Who: David Broza and friends
What: Nineteenth annual Not Exactly Christmas Eve Concert
Where: 92nd St. Y, Kaufmann Concert Hall, 1395 Lexington Ave. at 92nd St., 212-415-5500
When: Wednesday, December 24, $59-$92, 7:30
Why: Israeli superstar troubadour David Broza performs on Christmas Eve in New York City with guitarists Julio Fernandez and Yonatan Levi, saxophonist Jay Beckenstein, bassist Uri Kleinman, and drummers Yoni Halevi and Yuval Lion in support of his latest album, East Jerusalem / West Jerusalem (S-Curve, January 14, 2014) and the forthcoming documentary about the making of the record
twi-ny recommended events
LET THERE BE LIGHT — THE FILMS OF JOHN HUSTON: BEAT THE DEVIL
Humphrey Bogart and Jennifer Jones star as would-be married lovers in film noir parody
BEAT THE DEVIL (John Huston, 1953)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Saturday, December 20, 4:00, Thursday, December 25, 10:15, and Friday, December 26, 4:45
Festival runs December 19 – January 11
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.com
Oscar-winning director John Huston pokes fun at some of his previous films in the sly, dry crime noir parody Beat the Devil. Written by Huston and Truman Capote, who furiously typed out pages every day on set, the 1953 black-and-white film teams Huston with Humphrey Bogart for the sixth and final time, following such successes as The Maltese Falcon, Key Largo, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and The African Queen, elements from all of which can be found in this jumbled tale of a gang of crooked men looking to score big in the uranium mines of Kenya. Bogart stars as Billy Dannreuther, a cool customer married to Italian firebomb Maria (Gina Lollobrigida). They are stranded in an Italian port town while waiting for a ship to take them and his associates — Peterson (Robert Morley), O’Hara (Peter Lorre), Ravello (Marco Tulli), and Major Jack Ross (Ivor Barnard) — across the Mediterranean to Africa. Also along for the ride is the prim and proper Harry Chelm (Edward Underdown) and his hotsy-totsy wife, Gwendolen (Jennifer Jones), who quickly falls for the smooth, confident Billy. Throw in a murder, a drunk captain (Saro Urzi), and some neat twists and turns and you have yourself an amusing little exercise, even if it does have its share of plot holes, story jumps, and inconsistencies.
Robert Morley and Humphrey Bogart get down to business in BEAT THE DEVIL
Morley (subbing for the late Sydney Greenstreet), Lorre, and Tulli are like the Three Stooges of film noir, while Bogart riffs on himself as a leading man and Jones has a ball chewing the scenery as a blonde beauty. It’s a confusing film, randomly mixing humor with pathos, but even if it’s the least successful of the Huston-Bogart canon, it’s still more than just an interesting trifle. Beat the Devil is screening December 20, 25, and 26 as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center series Let There Be Light: The Films of John Huston, which runs December 19 to January 11 and consists of forty films directed by the master, from The Maltese Falcon and The Night of the Iguana to Key Largo and Moby Dick, from Prizzi’s Honor and Sinful Davey to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and The List of Adrian Messenger, in addition to a handful of other works he either appeared in (Tentacles!) or that demonstrate his lasting influence (There Will Be Blood.)
THE GAITS: A HIGH LINE SOUNDWALK
Free smartphone app turns High Line walk into audio adventure
Who: Composers Laine Fefferman, Jascha Narveson, and N. Cameron Britt and software developer Daniel Iglesia
What: Make Music Winter festival
Where: The High Line, Gansevoort & Washington Sts. to West 30th St.
When: Sunday, December 21, free, 5:00 – 6:30 pm
Why: Free downloadable app turns walk along the High Line into an unusual soundscape; portable speakers encouraged (first one hundred participants can borrow a wearable speaker for free); among the other free Make Music Winter events on December 21 are Tom Peyton’s “Bell by Bell,” the Nick Horner Family’s “Flat Foot Flatbush,” J. C. King’s “Kalimbascope,” Hiroya Miura’s “Lightmotif,” Malcolm J. Merriweather’s “Pilgrimage,” James Holt’s “Prelude,” Daniel Goode’s “Soho Gamelan Walk,” and Nissim Schaul’s “Wheels”
VIDEO OF THE DAY: “BROKEN CAR” BY MATISYAHU
Who: Matisyahu
What: 2014 Festival of Light concert with Judith Hill
Where: Best Buy Theater, 1515 Broadway, 212-930-1940
When: Saturday, December 20, $29.50 – $35, 8:00
Why: Matisyahu plays annual Hanukkah show in New York City in support of his latest album, Akeda (Elm City, June 2014), which includes such tracks as “Reservoir,” “Watch the Walls Melt Down,” “Ayeka (Teach Me to Love),” and “Vow of Silence (Shalom)”
VIDEO OF THE DAY: CHOPPING MALL AT NITEHAWK CINEMA
Who: Kelli Maroney (Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Night of the Comet), Tony O’Dell (Head of the Class), Russell Todd (Another World), Barbara Crampton (Re-Animator, Castle Freak), and Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov (Eating Raoul, Rock ‘n’ Roll High School) in cult classic
What: Chopping Mall (Jim Wynorski, 1986)
Where: Nitehawk Cinema, 136 Metropolitan Ave. between Berry St. & Wythe Ave., 718-384-3980
When: Friday, December 19, and Saturday, December 20, $11, 12:15 am
Why: Nitehawk Cinema’s December Midnite: Xmas Chopping series concludes with a premonition of the future that became Black Friday
SEE IT BIG! ANIMATION: CORALINE IN 3-D
Coraline finds a doorway to another dimension in film adapted from popular children’s book
CORALINE (Henry Selick, 2009)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Saturday, December 20, free with museum admission, 1:00
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us
www.coraline.com
Coraline Jones (voiced by Dakota Fanning) is an adventurous eleven-year-old in search of some fun and excitement in her new creaky home in Oregon. She finds just what she thinks she was looking for when a rodent introduces her to a hidden passageway that leads to an alternate universe, where replicas of her parents (Teri Hatcher and John Hodgman) are more interested in her and give her whatever she wants. However, this button-eyed Other Mother and Other Father have other plans for her and her real family as well. Written and directed by Henry Selick, Coraline lacks the frantic, nonstop energy of his breakthrough film, Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, but it is still a fun, creepy trip down the Narnia-esque rabbit hole. Combining his trademark stop-motion animation (James and the Giant Peach) with breathtaking stereoscopic 3-D that adds remarkable depth to the images, Selick does a marvelous job bringing to life the popular children’s novel by Newbery Medal-winning author Neil Gaiman (Sandman), who wrote the book for his young daughters. (Full disclosure: In another part of our life, we work for the company that publishes Gaiman’s children’s books, including Coraline.) The supporting cast of characters includes former music-hall divas Miss Spink and Miss Forcible (the Absolutely Fabulous British comedy team of Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French), the wise Cat (Keith David), mouse circus leader Mr. Bobinsky (Ian McShane), and local boy Wybie Lovat (Robert Bailey Jr.), who was created specifically for the movie. Be sure to stick around for one last cool 3-D effect at the end of the credits. Coraline is screening in 3-D on December 20 at 1:00 as part of the Museum of the Moving Image’s “See It Big! Animation” series, which continues through December 28 with such other recent feature-length animated flicks as Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Parronaud’s Persepolis, Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir, Brad Bird’s Ratatouille, and Satoshi Kon’s Paprika.
SEE IT BIG! ANIMATION: PERSEPOLIS
Animated PERSEPOLIS is part of free “Films on the Green” series, screening July 13 in Riverside Park
PERSEPOLIS (Marjane Satrapi & Vincent Paronnaud, 2007)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Friday, December 19, $12, 7:00
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us
www.sonypictures.com
France’s official selection for the 2007 Academy Awards, Persepolis brings to animated life Marjane Satrapi’s stunning graphic novels. Codirected by Satrapi and comic-book artist Vincent Paronnaud, Persepolis tells Satrapi’s harrowing life story as she comes of age during the Islamic Revolution in Iran in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Raised in a well-off activist family, she fights against many of the country’s crippling mores and laws, particularly those that treat women as second-class citizens, trapping them in their veils, denying them any kind of individual freedom. But the progressive Satrapi (voiced first by Gabrielle Lopes, then Chiara Mastroianni) continually gets into trouble as she speaks her mind, experiments with sex, and refuses to play by her country’s repressive rules. Satrapi and Paronnaud do an outstanding job of adapting the books’ black-and-white panels for the big screen, maintaining her unique style and emotional breadth. The first part of the film is excellent as the precocious teenager who talks to God learns about life in some very harsh ways. Unfortunately, the second half gets bogged down in Satrapi’s failures as an adult, focusing too much on her myriad personal problems and taking away the bigger picture that made the first part so entertaining as well as educational. Still, it’s a story worth telling, and well worth seeing. (Interestingly, since the film, which is in French, is subtitled in English, the audience ends up reading it similarly to the way they read the graphic novel.) The closing-night selection of the 2007 New York Film Festival, Persepolis also features the voices of Catherine Deneuve as Marjane’s mother, Danielle Darrieux as her grandmother, Simon Akbarian as her father, and François Jerosme as her radical uncle Anouche. Persepolis is screening on December 19 at 7:00 as part of the Museum of the Moving Image’s “See It Big! Animation” series, which continues through December 28 with such other recent feature-length animated flicks as Marjane Satrapi and Henry Selick’s Coraline 3-D, Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir, Brad Bird’s Ratatouille, and Satoshi Kon’s Paprika.