twi-ny recommended events

FLAVOR OF THE OPEN

Vanderbilt Hall, Grand Central Terminal
Wednesday, August 12, free, 12:30
www.grandcentralterminal.com
www.usopen.org

Once upon a time, the quality and price of the food at the U.S. Open were the deserved subjects of long-running jokes about the tennis tournament, first held in Forest Hills before moving to Flushing Meadows. But over the last several years, things have improved dramatically, as will be shown at the pop-up event Flavor of the Open, being held August 12 in Grand Central Terminal. There will be free samples of the lobster roll, Maya chopped salad, Tony Mantuano’s tomato bread, and Hill Country’s brisket slider, in addition to free Lavazza iced coffee and bottles of Evian.

TWI-NY TALK: DEXTER GARDINER / THE GARDINER MEMORIAL BASKETBALL CLASSIC

The tenth annual Gardiner Foundation Classic will be held August 15-16 in St. James Park (photo courtesy Dexter Gardiner)

THE GARDINER MEMORIAL BASKETBALL CLASSIC 2015
St. James Park
Jerome Ave., East 193rd St. & Creston Ave.
Saturday, August 15, and Sunday, August 16, free, 12 noon
thegardinerfoundation.org

A few years ago, the Daila Lama said, “There is a saying in Tibetan: ‘Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength.’ No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that’s our real disaster.” In July 2006, Dexter Gardiner did just that, turning tragedy into strength and hope after his twin brother, Derrick, his brother-in-law, his niece, and two nephews were killed in a car accident on the Bronx River Parkway on their way to a charity basketball tournament that Dexter and Derrick had organized to give back to their local community while honoring their mother and sister, both of whom had died earlier that year. The Gardiner Memorial Basketball Classic will be holding its tenth annual tournament August 15-16 in St. James Park in the Bronx, where the forty-nine-year-old Kingston, Jamaica-born Dexter lives with his wife, Sherri. There will be four games on Saturday, followed by single-elimination playoffs on Sunday. The first game pits Team Long Island against Team Gun Hill on August 15 at noon, followed by Team Shane vs. Team Buffalo at 2:00, Team the Body Snatchers vs. lawyertime.com at 4:00, and Team Kurt Flirt All Stars vs. Philly All Stars at 6:00. (The tournament has been sponsored for several years by Gersowitz Libo & Korek, P.C., aka lawyertime.com.)

There will also be a special girls game at 3:00, pitting an AAU team from Long Island Lightning, based out of Island Garden in West Hempstead, against an all-star team from Castle Athletics from 124th St. “I am very excited about having the opportunity to play in the first-ever girls basketball game at the Gardiner Memorial Basketball Classic, as playing the game I love for a worthy cause is very rewarding,” explains Oyster Bay High School sophomore Gianna Gotti of the Lightning. “What Dexter Gardiner and the Gardiner Foundation do for their community is incredible, and my teammates and I are honored to be a part of such a beautiful event. Helping people through the game of basketball is something that is somewhat new to me, but I see myself continuing to participate in these events for the rest of my career, as it’s such a great feeling.” A longtime friend of mine, Sandy Rossen, a coach at Island Garden, turned me on to this event. “Dexter is a caring man who believes that you should look not only to your own interest but also to the interest of others,” Rossen says. “He believes strongly that if you take care of your community and the people and children in it, you will actually have a hand in impacting the world in a positive way.” Dexter, whose motto is “I Am My Brother’s Keeper,” recently discussed with twi-ny how the tournament has grown over the years.

Sherry and Dexter Gardiner have turned tragedy into hope through charity basketball tournament and foundation (photo courtesy Sherry Gardiner)

Sherri and Dexter Gardiner have turned tragedy into hope through charity basketball tournament and foundation (photo courtesy Sherri Gardiner)

twi-ny: This year is the tenth annual Gardiner Foundation Basketball Classic. When you started this back in 2006, did you ever expect it to reach this milestone?

Dexter Gardiner: No, we just started it out of tragedy, and we wanted to help other families that were suffering loss. We never dreamed that it would get this far, but here we are in our tenth year and we’re excited about it. Each year it continues to grow.

twi-ny: How has the foundation’s relationship with the community developed over the years?

DG: The community sees what we are doing and they love it; they respect what we do and they have over the years become invested in our vision of helping others. Each year the community expects and anticipates the event and often volunteers to help on those days. It’s a great time of bonding with our community and forming a greater relationship.

twi-ny: You and your twin brother were streetball stars. What’s the key differences between outdoor street basketball and the indoor game?

DG: When you play outside, it makes it harder to play, so you really have to hustle on the court and it’s more physical. When you’re outside playing, you also see a lot more talent on the court.

twi-ny: Who are some of the pros who have stopped by the tournament over the years?

DG: Ben Gordon, John Starks, Ryan Gomes, Trevor Ruffin, Kenny Satterfield.

Gianna Gotti will be leading the Lightning in first-ever girls game at Bronx tournament (photo courtesy Sandy Rossen)

twi-ny: Since 2007, the foundation has given out nineteen scholarships; do you keep in touch with any of the recipients?

DG: Yes, we keep in contact with them and many have come back to volunteer to help at the event; many have graduated and are working, and some are still in college.

twi-ny: Which teams should we watch out for at this year’s tournament?

DG: Team Philly, they are coming out with a lot of talent.

twi-ny: What items will be given away and raffled off during the tournament?

DG: Sneakers from Kyrie Irving, hats and T-shirts from the Brooklyn Nets, socks and T-shirts and bookbags designed by the Gardiner Foundation, tablets and iPad Minis for education purposes. Plaques will be given to nine families to recognize them for the loss of their loved ones through tragedy and cancer. Also we provide free food and beverages on both days for the park.

twi-ny: What will be some of the non-basketball activities?

DG: A memorial program will recognize the families who lost loved ones. There will also be live entertainment, creative arts dancing, a scholarship presentation, and motivational words of encouragement to youth.

twi-ny: In addition to the basketball tournament, the foundation also sponsors the Tru Talk mentoring group. How does that work?

DG: Tru Talk is a peer-mentoring program. We provide a safe space for youth and young adults between the ages of fourteen and twenty-nine to discuss problems, conflict resolution, life issues, and peer pressure and provide vocational coaching. We also do recreational trips to expose our urban youth / young adults to healthier recreation by playing paintball and going to museums, New York Yankees baseball games, and NBA games.

twi-ny: You suffered tremendous personal losses in 2006. Does it ever get any easier?

DG: No, not really, but healing does come when you are helping others who have also gone through similar things.

twi-ny: How’s your game today compared with 2006?

DG: I’m two steps slower, not able to jump as high as I used to, but I’m smarter on the court and can still score on a good day thirty to forty points a game.

HUDSON RIVER FLICKS — BIG HIT WEDNESDAYS: BOYHOOD

Mason Jr. (Ellar Coltrane) and Mason Sr. (Ethan Hawke) take a look at their lives in Richard Linklater’s brilliant BOYHOOD

BOYHOOD (Richard Linklater, 2014)
Pier 63 Lawn, Hudson River Park
Cross at West 22nd or 24th St.
Wednesday, August 12, free (with free popcorn, 8:30
www.hudsonriverpark.org
www.boyhoodmovie.tumblr.com

Since 2002, Austin auteur Richard Linklater has made a wide range of successful films, from the family-friendly School of Rock and Bad News Bears to the second and third parts of the more adult Before series (Before Sunset, Before Midnight), with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, in addition to the Philip K. Dick thriller A Scanner Darkly and the Jack Black black comedy Bernie. But during that entire period he was also making one of the grandest films ever about childhood, the deceptively simple yet mind-blowingly complex Boyhood. The work follows Mason Evans Jr. (Ellar Coltrane) as he goes from six years old to eighteen, maturing for real as both the actor and the character grow up before our eyes. As the film begins, Mason, his older sister, Samantha (Linklater’s real-life daughter, Lorelei), and their mother, Olivia (Oscar winner Patricia Arquette), are preparing to move to Houston just as their usually absent father, Mason Sr. (Hawke), returns from a job in Alaska, supposedly ready to be a more regular part of their lives. But his emotional immaturity leads to divorce, and Mason Jr. spends the next dozen years dealing with school, stepfathers, and the normal machinations of everyday life, including sex, drugs, rock and roll, and, for him, a determination from an early age to become an artist. Along the way, his sister and parents experience significant changes as well as they all learn lessons about life, love, and loss.

Olivia (Patricia Arquette) reads to children Samantha (Lorelei Linklater) and Mason Jr. (Ellar Coltrane) in BOYHOOD

To make the film, the cast and crew met every year for three or four days of shooting, with writer-director Linklater moving the story ahead by incorporating real elements from Coltrane’s life that add to the natural ease and flow of the story. Despite the obvious difficulties of maintaining continuity over a dozen years, cinematographers Lee Daniel and Shane Kelly and editor Sandra Adair do a masterful job of keeping the narrative right on track. It’s breathtaking to see Mason Jr. go upstairs in one scene, then come downstairs a year later, ready for something new, dressed slightly differently, with a little more facial hair, to signal the change in time. (Linklater also uses the soundtrack to note the passing years, with songs by Coldplay, the Hives, Cat Power, Gnarls Barkley, the Flaming Lips, and others.) Mason Jr.’s unique relationship with each parent and his sister is utterly believable, complete with all the pluses and minuses that entails; at one point, Lorelei, tired of being in the movie, asked her father to kill off her character, and even that energy is apparent onscreen. In addition to Coltrane’s career-making performance, Hawke and Arquette are sensational, doing something no other actors before them have ever done. You won’t be bored for a second of this two-hour, forty-minute journey with a relatively average American family that helps define the modern human condition like no other single film before it. “Photography is truth . . . and cinema is truth twenty-four times a second,” Bruno Forestier (Michel Subor) tells Véronica Dreyer (Anna Karina) in Jean-Luc Godard’s Le Petit Soldat. With Boyhood, that statement has rarely been so true. Nominated for six Academy Awards, Boyhood is screening August 12 as part of the free “Hudson River Park: Big Hit Wednesdays” series in Hudson River Park, which concludes August 19 with Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar.

DANCE AT SOCRATES 2015

Dance at Socrates is back for its third year in Long Island City park

Socrates Sculpture Park
32-01 Vernon Blvd.
Saturday, August 8, 15, 22, free, 4:00
718-956-1819
socratessculpturepark.org

Walking around Socrates Sculpture Park’s spring/summer installations is a kind of artistic dance unto itself, beginning by going under Vera Lutter’s “Broadway Billboard: Degas Horses” and them making your way to Gabriela Albergaria’s “Two Trees in Balance,” Heide Fasnacht’s “Suspect Terrain,” IK Studio’s “Folly: Torqueing Spheres,” and Agnes Denes’s “The Living Pyramid.” But the Long Island City waterfront haven and Norte Maar for Collaborative Projects in the Arts are teaming up for the real deal, the third annual Dance at Socrates, three Saturdays of free dance performances at 4:00. Each of the presenters spends six days in residency in the park before taking the stage. The August 8 show features a preview of Randy James (10 Hairy Legs Projects) interpreting C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, with music by Mozart, and the work in progress Three Rites by Edisa Weeks (Delirious Dances), about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, set to music by the Occidental Brothers, the Carolina Chocolate Drops, and Perpetual E-Motion. The August 15 program consists of Siren’s Realm by Christopher Rudd (RudduR Dance), set to Mike Murphy’s “Sail by Night,” the world premiere of No Strings Attached by Gierre Godley (Project 44), with music by Stromae and the Balanescu Orchestra, an excerpt from Jenni Hong Dance’s I Am You, with music by Brian Eno, Sylvain Chauveau, and Tindersticks, and I hope it’s not too late by Lara Gemmiti and Katharina Morales (L & K Dance). The three-week festival concludes August 18 with the world premiere of Where Can You Be? from Meagan Woods (Meagan Woods & Company), set to music by Johnny McEvoy, the Andrews Sisters, the Black Keys, and John Hopkins, a sneak peek at the work in progress Knight Moves by Julia K. Gleich (Gleich Dances), which is inspired by the paintings of Abstract Expressionist Jack Tworkov, Gut Check by Matty Davis/Kora Radella (Boomerang), with text by Will Arbery, and the world premiere of Brynt Beitman’s WAKE. Admission is free, and no advance RSVP is required.

INDIE 80s: BLUE VELVET

Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) gets introduced to a dangerous, candy-coated world by Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini) in David Lynch’s BLUE VELVET

BLUE VELVET (David Lynch, 1986)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Saturday, August 8, 4:30 & 9:30
Series continues through August 27
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

David Lynch reveals the dark underbelly of American society in his 1986 masterpiece, Blue Velvet. Channeling Douglas Sirk and Alfred Hitchcock as well as John Badham’s War Games, Lynch creates a unique look and feel in this modern erotic noir thriller, set in the small suburban town of Lumberton, North Carolina, where danger and darkness lurk just below the surface. Lynch, who had previously made the well-received Eraserhead and The Elephant Man as well as the disastrous Dune, establishes the American theme at the heart of the movie with Blue Velvet’s opening shot, red roses in front of a white picket fence with a bright blue sky in the background. As the soundtrack plays Bobby Vinton’s 1963 hit version of the title song, Lynch then shows a red fire truck moving in slow motion down a tree-lined street, a fireman in a blue shirt on the truck, waving, standing next to a Dalmatian; children being beckoned across a street by a crossing guard; a woman (Priscilla Pointer) on her couch watching a black-and-white crime movie in which a man with a gun enters a living room; and her husband (Jack Harvey) suffering a heart attack while watering the lawn, the hose shooting out from his groin area as he lies on the ground. Lynch then zooms in on a human ear in a windy green field, the organ being devoured by bugs, followed by a billboard announcing, “Welcome to Lumberton.” That’s quite a welcome, indeed. Lynch begins the main narrative as college student Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) visits his father in the hospital, then finds that now-ant-covered ear in the field. The camera swoops in closer and closer, finally taking viewers inside the detached organ, and the story takes off, as Jeffrey and high school student Sandy (Laura Dern), the daughter of local police detective John Williams (George Dickerson), get involved with a group of demented, crazed criminals led by the deranged Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), who are abusing singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini) while apparently holding her husband and son hostage. The more Jeffrey immerses himself in this maniacal, candy-coated world, the more peril he finds himself in as his relationships grow with both Sandy and Dorothy.

Dennis Hopper restarted his career with memorable performance as the maniacal Frank Booth in BLUE VELVET

Like the true surrealist he is, Lynch populates Blue Velvet with all kinds of insects, from the ants and other creepy crawly things on the dismembered ear to a bug a robin brings to the Beaumont kitchen; when Frank Booth puts on his oxygen mask to suck in an unidentified drug that most likely is nitrous oxide or amyl nitrate, he resembles a bug, and when Jeffrey needs to gain access to Dorothy’s apartment, he pretends to be an exterminator — and is spotted by the man in the yellow jacket (Fred Pickler). Lynch doesn’t overplay his hand; he deleted a scene involving Aunt Barbara’s (Frances Bay) obsession with termites; the story does take place in Lumberton, after all. The American dream turns into an American nightmare as Lynch also turns Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams” into a theme fraught with menace, lip-synced by the very strange Ben (Dean Stockwell) and mimicked with evil glee by the maniacal Booth. The song, which includes the key line “Too bad it only seems / It only happens in my dreams,” has led some to consider that most of the film is a dream, taking place in Jeffrey’s head from the time the camera zooms into the ear and then eventually emerges near the end. (It would also help explain why high school student Sandy is wearing a ring on her wedding finger throughout the movie.) Even the casting and character names are filled with tantalizing references: Sandy’s mother is played by Hope Lange, who was nominated for an Oscar for her performance as Selena Cross in Peyton Place, a film about a different underside to an American town; Stockwell was a child actor who starred in such films as The Boy with Green Hair and later as a cold-blooded killer in Compulsion; and even the Beaumont family name evokes Hugh Beaumont, who played the patriarch of the Cleaver (!) family in Leave It to Beaver. It’s also extra difficult to watch Vallens get so physically and emotionally abused, knowing that she is played by the daughter of one of cinema’s most beloved and beautiful stars, Ingrid Bergman; Rossellini gives a brave and courageous career-defining performance as a wife and mother who will do anything to get her family back. Nearly thirty years old, Blue Velvet holds up marvelously well, as dark and depraved, and as shimmering and vibrant, as ever, set in a luridly colored world stunningly photographed by Frederick Elmes and featuring a haunting throwback score by Angelo Badalamenti, a frightening yet appealing world that Lynch turns upside down and inside out. Blue Velvet is screening August 8 as part of the BAMcinématek series “Indie 80s,” which continues through August 27 with such other seminal ’80s films as the Coen brothers’ Blood Simple, Gregory Nava’s El Norte, Hal Hartley’s The Unbelievable Truth, and Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead.

TICKET ALERT: UNBOUND

Elvis Costello will be at BAM on November 10 to talk about his new book (photo by Mary McCartney)

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
Peter Jay Sharp Building
230 Lafayette Ave.
September 24 – November 10, $25-$30 ($45 with signed book), 7:30 or 8:00
718-636-4100
www.bam.org/unbound

Since its inaugural event in September 2013, BAM’s “Unbound” literary series has featured such personalities as John Cleese, Philip Glass, Kim Gordon, Jonathan Lethem, and Angélique Kidjo presenting their new books, teaming up with the nearby Greenlight Bookstore. Tickets are now on sale for the fall festival, which begins September 24 with the launch of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, with the author of Eat Pray Love joined by Tony-winning playwright and actress Sarah Jones. On September 27, Adam Driver, Paul Giamatti, David Strathairn, and others will be at BAM to read selections from Bryan Doerries’s The Theater of War: What Ancient Greek Tragedies Can Teach Us Today, followed by a discussion with Doerries, held in conjunction with the Onassis Cultural Center NY. On October 6, Sara Bareilles will discuss her essay collection, Sounds Like Me: My Life (so far) in Song, with Ben Folds, while Gloria Steinem will discuss her latest book, My Life on the Road, on October 27. The all-star lineup concludes on November 10 with Elvis Costello lending further insight to his memoir, Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink, with Rosanne Cash. Tickets are $25-$30 for a seat in the Howard Gilman Opera House and $45 if you want a signed copy of the book as well. (The Gilbert, Doerries, and Costello books will be presigned.)

RICHARD LESTER — THE RUNNING JUMPING POP CINEMA ICONOCLAST: A HARD DAY’S NIGHT

The Fab Four are on the run in A HARD DAY’S NIGHT, screening at Lincoln Center as part of Richard Lester retrospective

A HARD DAY’S NIGHT (Richard Lester, 1964)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Saturday, August 8, 1:00
Festival runs August 7-13
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.org
www.thebeatles.com

The Beatles are invading America again with the fiftieth anniversary restoration of their debut film, the deliriously funny anarchic comedy A Hard Day’s Night. Initially released on July 6, 1964, in the UK, AHDN turned out to be much more than just a promotional piece advertising the Fab Four and their music. Instead, it quickly became a huge critical and popular success, a highly influential work that presaged Monty Python and MTV while also honoring the Marx Brothers, Buster Keaton, Jacques Tati, and the French New Wave. Directed by Richard Lester, who had previously made the eleven-minute The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film with Peter Sellers and would go on to make A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Petulia, and The Three Musketeers, the madcap romp opens with the first chord of the title track as John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr are running down a narrow street, being chased by rabid fans, but they’re coming toward the camera, welcoming viewers into their crazy world. (George’s fall was unscripted but left in the scene.) As the song blasts over the soundtrack, Lester introduces the major characters: the four moptops, who are clearly having a ball, led by John’s infectious smile, in addition to Paul’s “very clean” grandfather (Wilfrid Brambell, who played a dirty old man in the British series Steptoe and Son, the inspiration for Sanford and Son) and the band’s much-put-upon manager, Norm (Norman Rossington). Lester and cinematographer Gilbert Taylor (Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Repulsion, Star Wars) also establish the pace and look of the film, a frantic black-and-white frolic shot in a cinema-vérité style that is like a mockumentary taking off from where François Truffaut’s 400 Blows ends. The boys eventually make it onto a train, which is taking them back to their hometown of Liverpool, where they are scheduled to appear on a television show helmed by a hapless director (Victor Spinetti, who would star in Help as well) who essentially represents all those people who are dubious about the Beatles and the sea change going on in the music industry. Norm and road manager Shake (John Junkin) have the virtually impossible task of ensuring that John, Paul, George, and Ringo make it to the show on time, but there is no containing the energetic enthusiasm and contagious curiosity the quartet has for experiencing everything their success has to offer — while also sticking their tongues out at class structure, societal trends, and the culture of celebrity itself.

Lester and Oscar-nominated screenwriter Alun Owen develop each individual Beatle’s unique character through press interviews, solo sojourns (the underappreciated Ringo goes off on a kind of vision quest; George is mistaken by a fashion fop for a model), and an endless stream of spoken and visual one-liners. (John sniffs a Coke bottle; a reporter asks George, “What do you call your hairstyle?” to which the Quiet One replies, “Arthur.”) Oh, the music is rather good too, featuring such songs as “I Should Have Known Better,” “All My Loving,” “If I Fell,” “Can’t Buy Me Love,” “I’m Happy Just to Dance with You,” “This Boy,” and “She Loves You.” The working name for the film was Beatlemania, but it was eventually changed to A Hard Day’s Night, based on a Ringo malapropism, forcing John and Paul to quickly write the title track. No mere exploitation flick, A Hard Day’s Night is one of the funniest, most influential films ever made, capturing a critical moment in pop-culture history and unleashing four extraordinary gentlemen on an unsuspecting world. Don’t you dare miss this glorious eighty-five-minute explosion of sheer, unadulterated joy. The restoration, courtesy of Janus Films, is screening August 8 at the Walter Reade Theater as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center tribute series “Richard Lester: The Running Jumping Pop Cinema Iconoclast” and will be preceded by The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film. The festival runs August 7-13 and consists of most of the now-eighty-three-year-old Philadelphia native’s films, including Robin and Marian, The Bed Sitting Room, Juggernaut, Cuba, The Royal Flash, and the above-mentioned titles. “Growing up, I always thought of Richard Lester as one of the 1960s’ most typically English filmmakers — not just because of his irreverent and absurd sense of humor and his feel for English life but also for the affectionate way he sent up familiar icons from the Beatles to the Three Musketeers to even Superman,” Film Comment editor and FSLC senior programmer Gavin Smith said in reference to the series. “Imagine my surprise when I first learned he was actually an expat Yank. Regardless, he’s still a great English filmmaker!”