twi-ny recommended events

MEMORIES OF MURDER

Local detectives are searching for a serial killer in Memories of Murder

MEMORIES OF MURDER (SALINUI CHUEOK) (Bong Joon-ho, 2003)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Friday, August 18
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com

In 2006, South Korean writer-director Bong Joon-ho burst onto the international cinematic landscape with the sleeper hit The Host, a modern-day monster movie with a lot of heart. He followed that up with the touching segment “Shaking Tokyo” in the compilation film Tokyo!, and Mother, the futuristic thriller Snowpiercer, and Okja, about an extraordinary pig. IFC Center is now going back to Bong’s second film, 2003’s Memories of Murder, screening a new digital restoration beginning August 18. Inspired by actual events, Memories of Murder is a psychological thriller set in a rural South Korean town. With a serial killer on the loose, Seoul sends experienced inspector Suh (Kim Sang-kyung) to help with the case, which is being bungled by local detectives Park (Song Kang-ho) and Cho (Kim Roe-ha), who consistently tamper with evidence, bring in the wrong suspects, and torture them in both brutal and ridiculously funny ways. But as the frustration level builds and more victims are found, even Suh starts considering throwing away the book and doing whatever is necessary to catch the killer. Bong’s first major success, earning multiple awards at film festivals around the world, Memories of Murder is a well-paced police procedural that contains just enough surprises to overcome a few too many genre clichés. The film is beautifully shot by Kim Hyung-gu, from wide-open landscapes to a busy, crowded factory. But the film is dominated by Song’s (The Host, Thirst) big, round face, a physical and emotional wonder whether he’s goofing around with a prisoner or dead-set on catching a criminal.

A PARALLELOGRAM

Bruce Norris’s A Parallelogram explores time travel and potential tragedy (photo by Joan Marcus)

2econd Stage Theatre
Tony Kiser Theatre
305 West 43rd St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Through August 20, $37-$109
2st.com

2econd Stage follows up its poignant New York premiere of Pulitzer Prize winner Tracey Letts’s 2003 Man from Nebraska with the superb New York premiere of Pulitzer Prize winner Bruce Norris’s 2010 A Parallelogram, continuing at the Tony Kiser Theatre through August 20. “If you knew in advance exactly what was going to happen in your life, and how everything was going to turn out, and if you knew you couldn’t do anything to change it, would you still want to go on with your life?” thirty-five-year-old Bee (Celia Keenan-Bolger) asks her boyfriend, the married fortysomething Jay (Stephen Kunken), adding, “What if it turned out to be for the best if we’d never even existed?” It’s a classic science-fiction trope, handled with unique flair by Norris, director Michael Greif, and a strong cast of four. Celia Keenan-Bolger stars as the conflicted Bee, a Rite Aid regional manager who is apparently being visited by her future self, an older woman (Anita Gillette), identified in the program as Bee 2, who sits on a chair in the front corner of her bedroom, smoking and sardonically dropping hints about what is in store for Bee’s life. Invisible to the rather self-involved Jay, who moved in with Bee after leaving his wife and two children, Bee 2 nevertheless manages to set off quite a battle between the two lovebirds. The virile young JJ (Juan Castano) mows the lawn outside, but he’ll be inside soon, while Bee 2 plays with some kind of high-tech remote that can shift time backward and forward, the stage going dark and lights flashing to signify the movement of time. (The lighting designer is Kenneth Posner.) But the more Bee gets involved with Bee 2, the more Jay grows concerned about her mental health, and the more the audience is drawn into a parallelogram of ideas and questions about chronology, sanity, narrative, and theater itself.

Bee 2 (Anita Gillette) speaks directly with the audience in 2econd Stage production (photo by Joan Marcus)

Norris (Clybourne Park, Domesticated) and Greif (Dear Evan Hansen, Rent) include lots of little clues as to whether Bee is actually in contact with Bee 2 or is imagining it all and is in the midst of a breakdown, from Bee’s proclivity for playing Solitaire on the bed to the placement of a clock and a TV and Jay’s insistence that he can not only smell the smoke but see it, pointing out the drifting trails that evoke the lines that Bee 2 explains circle the planet and meet themselves, resulting in slightly different realities converging. Bee even tells Bee 2 that people can’t smell light or time, as if they just have to have faith, just like the audience must have faith in the magic of theater. The idea of doubling also relates to the two men, who are not accidentally named Jay and JJ and who play key roles in various aspects of Bee’s life. Three-time Tony nominee Keenan-Bolger (The Glass Menagerie, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee) is delightful as Bee (previously portrayed by Kate Arrington in Chicago and Marin Ireland in L.A.), a kind of surrogate for the audience as we contemplate whether she is delusional or not; of course, it helps that Tony nominee Gillette (Chapter Two, Moonstruck), who clearly relishes her role, often addresses us directly, but she is a highly unreliable narrator. Tony nominee Kunken (Enron, Frost/Nixon) is terrific as the easy-to-despise Jay, while Castano (Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train, Transfer) holds his own as the bilingual JJ. Obie winner Rachel Hauck’s set quickly rotates from ground-floor apartment to hospital room (where Bee 3 makes a subtle Three Stooges reference), with both spaces resembling each other, another instance of doubling, as is the existence of theater in general, something that presumes to re-create real life onstage. A Parallelogram asks some key questions while not offering any concrete answers. There’s a minor slip-up here and there and not every detail holds up to concerted investigation, but we could always grab hold of that remote and try to fix a few holes — but would it really change anything?

DAWSON CITY: FROZEN TIME / NEW ADVENTURES IN NONFICTION: TWO BY BILL MORRISON — BEYOND ZERO 1914-1918 / JUST ANCIENT LOOPS

Bill Morrison follows the boom and bust of a Yukon gold-rush town in Dawson City: Frozen Time

DAWSON CITY: FROZEN TIME (Bill Morrison, 2016)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
August 18-20
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us
billmorrisonfilm.com

“What power has gold to make men endure it all?” a title card asks in William Desmond Taylor’s 1928 silent film, The Trail of ’98, based on a novel by Robert Service. Both Taylor and Service were at one time residents of Dawson City, the town in the Yukon in Canada that was at the center of the Klondike Gold Rush in the late 1890s. In June 1978, while construction was just under way to build a new recreation center behind Diamond Tooth Gertie’s Gambling Hall in Dawson, Pentecostal minister and city alderman Frank Barrett uncovered a treasure trove of motion picture stock, hundreds of silent films that had been believed to have been lost forever. Writer, director, and editor Bill Morrison uses stunning archival footage from those films in his elegiac, beautiful documentary, Dawson City: Frozen Time, which brilliantly tells the story of greed, perseverance, and the growth of the entertainment industry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. After gold was discovered in Dawson, the indigenous Hän people were relocated to Tr’ochëk and some hundred thousand prospectors stampeded in, the gold mining destroying the Hän’s fishing and hunting grounds. Morrison also follows the invention of film itself, celluloid stock that would end up causing many fires, including one every year in Dawson for nine years. Bookended by an original interview with Michael Gates, Parks Canada curator of collections, and his wife, Kathy Jones-Gates, director of the Dawson Museum, the film traces the boom-and-bust fortunes and misfortunes of Dawson, as gambling casinos, movie theaters, hotels, and restaurants are built, including the Arctic, a hotel and restaurant owned by Ernest Levin and Fred Trump, the president’s grandfather, that might have served as a brothel as well. The film is supplemented with photographs by Eric A. Hegg, a giant in the field who left behind glass plates when he ultimately departed Dawson. Among others making their way through Dawson at one time or another are newsboy Sid Grauman, who went on to build Grauman’s Chinese Theatre; New York Rangers founder Tex Rickard; comic superstar Fatty Arbuckle; and Daniel and Solomon Guggenheim, who dominated the mining there.

Discovery of long-lost silent films tells a fascinating story in Dawson City: Frozen Time

Morrison, whose previous films, including Decasia, The Miners’ Hymns, and The Great Flood, employ archival footage to often tell historical tales, uses thousands of clips in Dawson City: Frozen Time, from newsreels to such films as Temperance Town, The Half Breed, The End of the Rainbow, and The Frog. Footage from the found clips, identified as “Dawson City Film Find” on the screen, also delves into the evolving battle between workers and owners, the deportation of political radicals, and the Black Sox scandal, all of which Morrison relates to the upstart movie industry. The film is a tour de force of editing, as Morrison streams together scenes of actors going through doorways, kissing, or moving in vehicles, not just a torrent of random images, all set to Alex Somers’s haunting experimental score. (Somers’s brother, John, is the sound designer.) The film also sets a new personal high for Morrison, clocking in at 120 minutes, by far his longest work; all of his previous features are less than 80 minutes, but this latest one further establishes that Morrison’s mesmerizing but unusual visual approach is not time-sensitive. With Dawson City: Frozen Time, Morrison has created a magical ode to the history of film, to preservation, to pioneers, and to perseverance, told in his hypnotic, unique style. Following its initial theatrical run this past June at IFC Center, the film is screening August 18-20 at the Museum of the Moving Image, with Morrison on hand Friday at 7:30 to talk about the work. In addition, as part of its “New Adventures in Nonfiction” series, MoMI is presenting

JAIMIE WARREN PERFORMANCE: ONE SWEET DAY

The Hole
312 Bowery
Thursday, August 17, free with advance RSVP, 6:00, 7:00, 8:00, 9:00
Exhibition continues through September 3
212-466-1100
theholenyc.com

Wisconsin-born, Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist Jaimie Warren will activate her twisted fairy-tale installation at the Hole on August 17, promising that “you will witness vomiting deities, epic love ballads, and multiple beheadings.” Warren, a photographer, performance artist, filmmaker, and codirector and cofounder of the traveling community-oriented, child-friendly fake public access television show Whoop-Dee-Doo, will stage, with more than twenty collaborators, One Sweet Day, a half-hour musical at 6:00, 7:00, 8:00, and 9:00 for no more than fifty guests at a time, in the medieval cave/castle/forest/mountain she has built in the back of the Bowery gallery, consisting of, among other elements, giant saints with glowing red eyes, an open wall casket with three somewhat familiar bodies, and a pair of video stations where visitors can watch “One Sweet Day: Self-Portrait as Shepherd, GG Allin, and Prince in Re-Creation of Studio Reconstitution of the Thebaid by Fra Angelico,” a cracked tale of good vs. evil vs. weird that mixes in Punky Brewster with all the madness. The exhibition itself, which continues through September 3, also includes the music videos “I Got My Mind Set on You: Self-Portrait as George Harrison in Re-creation of Ancient Egyptian Papyrus Painting of Ma’at and Isis,” “Somebody to Love: Self-Portrait as Freddie Mercury in Re-creation of Saints Cosmas and Damian by Matteo di Pacino (1350-75),” “I Just Called to Say I Love You: Self-Portrait as Stevie Wonder in Re-creation of Primavera by Sandro Botticelli (1482),” and “You Are Not Alone: Self-Portrait as Michael Jackson in a Re-creation of the Genealogical Trees of the Dominican Order,” featuring characters dressed up as pop-culture icons; the works were made at residencies at the Abrons Art Center in Manhattan, Artspace in North Carolina, American Medium in Brooklyn, and Helmuth Projects in San Diego. Advance RSVP is strongly recommended.

BOWERY POETRY ❤ JOHN GIORNO

john giorno

Artists Space
55 Walker St.
Wednesday, August 16, free, 7:00
artistsspace.org

Ugo Rondinone’s citywide celebration of his husband, “I ❤ John Giorno,” continues Wednesday night with a special poetry jam at Artists Space organized by Bowery Poetry Club, the downtown institution down the street from John Giorno’s apartment and studio. The free event will be hosted by Bob Holman, Nikhil Melnechuk, Ashley August, and Mason Granger and feature readings by Julius Baltonado, Stefan Bondell, Steve Cannon, Lynne DeSilva Johnson, Timothy DuWhite, Joel François, Myles Golden, David Henderson, Sam Jablon, Amy Lawless, Lisa Markuson, Sam O’Hana, Noel Quiñones, Shawn Randall/Symphonics Live, Patrick Roche, Hannah Wood, and Anton Yakovlev. Swiss artist Rondinone’s tribute to his life partner, the eighty-year-old Giorno, a poet, painter, musician, and performance artist who has no time for rules, is taking place at thirteen venues, with exhibitions, wall murals, film and video, portraiture, at the Kitchen, Hunter College, the New Museum, White Columns, Sky Art in Hell’s Kitchen, the Swiss Institute, Red Bull Arts New York, Artists Space, and the Broadway and Washington Square windows.

TICKET ALERT: KPOP

kpop

A.R.T./New York Theatres
502 West 53rd St.
Monday – Saturday, September 5 – October 7, general admission $45 (select dates $25-$35), premium $75
212-352-3101
arsnovanyc.com/kpop

Tickets are going extremely fast for Ars Nova’s latest production, KPOP, a collaboration with Ma-Yi Theater and Woodshed Collective running at A.R.T./New York Theatres from September 5 to October 7, with opening night set for September 22. The immersive show takes audiences behind-the-scenes at a K-pop music factory and will involve standing, walking, climbing stairs, and dancing as a cast of eighteen leads audiences throughout the space. It was conceived by Woodshed Collective (Empire Travel Agency, The Tenant) and Jason Kim; Kim wrote the book, with music and lyrics by Helen Park and Max Vernon, choreography by Bessie winner Jennifer Weber, and direction by Teddy Bergman. Ars Nova has previously presented such inventive, immersive works as Small Mouth Sounds, Eager to Lose, The Lapsburgh Layover, and a little thing called Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812. So this is no time to dawdle if you want to catch what promises to be another unique, unpredictable experience.

MICHAEL MOORE: THE TERMS OF MY SURRENDER

Michael Moore makes his Broadway debut in The Terms of My Surrender (photo by Joan Marcus)

Belasco Theatre
111 West 44th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Saturday through October 22, $29 – $149
www.michaelmooreonbroadway.com

“How the fuck did this happen?” Michael Moore asks at the beginning of his Broadway debut, The Terms of My Surrender, which opened last night at the Belasco Theatre for a three-month run. He makes it clear that he’s talking about the election of Donald J. Trump, not his one-man show on the Great White Way. For nearly two hours, the filmmaker, activist, and mensch, dressed in his usual schmatas including ever-present baseball cap, mixes pivotal moments from his life with ideas about how the left can come together and retake control of the White House and Congress. When he’s talking about President Trump, usually standing at a microphone at the front center of the stage, a giant American flag behind him, he does not quite have the fanatical fury or commanding presence of George C. Scott as General George S. Patton that setup evokes but instead comes off as a comic pundit preaching to the choir on MSNBC. But when he sits down at a desk or in a comfy reading chair and shares personal stories about how one person — himself, in several cases — can indeed make a difference, the his performance is riveting. Moore relates how he got involved in an Elks Club controversy; how he and a friend went to Germany to protest Ronald Reagan’s visit to a Nazi cemetery in Bitburg; how the governor of Michigan is involved in the poisoning of thousands of children with lead-laced drinking water in Moore’s impoverished hometown of Flint; and how one librarian from Englewood affected the publication of his 2001 book Stupid White Men. (That librarian, Ann Sparanese, was in the audience on opening night and received a standing ovation. Also on hand for the opening-night celebration were Harry Belafonte, Anna Deavere Smith, Dan Rather, Christie Brinkley, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Marlo Thomas, Jonathan Alter, Nia Vardalos, Al Sharpton, Rosanna Scotto, and Tony Bennett.)

Michael Moore settles in for his Broadway debut, The Terms of My Surrender (photo by Joan Marcus)

Michael Moore will consider ways to win back Congress and the White House during three-month run at the Belasco Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)

A set piece about carry-on items banned by the TSA is hit-or-miss, and a game show pitting the dumbest Canadian in the audience against the smartest American is silly and goes on too long, serving as a way for Moore to spout yet more statistics at us. An informal tête-à-tête with a surprise guest — on opening night it was Gloria Steinem and previously has featured Bryan Cranston, Rep. Maxine Waters, Morgan Spurlock, and Judah Friedlander — can become self-indulgent, a crafty way to turn the spotlight away from Moore temporarily, but that’s easier said than done, as Moore can’t help being the center of attention, whether on a Broadway stage, on television (TV Nation, The Awful Truth), or in such films as Roger & Me, Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11, and Michael Moore in Trumpland. His shocking tale of receiving death threats and assassination attempts brings the show to a screeching halt when he decides to test the FCC by calling a public figure and making the same death threats he got from Glenn Beck. Moore most certainly is not in Trumpland at the Belasco, where the predominantly liberal audience claps often in support of the Flint native’s views on the president and politics. Tony-winning director Michael Mayer (Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Spring Awakening) has his hands full with the show, which jumps around from scene to scene and bit to bit, including a fair amount of ad-libbing, as Moore updates his comments with the latest news to keep things fresh. Tony-winning designer David Rockwell’s (She Loves Me, Kinky Boots) set features a desk and chairs that slide on- and offstage and a large American flag backdrop onto which Andrew Lazarow projects photographs, clips of Trump, headlines, and other images. There’s also an empty presidential box waiting for Trump, complete with “little opera gloves,” but don’t expect Trump or Vice President and Broadway superfan Mike Pence to take those seats anytime soon. The show is uneven, but when Moore, an often amiable yet fiery fellow who drives the right insane, gets away from the rhetoric and focuses on his heartfelt conviction that one person really can initiate change — and insists that now is most definitely not the time to give up — The Terms of My Surrender is right on target, reminding us all that if Moore can do it, there’s no reason we can’t either.