twi-ny recommended events

4KNOTS VIDEO OF THE DAY: “JUNK ESTATE” BY SURFBORT

Who: Heaven, Heaters, Meatbodies, Happyness, Screaming Females, Mikal Cronin, Twin Peaks, Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, and Super Furry Animals
What: Fifth annual Village Voice 4Knots Music Festival
Where: Pier 84, Hudson River Park, West 44th St. at 12th Ave.
When: Saturday, July 11, general admission $25, VIP $50, 12 noon – 10:00
Why: Anarchy rules on Surfbort’s debut release, October 2014’s R.I.P. Die Old, an update of their March 2014 demo. “This album laughs in the face of the end of the world and gets emotional about the slushie streets,” the Brooklyn punks declare on their Bandcamp site, welcoming people to “dive into a silky sea of decaying dolphins filled with trash as drops of ice-cream run off the cone onto your fingers with the one and only, super teen bobbers from your 2008 wet dreams = *** SURFBORT ***” On such original songs as “Slushie,” “War,” “Suburbia,” and “Blobs” and a cover of the Trashwomen’s “Perversion,” vocalists Dani Miller and Hellena Eisenhart, guitarists Charlotte Wimberley and Matty Birdflu, and drummer Josh Wolpert let it all out with reckless abandon. When you hear Miller spit out “I don’t care about you” on “Junk Estate,” she sure sounds like she means it. Have fun Googling the name of the band, which became an Internet meme after Beyoncé sang “surfboard” that way on “Drunk in Love,” her hit duet with husband Jay-Z. Surfbort claims that R.I.P. Die Old was “recorded in an abandoned animal testing lab on an 8 track,” and we don’t doubt it.

ANDREI TARKOVSKY, SCULPTING IN TIME: SOLARIS

Reality gets twisted up in outer space in Andrei Tarkovsky’s SOLARIS

SOLARIS (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972)
Museum of Arts & Design
2 Columbus Circle at 58th St. & Eighth Ave.
Friday, July 10, $10, 7:00
Series continues Friday nights through August 28
212-299-7777
madmuseum.org

In Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris, the Russian 2001: A Space Odyssey, Natalya Bondarchuk and Donatus Banionis star as a different kind of couple caught up in something very strange that is going on in outer space, unexplainable to both the characters in the film and the people in the audience. Banionis plays Dr. Kris Kelvin, a psychologist who is sent to the Solaris space station to decide whether to put an end to the solaristics project that Burton (Vladislav Dvorzhetsky) complicated twenty years before. What he discovers is one death, two possibly insane men, and his supposedly dead wife (Bondarchuk). Ambiguity reigns supreme in this gorgeously shot (in color and black-and-white by cinematographer Vadim Yusov) and scored (by Eduard Artemyev) film that, while technically science fiction, is really about the human conscience, another gem from master Russian director Tarkovsky. See it whether or not you checked out Steven Soderbergh’s underrated remake with George Clooney and Natascha McElhone. Based on Stanislaw Lem’s novel, Solaris, which won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, kicks off the Museum of Arts & Design film series “Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time,” which runs Friday nights from July 10 through August 28 and includes all seven of Tarkovsky’s masterpieces (Solaris, Stalker, Ivan’s Childhood, Andrei Rublev, The Mirror, Nostalghia, The Sacrifice) before concluding with the behind-the-scenes documentary Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. Tarkovsky, who died in 1986 at the age of fifty-four, was a superior craftsman whose cinematic oeuvre is filled with poetry and wonder, mystery and self-examination, exploring life and death, the past, the present, and the future, incorporating mesmerizing sound and visuals in telling complex stories like one else before or since.

GOD LOVES THE FIGHTER

Old friends Stone (Abdi Waithe) and Charlie (Muhammad Muwakil) are on different paths in GOD LOVES THE FIGHTER

GOD LOVES THE FIGHTER (Damian Marcano, 2013)
Available on DVD and VOD July 7
www.godlovesthefighter.com

If you missed Damian Marcano’s gripping God Loves the Fighter when it played the Urbanworld Film Festival last September and BAMcinématek’s Caribbean Film Series in April, you can now catch this realistic, unflinching portrait of street life in the capital of Trinidad & Tobago on DVD and VOD. Following in the tradition of such classic tales as Perry Henzell’s The Harder They Come, Fernando Meirelles’s City of God, and Gavin Hood’s Tsotsi, God Loves the Fighter is set in Port of Spain, which angry narrator King Curtis (Freetown Collective’s Lou Lyons) calls “blood city” and “gun town” and where Charlie Ward (Freetown Collective’s Muhammad Muwakil) is trying to make a better life for himself despite being dealt a bad hand. Desperate for money, Charlie hooks up with childhood friend Daniel (Abdi Waithe), now known as Stone, a powerful local gangster doing the dirty work for drug-dealing pimp Putao Singh (Darren Cheewah), a vicious, heavily tattooed man who walks around in nothing but flip-flops and ridiculously tight black Jockey shorts. Charlie seeks advice from his mentor and father figure, Mr. Odrick (Albert Laveau), a wise old man who has lost four sons to the violence on the streets. Meanwhile, smart young kid Chicken (Zion Henry) represents the future of the city, but he is brutalized by his mother (Penelope Spencer), who demands that he does whatever is necessary to bring home food for her, forgoing an education and instead meeting up with the wrong people. The multiple story lines all come together when Dinah (Jamie Lee Phillips), one of Putao’s prostitutes, decides that she’s not going to let what happened to her happen to his newest recruit, the young Nina (Tyker Phillips).

Characters dream of finding a way out in GOD LOVES THE FIGHTER

God Loves the Fighter is alive with the rhythms of Port of Spain, the sounds and colors, beautifully shot and edited by Marcano, who incorporates slow motion, jump cuts, and sometimes dizzying handheld camerawork to capture the dark mood on the streets, the lack of hope that is pervasive in this society. Marcano also cowrote the screenplay with executive producer Alexa Bailey, but most of the dialogue is improvised based on the script; the subtitles don’t always match what the characters are actually saying, which is far more poetic and natural. The evocative soundtrack, which is a character unto itself, consists of music by Freetown Collective and Q Major that furthers the emotional power and overarching moods. The title of the film, which has been a hit at festivals around the world but has not had a U.S. theatrical release, comes from a quote by Muwakil: “I believe that as much as God loves the prayerful penitent so too must he love the persistent, up against all odds death coming endlessly in waves but never go under, God loves the fighter.” Those words embody the provocative spirit of Marcano’s feature debut, a compelling work about his hometown, a place that leads King Curtis to ask, “So what’s in a name when a name is worthless? I sleep on the streets, but I’m still a king.”

4KNOTS VIDEO OF THE DAY: MIKAL CRONIN LIVE ON KEXP

Who: Surfbort, Heaven, Heaters, Meatbodies, Happyness, Screaming Females, Mikal Cronin, Twin Peaks, Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, and Super Furry Animals
What: Fifth annual Village Voice 4Knots Music Festival
Where: Pier 84, Hudson River Park, West 44th St. at 12th Ave.
When: Saturday, July 11, general admission $25, VIP $50, 12 noon – 10:00
Why: Laguna Beach native Mikal Cronin has divided his third solo album, MCIII (Merge, May 2015), into one side of lush pop songs (“Turn Around,” “Made My Mind Up,” others), and a second side that tells his very personal coming-of-age story, a six-song suite of “Alone,” “Gold,” “Control,” “Ready,” “Different,” and “Circle.” “It’s about a pivotal moment in my life that changed things, just within a couple of months,” Cronin, who plays most of the instruments on the record, explains in a statement. “It was a shifting point that sent me on the path to doing what I’m doing right now.” Cronin, who has also recorded with Ty Segall, Epsilons, Charlie and the Moonhearts, Party Fowl, and Okie Dokie, will be playing the 4Knots Music Festival in Hudson River Park on July 11.

Surfbort — 12:00
Heaven — 12:40
Heaters — 1:25
Meatbodies — 2:05
Happyness — 2:45
Screaming Females — 3:45
Mikal Cronin — 4:45
Twin Peaks — 5:45
Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks — 6:45
Super Furry Animals — 8:30

JULIE TAYMOR: REMOVING THE MASK

Julie Taymor will talk masks at the Rubin with Morgan Stebbins on July 9 (photo by Brigitte Lacombe, 2010)

TALK WITH JUNGIAN ANALYST MORGAN STEBBINS
Rubin Museum of Art
150 West 17th St. at Seventh Ave.
Thursday, July 9, $30, 7:00
212-620-5000
www.rmanyc.org

The Rubin Museum exhibition “Becoming Another: The Power of Masks” is a splendid collection of religious, cultural, and theatrical faces that people throughout the centuries have worn, from Japan, India, Bhutan, Alaska, British Columbia, Russia, Nepal, and other locales. Not part of the collection are the classic Greek comedy and tragedy masks, so essential to Western drama, depicting Thalia and Melpomene, but on July 9, they will all come together for “Julie Taymor: Removing the Mask,” when award-winning theater veteran Julie Taymor sits down with Jungian Analyst and archetypal symbols specialist Morgan Stebbins for an illustrated talk. Taymor has directed many a Shakespeare adaptation for stage and screen in addition to The Lion King on Broadway and the films Frida and Across the Universe; the New York-based Stebbins has previously been at the Rubin for talks with Meredith Monk and Billy Corgan. Also in conjunction with the exhibition, the Rubin’s Cabaret Cinema series “Movie Masks” will screen such films as The Princess Bride, Phantom of the Paradise, The Face of Another, and Witness for the Prosecution on Friday nights, with an all-day art workshop and tour on July 11.

MOVIE NIGHTS IN THE ROCKAWAYS: THE IRON GIANT

Hogarth Hughes makes a big new friend in 1950s Cold War throwback THE IRON GIANT

THE IRON GIANT (Brad Bird, 1999)
O’Donohue Park
Beach 17th St. & Seagirt Blvd., Rockaway, Queens
Tuesday, July 7, free, 8:00
www.nycgovparks.org

Writer-director Brad Bird won Oscars for his animated features The Incredibles (2004) and Ratatatouille (2007), but the Simpsons veteran first made his mark with the charming 1999 sci-fi cartoon The Iron Giant. Based on the 1968 book The Iron Man by Ted Hughes, the animated film is set during the Cold War, with the general populace and the military fearful of a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union. So when rumors that a fifty-foot-tall iron giant (voiced by Vin Diesel) has fallen from the sky, the government wants to destroy it, but it is being hidden by young Hogarth Hughes (Eli Marienthal), who has saved its life. Hogarth keeps his new best friend a secret from his mother (Jennifer Aniston) and federal agent Kent Mansley (Christopher McDonald) with the help of the town beatnik, Dean McCoppin (Harry Connick Jr.), who takes a liking to Hogarth’s mom. The screenplay, written by Tim McCanlies (Secondhand Lions), plays with various genre clichés just enough to avoid being clichéd itself, instead making The Iron Giant a delightful, nearly flawless twist on the E.T. mythos, mixed in with a little Androcles & the Lion, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and even Frankenstein and King Kong. The film, which also features the voices of Cloris Leachman (Mrs. Tensedge), John Mahoney (General Rogard), and M. Emmet Walsh (Earl Stutz), is a treat for children and adults. Bird, meanwhile, has graduated to live action; his next movies were Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol, starring Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, and Simon Pegg, and Tomorrowland, with George Clooney and Hugh Laurie. The Iron Giant is screening for free on July 7 at dusk as part of the Movie Nights in the Rockaways series in O’Donohue Park, which continues August 4 with Robert Zemeckis’s Back to the Future 2. (For a day-by-day list of free summer movies throughout New York City, go here.)

4KNOTS VIDEO OF THE DAY: “HOPELESS” BY SCREAMING FEMALES

Who: Surfbort, Heaven, Heaters, Meatbodies, Happyness, Screaming Females, Mikal Cronin, Twin Peaks, Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, and Super Furry Animals
What: Fifth annual Village Voice 4Knots Music Festival
Where: Pier 84, Hudson River Park, West 44th St. at 12th Ave.
When: Saturday, July 11, general admission $25, VIP $50, 12 noon – 10:00
Why: New Brunswick’s Screaming Females, who tore it up at the 2010 Siren Festival, will be playing 4Knots on July 11, led by super-shredder Marissa Paternoster on guitar, along with bassist King Mike and drummer Jarrett Dougherty. The band is touring behind its first studio album in three years, Rose Mountain, (Don Giovanni, February 2014) which features such tracks as “Empty Head,” “Ripe,” “Burning Car,” “Triumph,” and “It’s Not Fair,” which need to be played loud.