Lafayette’s newly re-created “L’Hermione” will travel up the East Coast and lead the Parade of Ships on July 4
Pier 16, South Street Seaport
July 1-4, free (public tours available July 2-3, parade July 4)
www.southstreetseaport.com
hermione2015.com
The annual Parade of Tall Ships held in New York Harbor in conjunction with the July 4 festivities will have a special guest this year, as more than one hundred seaworthy vessels will be joined by an exact replica of L’Hermione, the eighteenth-century ship, commanded by Louis-René de Latouche, that brought Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roche Gilbert du Motier, better known as Marquis de Lafayette, the “Boy General,” to America in 1780 to help fight in the Revolutionary War. The blue, black, and gold ship is 117 feet tall and 210 feet long and features 3 masts, 19 sails, and 34 cannons. It’s re-creating its famous journey, making its way across the Atlantic and then north from Yorktown, Mount Vernon, Annapolis, and Philadelphia to Manhattan, Newport, Boston, and Nova Scotia. It will be on view at the South Street Seaport July 1-4, hosted by the South Street Seaport Museum, and will be celebrated with a Lower Manhattan Historical Society foot parade and flag raising on July 3, going from the Seaport to Bowling Green, followed on July 4 by the People’s Parade of Ships, sailing from the Verrazano Bridge to the Statue of Liberty and the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum before berthing at Governors Island and then continuing back to the Seaport. L’Hermione has been painstakingly reconstructed over twenty years by the Friends of the Hermione-Lafayette in America, which boasts honorary chairman Henry Kissinger and whose mission statement is “to evoke the spirit of ‘why not?’ and demonstrate that given determination, anything is achievable. Through this, to create a lasting educational legacy which will be accessible to generations of young Americans to come. To symbolize and rekindle through the Hermione the intimate ties between France and the United States, and the spirit of liberty that sustains them. . . . To bring to life the memory of Marquis de Lafayette, who embodied this spirit.”
Nobuhiro Yamashita (Linda Linda Linda, Tamako in Moratorium) returns to the New York Asian Film Festival with La La La at Rock Bottom, a charmingly goofy story about a low-level amnesiac gangster (Kanjani Eight superstar Subaru Shibutani) who only comes alive when he is behind a microphone, singing. Shortly after getting out of prison, the unidentified man is severely beaten and loses his memory. Wandering through the streets, he hears live music, pushes aside the lead singer, takes the mic, and starts singing until he collapses. He is taken in by the group’s manager, Kasumi (Fumi Nikaidô), who names him “Pooch” after her recently deceased beloved dog. Pooch is like a lost puppy himself, with music the only thing that soothes this savage beast. But as he slowly begins remembering things from his past, he has to decide whether he will make things right or continue to run from his responsibilities. Shibutani gives a low-key performance as Pooch, a quiet man who is almost zombielike in his approach to life, an excellent complement for fashion model and actress Nikaidô’s (
In 1950, Edmond O’Brien starred as auditor Frank Bigelow in Rudolph Maté’s classic noir D.O.A., a story told in flashback as Bigelow tries to figure out why someone has poisoned him. Four years earlier, O’Brien dealt with another kind of fatalism in Robert Siodmak’s The Killers, playing insurance agent Jim Reardon, who is investigating why a gas station attendant was brutally gunned down in his bed in suburban Brentwood, New Jersey. The film opens with cold-hearted contract killers Al (Charles McGraw) and Max (William Conrad) arriving in town, looking for the Swede (Burt Lancaster), aka Pete Lund and Ole Andreson. They waltz into Henry’s Diner, giving orders and exchanging mean-spirited dialogue with no fears or worries. When Nick Adams (Phil Brown) warns the Swede that the men are coming to kill him, the former boxer knows there’s nothing he can do about it anymore; he’s tired of running, and he’s ready to meet his end. It’s a shocking way to begin a movie; up to that point, it’s a faithful version of Ernest Hemingway’s short story, but the rest is the splendid invention of writers Richard Brooks, Anthony Veiller, and John Huston and producer Mark Hellinger. Reardon soon finds himself meeting with a series of gangsters as they relate, through flashbacks, a plot to rob a payroll, perpetrated by a motley crew that includes “Dum Dum” Clarke (Jack Lambert), “Blinky” Franklin (Jeff Corey), the Swede, and mastermind Big Jim Colfax (Albert Dekker), along with Big Jim’s gun moll, femme fatale extraordinaire Kitty Collins (Ava Gardner). Reardon’s boss (Donald MacBride) wants him to forget about it, since it’s essentially about a meager $2,500 insurance claim, but Reardon is determined to find out what happened to a quarter million in cash, with the help of the Swede’s childhood friend, Lt. Sam Lubinsky (Sam Levene).
The fourteenth annual New York Asian Film Festival is saluting legendary Hong Kong director Ringo Lam, presenting him with the Lifetime Achievement Award. Lam, who turns sixty this year, will be at Lincoln Center for screenings of two of his works, City on Fire on June 27 and Full Alert on June 28. In the latter, Lam’s follow-up to his disappointing Hollywood debut, the Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle Maximum Risk, Lau Ching-wan stars as Officer Pao, a member of Hong Kong’s Special Crime Bureau who becomes involved in a case that turns deeply personal. After arresting explosives expert Mak Kwan (Francis Ng) for the brutal murder of an architect, Pao is determined to find the rest of Mak’s Taiwanese crew, which is led by mainland boss Jie (Jack Gao), and prevent the robbery of a mysterious vault. Pao and his team track Mak’s girlfriend, Chung Lai Hung (Amanda Lee), who knows more than she’s letting on, while Pao and Mak become immersed in a tense, psychological game of cat and mouse, exploring what it feels like to kill someone. There are numerous incredulous plot twists and a rather lame car chase, but the guerrilla filmmaking style of Lam and cinematographer Ardy Lam, ranging through the streets of a Hong Kong about to be handed over from the British to the Chinese, is supremely effective, as are the lead performances by Lau and Ng, evoking the relationships portrayed earlier by Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in Michael Mann’s Heat and later by Andy Lau and Tony Leung in Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s Infernal Affairs. The use of mobile phones and surveillance technology feels much older than 1997, displaying how far we have come so fast. Lam saves the heavy violence for the spectacular finale, letting the emotions build before exploding. Nominated for five Hong Kong Film Awards, including Best Film, Best Director, and Best Actor (Lau), Full Alert is screening at the Walter Reade Theater on June 28 at 2:00, with Lam on hand to introduce it. The New York Asian Film Festival continues at Lincoln Center through July 6 with more than three dozen new and old films from China, Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Cambodia, and other Southeast Asian countries, including Sabu’s Chasuke’s Journey, Kinji Fukasuku’s Battles without Honor and Humanity, Im Sang-soo’s The President’s Last Bang, Wang Xiaoshuai’s Red Amnesia, Im Kwon-taek’s Revivre, and Sion Sono’s Tokyo Tribe.