twi-ny recommended events

THE CONTENDERS 2013: BLUE JASMINE

Jasmine (Cate Blanchett) has to start her life all over again with her sister (Sally Hawkins) in Woody Allen’s latest

BLUE JASMINE (Woody Allen, 2013)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Saturday, November 9, 7:00
Series continues through January 16
Tickets: $12, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk beginning at 9:30 am
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
www.sonyclassics.com

Woody Allen’s best film in years, Blue Jasmine is a modern-day Streetcar Named Desire filtered through the Bernie Madoff scandal. Cate Blanchett gives a marvelously nuanced and deeply textured performance as Jasmine French, an elegant socialite whose immensely wealthy husband, Hal (a wonderfully smarmy Alec Baldwin), amassed his fortune the new-fashioned way: by lying and cheating—only he was the rare financier who got caught and ended up in jail. Now broke and distraught, Jasmine moves in with her sister, Ginger (the delightful Sally Hawkins), a single mother with two kids living in a cramped apartment in San Francisco. Ginger and her ex-husband, Augie (an excellent Andrew Dice Clay), lost all their money by investing with Hal, and she is now trying to rebuild her life, working as a cashier and dating the gruff but dedicated Chili (a strong Bobby Cannavale). Not used to taking care of herself, Jasmine seems lost in a world that no longer treats her like a princess; she takes a job working for a dentist (Michael Stuhlbarg) and attends a computer class, but she is determined to regain her previous status. And that chance comes when she meets Dwight (a gentle Peter Sarsgaard), a man with grand plans who just might be the one to lead her back to the level to which she is accustomed.

Sisters Jasmine (Cate Blanchett) and Ginger (Sally Hawkins) go on an awkward double date in San Francisco

With Blue Jasmine, Allen has written his best screenplay since 1989’s Crimes and Misdemeanors, creating a complex, multilayered narrative that intelligently examines both sides of the financial crisis, as the rich Jasmine loses everything and the lower-middle-class Ginger can’t quite reach the next level. The relationship between the two sisters is bittersweet, evoking Tennessee Williams’s Blanche and Stella, with Jasmine the delusional sibling and Ginger as the much more realistic one, in this case dealing with a pair of Stanley Kowalski-type brutes. The story travels seamlessly back and forth between the past and the present, concentrating on Jasmine’s downward emotional and psychological spiral, which is supremely evident in Suzy Benzinger’s dazzling costume design and the detailed makeup, which focuses particularly on Blanchett’s stunningly emotive eyes. She physically dominates the screen like no previous Allen leading lady, with cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe (Vicky Cristina Barcelona) making sure she fills the screen again and again. It’s a sensational star turn in a film loaded with superb acting. Blue Jasmine is a joy to watch from beginning to end, a deft commentary from a master back at the very top of his game. Blue Jasmine is screening November 9 at 7:00 as part of MoMA’s annual series “The Contenders,” consisting of exemplary films they believe will stand the test of time; upcoming entries, many of which will be followed by Q&As with the filmmakers or actors, include Stephen Frears’s Philomena, Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing, Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, and Rick Rowley’s Dirty Wars.

SWANN’S WAY: A NOMADIC READING

2013: A YEAR WITH PROUST
Multiple locations
November 8-14, free (some events require advance RSVP)
www.frenchculture.org

Earlier this week, Flavorwire posted “50 Incredibly Tough Books for Extreme Readers,” which included such classic difficult favorites as Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, and Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. If you’ve never made it through even the beginning of Proust’s challenging epic, you can now have others do it for you, as the Cultural Services of the French Embassy presents a one hundredth anniversary public reading of Swann’s Way as part of its major celebration 2013: A Year with Proust. “A Nomadic Reading” kicks off November 8 at the Wythe Hotel and continues November 9 at Soho Rep., November 10 at the New York Botanical Garden, November 11 at the Oracle Club, November 12 at Simone Subal Gallery, and November 13 at Le Baron Chinatown before concluding November 14, the actual centennial of the publication of Swann’s Way, at the French Embassy. All programs are free, with some requiring advance RSVP; among the scheduled readers are Ira Glass, Deborah Treisman, Jonathan Galassi, Paul Holdengraber, Judith Thurman, and Mike Birbiglia. Here’s a little amuse-bouche to get you started, from Lydia Davis’s 2003 translation for Viking:

For a long time I used to go to bed early. Sometimes, when I had put out my candle, my eyes would close so quickly that I had not even time to say “I’m going to sleep.” And half an hour later the thought that it was time to go to sleep would awaken me; I would try to put away the book which, I imagined, was still in my hands, and to blow out the light; I had been thinking all the time, while I was asleep, of what I had just been reading, but my thoughts had run into a channel of their own, until I myself seemed actually to have become the subject of my book: a church, a quartet, the rivalry between François I and Charles V. This impression would persist for some moments after I was awake; it did not disturb my mind, but it lay like scales upon my eyes and prevented them from registering the fact that the candle was no longer burning. Then it would begin to seem unintelligible, as the thoughts of a former existence must be to a reincarnate spirit; the subject of my book would separate itself from me, leaving me free to choose whether I would form part of it or no; and at the same time my sight would return and I would be astonished to find myself in a state of darkness, pleasant and restful enough for the eyes, and even more, perhaps, for my mind, to which it appeared incomprehensible, without a cause, a matter dark indeed.

SONG OF THE DAY: “TRUE BELIEVER” BY WIDOWSPEAK

Brooklyn-based duo Widowspeak has followed up its sophomore full-length, the doomsday-inspired Almanac — which was also influenced by the sudden departures of founding member Michael Stasiak and bassist Pamela Garabano-Coolbaugh — with the six-track EP The Swamps (Captured Tracks, October 2013). “I burned my share of sage / closed up the mouth of our cave /and tried to keep it all from you,” singer-guitarist Molly Hamilton sings on the new disc’s “Smoke and Mirrors,” but she and guitarist Robert Earl Thomas have emerged relatively unscathed from their end-of-the-world worries. The EP serves as a bridge between their second and third albums, one that they firmly set in the southeastern swamps of America. As with Almanac, the EP creates an immersive, cinematic atmosphere, transporting the listener to the swamps on such songs as “Calico” and “True Believer.” As she sings in the exquisite title track, “And in the swamps I’d rest / I’d think about it less / or maybe I’d let it sink in / I want to tell the truth again.” The EP cover is also an important part of the whole, a photograph taken by Hamilton on the night of the Supermoon this past June of a swamp diorama she built. Thomas, who hails from Chicago, and Tacoma native Hamilton will be at Bowery Ballroom on November 8 with Pure Bathing Culture and Spires.

MARIA HASSABI: PREMIERE

Choreographer Maria Hassabi is joined by four other dancers as they redefine the relationship between audience and performer in PREMIERE (photo © Paula Court)

The Kitchen
512 West 19th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
November 6-9, $12-$15, 8:00
Performa 13 continues through November 24
212-255-5793
www.thekitchen.org
www.13.performa-arts.org

In the November 2011 premiere of Maria Hassabi’s Show at the Kitchen, the audience stood or sat on the black floor as the Cyprus-born, New York–based choreographer and regular cohort Hristoula Harakas weaved ever so slowly through the crowd to a soundtrack that incorporated the audience’s preshow chatter. Hassabi has redefined the relationship between performer and audience once again in Premiere, which premiered at the Kitchen on November 6 and continues through Saturday. When the doors open, Hassabi, Harakas, Robert Steijn, Biba Bell, and Andros Zins-Browne are already carefully positioned on the floor, three sitting, two standing, facing the empty seats as ticket holders enter and walk around them to sit down. Blazing lights on either side illuminate the stock-still performers, who are soon bracketed by semicircles of fresh shoe prints. Once everyone is seated, the doors are closed, and for the next eighty minutes, the five performers, wearing different-colored denim pants, tucked-in button-down shirts with minute but strange extra details, and black shoes or boots, eventually begin moving nearly imperceptibly, slow enough to make Butoh look like the Indy 500. The only sounds are the squeaks made by hands and feet pressing against the floor, except for occasional electronic noise coming out of the speakers (as well as every stomach grumble, cough, and shift from the audience). Never making contact with one another, Hassabi, Harakas, Steijn, Bell, and Zins-Browne perform deeply pensive and carefully choreographed simultaneous solos, fiercely focused, never smiling or breaking concentration, creating a nervous energy between audience and dancer, filled with both trepidation and anticipation. Once you figure out how the performance will end, sheer elation takes over. And then, indeed, it comes to a close, and the audience exits much as it entered. A copresentation of Performa 13, Premiere is another fabulously creative, involving, and challenging piece by Hassabi in her continuing exploration of movement, expectation, personal connection, the nature of performance itself, and the endless intricacies of the human mind and body.

NEXT WAVE DANCE: AND THEN, ONE THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE

BAM hosts the New York premiere of Ballet Preljocaj’s apocalyptic “And then, one thousand years of peace” this week (photo © JC Carbonne)

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
November 7-9, $20-$55, 7:30
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.preljocaj.org

Ten years ago, Ballet Preljocaj performed Near Life Experience, an exploration of the body’s endless sensations. Now French choreographer Angelin Preljocaj brings his 2010 creation, And then, one thousand years of peace, to BAM, an evening-length journey into life and death courtesy of the apocalypse. “A fertile source of interpretation, the very word Apocalypse (from the Greek apo: ‘to lift’ and calypsis: veil’) evokes the idea of revealing, unveiling, or highlighting elements that could be present in our world but are hidden from our eyes. It should thus evoke what is nestled in the innermost recesses of our existence, rather than prophesizing about compulsive waves of catastrophe, irreparable destruction, or the imminent end of the world,” Preljocaj explains. “When dance, the art of the indescribable par excellence, assumes the role of the developer (in the photographic sense), is it not most able to realize this delicate function of exposing our fears, anxieties, and hopes? Dance relentlessly highlights the entropy of molecules programmed in the memory of our flesh that heralds the Apocalypse of bodies. It stigmatises our rituals and reveals the incongruity of our positions, be they of a social, religious or pagan nature.” The piece features twenty-one dancers moving in costumes by Igor Chapurin to music by DJ Laurent Garnier, along with Scan X mixes incorporating Benjamin Rippert and Beethoven. The set design, which includes inventive architectural elements, is by Subodh Gupta, with lighting by Cécile Giovansili-Vissière. Last month, the New York City Ballet presented the world premiere of Preljocaj’s Spectral Evidence, a dazzling work about the Salem Witch Trials, leaving fans hungry for more. And then, one thousand years of peace, a collaboration with the Bolshoi, should provide a visual and aural feast. Performances take place at BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House November 7-9 at 7:30; in addition, company member Julien Thibault will teach a special class for experienced and professional dancers on November 8 at 12 noon ($25) at the Mark Morris Dance Center.

BIRTH OF THE LIVING DEAD

George Romero has a ball discussing NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD in new documentary about the making of his masterpiece (courtesy of Predestinate Productions)

BIRTH OF THE LIVING DEAD (Rob Kuhns, 2013)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Wednesday, November 6
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.firstrunfeatures.com

“It was this tiny little movie in Pittsburgh that seemed to have no chance and it changed the world,” says Jason Zinoman at the beginning of Rob Kuhns’s extremely entertaining new documentary, Birth of the Living Dead. Zinoman, author of Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror, is one of several experts discussing the making, influence, and legacy of college dropout George A. Romero’s 1968 classic frightfest, Night of the Living Dead, which essentially invented the flesh-eating zombie. Throughout the documentary, the Bronx-born Romero, looking somewhat like a wide-eyed, white-haired Martin Scorsese, shares fascinating behind-the-scenes details about the creation of his masterpiece, describing how he raised what little funds he could, how most of the nonprofessional actors were members of the local community (steel workers, cops, meatpackers, ad executives, television hosts, etc.) who not only played ad-libbing humans or zombies but also supplied props, did the makeup, and donated equipment, and how no one really thought they’d ever actually finish and distribute the film, having previously specialized primarily in beer commercials and such authorized shorts as Mister Rogers Gets a Tonsillectomy — which Romero still considers his scariest work to date. Fans of Night of the Living Dead will glory in learning more about Harry and Helen Cooper (business partners Karl Hindman and Marilyn Eastman), newscaster Charles Craig, cemetery zombie Bill Hinzman, Sheriff McClelland (George Kosana), and others. While Romero says that the casting of Duane Jones as Ben was not based on race — and that not a word of the script was changed because Jones was black — a group of talking heads relates how it was a genius move not to make specific mention of race in the film, which was completed just before the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Gary Pullin illustrates George Romero editing his masterpiece (courtesy of Predestinate Productions)

Gary Pullin illustrates George Romero editing NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (courtesy of Predestinate Productions)

Among those excitedly placing NOTLD firmly in film history and sociopolitical context, explaining how it was a counterculture touchstone that symbolized the unrest in late 1960s America brought about by the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War, are critic, curator, and radio host Elvis Mitchell (The Black List, The Treatment), indie filmmaker and Birth executive producer Larry Fessenden (The Last Winter, Habit), Hollywood producer Gale Anne Hurd (Aliens, The Walking Dead), film journalist Mark Harris (Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood), documentarian and NYU professor Sam Pollard, producer Chiz Schultz (who tells an amazing story about Harry Belafonte and Petula Clark), and the aforementioned Zinoman. It’s absolutely gripping when Ben’s slap of Barbara (Judith O’Dea) is compared to scenes from In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. The Brooklyn-based Kuhns, who wrote, produced, directed, and edited the film, includes archival news footage that he was able to access through his role as editor of the Bill Moyers television program Moyers & Company; meets with Bronx elementary school teacher Christopher Cruz, who is questionably showing fifth- and sixth-grade students NOTLD as part of his film class; and adds ghoulish graphic-novel-style animation by Gary Pullin. However, he curiously never touches on anything Romero did post-NOTLD, a career that has boasted another five Dead movies so far. But he has done a great service for the nonpareil standard-bearer, offering a thrilling examination of the little horror movie that could. Stick around for a post-credits tribute to Hinzman, who passed away last year at the age of seventy-five. Birth of the Living Dead opens November 6 at the IFC Center, with Kuhns on hand for the 8:35 screenings on Wednesday and Thursday, which will be followed by free 10:15 showings of the original Night of the Living Dead.

BETRAYAL

Robert (Daniel Craig) and wife Emma (Craig’s real-life wife, Rachel Weisz) don’t spend a lot of time together in bed in BETRAYAL (photo by Brigitte Lancombe)

Ethel Barrymore Theatre
243 West 47th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Through January 5, $67 – $185
www.betrayalbroadway.com

Harold Pinter’s Betrayal has always been a star-driven vehicle. The reverse-chronology tale of marital infidelity opened on Broadway in 1980 with Raul Julia, Blythe Danner, and Roy Scheider and was revived in 2000 with Liev Schreiber, Juliette Binoche, and John Slattery; the 1983 film featured Jeremy Irons, Patricia Hodge, and Ben Kingsley. In its current incarnation on Broadway, directed by Mike Nichols, the husband-and-wife team of Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz might be driving ticket sales through the roof, but it’s Rafe Spall who ends up stealing the show. Spall plays Jerry, an impulsive arts agent who has had a long affair with gallery owner Emma (Weisz), who is married to one of his closest friends, refined publisher Robert (Craig, who resembles Kirk Douglas here); Jerry was even best man at their wedding. The play begins in 1977, as Jerry, who is married to the never-seen Judith, and Emma meet in a bar so Emma can tell him that she had no choice but to finally confess their affair to Robert the previous night. But as Jerry finds out when he sees Robert later that day, Robert has actually known about their lengthy indiscretion for several years, which infuriates Jerry. The story continues in backward order, going from Jerry and Emma’s breakup in 1975 to the night he professes his love for her at a party in 1968. (However, multiple scenes within the same year move forward.)

Jerry (Rafe Spall) and Robert (Daniel Craig) reminisce over better times in second Broadway revival of Harold Pinter play (photo by Brigitte Lacombe)

Nichols, who helmed a marvelous revival of Death of a Salesman last year with Philip Seymour Hoffman, keeps things relatively simple in this even-keeled, somewhat subdued production. In his Broadway debut, Spall (Life of Pi, Prometheus) injects fiery life into the wildly unpredictable Jerry, while Craig (A Steady Rain, Bond, James Bond) and Weisz (The Constant Gardener, 2010 Olivier Award for A Streetcar Named Desire), in her Broadway debut as well, give their characters a dispassionate coldness that wavers a little too much in intensity, occasionally playing it too matter-of-factly. The staging matches the emotional temperature: As scenes fade out, somber piano music by former LCD Soundsystem head James Murphy tinkles over the loudspeaker, the actors glide offstage on Ian MacNeil’s rotating sets, and backdrops float in and out from above. Of course, Jerry is the meatier role; Emma and Robert’s marriage is cold and dispassionate from the start of the play, but Weisz’s and Craig’s performances still can feel a bit distant at critical moments. Based on his own affair with Joan Bakewell, Pinter’s thirty-five-year-old Olivier Award–winning drama retains a timeless quality, as Nichols focuses on the hearts and minds involved in a classic love triangle, avoiding the impulse to ground the play in any specific era by steering clear of overt references to the sociopolitical climate or even the clothing of the day. It might not be as stirring as it could have been, but this Betrayal offers an honest, penetrating examination of complex adult relationships.