Coming to the free 4Knots Music Festival at the South Street Seaport from Queens, just across the waters of the East River, is Juan Wauters. Fresh from his role as leader of the Beets, a wild and delightful guitar-pop band, singer-songwriter Wauters released his debut solo album, N.A.P. North American Poetry (Captured Tracks), this past February. He may have sold out the vinyl 7″ of his charming, upbeat pop single “Sanity or Not,” but you can still check out if he’s sane or not here. Meanwhile, his above multilingual performance of the quiet, modest trilogy of “Nena,” “Water,” and “Ay Ay Ay” should give a taste of what to expect from Wauters, who’s been compared to Daniel Johnston for his weird and wonderful lyrics and guitar work. Wauters’s recent appearances have been marked by a more personal note, and his always engaging presence should lend a quirky edge to the 4Knots lineup, which includes Radkey, Dead Stars, Mac DeMarco, Speedy Ortiz, Those Darlins, Viet Cong, Crazy Pills, Nude Beach, and, most massively, Dinosaur Jr. (You can hear a sampler of songs by all the groups here. Please note that Re-TROS has canceled their scheduled appearance.)
twi-ny recommended events
MOVIE MEDICINE — A FILM SERIES ABOUT THE HEALING FACTOR IN CINEMA: NIGHT NURSE
Joan Blondell and Barbara Stanwyck play daring nurses in William A. Wellman’s pre-code doozy
CABARET CINEMA: NIGHT NURSE (William A. Wellman, 1931)
Rubin Museum of Art
150 West 17th St. at Seventh Ave.
Friday, July 11, free with $10 K2 minimum, 9:30
212-620-5000
www.rubinmuseum.org/cabaretcinema
It’s hard to believe that the Hays Code, a set of standards initiated by two religious figures and named after chief censor Will H. Hays, was enacted and enforced, to varying degrees, in Hollywood from 1934 all the way up to 1968. One of the best examples of the racier pre-code films is William A. Wellman’s rarely screened 1931 doozy, Night Nurse. The first of five collaborations between Wellman and Barbara Stanwyck, Night Nurse, based on Dora Macy’s 1930 novel, stars Stanwyck as Lora Hart, a young woman determined to become a nurse. She gets a probationary job at a city hospital, where she is taken under the wing of Maloney (Joan Blondell), who likes to break the rules and torture the head nurse, the stodgy Miss Dillon (Vera Lewis). Shortly after treating a bootlegger (Ben Lyon) for a gunshot wound and agreeing not to report it to the police, Lora starts working for a shady doctor (Ralf Harolde) taking care of two sick children (Marcia Mae Jones and Betty Jane Graham) whose proudly dipsomaniac mother (Charlotte Merriam) is being manipulated by her suspicious chauffeur (Clark Gable). Wellman pulls out all the stops, hinting at or simply depicting murder, child endangerment, rape, alcoholism, lesbianism, physical brutality, and Blondell and Stanwyck regularly frolicking around in their undergarments. It’s as if Wellman is thumbing his nose directly at the upcoming Hays Code in scene after scene. Although far from his best film — Wellman directed such classics as Wings (1927), The Public Enemy (1931), A Star Is Born (1937), Nothing Sacred (1937), Beau Geste (1939), and The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) — Night Nurse is an overly melodramatic, dated, but entertaining little tale with quite a surprise ending. Night Nurse is screening July 11 as part of the Rubin Museum’s Cabaret Cinema series “Movie Medicine: A Film Series about the Healing Factor in Cinema,” being held in conjunction with the “Bodies in Balance: The Art of Tibetan Medicine” exhibition, and will be introduced by Edna Igoe of the New York Professional Nurses Union. The series continues July 18 with Woody Allen’s Sleeper, introduced by psychotherapist Maggie Robbins, July 25 with Arthur Hiller’s The Hospital, introduced by Dr. Kenneth Perrine, and August 1 with Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s Black Narcissus, introduced by award-winning editor Thelma Schoonmaker.
JAPAN CUTS: WHY DON’T YOU PLAY IN HELL?
Sexy Michiko (Fumi Nikaido) shows her dangerous side in Sion Sono’s outrageously fun WHY DON’T YOU PLAY IN HELL?
WHY DON’T YOU PLAY IN HELL? (JIGOKU DE NAZE WARUI) (Sion Sono, 2013)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Thursday, July 10, 8:30
Festival runs July 10-20
212-715-1258
www.subwaycinema.com
www.japansociety.org
It might take a while for the two seemingly disparate narratives to come together in Sion Sono’s totally awesome Why Don’t You Play in Hell?, but when they do, watch out, because it all leads to one gloriously insane finale. As teenagers, the nerdy Fuck Bombers — director Hirata (Hiroki Hasegawa), camera operators Miki (Yuki Ishii) and Tanigawa (Haruki Mika), and future action star and Bruce Lee wannabe Sasaki (Tak Sakaguchi) — are determined to make a movie. Ten years later, they are still waiting to make their masterpiece. Meanwhile, Shizue (Tomochika), the wife of yakuza boss Taizo Muto (Jun Kunimura) and ambitious stage mother of toothpaste-commercial darling Michiko (Nanoka Hara), has been in prison for ten years for brutally killing three men while defending her home against an assassination attempt by the Ikegami yakuza clan, which only Ikegami (Shinichi Tsutsumi) himself survived. Ten years later, Shizue is scheduled to get out of prison in ten days, and Muto is scrambling to keep his promise to his wife that Michiko (now played by Fumi Nikaido) would be the star of a movie by the time Shizue was released. However, Michiko, who has become a bitter, dangerous young woman, is on the run, taking with her geeky innocent bystander Koji (Gen Hoshino) as her inept pretend boyfriend. When the plot lines intersect, the fun really begins, with blood and body parts battling it out for the biggest laughs.
Why Don’t You Play in Hell? is a riotous send-up of yakuza crime thrillers and a loving and downright silly homage to DIY filmmaking. Digging back into his past to adapt a screenplay he wrote back in the 1990s, Sono (Love Exposure, Cold Fish) lets it all fly, holding nothing back in this sweetly violent, reality-bending, severely twisted romantic comedy that actually has quite a big heart. And at the center of it all is Nikaido (Sono’s Himizu), splendidly portraying a sexy, black-clad ingénue/femme fatale who is capable of just about anything. Winner of the Toronto International Film Festival’s People’s Choice Midnight Madness Award, Why Don’t You Play in Hell? is screening July 10 at Japan Society’s Japan Cuts: The New York Festival of Contemporary Japanese Cinema, in conjunction with the fourteenth annual New York Asian Film Festival. Nikaido, who is receiving the NYAFF’s Screen International Rising Star Award, will be on hand to introduce the film and participate in a Q&A; the screening will be followed by the “Let’s Play in Hell” opening-night party with live music by New York-based Japanese punk band Gelatine.
4KNOTS VIDEO OF THE DAY: RADKEY
Fans of Missouri teen trio Radkey might “Start Freaking Out,” as their high-energy single recommends, when the SXSW sensation hits the stage at the free 4Knots Music Festival at the South Street Seaport on July 12. The three young Radkey brothers, lactose intolerant guitarist and vocalist Dee, video-gaming bassist Isaiah, and beef-jerky-loving drummer Solomon, deliver a solid dose of classic punk rhythm and speedy guitars; they’re just kicking off a tour with popular punk stalwarts Rise Against and L.A. five-piece Touché Amoré through the fall, including a stop at the Best Buy Theater on September 26. They haven’t finished their first album yet — their four-track EP, Devil Fruit, was released last October — but the 4Knots show offers an early chance to see them “melting faces” with such songs as “Little Man,” “Overwhelmed,” and “Red Letter” as well as new tunes they’re recording with Arctic Monkeys producer Ross Orton for their debut album. (You can hear “Feed My Brain” here.) 4Knots also features Mac DeMarco, Those Darlins, Speedy Ortiz, Viet Cong, Nude Beach, Crazy Pills, Juan Wauters, Dead Stars, and headliners Dinosaur Jr.
JAPAN CUTS — THE MOLE SONG: UNDERCOVER AGENT REIJI
Reiji Kikukawa (Toma Ikuta) goes undercover in Takashi Miike’s way-over-the-top yakuza flick THE MOLE SONG
THE MOLE SONG: UNDERCOVER AGENT REIJI (MOGURA NO UTA SENNYU SOUSAKAN REIJI) (Takashi Miike, 2013)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Thursday, July 10, 6:00
Festival runs July 10-20
212-715-1258
www.subwaycinema.com
www.japansociety.org
Multigenre master and cult legend Takashi Miike kicks off the annual Japan Cuts: The New York Festival of Contemporary Japanese Cinema with the U.S. premiere of his wild and wacky yakuza comedy-thriller, The Mole Song: Undercover Agent Reiji. Adapted from Noboru Takahashi’s popular manga series Mogura no Uta, the film stars Toma Ikuta (Hanazakari no Kimitachi e) as Reiji Kikukawa, a goofy but dedicated virgin cop (think a Japanese Dudley Do-Right) who is fired by Chief Sakami (Mitsuru Fukikoshi) so he can go undercover with the dangerous Sukiya-kai gang and ultimately capture its leader, Shuho Todoroki (Koichi Iwaki). Dressed in flashy clothes and sporting a ridiculous cockatoo-like mop of red hair, Reiji is soon taken under the wing of drug-hating made man and butterfly enthusiast Masaya Hiura (Shinichi Tsutsumi), aka “Crazy Papillon”; doing fierce battle with the short, bald, diamond-toothed, cat-loving Itsei Nekozawa (Takashi Okamura) from the rival Hachinosu-kai clan; cozying up to blonde MDMA dealer Shun Tsukihara (Takayuki Yamada); and being hunted down by tattoo-covered motorcycle-riding assassin Kenta Kurokawa (Yusuke Kamiji). All the while, Reiji keeps bumping into fellow cop and potential love interest Junna Wakagi (Riisa Naka), usually at the most inopportune of moments.
Written by Kankuro Kudo — who wrote Miike’s Zebraman films and wrote and directed another Japan Cuts selection, Maruyama, the Middle Schooler — The Mole Song has fun going way over the top, from Yuji Hayashida’s splendid production design to Nobuyasu Kita’s stellar cinematography to the actors themselves, who must have had quite a hard time trying to keep a straight face so much of the time. Miike, who references such previous cult classics of his as Ichi the Killer and Audition, does veer off course as he tries to figure out how to end the film, as the laughs start coming fewer and farther between, and the relationship between Reiji and Junna turns into more of an afterthought, but The Mole Song is still a blast, filled with zany surprises and unpredictable plot twists. A copresentation with the fourteenth annual New York Asian Film Festival, The Mole is screening July 10 at 6:00 at Japan Society.
CONTEMPORARY POETRY TOO
Andrew Edlin Gallery
134 Tenth Avenue between 18th & 19th Sts.
Thursday, July 10, free, 6:00
212-206-9723
www.edlingallery.com
On May 10, Sam Gordon curated a marathon poetry reading as part of the NADA New York art fair, presented with BOMB magazine. Gordon, NADA, and BOMB have joined forces again with the follow-up, “Contemporary Poetry Too,” taking place July 10 at Andrew Edlin Gallery in Chelsea. Held in conjunction with the group exhibition “Purple States,” which explores the differences between insiders and outsiders and the merging of blue and red states, and “Café Dancer Pop-Up,” in which Jessie Gold and Elizabeth Hart have turned Edlin’s reception area into a “Gone Fishin’” party space, “Contemporary Poetry Too” will feature approximately eighteen poets reading their works in combination with performance and video art; the participants include Alina Gregorian, Angelo Nikolopoulos, Bianca Stone, Emily Skillings, Jameson Fitzpatrick, Juliana Huxtable, not_I (Ana Boziĉević & Sophia Le Fraga), and Sampson Starkweather. DJs S&M (Shannon Michael Cane and Matt Conners) will provide the music.
4KNOTS MUSIC FESTIVAL VIDEO OF THE DAY: “MY DYING ATMOSPHERE” BY Re-TROS
It’s year four for the Village Voice’s 4Knots Music Festival at the South Street Seaport, a more-than-worthy successor to the old Siren Festival, which was held on two stages in Coney Island. 4Knots at the seaport is one of the most enjoyable free festivals of the summer: It’s easy to get to, relatively painless to navigate between stages, and packed with intriguing new and emerging talent, along with an old favorite or two. The festival, taking place from 1:00 to 8:00 on Saturday, July 12, is anchored this year by the venerable Dinosaur Jr.; one of the more exciting, lesser-known bands worth catching is Re-TROS, hailing from Beijing, China. The young band’s long name is Rebuilding the Rights of Statues, or Chong Su Diao Xiang De Quan Li (重塑雕像的权利 in Chinese). Citing such postpunk influences as Bauhaus, the Birthday Party, and Joy Division, Re-TROS have released such music as the sweet, blippy electronic single “My Dying Atmosphere” in addition to the Brian Eno–produced 2005 EP Cut Off!, which was recorded in New York and includes such tracks as “A Death-Bed Song,” “If the Monkey Becomes (to Be) the King,” and “Laugh from the Time.” Guitarist and vocalist Dong Hua, bassist and vocalist Min Liu, and drummer Hui Ma have played regularly to large, enthusiastic crowds at festivals in China, but they are not as well known as they deserve here. 4Knots is likely to change that, as they share a bill with such other performers as Mac DeMarco, Those Darlins, Speedy Ortiz, Crazy Pills, Radkey, Viet Cong, Nude Beach, Juan Wauters, and Dead Stars. (Please note that Re-TROS has since canceled their scheduled appearance at 4Knots because of passport issues and will be back in New York City in the fall.)