twi-ny recommended events

SEE IT BIG! 70MM: IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD

Comedic giants come together for quite a wild ride in Stanley Kramer’s IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD

IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD (Stanley Kramer, 1963)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Saturday, August 15, and Sunday, August 16, $12 (includes museum admission), 2:00
Series runs through August 30
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us

They don’t come much crazier than the madcap 1963 comedy It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World. Producer-director Stanley Kramer takes a sharp turn with the wacky film, clearly needing a laugh following his rather serious string of issue pictures: The Defiant Ones, On the Beach, Inherit the Wind, and Judgment at Nuremberg. As he lays dying after a car crash, master thief Smiler Grogan (Jimmy Durante) tells a group of onlookers that there is $350,000 buried under a “big W” in Santa Rosita State Park. And off they go in search of the prize, willing to do just about anything and everything in order to get their greedy hands on the money. Hot on their trail is police captain T. G. Culpeper (Spencer Tracy), trying to solve one last case before he retires. It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World lives up to its title, a mad, mad, mad, mad epic featuring the greatest all-star comedic cast ever assembled, including Sid Caesar, Edie Adams, Mickey Rooney, Buddy Hackett, an absolutely lunatic Jonathan Winters, Terry-Thomas, Phil Silvers, Dick Shawn, Peter Falk, Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, and Ethel Merman in addition to cameos by Jerry Lewis, Jack Benny, Joe E. Brown, Howard Da Silva, Andy Devine, Norman Fell, Selma Diamond, Leo Gorcey, Jim Backus, Marvin Kaplan, Stan Freberg, Arnold Stang, Jesse White, Carl Reiner, Don Knotts, Buster Keaton, and the Three Stooges. Basically, you can’t blink during the film’s 161 minutes or you’ll miss someone or some incredibly silly slapstick moment. And the ending is a laugh riot — literally. It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is screening August 15-16 as part of the Museum of the Moving Image series “See It Big! 70MM,” of old and new films being shown in all their 70mm glory, including Robert Wise’s West Side Story, David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia, Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, Steven Lisberger’s Tron, and Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar.

HARLEM WEEK: SUMMER IN THE CITY / HARLEM DAY

Kenny Lattimore will be performing at Harlem Week Summer in the City festivities

West 135th St. between Malcolm X Blvd. & Frederick Douglass Blvd.
Saturday, August 15, and Sunday, August 16, free, 12 noon – 6:00 pm
harlemweek.com

The annual Harlem Week festival continues August 15 with Summer in the City and August 16 with Harlem Day, two afternoons of special events along West 135th St. that honor the theme “Celebrating the Journey: Embracing the Future.” Saturday’s festivities include the Historic Black College Fair & Expo, the Peace in Our Community Conference, New Yorkers Are “Dancing in the Street” (with Alvin Ailey instructors and dancers), the Fabulous Fashion Flava Show, the first day of the NYC Children’s Festival (with a parade, sports clinics, health testing, arts & crafts, and more), Harlem Honeys & Bears swimming activities in the Hansborough Recreation Center, an International Vendors Village, the Uptown Saturday Concert with Kenny Lattimore, the Jeff Foxx Band, and Deborah Cox, an Our Lives Matter program, and a screening in St. Nicholas Park of Damani Baker and Alex Vlack’s 2010 documentary, Still Bill, about newly inducted Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Bill Withers. Sunday’s Harlem Day celebration features the Upper Manhattan Auto Show, tennis clinics, a health village, the second day of the NYC Children’s Festival (with a Back to School theme), the Upper Manhattan Small Business Expo & Fair, live music, dance, and spoken-word performances, another fashion show, and a musical tribute to Malcolm X with Doug E. Fresh, Vivian Green, and others.

SHAKESPEARE IN THE PARK: CYMBELINE

Posthumus (Hamish Linklater) and Iachimo (Raúl Esparza) make a dangerous bet as Philario (Patrick Page) looks on (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Central Park
Delacorte Theater
Through August 23, free, 8:30
shakespeareinthepark.org

Cymbeline, one of Shakespeare’s later, lesser-known plays, is not easy to bring to the stage. It’s a sort of greatest-hits mash-up of previous Bard themes and plot devices, lacking in memorable lines and named after a relatively minor character. So Tony-winning Shakespeare in the Park veteran Daniel Sullivan has added a large dose of whimsy to what turns out to be a rather charming and modern romantic comedy. In fact, whereas the first folio identifies it as “The Tragedy of Cymbeline,” a framed backdrop that is visible throughout nearly all of the Public Theater presentation calls it “The Story of Cymbeline,” as tragedy becomes farce. With war threatening between Britain and Rome in ancient times, King Cymbeline (Patrick Page) has banished Posthumus Leonatus (Hamish Linklater), a commoner who is married to, and very much in love with, his daughter, Imogen (Lily Rabe), so she can instead wed the queen’s not-too-swift progeny, Cloten (Linklater). Meanwhile, in a 1950s-era Vegas-y Rome, Posthumus boasts about his wife’s virtue, leading the Italian playboy Iachimo (Raúl Esparza), after performing a glitzy Sinatra-like number, to lay a wager that he can bed Imogen and despoil her honor. The bet is overseen by Philario (Page), a sharp-dressed gangster who is Posthumus’s host. As the queen conspires to poison Imogen, both Iacomo and Cloten attempt to woo the princess, who soon sets out for Wales disguised as a boy to set things straight with her one true love. But on the way she gets lost in the woods and is taken in by an oddball anarchist family consisting of a bent-over father (Kate Burton) and his two would-be sons (David Furr and Jacob Ming-Trent). It all leads to a dizzying finale with more than two dozen revelations coming fast and furious.

The cloddish Cloten (Hamish Linklater) makes his case to marry Imogen (Lily Rabe) (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Sullivan (Proof, Twelfth Night) has a ball revealing the artifice behind the production while also taking the story to some surprising extremes. Riccardo Hernandez’s set features a pair of large gold frames and boxes and props from other Shakespeare productions (Hamlet, King Lear), reminding everyone of the machinations behind it all. There are several rows of audience members on either side of the stage who do indeed get involved in the action, while some of the actors sit at the back of the stage between their scenes. Rabe and Linklater, who are partners in real life and have previously appeared together in Seminar on Broadway and in The Merchant of Venice and Much Ado About Nothing at the Delacorte, are at their best in Cymbeline, she as the strong-willed and sexy Imogen, he going back and forth between the noble-to-a-fault Posthumus and the dumb-and-dumber Cloten (complete with Jim Carrey–like wig), pausing in his line readings for maximum double-entendre effect. Page (Casa Valentina, Cyrano de Bergerac) is gallant as the king and Philario, balancing power with a conscience; Burton is nicely wicked as the queen and almost unrecognizable as Belarius; four-time Tony nominee Esparza (Company, Taboo) is appropriately smarmy as Iachimo, who spans two eras; Teagle F. Bougere (A Raisin in the Sun, Macbeth) is solid as Roman ambassador Lucius and court doctor Cornelius, particularly in the grand finale; Steven Skybell (Pal Joey, A Midsummer Night’s Dream) is engaging as Pisanio, Posthumus’s loyal servant who dedicates himself to Imogen; and Furr (As You Like It, The Importance of Being Earnest) and Ming-Trent (Hands on a Hardbody, Shrek the Musical) bring a sweet nature to their portrayals of the mountain brothers as well as the play’s narrators. Yes, it’s lesser Shakespeare, and at nearly three hours it runs too long (even with the excision of the Jupiter dream sequence), but Sullivan’s fanciful production is a whole lot more fun than Cymbeline usually is. (Don’t forget that in addition to waiting on line at the Delacorte to get free tickets, you can also enter the daily virtual ticketing lottery online here.)

A CERTAIN SLANT OF LIGHT: SPENCER FINCH AT THE MORGAN

Spencer Finch installation sheds colorful new light on Morgan interior (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Morgan Library
225 Madison Ave. at 36th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through August 23, $12-$18 (free Friday nights from 7:00 to 9:00)
212-685-0008
www.themorgan.org
a certain slant of light slideshow

“There’s a certain Slant of Light, / Winter Afternoons — / That oppresses, like the Heft / Of Cathedral Tunes —,” Emily Dickinson wrote in one of her most famous poems, touching on depression, religion, and humanity’s sense of being overwhelmed by the vastness of the universe. New Haven-born, Brooklyn-based artist Spencer Finch, who uses color in his environmental, site-specific pieces, references Dickinson’s poem in “A Certain Slant of Light: Spencer Finch at the Morgan,” an intoxicating installation that breathes new life into the institution’s Gilbert Court, where visitors can take a break with some food or drink and listen to live music on Friday evenings. Inspired by the Morgan’s renowned collection of medieval, illuminated Books of Hours, Finch has placed colored gels over the windows (including in the elevator) and hung glass panes from the ceiling, which pick up and reflect sunlight to cast rainbow glows across the space. But it’s more than just beautiful reds, blues, greens, yellows, purples, etc., dangling overhead and lighting up the wood-paneled floor; it is also a calendar, like the Book of Hours, referencing the fall harvest, spring planting, religious feasts, and even Isaac Newton’s birthday. Unique use of color with a scientific/technological edge is a key part of Finch’s oeuvre; his “The River That Flows Both Ways” on the High Line consists of colored glass panes based on individual pixels from photographs he took of the Hudson River, and for the recent Creative Time “Drifting in Daylight” group show in Central Park he contributed “Sunset (Central Park),” a truck that served ice cream whose color changed based on the heat of the sun. “A Certain Slant of Light” opened in June 2014, and it has been fascinating watching it morph with the turn of the seasons, but there’s nothing quite like seeing it on a bright and sunny summer day, casting its charming glow for all to see.

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.