twi-ny recommended events

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.

OF GOOD STOCK

Jennifer Mudge, Heather Lind, and Alicia Silverstone star as three sisters reconnecting at their family home on Cape Cod in OF GOOD STOCK (photo by Joan Marcus)

Manhattan Theatre Club
New York City Center Stage 1
Tuesday – Sunday through July 26, $90
212-581-1212
ofgoodstockplay.com
www.nycitycenter.org

Having spent some time the past several summers in a house on Cape Cod rented by my in-laws, I was looking forward to Melissa Ross’s new play, Of Good Stock, which takes place on the popular peninsula. Entering the theater at City Center, I could practically smell the fresh saltwater air as soon as I saw Santo Loquasto’s open stage of beach grass and dune. And once the play started and the revolving set rotated to that all-too-familiar, overly comfy style of Cape Cod house, and then two of the characters went out to pick up something from Marion’s Pie Shop in Chatham, well, it was like I’d been transported to Massachusetts, where I will not be going this summer. Fortunately, however — or, perhaps, unfortunately — I had little cathartic identification with the fictional Stockton clan, a dysfunctional family of three sisters and their significant others, that who did not remind me of any real people I know but instead felt like escapees from worlds created by Wendy Wasserstein (The Sisters Rosensweig), Tracy Letts (August: Osage County), Beth Henley (Crimes of the Heart), and, of course, Anton Chekhov (Three Sisters), among others. Oldest sister Jess (Jennifer Mudge), middle sister Amy (Alicia Silverstone), and youngest sister Celia (Heather Lind) arrive at the Cape Cod house where they spent their childhood summers, seeking to take stock of their lives. The daughters of the late famous writer and master philanderer Micah Stockton, they each have relationship and daddy issues. Jess, the stalwart leader of the group who is battling cancer, married the much older, very dependable Fred (Kelly AuCoin), who used to work for Micah. Amy, a flighty drama queen given to histrionics and whining, is engaged to the already henpecked Josh (Greg Keller) and is obsessed with planning their destination wedding in Tahiti. And neurotic free spirit Celia has brought a new beau, Hunter (Nate Miller), a hirsute thirtysomething hipster from Montana who has still not finished college. While the men basically sit back and watch, the three women rehash old stories, purposefully push one another’s buttons, and argue over just about everything. But their problems are nothing to the easygoing, up-front Hunter, who says, “I’ve got twelve siblings. No offense to you guys but y’all are amateurs.”

A rare moment of laughter is shared in new play about family dysfunction (photo by Joan Marcus)

Mudge (Into the Woods, Reckless) and AuCoin (The Wayside Motor Inn, House of Cards) are an excellent team as Jess and Fred, the heart and soul of the play, keeping it from teetering over the edge, bringing empathy and depth to every situation. AuCoin is particularly effective in a terrific scene with Keller (Wit, The Who and the What) as Fred and Josh discuss “manly men things.” Lind (Turn: Washington’s Spies, The Merchant of Venice) and Miller (Love and Information, Peter and the Starcatcher) are fun to watch, she a whirling dervish of energy, he an easygoing, content dude who prefers the truth to secrets. Silverstone (Clueless, The Graduate) isn’t given a whole lot to do with Amy except annoy, complain, and rush off in tears, which grows tiresome rather quickly. Directed by Lynne Meadow, Of Good Stock can get a bit too manic depressive, and its characters and plot twists offer little new on family dysfunction. Ross, whose Nice Girl was recently warmly received at LCT3, favors overlapping dialogue that sometimes gets confusing, and the narrative too often heads toward sitcom territory. The play, which premiered earlier this year in a different production at South Coast Repertory in California, was a late substitute after Manhattan Theater Club announced that Richard Greenberg’s previously scheduled The Swing of the Sea was being postponed “in order to give these artists more time to work on the production of the play.” Of Good Stock could probably have benefited from more tweaking as well. But it’s still a nice place to visit, even if you wouldn’t want to live there.

MATTHEW BARNEY: THE CREMASTER CYCLE

Marti Domination squeezes into a tight space in CREMASTER 1

THE CREMASTER CYCLE (Matthew Barney, 1994-2002)
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.
Saturday, July 11, August 8, and September 5, free with museum admission, 10:30 am – 7:40 pm
212-423-3587
www.guggenheim.org
www.cremaster.net

Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle is so much more than five essentially incomprehensible films totaling nearly seven hours made over the course of eight years out of chronological order; it’s a state of mind, a whole other level of consciousness. The complete series, which is shown at art houses and museums and will never, according to Barney, be available on DVD or any other salable personal format, has only been shown in its entirety in New York City twice this century, in October 2003, when it screened at Anthology Film Archives shortly after the exciting Matthew Barney survey held at the Guggenheim earlier that year, then at the IFC Center in the spring of 2010, in three programs of either one or two films. But now you can experience it all in one marathon sitting on July 11, August 8, and September 5 at the Guggenheim, where one of the films was made. (The full cycle was also shown there on June 6.) Ostensibly following the ascension and descension of the cremaster muscle, which raises and lowers the testicles as sexual differentiation takes place inside the human body, the films feature strange characters in odd metaphorical situations that are rarely immediately apparent; you may want to continually refer to Cremaster Fanatic, which offers excellent meta-descriptions of each work, breaking down each bizarre symbol. But that doesn’t mean the narrative is impossible to follow or overly convoluted; instead, part of the fun is trying to figure out just what the heck is going on.

Artist Richard Serra plays the Architect in CREMASTER 3

In Cremaster 1 (1995), the Goodyear blimp hovers over a stadium where the young Barney, a former quarterback, played football. Bright colors dominate as four flight attendants peer out the window, unaware that beneath a table topped with a Vaseline centerpiece a platinum blonde (Marti Domination) is stealing grapes. A beautifully choreographed Busby Berkeley–like dance ensues. In Cremaster 2 (1999), Barney plays Gary Gilmore, re-creating the murder of Mormon gas station employee Max Jensen. There’s also a séance led by Baby Fay La Foe, graphic sex, a queen bee and her drones, the Bonneville Salt Flats, the Mormon Tabernacle, and Norman Mailer, who wrote The Executioner’s Song about Gilmore, as Harry Houdini at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. At three hours, Cremaster 3 (2002) is the longest and easiest to follow of the series. It details the heated 1929 fight between the Chrysler Building and the Bank of Manhattan (40 Wall St.) to be the tallest structure in New York, framed by the Irish legend of Fionn and Fingal and the Giant’s Causeway. The cast features Barney as the Entered Apprentice climbing up the Guggenheim’s spiral walls, conceptual artist Richard Serra as the Architect (Hiram Abiff) and himself (melting Vaseline that drips down the length of the museum), amputee Aimee Mullins as the Entered Novitiate, singer Paul Brady as the Cloud Club maitre d’ serving a small group of gangster-like Masons, Terry Gillespie as a bartender with a bit of a Guinness problem (in the series’ funniest scene), and punk bands Agnostic Front and Murphy’s Law engaged in a musical battle. In Cremaster 4 (1994), the Ascending and Descending motorcycle sidecar teams race for the Tourist Trophy on the Isle of Man while the Loughton Candidate (Barney) carefully combs his hair (he has four potential horns on his head) and tap-dances as a trio of faeries bandy about. And in Cremaster 5 (1997), the Queen of Chain (Ursula Andress) belts out a Hungarian opera above the Gellert Baths, where Fudor Sprites swim and Jacobin pigeons are prepared for a special purpose, with Barney (Drawing Restraint, River of Fundament) appearing as the Queen’s Diva, the Queen’s Magician, and the Queen’s Giant.

Matthew Barney plays multiple roles in his experimental epic THE CREMASTER CYCLE

Watching the Cremaster Cycle is an unforgettable experience, a thrilling foray into experimental film at its finest. It’s both mind-blowing and infuriatingly confusing, stunningly gorgeous and utterly ridiculous. Everything in it is laden with meaning, though you’ll be hard-pressed to know what much of it is about. And there are more references to male genitalia than in any teen sex comedy ever made. The Guggenheim will be showing the films in the order in which they were made, so audiences can follow Barney’s creative process, beginning at 10:30 in the morning with Cremaster 4 and continuing with Cremaster 1 at 11:15, Cremaster 5 at 12:15, Cremaster 2 at 2:45, and, for the big finale, Cremaster 3 at 4:30. The screenings are free with museum admission, and you can come and go as you please as long as there are available seats. But you might as well settle in for the whole thing. The Cremaster Cycle is more than just a cinematic art project; it’s an event that has to be seen to be believed.

STRAY DOG

Ron “Stray Dog” Hall takes his wife, and viewers, on a marvelous ride into the heart of America in Debra Granik’s charming documentary

STRAY DOG (Debra Granik, 2014)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
144 West 65th St. between Amsterdam & Columbus Aves.
Opens Friday, July 3
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.com
www.straydogthemovie.com

Shortly after meeting Ron “Stray Dog” Hall at the Biker Church in Branson, Missouri, writer-director Debra Granik (Down to the Bone) cast the Vietnam vet as Thump Milton in her second feature, the Oscar-nominated Winter’s Bone. Upon learning more about him, she soon decided that he would be a great subject for a documentary, so she took to the road, following him across the country in the engaging and revealing Stray Dog. Nearly always dressed in black, including his treasured leather jacket covered in medals and patches — when he puts it in a suitcase for a trip, it’s a ritual like he’s folding the American flag — Hall is a wonderfully grizzled old man with a fluffy white beard. At home, he is learning Spanish online so he can communicate better with his new wife, Alicia, a Mexican immigrant, and her two sons (who still live across the border). He visits with his teenage granddaughter, who is making some questionable decisions about her future. In Missouri, he owns and operates the At Ease RV Park, where he gives breaks to fellow vets who can’t always afford to pay the rent. And when he goes on the road, participating in the Run for the Wall, joining up with thousands of other bikers heading for the annual service at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, he stops along the way at other ceremonies honoring soldiers who have gone missing, are POWs, or were killed in action in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other wars.

Hall is a gregarious, gentle man who people instantly flock to and gather around — a scene in which two of his cats sit on each of his knees is absolutely heartwarming — but he is also haunted by some of the things he did in Vietnam, suffering from nightmares that sometimes have him screaming out loud while sleeping in bed. And he wears one of his mottoes right on his arm: “Never Forgive Never Forget.” At one point he sits comfortably on a couch and says, “Just kind of being free, don’t hurt nobody, do what you want to do — a nice thing, ain’t it? You know, I’d rather live as a free man for a year than a slave for twenty.” Granik simply follows Hall as he experiences life with his surprisingly refreshing point of view; no one ever turns to the camera to make any confessions, and no talking heads are brought on board to evaluate what we’re seeing. Granik just lets this beautiful piece of Americana unfold at its own pace while also touching on such hot-button topics as immigration reform, gun control, the economic crisis, and PTSD, making no judgments as we follow the captivating exploits of a man who is part Buddha, part Santa, and all patriot. Stray Dog returns to Lincoln Center, where it was shown at the 2014 New York Film Festival, for a theatrical run beginning July 3 at the Francesca Beale Theater, with Granik participating in Q&As following the 6:45 screening on Friday and the 4:30 show on Sunday.