twi-ny recommended events

ANDREI TARKOVSKY, SCULPTING IN TIME: DIRECTED BY ANDREI TARKOVSKY

Documentary follows Andrei Tarkovsky making THE SACRIFICE and getting philosophical about art, film, and time

DIRECTED BY ANDREI TARKOVSKY (Michal Leszczylowski, 1988)
Museum of Arts & Design
2 Columbus Circle at 58th St. & Eighth Ave.
Friday, August 28, $10, 7:00
Series continues Friday nights through August 28
212-299-7777
madmuseum.org

After seven consecutive Friday nights presenting all seven of Soviet auteur Andrei Tarkovsky’s feature-length films (Solaris, Stalker, Ivan’s Childhood, Andrei Rublev, The Mirror, Nostalghia, and The Sacrifice, each one a masterpiece in its own right), the Museum of Arts & Design — it’s affectionately known as MAD for a reason — is concluding its “Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time” series on August 28 with the 1988 documentary Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. During the shooting of what would be Tarkovsky’s last film, The Sacrifice, coeditor Michal Leszczylowski kept his own camera going, filming Tarkovsky as he collaborated with cinematographer Sven Nykvist, production designer Anna Asp, star Erland Josephson, and others, carefully orchestrating each shot, anxious about the lighting, the angles, the position of a table. Yes, that is the job of all directors, but Tarkovsky takes it to whole ’nother level, sometimes worried about the slightest hair flip, then barely concerned about a specific piece of dialogue. It is fascinating watching him in action, working with a translator to sift through the Russian, English, and Swedish being spoken on the set. The Sacrifice is about a man who is willing to suddenly give up everything to save himself; it looks like there’s not much that Tarkovsky wouldn’t sacrifice to make sure his film is perfect. Leszczylowski supplements the behind-the-scenes footage with stories from Tarkovsky’s wife, assistant director Larisa Tarkovskaya (Larisa Kizilova), as well as narration by Brian Cox, reading from Tarkovsky’s book Sculpting in Time, his poetic defense of cinema as art melding beautifully with images of the great director creating some of the most artistic cinema ever put on celluloid.

THE METROPOLITAN OPERA: SUMMER HD FESTIVAL

Free summer festival screens recent Met performances outside in HD (photo by Richard Termine/Metropolitan Opera)

Lincoln Center, Josie Robertson Plaza
Columbus Ave. at 63rd St.
August 28 – September 7, free, starting time between 7:30 and 8:00
212-769-7028
www.metopera.org

Catching an opera at the Met can be a tough ticket, but you’ll have no such worry at the fabled institution’s annual Summer HD Festival, ten days of free screenings of works that graced the opera house’s stage between 2007 and 2015, now shown outside by the fountain in Josie Robertson Plaza. The series kicks off August 28 with a bonus film, Robert Wise’s West Side Story, much of which was filmed in the pre-Lincoln Center neighborhood. There will be 3,100 first-come, first-served seats available each night, featuring such “The Met: Live in HD” presentations as Bizet’s Carmen, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and starring Elīna Garanča and Roberto Alagna; Verdi’s Macbeth, with Anna Netrebko as Lady Macbeth and Željko Lučić as her ill-fated husband; Puccini’s Il Trittico, a triple bill directed by Jack O’Brien and conducted by James Levine; and Mozart’s Don Giovanni, directed by Michael Grandage and conducted by Fabio Luisi.

VIDEO OF THE DAY: “RED STILETTOS” BY THE PRIMADONNA REEDS

Who: The PrimaDonna Reeds
What: CD release concert & party
Where: SPiN, 48 East 23rd St. between Park & Madison Aves., 212-982-8802
When: Saturday, August 29, $10 in advance, $14 at the door, 7:30
Why:Lower East Side six-piece the PrimaDonna Reeds are celebrating the release of their debut CD, Red Stilettos, in the kind of style that would probably make Oscar-winning namesake Donna Reed proud. On Saturday night, singer Karena Reiter, guitarists JC Ryder and Quinn Sheppard, bassist John Sheppard, drummer Slamin’ George Morales, and backup vocalist Christa McNamee will be at SPiN NYC on East Twenty-Third St. highlighting the record, which includes such tracks as “Planetary City Soldier,” “Cell Phone Funk,” and “Give Me the Key.” Attendees will receive a free three-song preview disk consisting of “Red Stilettos,” “Cell Phone Funk,” and “To Feel You.” (You can check out a handful of PrimaDonna Reeds songs here.) Also on the bill are Sylvana Joyce & the Moment, the Vinyl Plane, the Dave Fields Band, and Gusher. And at midnight, an after-party fashion show will feature such models as Ali Bukhari, Starlana Johnson, and Angelina Torreano.

JUNG UK YANG: A MAN WITHOUT WORDS

“A Fatigue Always Comes with a Dream” is centerpiece of Jung Uk Yang exhibition in Chelsea (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Who: Jung Uk Yang
What: “A Man Without Words”
Where: Doosan Gallery, 533 West 25th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
When: Through Thursday, August 27
Why: Korean artist Jung Uk Yang’s first solo show in the United States is an intriguing collection of four kinetic sculptures that incorporate movement with light, shadow, and/or sound in fun, mesmerizing ways. Referencing people’s basic, everyday lives, Yang constructs mechanical installations using wood, thread, and motors. On entering Doosan Gallery in Chelsea, visitors are met by “Be of One Same Mind,” an ovular piece that flutters in greeting. On the other side of the wall, “The Hardship Is Whispering Hope” sits on the floor, casting a large shadow, moving ever so slowly until ringing a bell. The intricately designed “Only the Turtle Does Not Know about Our Weekends” features a bevy of moving parts and abstract faces behind a wooden frame, as if a kind of living portrait of humanity. And the centerpiece of the exhibit, the eye-catching “A Fatigue Always Comes with a Dream,” bathes the back room in stunning shadows, a solitary lightbulb in the middle of moving parts including empty bottles held by thread, honoring South Korean apartment security guards who work overnight, confined to their little glass booths.

ARMY OF SHADOWS

Lino Ventura is leading a seemingly impossible mission in ARMY OF SHADOWS

L’ARMÉE DES OMBRES (ARMY OF SHADOWS) (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1969)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
August 26 – September 1
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

Based on the novel by Joseph Kessel (Belle de Jour), Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1969 WWII drama Army of Shadows got its first theatrical release in America in 2006, in a restored 35mm print supervised by the film’s cinematographer, Pierre Lhomme, who shot it in a beautiful blue-gray palette. The film centers on a small group of French resistance fighters, including shadowy leader Luc Jardie (Paul Meurisse), the smart and determined Mathilde (Simone Signoret), the nervous Jean-François (Jean-Pierre Cassel), the steady and dependable Felix (Paul Crauchet), the stocky Le Bison (Christian Barbier), the well-named Le Masque (Claude Mann), and the unflappable and practical Gerbier (Lino Ventura). Although Melville, who was a resistance fighter as well, wants the film to be his personal masterpiece, he is too close to the material, leaving large gaps in the narrative and giving too much time to scenes that don’t deserve them. He took offense at the idea that he portrayed the group of fighters as gangsters, yet what shows up on the screen is often more film noir than war movie. However, there are some glorious sections of Army of Shadows, including Gerbier’s escape from a Vichy camp, the execution of a traitor to the cause, and a tense Mission: Impossible–like (the TV series, not the Tom Cruise vehicles) attempt to free the imprisoned Felix. But most of all there is Ventura, who gives an amazingly subtle performance that makes the overly long film (nearly two and a half hours) worth seeing all by itself. Army of Shadows is once again back at Film Forum for a special one-week return engagement August 26 – September 1.

RON ENGLISH: ALL AMERICAN TEMPER TOT

Baby Hulk is about to throw one helluva tantrum on Houston St. (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Houston Bowery Wall
Houston St. at Bowery
www.popaganda.com
all american temper tot slideshow

American consumerism run amok has got Hulk Baby angry! Street art legend and political activist Ron English has wheat-pasted an enormous American flag on the Houston Bowery Wall, the stars centered with skulls, the stripes consisting of fake supermarket deals (selling such products as “Corn Fed Cow Corpse,” “Rainbow Tinted Unicorn Flesh,” and “Aged Deceased Sheep”) and advertising signs (promoting such items as “Kiss Kids on Coke” and “Morrison Marijuana Cigarettes: Baby we couldn’t get much higher”). Other signs proclaim, “Evolution: It’s Not for Everyone,” “Jesus Returns 06-06-06: Look Religious,” and “The Poor: What Are They Good For?” depicting a boy in clown gear and makeup, wearing an army helmet and holding an assault rifle. English also takes shots at breakfast cereal (from his “Cereal Killers” series), Starbucks, McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, Marlboro, Wall Street, credit cards, oil companies, and U.S. currency — easy targets all, but well deserving of their place on this flag. He also hypes such freak-show characters as Poultry Rex, Multi-Brained Brodmann, Otto Topsy the Internal Alien, and Cathy Cowgirl. Standing in front of it all is English’s trademark Temper Tot, a giant green Hulk Baby with his eyes shut, his face scrunched, his fists tightening, preparing to throw a major tantrum, and you’re not going to want to be around when that happens. Other versions of Temper Tot can be seen in various places around the city, in both green and pink, but this fella on Houston is the one to watch out for. The Dallas-born, culture-jamming English pulls no punches with this large-scale mural, another potent example of his theory of POPaganda.

AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL PICTURES: A BUCKET OF BLOOD

Walter Paisley (Dick Miller) shows off his debut artistic creation, “Dead Cat,” at the Yellow Door in A BUCKET OF BLOOD

A BUCKET OF BLOOD (Roger Corman, 1959)
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Ave. at Second St.
Saturday, August 29, 9:00, and Tuesday, September 1, 7:15
Series runs through September 3
212-505-5181
anthologyfilmarchives.org

Writer Charles B. Griffith and producer and director Roger Corman skewer — and we do mean skewer — beatnik culture, the elitist art world, and their very own horror genre in the freaky-fun satire A Bucket of Blood. Inspired by Michael Curtiz’s 1933 The Mystery of the Wax Museum and André de Toth’s 1953 3D classic House of Wax and adding more than a dash of Macbeth, Griffith and Corman tell the lurid tale of one Walter Paisley (Dick Miller), a relatively simple-minded busboy at the Yellow Door, a smoky bohemian nightclub in San Francisco, where pre-Williamsburg hipster Maxwell H. Brock (Julian Burton) recites his poetry and hobnobs with his adoring fans. “I will talk to you of art, for there is nothing else to talk about, for there is nothing else,” Brock says over the opening credits, looking directly into the camera. “Swim on, you maudlin, muddling, maddened fools, and dream that one bright and sunny night some artist will bait a hook and let you bite upon it. Bite hard, and die!” Maxwell’s bloviating words impress Walter, who repeats them to himself as he is determined that he, too, will become an artist. Back at home, Walter is trying to make a clay bust of club hostess Carla (Barboura Morris, who later appeared in The Wasp Woman and The Trip), who he has a crush on, but he is interrupted by the meows of a cat trapped in the wall. In trying to free the cat, Walter accidentally stabs it to death, then decides to cover it in clay (leaving the knife in it) and show it off at the club so he can join the prestigious ranks of the art world. (No one quite gets the irony of his having killed a cat, hipster slang for a supposed cool person.) He is indeed celebrated by Maxwell, Carla, and most of the others, except for his boss, Leonard (Antony Carbone), who is suspicious of Walter’s sudden talent but doesn’t mind making a quick buck off his employee. Also keeping a close eye on things are undercover cops Art Lacroix (Peyton Place star Ed Nelson) and Lou Raby (game show host Bert Convy, billed as “Burt” Convy), who are looking to make some drug busts. Walter’s instant success goes straight to his addled little head, so soon he is creating disturbing statues of, well, let’s just say people start going missing in the neighborhood. Walter is determined to no longer be ignored, but it’s all liable to fall apart at any moment, like so much broken clay.

Shot in five days in black-and-white for $50,000 on existing sets (some of which would be used again for Griffith and Corman’s next comedy, the somewhat similarly themed Little Shop of Horrors), A Bucket of Blood suffers from the whirlwind production schedule and extremely low budget — Miller has since complained that there wasn’t enough time or money to prepare a proper finale, and he’s right — but it’s still a hoot, a playful stab at many of the genre conventions that Griffith (The Wild Angels, Eat My Dust!) and Corman (The Pit and the Pendulum, The Terror) established working for American International Pictures. This horror comedy is extremely creepy and very funny, with a superb lead performance by Miller, a distinctive, longtime character actor who would actually play men named Walter Paisley in several later films (including Joe Dante’s The Howling and Jim Wynorski’s Chopping Mall) as an homage to his triumph here. You can feel his every twisted emotion as he tries so hard to become an artist and capture Carla’s romantic attention and help them and others reach immortality. Photographed by Jacques R. Marquette and featuring a Twilight Zone–like score and pace (the Rod Serling series began the same year), A Bucket of Blood well deserves its cult status as a camp classic. A Bucket of Blood is screening August 29 and September 1 in Anthology Film Archives’ three-part tribute to American International Pictures, the first section of which continues through September 3 with such other cult faves as Ray Milland’s Panic in Year Zero!, Edward L. Cahn’s The She-Creature, and Corman’s X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes and The Tomb of Ligeia, with star Elizabeth Shepherd in person.