twi-ny recommended events

JIA ZHANGKE

Zhang Jinsheng (Zhang Yi) shows his love for Shen Tao (Zhao Tao) in materialistic ways in Jia Zhangke’s MOUNTAINS MAY DEPART

Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Ave. at Second St.
May 23-29
212-505-5181
anthologyfilmarchives.org

In conjunction with the theatrical premiere of Walter Salles’s Jia Zhangke, a Guy from Fenyang, a documentary running May 27 through June 2 about the life and career of one of the leaders of China’s Sixth Generation of filmmakers, Anthology Film Archives is presenting three other works by the extraordinary writer-director, who goes back and forth between fiction and nonfiction (sometimes in the same film) while exploring the very real problems the Chinese people are facing in the massive transition to modernity. The Cannes Film Festival favorite has made such films as Platform, Unknown Pleasures, The World, Useless, 24 City, and I Wish I Knew; the Anthology series will show 2006’s Golden Lion-winning Still Life, 2013’s A Touch of Sin, and 2015’s Mountains May Depart.

MOUNTAINS MAY DEPART (SHAN HE GU REN) (Jia Zhangke, 2015)
Anthology Film Archives
Monday, May 23, 7:30, and Saturday, May 28, 4:30
www.kinolorber.com

Master Chinese writer-director Jia Zhangke returned to the New York Film Festival last year with Mountains May Depart, a melancholic look at love and relationships in which one decision can change the rest of your life, as well as an allegory about China itself and its path in the world. Jia’s wife and muse, Zhao Tao, stars as Shen Tao, a flighty, flakey young woman flirting with coal miner Liangzi (Liang Jin Dong) and burgeoning capitalist Zhang Jinsheng (Zhang Yi) in 1999 China, the country on the cusp of an economic crisis. It’s easy to see the young woman’s romantic decision as a microcosm of China’s economic decisions, as the working class battles the wealthy elite, and the effects of both are profound. The setup is reminiscent of the love triangle at the center of François Truffaut’s Jules et Jim, but Jia takes it much further, continuing the story in 2014, and then into 2025, a bleak future where individual happiness is painfully elusive. Jia (Still Life, The World, 24 City) and his longtime cinematographer, Yu Lik-wai, shoot the three time periods in different screen ratios, exemplifying how much things evolve as Chinese capitalism and globalism take over, affecting — and disaffecting — the next generation. But the past is always snapping at the characters’ heels; much of the film takes place in the Yellow River basin, where ancient structures recall China’s history, and in Jia’s vision of the future, vinyl LPs are back in fashion (although handheld devices are much cooler). Music plays a key role in the film, primarily Sally Yeh’s Cantonese song “Take Care” and the Pet Shop Boys’ cover of the Village People’s “Go West,” the latter a title that gets to the heart of the film.

Mia (Sylvia Chang) takes stock of her complicated life in MOUNTAINS MAY DEPART

Zhao is marvelous as the bittersweet Shen, from singing at the colorful Fenyang Spring Festival Gala as the new millennium approaches to trying to restore her relationship with her son (Dong Zijian), who her husband insisted be named Dollar. Her eyes are filled with emotion as she proceeds on a course that was never what she dreamed. In the third section, Sylvia Chang shines as Mia, a sensitive, divorced teacher from Hong Kong who grows close to Dollar in a future world in which English has eclipsed Chinese, so fathers and sons literally do not speak the same language. Navigating the four physical sufferings of Buddhist thought — birth, old age, sickness, and death, Jia avoids showing many key moments in the lives of the characters, often leaving it up to the audience to uncover what has happened over the years and decades, which has a certain grace, although the ambiguous ending is more than a bit frustrating, even if it makes sense as a parable for China as a whole. But it’s all encapsulated in the briefest of kisses in a helicopter that will both brighten and break your heart. And keep an eye out for the guy with the Guangdong Broadsword.

Zhao San (Wang Baoqiang) is one of four protagonists who break out into sudden acts of shocking violence in Jia Zhangke’s A TOUCH OF SIN

A TOUCH OF SIN (TIAN ZHU DING) (Jia Zhangke, 2013)
Anthology Film Archives
Tuesday, May 24, 7:30, and Sunday, May 29, 2:00
www.kinolorber.com

During his sixteen-year career, Sixth Generation Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke has made both narrative works (The World, Platform, Still Life) and documentaries (Useless, I Wish I Knew), with his fiction films containing elements of nonfiction and vice versa. Such is the case with his latest film, the powerful A Touch of Sin, which explores four based-on-fact outbreaks of shocking violence in four different regions of China. In Shanxi, outspoken miner Dahai (Jiang Wu) won’t stay quiet about the rampant corruption of the village elders. In Chongqing, married migrant worker and father Zhao San (Wang Baoqiang) obtains a handgun and is not afraid to use it. In Hubei, brothel receptionist Ziao Yu (Zhao Tao, Jia’s longtime muse and now wife) can no longer take the abuse and assumptions of the male clientele. And in Dongguan, young Xiao Hui (Luo Lanshan) tries to make a life for himself but is soon overwhelmed by his lack of success. Inspired by King Hu’s 1971 wuxia film A Touch of Zen, Jia also owes a debt to Max Ophüls’s 1950 bittersweet romance La Ronde, in which a character from one segment continues into the next, linking the stories. In A Touch of Sin, there is also a character connection in each successive tale, though not as overt, as Jia makes a wry, understated comment on the changing ways that people connect in modern society. In depicting these four acts of violence, Jia also exposes the widening economic gap between the rich and the poor and the social injustice that is prevalent all over contemporary China — as well as the rest of the world — leading to dissatisfied individuals fighting for their dignity in extreme ways. A Touch of Sin is a gripping, frightening film that earned Jia the Best Screenplay Award at Cannes.

Jia Zhangke’s STILL LIFE examines displaced families caused by the construction of the Three Gorges Dam

STILL LIFE (SANXIA HAOREN) (Jia Zhangke, 2006)
Anthology Film Archives
Saturday, May 28, 2:00
Sunday, May 29, 4:45

Sixth Generation Chinese film director Jia Zhangke won the Golden Lion for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival for the small gem Still Life, his beautiful, elegiac, documentary-like examination of displaced family. Jia sets his film around the ongoing, controversial Three Gorges Dam project, which has forced millions of residents from their homes. Han Sanming, a miner from Shanxi, arrives in the former town of Fengjie, looking for the daughter he hasn’t seen in sixteen years, since she was a baby. Meanwhile, a young nurse, Shen Hong (Zhao Tao), is seeking out her husband, a construction executive whom she hasn’t heard from in two years. Using nonprofessional actors, Jia (Platform, The World) tells their heartbreaking stories virtually in slow motion, with many scenes driven by Han’s tired eyes, featuring little or no dialogue. He gets a job helping tear down buildings, in direct contrast to his desire to rebuild his relationship with his long-lost family. Jia’s gentle camera reveals how China, in its quest for modernization and financial power, has left behind so many of its people, the heart and soul of the land that has literally been torn out from under them.

NEW YORK ON LOCATION

Visitors can step into working movie trailers during New York on Location festival in Astoria (photo by Rene Carson for Museum of the Moving Image)

Museum of the Moving Image, 35th Ave. at 36th St.
Kaufman Astoria Studios backlot, 36th St. between 34th & 35th Aves.
Sunday, May 22, free, 11:00 am – 5:00 pm
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us

New York on Location, the Museum of the Moving Image’s annual street fair and celebration, will take place on May 22, featuring a full day of movie-related activities. A joint venture of the museum, Theatrical Teamsters Local 817, I.A.T.S.E. Local 52, and Kaufman Astoria Studios, the festivities include car, fire, and high-fall stunts, weather effects, hair and makeup demonstrations, face painting and hair extensions, and more. Visitors can also go inside twenty working trailers and trucks that come directly from shoots and speak with professionals about their jobs, in addition to using a few of their bathrooms. Even some of the food that is available for purchase will be set up in movie-catering fashion. “The film and television industry employs thousands of New Yorkers every year, from electricians to carpenters to makeup artists. And while we love seeing the magic that appears on screen, few people outside the industry can really appreciate all the work that goes into creating that magic,” Kaufman Astoria Studios president and CEO Hal Rosenbluth said in a statement. “New York on Location is a wonderful way for families and anyone interested in movies and TV shows to experience what goes on behind-the-scenes and meet the people who work in the industry.” As a bonus, the museum will be open for free as well, so be sure to check out such exhibitions as “Behind the Screen,” “Arcade Classics: Video Games from the Collection,” “The World of Anomalisa,” “To the Moon and Beyond: Graphic Films and the Inception of 2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Mutant Leftovers,” and “Computer Films of the 1960s.”

WEINER

The colorful Anthony Weiner marches in the Gay Pride Parade as he runs for mayor in 2013, a bright future potentially ahead of him

WEINER (Josh Kriegman & Elyse Steinberg, 2016)
IFC Center, 323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St., 212-924-7771
Lincoln Plaza Cinema, 1886 Broadway between 62nd & 63rd Sts., 212-757-2280
Opens Friday, May 20
www.ifcfilms.com

Near the end of Weiner, one of the most revealing and entertaining documentaries about a political figure you’re ever likely to see, one of the directors, Josh Kriegman, asks subject extraordinaire Anthony Weiner, “Why have you let me film this?” It’s a great question, and one that can be inquired of Weiner’s wife as well, Huma Abedin, who stands alongside her scandal-ridden husband nearly every step of the way. In May 2011, during his seventh term as a fierce, fiery congressman representing parts of Brooklyn and Queens, Weiner was forced to resign in disgrace after it was discovered that he had sent lewd pictures of himself to several women over a public social media account while lying about it as well. Just two years later, the Brooklyn-born Weiner decided to get back in the game, running for mayor of New York City. Kriegman, who was a senior aide to Weiner in 2004-5 and his New York chief of staff in 2005-6, thought the comeback campaign would make a fascinating story, and Weiner agreed, giving him virtually unlimited access to his family and staffers. Initially, everything is going better than expected: Weiner is leading in the polls and getting his message across. But then the sexting scandal rises up again, and it all starts falling apart. Weiner tries hard to fight the good fight, concentrating on communicating his political platform, but the media only wants to ask him and his brave wife about the sexting, even when it is clear that the people of New York City prefer to talk about the issues. “I guess the punch line is true about me. I did the things . . . but I did a lot of other things too,” Weiner acknowledges. Of course, maybe Weiner never really had a fair chance. The movie begins with a telling quote from Marshall McLuhan: “The name of a man is a numbing blow from which he never recovers.”

Yet another texting scandal forces Anthony Weiner to reconsider his options under media scrutiny

PBS and MTV veterans Kriegman and codirector Elyse Steinberg amassed more than four hundred hours of footage for their feature debut, and very rarely does Weiner or Abedin shut them out, even when things appear to hit rock bottom. Kriegman focuses his camera on Weiner, who doesn’t flinch as he considers all his options and, all too often, takes the wrong path, whether it’s getting angry with a patron in a Jewish deli or arguing with Lawrence O’Donnell on a videolink interview. Weiner continually performs self-defeating acts that Abedin, a longtime Hillary Clinton supporter who is now vice chairwoman of the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee’s campaign, gracefully and painfully points out to him, but she sticks with her husband and his campaign to the bitter end. Kriegman and Steinberg show Weiner hanging out at home, walking around barefoot, and playing with son Jordan, who was born in December 2011. But it’s truly heartbreaking when the directors zero in on Abedin’s forlorn face as the scandal grows and grows and the media has a field day with it. Weiner is seamlessly edited by Eli Despres (Blackfish, Red Army), who keeps the tension high even when we know what is coming, as the narrative plays out like a unique kind of political thriller. It’s impossible to take your eyes off the screen, to stop watching Weiner and Abedin as they have to deal with his dirty laundry in public. In addition to allowing Kriegman and Steinberg to follow him everywhere, the usually charismatic Weiner is decidedly dour as he sits down for a candid wraparound interview with the filmmakers. “Shit. This is the worst. This is the worst. Doing a documentary on my scandal,” Weiner opines at one point, displaying a rare moment of genuine regret as opposed to his usual hubris. But the film, which makes no judgments — and which Weiner and Abedin have refused to see so far — is as much about the relationship between media and politics as it is about one specific politician who made some personal mistakes, and it does not bode well for our future. Will Weiner ever be able to stage another comeback? He’s a determined guy, almost to the point of obsession, with a deep desire to help the people of New York City and the country, but then there’s that name, and the photos he posted, and the strange faces that he makes, so a third chance might just be one too many. A most human drama that won the U.S. Grand Jury Documentary Prize at Sundance, the extraordinary Weiner opens at Lincoln Plaza and IFC Center on May 20, with the filmmakers at IFC for Q&As following the 8:00 show on Friday night and the 7:15 and 8:00 shows on Saturday.

MAGGIE’S PLAN

Greta Gerwig and Ethan Hawke star in New York-set romantic comedy MAGGIE’S PLAN

MAGGIE’S PLAN (Rebecca Miller, 2015)
Opens Friday, May 20
sonyclassics.com/maggiesplan

Rebecca Miller channels her inner Woody Allen and Noah Baumbach with the bittersweet romantic comedy Maggie’s Plan, which made its U.S. premiere at the fifty-third New York Film Festival last September. Greta Gerwig is at her loopy best as Maggie, a thirtysomething college arts administrator who, after failing to maintain any relationship for more than six months, decides to become a single mother by impregnating herself with the sperm of an old classmate, Guy (Travis Fimmel), a Brooklyn hipster trying to become a pickle mogul. (He works for the real Brooklyn Brine Co.) Maggie’s married best buds, former boyfriend Tony (Bill Hader) and Felicia (Maya Rudolph), who have just had a baby themselves, debate her decision, but she is determined to forge ahead. As she prepares for the artificial insemination, which she is performing herself, she grows close with older New School adjunct professor John (Ethan Hawke), a ficto-crypto-anthropologist working on his novel. John has two kids of his own but is feeling overwhelmed by his wife, Georgette (Julianne Moore), a wickedly ambitious educator who has just been offered a lofty position at Columbia. Soon Maggie, John, and Georgette are in the midst of a complicated love triangle that is at times as frustrating to watch as it is endearing.

Ethan Hawke and Julianne Moore play a married couple whose relationship is on thin ice in MAGGIE’S PLAN

Miller, the daughter of playwright Arthur Miller, is a novelist and writer-director who has previously made such films as The Ballad of Jack and Rose, which starred her husband, Daniel Day-Lewis, and The Private Lives of Pippa Lee. Inspired by an unpublished novel by Karen Rinaldi, Maggie’s Plan is likely to be Miller’s most popular film, despite the clichéd setup that threatens to be annoyingly obvious and mundane but usually manages to bring out something fresh and charming. The tale evokes such films as Allen’s Manhattan and Baumbach’s Frances Ha, with mumblecore breakout star Gerwig (Nights and Weekends, Hannah Takes the Stairs) again playing a quirky character who seems to live in her own candy-colored fantasy land. Miller even uses cinematographer Sam Levy, who photographed such other Gerwig films as Frances Ha and Mistress America, to shoot Maggie’s Plan. Hawke is in good form as a man caught between two worlds, Hader and Rudolph provide cynical comic relief, and it’s impossible to take your eyes off Gerwig, who once again displays her mesmerizing natural talent, but Moore nearly steals the show as the sensationally dressed and coiffed Georgette, an unrelenting force with a to-die-for Danish-Teutonic accent and an attitude to boot.

TICKET ALERT — MEL BROOKS: BACK IN THE SADDLE AGAIN!

Mel Brooks will take viewers behind the scenes of BLAZING SADDLES at special screening at Radio City Music Hall

Who: Mel Brooks
What: A Hilarious LIVE Conversation with Mel Brooks and Screening of Blazing Saddles
Where: Radio City Music Hall, 1260 Sixth Ave. at 50th St., 212-465-6741
When: Tickets go on sale Friday, May 20, at 10:00 am for show Thursday, September 1, $60-$130, 7:30
Why: Eighty-nine-year-old Melvin James Kaminsky, aka Mel Brooks, is one of the funniest people to have ever stepped foot on the planet Earth. And his 1974 comedy classic, Blazing Saddles, is one of the funniest movies to have ever been shown on the big screen. The riotously lewd film leaves no one and nothing unscathed, having fun with and skewering Westerns, Hollywood musicals, racism, religion, pies, beans, horses, alcoholism, sex, guns, politics, anti-Semitism, and, of course, friendship and heroism. The all-star cast includes Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder, Harvey Korman, Madeline Kahn, Slim Pickens, Dom DeLuise, John Hillerman, David Huddleston, Alex Karras, Rodney Allen Rippy, and Brooks himself in two roles. On September 1, Brooks will be at Radio City Music Hall for a screening of Blazing Saddles, followed by an inside look at the making of the picture and an audience Q&A with the comedy legend, who also wrote and directed such fab flicks as The Producers, Young Frankenstein, Silent Movie, High Anxiety, and History of the World, Part 1. And don’t forget to harrumph.

MIKE BIRBIGLIA: THANK GOD FOR JOKES

Culture Project, Lynn Redgrave Theater
49 Bleecker St. near Lafayette St.
Wednesday – Sunday through May 29, $56.50-$96.50
866-811-4111
www.thankgodforjokes.com
cultureproject.org

“At some point this week you told someone where you were going tonight and that person said, ‘Who?’ and you said something I’d been in and they said, ‘What’s that?’ and you said, ‘Go back to bed, Grandma,’” Mike Birbiglia explains near the beginning of his latest one-man show, Thank God for Jokes. “But I’m a niche thing.” The thirty-seven-year-old actor, comedian, writer, and director has appeared in such films as Trainwreck and Hot Pursuit and such cable series as Orange Is the New Black and Girls and is a regular contributor to This American Life on radio. In 2012, he wrote, directed, and starred in the award-winning Sleepwalk with Me, a film based on his one-man show and book about his battle with rapid eye movement (REM) behavior disorder. The success of the indie movie led to his gig hosting the 2012 Gotham Awards, which plays a central role in Thank God for Jokes. Over the course of eighty-five minutes, Birbiglia also discusses spam filters, nut allergies, cursing in front of the Muppets, riffing on Jesus at a Christian college, cats, and his fear of cops. The latter leads to an improvised conversation with an audience member that can be both funny and a little scary depending on the person’s past. He also has a blast with latecomers — the Lynn Redgrave Theater makes it clear that there will be no late seating, but when a few stragglers do indeed arrive after the show has begun, Birbiglia lets them have it. “What late people don’t understand about us on-time people is that we hate you,” he says. “And the reason we hate you is that it’s so easy to be on time. You just have to be early and early lasts for hours and on time just lasts a second and then you’re late. Forever.”

Mike Birbiglia riffs on lateness, Jesus, fear of cops, the Muppets, and more in THANK GOD FOR JOKES (photo © Joan Marcus)

But mostly, Birbiglia delves into the art of the joke. “I say this about jokes, having thought about them a lot. Jokes are a volatile type of speech. Sometimes when you tell a joke someone will punch you in the face. And the people standing around you will go, [nodding] ‘Yeah.’” Referring to the Charlie Hebdo incident, in which twelve magazine employees were killed for publishing cartoons depicting Muhammad, Birbiglia points out, “A few of my friends said, ‘Can’t people just write jokes that aren’t offensive?’ And I’m not sure that’s possible. I think all jokes are offensive . . . to someone. . . .” Directed by Seth Barrish (All the Rage, The Tricky Part) and designed by Beowulf Boritt (Act One, The Scottsboro Boys), both of whom did the same on Birbiglia’s first two one-man shows, Sleepwalk with Me and My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend, Thank God for Jokes features the relatively soft-spoken and self-effacing Birbiglia walking around a small stage, the audience seated around him on three sides. On the wall behind him are religious-tinged stained-glass windows and a handwritten scrawl about Jesus. But don’t let Birbiglia’s gentle, thoughtful demeanor fool you, as he can pack quite a punch, in his storytelling and his delivery, hitting you with hilarious surprises just when you’ve settled in comfortably. He’s a friendly, engaging guy — as long as the joke’s not on you. The show continues through May 29; you can catch more of Birbiglia this July, when his second film as writer, director, and star, Don’t Think Twice, opens in theaters.

DADDY LONG LEGS

Megan McGinnis shines as orphan getting chance to go to college in DADDY LONG LEGS (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

Davenport Theatre
354 West 54th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Friday – Wednesday through June 6, $59.50 – $89.50
www.daddylonglegsmusical.com

Don’t let the title steer you in the wrong direction. The off-Broadway musical Daddy Long Legs is not a stage adaptation of the 1955 Jean Negulesco film starring Fred Astaire and Leslie Caron, nor is it a theatrical version of Josh and Benny Safdie’s 2009 hit indie film, Daddy Longlegs. (It’s not about spiders either, although it references the creepy arachnid.) This absolutely lovely Daddy Long Legs goes back to the source of the earlier film, Jean Webster’s 1912 epistolary novel about an American orphan’s coming-of-age as a young woman in a male-dominated society. Megan McGinnis gives one of the most charming and engaging performances of the season as Jerusha, who is, as she sings in the show’s catchy opening number, “the oldest orphan in the John Grier Home.” She also points out, “Poor Jerusha Abbott / Never breaking free of this place,” but she is finally given a shot at a real life when her essays win her a college scholarship — previously reserved for boys only — from a mysterious, anonymous benefactor. But “The Further Education of Miss Jerusha Abbott by Mr. John Smith” comes with nine very specific rules, including requirements that Jerusha must write him a letter every month, can never thank him, will never receive a letter back, and will never meet him. However, her very first letter from college begins to beguile Mr. Smith with her candidness and fresh point of view on life and education. “I just wanna be like other girls / Get all dressed up like other girls / Become a scientist, a motorist / a suffragette, a Methodist / a Fabian, a Freudian / the class valedictorian,” she explains to Mr. Smith, who is actually Jervis Pendleton, the wealthy scion of a society family. In subsequent letters, she wonders more about Daddy Long Legs, whether he is old and bald, rich and tall, while a lovestruck Jervis starts thinking that he needs to meet Jerusha but maintain his secret identity.

DADDY LONG LEGS is told exclusively through letters and songs (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

Two-time Tony-winning director John Caird (Les Misérables, Nicholas Nickleby) and composer Paul Gordon, who previously collaborated on Jane Eyre, wrote the book, music, and lyrics for Daddy Long Legs, with Caird directing. All of the dialogue comes from Jerusha’s letters, which are either read or sung by her and Jervis, the latter often sitting at his desk at the back of the left corner of the stage, in his book-laden study, while Jerusha is generally front and center. The quaint set and period costumes are by David Farley, with subtle lighting by Paul Toben, sound by Peter Fitzgerald, and splendid orchestrations by Brad Haak, performed live by Haak on piano, Steven Walker on guitar, and Jeanette Stenson on cello. Projections in a cursive typeface identify the precise time and place like chapter headings. McGinnis (Les Misérables, Beauty and the Beast) is beyond delightful as Jerusha, casting wide-eyed smiles directly at the audience, making warm, intimate connections with her beautiful voice as well. McGinnis, who originated the role in 2010 at the Rubicon Theatre Company and has played Belle in Beauty on the Beast and Eponine in Les Miz on Broadway, has an infectious charisma and casual grace that should make her a star. The role of Jervis is usually played by McGinnis’s real-life husband, Adam Halpin (Paul Alexander Nolan originated the role off Broadway), but we saw his understudy, Will Reynolds, who was just fine following some initial tightness. Nominated for two Drama Desk Awards and three Outer Critics Circle Awards, Daddy Long Legs was scheduled to end its run on January 10 but was extended to June 6, so there’s not much time left to see one of the best shows of the year.