covered banana to a trio of FBI agents picking their noses, from the right-wing Vigilant California organization to a clip from the 1952 Cold War propaganda film Red Nightmare. Phoenix once again fully inhabits his character, who putt-putts around in an old Dodge Dart and just wants life to be mellow and groovy. Brolin is hysterical as his foil, the straitlaced, flattop cop who has a penchant for busting down doors. The large cast also includes Benicio del Toro as Sauncho Smilax, Doc’s too-cool lawyer; Reese Witherspoon as Penny Kimball, Doc’s well-coiffed girlfriend; Maya Rudolph (Anderson’s real-life partner and the daughter of Riperton) as receptionist Petunia Leeway; Sasha Pieterse as Japonica Fenway, who hangs with Golden Fang dentist Rudy Blatnoyd (Short); and Joanna Newsom as Sortilège, the film’s narrator (who does not appear in the book). Inherent Vice is yet another unique cinematic experience from Anderson, one that is likely to take multiple viewings to understand just what is going on, but as with his previous films, it is likely to be well worth the investment. Inherent Vice is screening January 19 at 3:45 in the Metrograph series “Paul Thomas Anderson x 6” and will be preceded by Anderson’s Radiohead: Daydreaming music video in 35mm. The mini-festival is being held in conjunction with the release of his latest work, Phantom Thread, and continues through January 25 with Punch-Drunk Love and Boogie Nights.

BEUYS

Joseph Beuys declares that everything is art and everyone is an artist in new documentary (copyright zeroonefilm/bpk _ErnstvonSiemensKunststiftung_StiftungMuseumSchlossMoyland_Foto: UteKlophaus)

BEUYS (Andres Veiel, 2017)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Opens Wednesday, January 17
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

About ten years ago, I was visiting Chelsea galleries on a sunny afternoon when a car pulled up on the corner of Eleventh Ave. and Twenty-second St. A father and a young boy of about five or six got out, and the man led the child to one of the stone sculptures that make up Joseph Beuys’s “7000 Oaks.” The boy relieved himself on the stone; the pair then returned to the car and the family drove off. I always thought that the German avant-garde artist would have gotten a kick out of that scene; after watching Andres Veiel’s new documentary, Beuys, I’m sure of it. If you’re going to make a documentary about Beuys (pronounced boys), one of the most influential artists of the postwar generation, it had better not be a straightforward, talking-heads film but something that pushes the boundaries and challenges the viewer, much like his art. Award-winning director Veiel (Balagan, Black Box Germany) does just that with the film, which concentrates primarily on rarely shown and never-before-seen archival footage of Beuys, including radio and television interviews, art openings, panel discussions, live performances, photographs, and home movies, mostly in black-and-white. Veiel conducted approximately twenty new interviews and met with more than five dozen people who knew Beuys, but he only uses spare clips from art historian Rhea Thönges-Stringaris, publisher Klaus Staeck, collector Franz Joseph van der Grinten, and critic, curator, and writer Caroline Tisdall, who wrote seven books about Beuys and worked with him on several major exhibitions and lecture tours. “The anonymous viewer is back there, yeah?” Beuys says early on, looking straight into the camera, and it’s a critical moment, as the documentary emphasizes how important it was to him that his work be seen. “I want to inform people about the true culprits in our system. I want to inform and educate people,” he says. Beuys, who also taught at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, is eminently quotable, his speech filled with manifesto-like declarations. “Forget the conventional idea of art. Anyone can be an artist. Anything can be art, especially anything that conserves energy,” he explains. “I’m not an artist at all. Except if we say that everyone is an artist,” he opines. “The concept of what art is has expanded to such a degree that, for me, there’s nothing left of it,” he offers.

Joseph Beuys. (Image copyright zeroonefilm_bpk_Stiftung MuseumSchloss_Moyland_UteKlophaus)

Wearing his trademark outfit, Joseph Beuys shares his thoughts about art and life (copyright zeroonefilm_bpk _ Stiftung_MuseumSchloss_Moyland_UteKlophaus)

Veiel, cinematographer Jörg Jeshel, and editors Olaf Voigtländer and Stephan Krumbiegel begin many scenes by scanning a contact sheet of photos of Beuys and zeroing in on one, which suddenly comes to life. Among Beuys’s projects they focus on are 1969’s “The Pack” (das Rudel), sleds tied to the back of a VW bus; the 1974-75 installation “Show Your Wound,” which might have been inspired by the injuries he suffered as a pilot in WWII; the 1965 performance piece “How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare”; “Boxing Match: Joseph Beuys & Abraham David Christian”; “Honey Pump in the Workplace,” an example of what Beuys called “social sculpture”; and the expansive “7000 Oaks,” in which he paired stone sculptures with tree plantings. Usually smoking a cigarette, baring his big, white teeth, and wearing his vest and trademark hat — perhaps to cover up war injuries — Beuys is always aware he is being watched, on exhibit himself, and it’s something he toys with, tongue often in cheek as he expounds on concepts about life and art and plays around with interlocutors. The film touches on his childhood, his war experience, his association with the Green Party, and his descent into a deep, dark depression, but it evades various controversies, from possible Nazi ties to shamanism to his oft-told tale of a plane crash in which he was supposedly saved by Tartars. Veiel also doesn’t delve into Beuys’s personal relationships or the illness that led to his death in 1986 at the age of sixty-four. Instead, he gives us a Beuys who is ever-present, an iconoclastic, often inscrutable, and wildly intelligent artist and innovative provocateur who constructed his own mythology that continues to tantalize us today — even when his work is used as a public toilet. Beuys is making its U.S. theatrical premiere January 17 at Film Forum; Veiel will participate in a Q&A with MoMA PS1 director Klaus Biesenbach following the 7:00 show on January 19.

AFTER DARKNESS: SOUTHEAST ASIAN ART IN THE WAKE OF HISTORY

Htein Lin’s “A Show of Hands” documents the plight of hundreds of political prisoners in Myanmar (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Asia Society Museum
725 Park Ave. at 70th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 21, $7-$12 (free Friday nights from 6:00 to 9:00)
212-288-6400
asiasociety.org

There is nothing subtle about “After Darkness: Southeast Asian Art in the Wake of History,” an intense exhibition continuing through January 21 at Asia Society. The seven artists and one collective in the show — who hail from Indonesia, Myanmar, and Vietnam, three nations that have undergone major sociopolitical transformations since WWII — are angry, and they want everyone to know it. “The featured artists have worked within challenging environments, which have included periods of violence and uncertainty, to create artworks that represent their most ardent aspirations for their home countries,” Asia Society president and CEO Josette Sheeran writes in her foreword to the expansive catalog. In “Destruction,” Indonesian artist FX Harsono turns himself into Ravana, the Demon King from the epic Indian poem Ramayana, and uses a chainsaw to cut up chairs to protest voter fraud, while in “Burned Victims” he sets fire to nine wooden torsos to raise awareness about nine innocent people who died in a mall fire during a riot; the charred remains are lined up along the floor of the gallery. Vietnamese artist Dinh Q. Lê evokes Chinese handscrolls in “WTC from Four Perspectives,” four long, stretched images of the fall of the Twin Towers, now turned into abstract colors and shapes. In “Relevancy of Restricted Things,” Myanmar’s Nge Lay wears a mask and dresses up as her father, who died when she was a teenager, and takes photographs of other families who have lost the patriarch, with Lay taking his place. She also stages her own death in “Observing of Self Being Dead.” Vietnamese artist Nguyen Thi Thanh Mai asked refugees in Cambodia and Vietnam to choose a stock background of an idyllic location, then had a traveling photographer take a picture of them as if they were there; the photos were then arranged on the walls of a hut made from coconut and eucalyptus leaves.

FX Harsono’s “Burned Victims” leads to Dinh Q. Lê’s “WTC from Four Perspectives” (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The Propeller Group, founded by Matt Lucero, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, and Phunam Thuc Ha, uses time-delay video to watch a motorcycle being stripped down by thieves in The Dream, while in the two-channel video The Guerrillas of Cu Chi, tourists pay a dollar to shoot M-16s and AK-47s from the Vietnam War where underground tunnels were used by the Viet Cong to kill American troops; across the way, a propaganda film promotes the Cu Chi Guerrillas. In Chinese Indonesian Tintin Wulia’s Everything’s OK, her camera moves across a Styrofoam city where money rains down and overcrowding takes over, while opportunity knocks in Ketok and fangs emerge from imported fruit in Violence Against Fruits, about the treatment of minority groups. Indonesian photographer Angki Purbandono spoofs fashion shoots in “Beyond Versace.” And Htein Lin gets his own room for “A Show of Hands,” multiple shelves of plaster of Paris casts of hands of political prisoners in Myanmar, creating an almost blindingly white effect, each hand tagged with a label detailing the person’s name and time spent in which jail. In addition, Harsono’s Writing in the Rain video, in which the artist continues writing his name in black ink on a window as water comes down and washes his identity away, is this month’s “Midnight Moment” selection, being projected on electronic billboards in Times Square throughout January from 11:57 pm to midnight. The exhibition is a kind-of follow-up to 1996’s “Contemporary Art in Asia: Traditions/Tensions,” which was held simultaneously at NYU’s Grey Art Gallery, the Queens Museum, and Asia Society and introduced artists from India, Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand. But “After Darkness” takes it to the next level, focusing on artists’ reactions to dramatic changes in three nations. In his downstairs lobby installation, FX Harsono’s “Blank Spot on My TV” consists of twenty digital prints of news conferences in which the artist has placed a white circle on a politician’s face, primarily covering the speaker’s mouth, as if what is coming out is meaningless. Meanwhile, “After Darkness” celebrates artists who are not about to be silenced.

MISSION POSSIBLE: IN CONVERSATION WITH RONNY CHIENG

Comedian Ronny Chieng will discuss his life and career at Museum of Chinese in America on January 17

Who: Ronny Chieng, Nancy Yao Maasbach
What: “Mission Possible” conversation with comedian Ronny Chieng and MOCA president Nancy Yao Maasbach
Where: Museum of Chinese in America, 215 Centre St., 855-955-MOCA
When: Wednesday, January 17, $30 (includes museum admission and one drink), 6:00
Why: The Daily Show correspondent Ronny Chieng was born in Malaysia, raised in New Hampshire and Singapore, graduated from the University of Melbourne in Australia, and now is based in New York City. On Trevor Noah’s show, in his stand-up routines, and on his own series, Ronny Chieng: International Student, Chieng takes on stereotypes with straight-ahead humor and a touch of silliness, but always with a serious point. On January 17, the Chinese comedian will be at the Museum of Chinese in America to sit down with MOCA president Nancy Yao Maasbach to talk about comedy, his childhood, and Asian Americans in the arts. There will be an open mic with special guests at 6:00, followed by the discussion at 8:00. Tickets are $30 and include museum admission (and one drink), so get there early to check out the exhibitions “With a Single Step: Stories in the Making of America” and “FOLD: Golden Venture Paper Sculptures.” The program is part of MOCAFest 2018, a wide-ranging series of events welcoming in the Lunar New Year and the Year of the Dog. “Mission Possible” continues January 24 with Gish Jen and January 31 with Betty Wong Ortiz.