twi-ny recommended events

SUMMER MOVIE SERIES 2016: STAR TREK

J. J. Abrams directs the crew of the Starship Enterprise, including Anton Yelchin as Ensign Pavel Chekov

STAR TREK (J. J. Abrams, 2009)
Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum
Pier 86, 12th Ave. & 46th St.
Thursday, July 7, free, doors open at 7:30
Summer Movie Series continues through August 5
www.intrepidmuseum.org
www.startrek.com

The sudden, tragic death of Anton Yelchin, the twenty-seven-year-old Russian actor who was starring as Ensign Pavel Chekov in J. J. Abrams’s reboot of the Star Trek movie franchise, has cast a pall over the upcoming July 22 release of the third film in the series, Star Trek Beyond. But to prepare for the new flick, you can catch the first one for free on July 7 at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. Just as Kirk has his Khan, Spock gets his Nero in Abrams’s immensely entertaining time-traveling Star Trek movie. Abrams (Lost, Cloverfield) goes back to the very beginning, with the tumultuous birth of one James Tiberius Kirk (Chris Pine), whose father was a legendary member of Star Fleet. Soon he winds up aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise, surrounded by a crew that includes a logical Vulcan named Spock (Zachary Quinto); Uhura (Zoe Saldana), a hot language specialist; Leonard “Bones” McCoy (Karl Urban), a goofy doctor; seventeen-year-old helmsman Pavel Chekov (Yelchin); engineer extraordinaire Montgomery Scott (Simon Pegg); and rookie pilot and swordsman Hikaru Sulu (John Cho). In this sort-of Star Trek Babies tale, the young cadets are suddenly thrust into action with Captain Pike (Bruce Greenwood), on a mission that involves evil villain Nero (Eric Bana), a rogue Romulan with an ax to grind. Star Trek fans will love all the little homages to the series and the previous films, with both obvious and obscure references every step of the way as we learn how this famous crew first met one another and developed their extremely familiar relationships. Star Trek is screening July 7 on board the flight deck of the Intrepid as part of the museum’s free summer movie series and is a great way to get ready for the new interactive exhibition “Star Trek: The Starfleet Academy Experience,” which opens at the Intrepid on July 9 and is part of the fiftieth anniversary celebration of the debut of Gene Roddenberry’s cult show. The summer movie series continues with Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home on July 14 and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (which Abrams essentially remade as Star Trek into Darkness) on July 29 in addition to such other sci-fi fare as Galaxy Quest on July 21 and Big Hero 6 on August 5.

BURNING BRIGHT — NEW FRENCH FILMMAKERS: THE LAST HAMMER BLOW

Thirteen-year-old Vicgtor (Romain Paul) has to pull off quite a balancing act in Alix Delaporte’s poignant THE LAST HAMMER BLOW

CINÉSALON: THE LAST HAMMER BLOW (LE DERNIER COUP DE MARTEAU) (Alix Delaporte, 2014)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, July 5, $14, 4:00 & 7:30 (later screening introduced by Mathieu Fourne)
212-355-6100
fiaf.org
www.palacefilms.com

For their work in Alix Delaporte’s 2010 drama, Angèle et Tony, Clotilde Hesme, as Angèle, won the César for Most Promising Actress and Grégory Gadebois, as Tony, was named Most Promising Actor. For his film debut in Delaporte’s 2014 follow-up, the gentle, tender-hearted The Last Hammer Blow, playing at FIAF on July 5, teenager Romain Paul, portraying Victor, the illegitimate son of characters played by Hesme and Gadebois, won the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best New Young Actor at the Venice International Film Festival. (Hesme and Gadebois also both starred in the French television series The Returned.) Victor is a sullen thirteen-year-old soccer phenom living with his mother, Nadia (Hesme), in a lonely trailer park. They have run out of money as Nadia battles cancer and considers selling their home and moving in with her estranged parents. When Victor’s father, famous conductor Samuel Rovinski (Gadebois), arrives to lead a performance of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony at the local opera house, Victor confronts him, but Rovinski at first denies that he has a son. But Victor persists in visiting the maestro, all the while not telling his mother that he is being considered for a spot in a prestigious soccer program. In addition, his hormones start raging as he begins noticing that one of his neighbors, Luna (Mireia Vilapuig), is blossoming into quite a beautiful young girl. The various parts of his life converge suddenly, putting him in a precarious position as he is forced to make some difficult decisions.

The Last Hammer Blow is a touching, sensitively told coming-of-age tale, anchored by a breakout performance by Paul, who imbues Victor with a mixture of compassion and ennui, keeping him at an even keel no matter what he faces. Hesme (Love Songs, Mysteries of Lisbon) is heartbreaking as a mother running out of options, and Gadebois (One of a Kind, Une femme dans la Révolution) excels as a bold, strong man who can’t just wave his conductor’s baton and make the past go away. Delaporte’s second film is a character-driven study filled with a poignant humanity that avoids melodrama and cliché in favor of honesty and genuine surprise. Claire Mathon (Angèle et Tony, Mon roi, Two Friends) earned her first of three Lumières Award nominations for her evocative cinematography, and Evgueni and Sacha Galperine’s soundtrack is bittersweet and subtle, especially in the shadow of the grand Mahler symphony. The Last Hammer Blow is screening at 4:00 and 7:30 on July 5 in FIAF’s CinéSalon series “Burning Bright: New French Filmmakers”; the later screening will be introduced by Mathieu Fournet of the French Embassy. The series continues Tuesday nights in July with Arnaud Viard’s Paris, Love, Cut, Thomas Salvador’s Vincent, and Jean-Charles Hue’s Eat Your Bones.

4KNOTS MUSIC FESTIVAL 2016

4knots

4KNOTS MUSIC FESTIVAL
South Street Seaport District
Saturday, July 9, free, 1:00 – 8:00
villagevoice.com/4knots

Last year’s fifteenth annual Village Voice music festival, which began as the Siren in Coney Island and shifted to 4Knots in Manhattan in 2011, implemented a major change, charging admission for the first time in its history. It was not a major success, with a small crowd paying $25 to $50 to see such bands as Super Furry Animals, Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, Twin Peaks, Mikal Cronin, and Screaming Females on one stage on Pier 84 in Hudson River Park. So this year the festival is free again and back at the South Street Seaport, where twelve groups will perform on two stages, with a third stage for DJ sets in between bands. The coheadliners are Guided by Voices and the Strumbellas, along with Protomartyr, Car Seat Headrest, Kirk Knight, Girlpool, Bayonne, Diane Coffee, Promised Land Sound, and Mild High Club, with the show beginning at 1:00 and continuing through 8:00. VIPs get to watch all the action aboard the historic four-masted barque Peking on Pie 16. Be on the lookout for official set times, which are usually announced very late in the week, and get ready to make those mad dashes between stages, or just settle in early for a good spot at one and just hang in the sunshine all day and into the night.

NATHAN’S 2016 HOT DOG EATING CONTEST

Matt Stonie and seek to defend their title

Matt Stonie and Miki Sudo seek to defend their hot-dog-eating titles at Nathan’s on July 4

Sweikert Alley, Nathan’s Famous
1310 Surf Ave. at Stillwell Ave.
Monday, July 4, free, 10:00 am – 1:00 pm
Admission: free
212-627-5766
www.nathansfamous.com
www.majorleagueeating.com

The 100th anniversary of Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Contest is promising to be one of the best following last year’s results. After eight straight victories, California native Joey “Jaws” Chestnut was upset by fellow Golden Stater Matt Stonie, who edged him in a close battle, 62-60. (In 2007, Chestnut dethroned Takeru Kobayashi, who had won the title six consecutive times.) In the women’s division, New York native Miki Sudo defended her belt against South Korea’s Sonya Thomas, the Black Widow, who had captured the first three women’s championships, which started in 2011. Chestnut got ready for the ten-minute Independence Day showdown by devouring 73½ franks and buns in a DC match, breaking his own world record of 69. The festivities begin at 10:00 in the morning on July 4, with the women (Sudo, Thomas, Juliet Lee, Mary Bowers, Noelle Dudzinski, Michelle Lesco, Kassandra Zapata, Nela Zisser, Elizabeth Petra, Meredith Boxberger, Larell Marie Mele, BeeJay Alexander) taking the stage at 10:45 and the men (Stonie, Chestnut, Marcos Owens, Juan Rodriguez, Brian Dudzinski, Rich LeFevre, Crazy Legs Conti, Adrian Morgan, Steven Schuster, Geoffrey Esper, Badlands Booker, Gideon Oji) at 12:30. In conjunction with the event, which you can watch live in Coney Island or on television on ESPN, Nathan’s will donate 100,000 hot dogs to the Food Bank for New York City, which it has been doing annually since 2008.

WARREN OATES — HIRED HAND: COCKFIGHTER

Warren Oates tries to get his life back on track in Monte Hellman’s COCKFIGHTER

COCKFIGHTER (Monte Hellman, 1974)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
Francesca Beale Theater, 144 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Sunday, July 3, 9:00, and Wednesday, July 6, 5:15
Festival runs through July 7
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.org

Director Monte Hellman and star Warren Oates enter “the mystic realm of the great cock” in the 1974 cult film Cockfighter. Alternately known as Born to Kill and Gamblin’ Man, the film is set in the world of cockfighting, where Frank Mansfield (Oates) is trying to capture the Cockfighter of the Year award following a devastating loss that cost him his money, car, trailer, girlfriend, and voice — he took a vow of silence until he wins the coveted medal. Mansfield communicates with others via his own made-up sign language and by writing on a small pad; in addition, he delivers brief internal monologues in occasional voiceovers. He teams up with moneyman Omar Baradansky (Richard B. Shull) as he attempts to regain his footing in the illegal cockfighting world, taking on such challengers as Junior (Steve Railsback), Tom (Ed Begley Jr.), and archnemesis Jack Burke (Harry Dean Stanton); his drive for success is also fueled by his desire to finally marry his much-put-upon fiancée, Mary Elizabeth (Patricia Pearcy). The cast also includes Laurie Bird as Mansfield’s old girlfriend, Troy Donahue as his brother, Millie Perkins as his sister-in-law, Warren Finnerty as Sanders, Allman Brothers guitarist Dickey Betts as a masked robber, and Charles Willeford, who wrote the screenplay based on his novel, as Ed Middleton.

cockfighter 2

Shot in a mere four weeks, Cockfighter is not a very easy movie to watch. The cockfighting scenes are real, filmed in a documentary style by master cinematographer Néstor Almendros, who had previously worked with Eric Rohmer and François Truffaut and would go on to lens such films as Days of Heaven, Kramer vs. Kramer, Sophie’s Choice, and The Blue Lagoon. However, Almendros was hampered by a less-than-stellar staff and a low budget courtesy of producer Roger Corman, who wanted more blood and sex and did not allow Hellman (Two-Lane Blacktop, The Shooting) to rewrite the script the way he wanted to. Corman even had coeditor Lewis Teague (Cujo, The Jewel of the Nile) film some additional scenes to increase the lurid factor. (Hellman, who was inspired by A Place in the Sun and Shoot the Piano Player, has noted that the versions that are not called Cockfighter are not his director’s cut.) Even the music, by jazz singer-songwriter Michael Franks, feels out of place. But the film ultimately works because of Oates’s scorching performance as Frank, another in a long line of luckless, lovable losers that would fill his resume (Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, Race with the Devil, The Wild Bunch). Oates ambles from scene to scene with an infectious relish; you can’t wait to see what Frank will do next, and how Oates will play it. Hellman also doesn’t glorify the “sport” of cockfighting but instead presents it as pretty much what it is, a vile and despicable business populated by low-grade chumps. Cockfighter is screening July 3 and 6 in the Film Society of Lincoln Center series “Warren Oates: Hired Hand,” in a poor print that is emblematic of all the problems associated with the making of the movie. “I don’t care if they release it or not,” Oates said about Cockfighter. “It ain’t bitterness but just an insight.” The series is being held in conjunction with the release of the restored version of Leslie Stevens’s little-seen 1960 thriller, Private Property, starring Oates, Corey Allen, and Kate Manx. The tribute to Oates, who died in 1982 at the age of fifty-three, continues through July 7 with such other Oates films as Dillinger, 92 in the Shade, The Hired Hand, The Brink’s Job, and the inimitable Stripes.

INCOGNITO

Morgan Spector, Geneva Carr, Heather Lind, and Charlie Cox play multiple roles in Nick Payne’s ingenious INCOGNITO (photo by Joan Marcus)

Manhattan Theatre Club
New York City Center Stage 1
Extended through July 10, $105
212-581-1212
incognitoplay.com
www.nycitycenter.org

Some entertainments let us check our brains at the door when we enter a theater, seeking mindless, feel-good entertainment to take us away from the drudgery and complications of modern life. However, thirty-two-year-old British playwright Nick Payne not only forces audiences to use their noggins but uses the human brain as the catalyst and centerpiece of his ingenious play Incognito, which has been extended at City Center through July 10. In such previous works as Constellations, If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet, and Elegy, science plays a major role as Payne examines such topics as climate change, time, death, string theory, and the multiverse. Loosely inspired by several real stories, Incognito features four actors playing twenty parts built around three intertwining scenarios. Dr. Thomas Harvey (Spector) has performed the autopsy on Albert Einstein, cutting out his brain and bringing it home with him for further study. (Yes, this is based on fact.) “I got the professor in fronta me, I already opened him up and I’m looking at this . . . brain, and I’m thinking to myself: this could be the biggest moment of my life. So I took it,” the pathologist tells his incredulous wife, Elouise (Carr). Meanwhile, Dr. Victor Milner (Spector) is meeting with his patient, pianist Henry Maison (Cox), an epileptic who, following a brain operation to try to stop his seizures, now suffers from short-term memory loss, essentially restarting every forty-five seconds. His devoted wife, Margaret Thomson (Lind), is attempting to use musical therapy to help him, but Henry seems to have forgotten how to play the piano as well. In the third arc, Dr. Martha Murphy (Carr) is a divorced clinical neuropsychologist going on her first date with a woman, the free-spirited Patricia Thorn (Lind). Over the course of eighty-five breathless minutes, the stories overlap and intertwine either directly or conceptually as Payne explores love, grief, memory, identity, and time-and-space relativity.

Morgan Spector and Geneva Carr face off while Charlie Cox and Heather Lind watch in dazzling play by Nick Payne (photo by Joan Marcus)

Divided into three sections — Encoding, Storing, and Retrieving — Incognito takes place on Scott Pask’s essentially simple set, a circular platform with four chairs. The characters and multiple plotlines change instantly, like the firing of neurons in the brain, often in the middle of a conversation or sentence, the actors, wearing the same clothes throughout, using different accents and manners of speaking to indicate the sudden shifts in time and place, along with lighting cues from Ben Stanton. In addition, there is occasional abstract movement set to music by David Van Tieghem. It’s all seamlessly directed by Tony winner Doug Hughes (Doubt, The Father) and expertly acted by Carr, Cox, Lind, and Spector, who effortlessly slide from one role to another as the stories weave together in this Manhattan Theatre Club production. “Our brains are constantly, exhaustively working overtime to deliver the illusion that we’re in control, but we’re not,” Martha tells Patricia. “The brain builds a narrative to steady us from moment to moment, but it’s ultimately an illusion. There is no me, there is no you, and there is certainly no self; we are divided and discontinuous and constantly being duped. The brain is a storytelling machine and it’s really, really good at fooling us.” The same can be said for Payne’s marvelously constructed play, which makes audiences’ brains work overtime, but it’s well worth it. “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world,” one of Martha’s patients, Anthony (Spector), tells her, quoting Einstein. Incognito is riveting theater, with knowledge and imagination to spare.

I WANT YOU TO WANT ME

Jack Ferver’s deviously delicious I WANT YOU TO WANT ME continues at the Kitchen through July 2 (photo by Paula Court)

The Kitchen
519 West 19th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.,
June 30 – July 2, $25
855-263-2623
www.americandance.org
thekitchen.org

Jack Ferver’s I Want You to Want Me is a devastatingly funny and clever send-up of the classic Hollywood tale of a young woman chasing dreams of stardom — as if made by an Italian giallo master. A dancer who spends most of her time waitressing, Ann Erica Rose (Carling Talcott-Steenstra) is excited when she gets offered a chance to work with a prominent company (companie) in Europe, but her boyfriend (Ferver) doesn’t want her to go, spouting clichéd heterosexual platitudes that are all the more hysterical because Ferver, a local gay icon, plays the tough straight man with delicious relish. Ann Erica (from America) heads off to Paris, where she is taken under the wing of witchy dance legend Madame M (Ferver), who is assisted by the mysterious Reid (Reid Bartelme). Madame M guides Ann Erica, Reid, and another wide-eyed new dancer, Barth (Barton Cowperthwaite), who hails from Colorado, through a series of solos, duets, and trios that are consistently outrageous as Ferver plays with conventions of modern dance and classical ballet while the devious plot thickens, leading to a finale that would make fans of Mystery Science Theater 3000 shriek in delight.

Jack Ferver, Barton Cowperthwaite, Carling Talcott-Steenstra and Reid Bartelme perform solos, duets, and trios in Ferver’s latest piece of absurdist hilarity (photo by Paula Court)

I Want You to Want Me is set in a dance rehearsal studio, with two side mirrors in the corner and large mirrors against the back wall that reflect the audience. Both Madame M and Reid are able to magically turn the lights and fog machine on and off with the flick of a finger, lending an otherworldly nature to the proceedings. Talcott-Steenstra and Cowperthwaite are a riot as the Disney-esque couple from an alternate universe, and longtime Ferver collaborator Bartelme is a scream as Reid, who deadpans beautifully during extended dance sequences that feature some crazy-ass moves. Channeling such divas as Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, and Martha Graham, Ferver (Chambre; Mon, Ma Mes) feasts on his role as Madame M, gliding across the stage in an elegant dark costume, by Reid & Harriet Design (run by Bartelme and Harriet Jung), that can be rearranged for multiple purposes, from a devilish, hooded robe to a lovely off-the-shoulder gown to a sexy little frock. It’s no wonder Ferver spends much of the time looking at himself in one of the mirrors; he can’t take his eyes off himself, and we can’t either, especially as his thick makeup and ever-growing false eyelashes start to devolve. Part of the ADI/NYC Incubator residency program, I Want You to Want Me is another triumphant piece of thoroughly engaging dance theater as only Jack Ferver can create.