twi-ny recommended events

THE LOVING STORY: A VALENTINE’S DAY SPECIAL

The illegal interracial marriage of Mildred and Richard Jeter and their fight for justice is at center of powerful documentary

THE LOVING STORY (Nancy Buirski, 2011)
Maysles Cinema
343 Malcolm X Blvd. between 127th & 128th Sts.
Friday, February 14, $10 suggested donation, 7:30
212-582-6050
www.mayslesinstitute.org
www.lovingfilm.com

On June 2, 1958, Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter got married in Washington, DC. Shortly after returning to their Virginia home, Loving, a white man, and Jeter, a black and Native American woman, were arrested and imprisoned by the local sheriff, facing prison sentences because interracial marriage was illegal in their home state. Banished from Virginia, they spent nine years fighting in the courts, and their remarkable tale is now being told in the 2012 Oscar shortlisted documentary The Loving Story. First-time director Nancy Buirski, who founded the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, and editor Elisabeth Haviland James weave together never-before-seen archival footage shot by photojournalist Grey Villet, old news reports and interviews, and family home movies with new interviews with the Loving children and lawyers Bernard S. Cohen and Philip J. Hirschkop, who were ready to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary. One of the many fascinating aspects of the film is that Richard and Mildred had no desire to be trailblazers fighting miscegenation laws; they were just a man and a woman who had fallen in love at first sight and wanted to live happily ever after, in a community that fully accepted their situation. They of course have the perfect last name, because The Loving Story is a story of love and romance as much as it is about an outdated legal system, bigotry, and white supremacy. And it is more relevant than ever, with the issue of same-sex marriage dividing much of the nation. Told in a procedural, chronological format, The Loving Story is also absolutely infuriating, since this all happened not very long ago at all, with many of the protagonists and antagonists still alive — and race still being such a central issue in America. An HBO production, The Loving Story is having a special Valentine’s Day screening at the Maysles Cinema. (Buirski’s second film, Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq, is playing at Lincoln Center through February 13.)

WINTER RESTAURANT WEEK 2014

It’s so cold these days that not even the potential of a hot meal in a hot restaurant can get many New Yorkers to go out for lunch or dinner, but things will hopefully be somewhat warmer, and the streets much easier to traverse, by the time 2014 Winter Restaurant Week kicks into full gear. Reservation lines are now open for three-course prix-fixe $25 lunches and $38 dinners at some three hundred eateries around the city, available Monday through Friday from February 17 to March 7. Most of the restaurants have posted their special menus online; here are only some of the delights to look forward to: tuna tartare, cornmeal-crusted crab cake, Faroe Island salmon, prime beef short rib, and chocolate ganache cake at ‘21’; house-made country pâté, sautéed skate wing, chestnut gnocchi, and passion fruit Pavlova at Artisanal; soupe de choux fleur, saucisse, gnocchi de carottes, and buerre noisette et ananas coupe at Bar Boulud; garganelli in a tomato and basil sauce, roast chicken in a pomegranate sauce and pomegranate kernels with gratineed mashed potatoes, and mousse of orange bittersweet chocolate at Barbetta; New England seafood chowder, blackened mahi mahi sandwich, and Meyer lemon cake with citrus marmalade and blood orange sherbet at Blue Fin; fegatini di pollo, pane tostato, and pancetta, merluzzo in padella con caponata e finocchi, and crostata di mele, merengue, and vanilla gelato at Circo; Long Island duck ragu, eighteen-hour boneless short rib, and chocolate mousse cake at Delmonico’s; grilled baby octopus, marble potatoes, pickled yellow beans, and black olives, pan-roasted Chatham cod with tomatoes, onions, black olives, and capers, and torta di cioccolato at I Trulli; lahsooni gobi, murglababdar, and rice pudding at Junoon; and smoked barley and mushroom soup, pastrami sandwich and fries, and sour cream cheesecake at Kutsher’s. Among the other dining establishments serving up winter delicacies are B. Smith’s, City Hall, Craftbar, Dos Caminos, Gotham Bar, Les Halles, Mercer Kitchen, Nice Matin, Nobu New York, Pampano, the Red Cat, the Russian Tea Room, Shun Lee Palace, Tribeca Grill, Zengo, and many, many more, but you better book fast. As a bonus, if you register your American Express card, you will receive $5 back each time you charge at least $25 at a participating restaurant.

THE CREATIVE COLLABORATION OF MARTIN SCORSESE AND LEONARDO DiCAPRIO: THE DEPARTED

Leonardo DiCaprio gets ready for battle in Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning THE DEPARTED

THE DEPARTED (Martin Scorsese, 2006)
Bow Tie Ziegfeld Theater
141 West 54th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Thursday, February 13, 3:30
Festival runs February 13-14
212-765-7600
www.bowtiecinemas.com

Based on Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s awesome Infernal Affairs (2002), Martin Scorsese’s relatively faithful remake, The Departed, moves the relentless action and intrigue from Hong Kong to the mean streets of Boston, where it is hard to tell cop from criminal. Just out of the academy, Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) rises quickly to detective in the Special Investigations Unit, but he’s actually in cahoots with master crime lord Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson). Meanwhile, Billy Costigan (an excellent Leonardo DiCaprio), training to become a cop, is sent deep undercover (including a prison stint) to infiltrate Costello’s gang, with only Captain Queenan (Martin Sheen) and Sergeant Dignam (a very funny and foul-mouthed Mark Wahlberg) aware of the secret mission. Sullivan and Costigan are like opposite sides of the same persona; in between them stands Costello — and Madolyn (Vera Farmiga), a psychiatrist who is in a relationship with one and is doctor to the other. As both the cops and the criminals search desperately for their respective rats, no one can trust each other, leading to lots of blood and a spectacular finale. Nicholson has a field day as the aging gangster, chewing up mounds of scenery in his first film with Scorsese, who returned to peak form with his best work since 1990’s Goodfellas. The film was nominated for five Oscars, winning four, for Best Director, Best Film Editing (Thelma Schoonmaker), Best Adapted Screenplay (William Monahan), and Best Picture, while Wahlberg was nominated for Best Supporting Actor.

Collaboration between Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio is celebrated in two-day festival at the Ziegfeld

Collaboration between Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio is celebrated with two-day festival at the Ziegfeld

The Departed is being shown on February 13 at 3:30 as part of a two-day salute at the Ziegfeld to the long-running partnership between DiCaprio and Scorsese, including screenings of all five of their collaborations: The Aviator, Scorsese’s examination of Howard Hughes’s (DiCaprio) high-flying and controversial airplane career; Gangs of New York, which pits Amsterdam Vallon (DiCaprio) against Bill “the Butcher” Cutting (Daniel Day-Lewis) in the city’s immigrant-heavy Five Corners; Shutter Island, an adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s novel with DiCaprio as a U.S. marshal; and their latest, the multi-Oscar-nominated The Wolf of Wall Street, in which DiCaprio plays real-life stockbroker Jordan Belfort. DiCaprio, Schoonmaker, and screenwriter Terence Winter will take part in a Q&A with Kent Jones prior to the 7:00 screening of Wolf on February 13.

VENGEANCE IS HERS: THE MATCH FACTORY GIRL

Aki Kaurismäki concludes the Proletariat Trilogy with THE MATCH FACTORY GIRL

THE MATCH FACTORY GIRL (TULITIKKUTEHTAAN TYTTÖ) (Aki Kaurismäki, 1990)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Thursday, February 13, 5:00 & 9:30
Series runs through February 18
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki completes his conceptual Proletariat Trilogy with the bleakest, most deadpan of the three examinations of working-class life with the wickedly funny, blacker-than-black comedy The Match Factory Girl. The follow-up to 1986’s Shadows in Paradise and 1988’s Ariel, the finale tells the sad story of a poor young woman who just can’t seem to catch a break. Kaurismäki regular Kati Outinen stars as Iris, an assembly-line drone who makes way too much out of a rare one-night stand with the devastatingly disinterested Aarne (Vesa Vierikko), leading to all kinds of problems for her, both professionally and personally. Continuing the subtly dramatic color scheme of the previous two films, cinematographer Timo Salminen, set designer Risto Karhula, and Kaurismäki add sly bursts of blue and orange as things keep getting worse and worse for Iris, who, despite her name, doesn’t really see the world for what it is, instead living in a bizarre kind of fantasy until she decides to do something about it. The Match Factory Girl cemented Kaurismäki’s reputation as one of the most fascinating young international filmmakers, which he’s lived up to with such later favorites as Juha, Cannes Grand Prix winner The Man Without a Past, and Le Havre. The Match Factory Girl is screening on February 13 as part of the BAMcinématek series “Vengeance Is Hers,” twelve days of films featuring fabulous woman protagonists and antagonists, including Sissy Spacek in Carrie, Sandrine Bonnaire in Secret Defense, Olivia de Havilland in The Heiress, Lily Ho and Betty Pei Ti Ting in Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan, and Pam Grier in Coffy.

RIVER OF FUNDAMENT

Matthew Barney’s five-and-a-half-hour epic debuts at BAM this week (photo by Hugo Glendinning)

Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St. between Ashland & Rockwell Pl.
February 12-16, $25-$50
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

“Crude thoughts and fierce forces are my state. I do not know who I am. Nor what I was. I cannot hear a sound. Pain is near that will be like no pain felt before,” Norman Mailer writes at the beginning of his 1983 novel, Ancient Evenings. “Is this the fear that holds the universe? Is pain the fundament? All the rivers veins of pain? The oceans my mind awash? I have a thirst like the heat of earth on fire. Mountains writhe. I see waves of flame. Washes, flashes, flashes, waves of flame.” New York-based visual artist Matthew Barney and Berlin-based composer and musician Jonathan Bepler have transformed Mailer’s seven-hundred-page epic about death and rebirth in Egypt into the five-and-a-half-hour cinematic spectacle River of Fundament, which is making its debut February 12-16 at the BAM Harvey. In his five-part, seven-hour Cremaster Cycle, Barney explored the ascension and descension of the cremaster muscle, which determines sexual differentiation, with a cast that included Mailer as Harry Houdini and Barney as Gary Gilmore in a section inspired by Mailer’s book The Executioner’s Song while focusing on cars and petroleum jelly in others.

RIVER OF FUNDAMENT is built around episodes in Los Angeles, Brooklyn, and Detroit (photo by Ivano Grasso)

River of Fundament begins with Mailer’s wake at an intricate reconstruction of his Brooklyn Heights home, with Mailer’s son John Buffalo Mailer playing his father’s spirit. The second act follows the reincarnation of Mailer (Milford Graves) as he is born in the River of Feces and meets medium Hathfertiti (Maggie Gyllenhaal). The third act returns to Brooklyn, with Mailer’s next reincarnation played by a 2001 Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor and Ellen Burstyn taking over as Hathfertiti. The primary cast also features Paul Giamatti, Cremaster star Aimee Mullins, Elaine Stritch, Lila Downs, Chief Dave Beautiful Bald Eagle, Joan La Barbara, and Madyn G. Coakley, with a multitude of cameos by Dick Cavett, Luc Sante, Larry Holmes, Salman Rushdie, Lawrence Weiner, Fran Lebowitz, Marti Domination, James Toback, David Amram, and dozens of others.

Cars once again are featured prominently in epic new Matthew Barney film (photo by Ivano Grasso)

The action, much of which consists of filmed performance art presentations that were held in public spaces, moves from New York City to Los Angeles to Detroit as Egyptian mythology and ritual play out in unusual ways. Barney, whose multidisciplinary Cremaster exhibition at the Guggenheim in 2002-3 was one of the best of the decade, has given New Yorkers a sneak peek at the making of River of Fundament via the ”DJED” show at the Gladstone Gallery in the fall of 2011 and the wide ranging ”Subliming Vessel” at the Morgan Library last summer. Not that they gave any real indication of what to expect, because with Barney, the only thing to expect is the unexpected. And even then, don’t expect to understand what is unfurling before you.

REMASTERED AND RESTORED — TREASURES OF FRENCH CINEMA: UNE CHAMBRE EN VILLE

Edith (Dominique Sanda) and François (Richard Berry) find each other in Jacques Demy’s dark but colorful French musical

CINÉSALON: UNE CHAMBRE EN VILLE (A ROOM IN TOWN) (Jacques Demy, 1982)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, February 11, $13, 4:00 & 7:30
212-355-6100
www.fiaf.org

From the very opening of Une Chambre en Ville (A Room in Town), French New Wave director Jacques Demy announces that the 1982 musical melodrama is going to be something a little different. As a rising sun changes color over a construction site across the Loire River, what appear to be closing credits run up the screen, set to Michel Colombier’s romantic score, as if the film is ending. But Demy and cinematographer Jean Penzer are only getting started, shifting from black-and-white to color to black-and-white again as they cut to the hard streets of 1955 Nantes, where a shipyard strike is under way. Riot police are in a stand-off with hundreds of male and female strikers, characters on both sides singing instead of talking and shouting — in a scene that eerily evokes Tom Hooper’s Les Misérables, which came thirty years later. Soon the intricate plot unfolds, as the striking, and broke, François Guilbaud (Richard Berry), who is renting a room from former baroness Margot Langlois (Danielle Darrieux) and dating doe-eyed Violette Pelletier (Fabienne Guyon), instantly falls for femme fatale Edith Leroyer (Dominique Sanda), Mme. Langlois’s recently married daughter, who is already fed up with her impotent cheapskate of a husband, television salesman Edmond Leroyer (Michel Piccoli). The over-the-top drama plays out in wonderfully garish rooms of deep, intoxicating colors, which are echoed by Rosalie Varda’s (daughter of Demy and Agnès Varda) costumes, which even go so far as to have Violette wearing violet and Edith going bare beneath her luxurious fur coat, with no one changing clothes over the course of the two days in which the story takes place. As the strike continues, the main characters connect with one another in good and bad ways, especially when straight razors and guns are involved.

Striking workers are ready to fight the power in Jacques Demys UNE CHAMBRE EN VILLE

Striking workers are ready to fight for their rights in Jacques Demy’s UNE CHAMBRE EN VILLE

Writer-director Demy, who transformed the movie musical in the 1960s with The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Young Girls of Rochefort (the latter also featuring Darrieux), includes no Hollywood-like set pieces in Une Chambre en Ville, no dancing, no choruses — essentially, no real songs at all. Instead, all of the dialogue is sung by the actors (or dubbed in by someone else) as if in regular conversation. Inspired by a real shipyard strike in his hometown of Nantes in 1955, Demy takes on such concepts as wealth, class, authority, home, family, and, most of all, love — both real and imagined, unrequited and lustful — in the vastly underrated film, which is quite entertaining and very funny despite its dark themes. And be on the lookout for more echoes of Les Misérables throughout. A new digital restoration of Une Chambre en Ville is screening February 11 at 4:00 & 7:30 as part of the FIAF CinéSalon series “Remastered & Restored: Treasures of French Cinema”; the later screening will be presented by New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik, and both shows will be followed by a wine reception. The three-month festival continues with such other recently restored French classics as Max Ophüls’s Lola Montès (introduced by Lola Montes Schnabel), Claude Chabrol’s The Color of Lies (costar Jacques Gamblin will no longer introduce the film), and Jean-Pierre Melville’s Two Men in Manhattan.

TICKET ALERT: CHOICE EATS 2014

THE VILLAGE VOICE CHOICE EATS SEVENTH ANNUAL TASTING EVENT
Basketball City at Pier 36
299 South St. at Montgomery St.
Tuesday, March 25, $60 general admission, 7:00 – 10:00
21 and over only
www.villagevoice.com/choiceeats

There’s still time to get tickets to the seventh annual Village Voice Choice Eats festival, but you’ll need to move fast to score access to tastings from more than sixty New York City eateries, plus complimentary drinks, backgrounded by DJ DIIV and boasting a special Choice Sweets section upstairs. (Hint: Do not miss the Butter & Scotch table.) Dine and dash from line to line, meeting the chefs, but with access to so many vendors, Choice Eats can feel overwhelming. Make a plan: There are techniques for approaching this near-surfeit of goodness: Do a Manhattan vs. Brooklyn “lobster-off,” testing the rolls of East Seventh St.’s Luke’s Lobster vs. Van Brunt St.’s Red Hook Lobster Pound, or try to stay genre specific, pitting the meats of Mable’s Smokehouse in Brooklyn against Long Island City’s John Brown or Fletcher’s Brooklyn Barbecue. Or take an Asian tour from Larb Ubol’s Isan Thai to the Kati Roll Company to Tabata Noodle. You can also strategically make a trip across four boroughs by adding Staten Island’s Indian Clove to your culinary journey, but, alas, there are no eateries hailing from the Bronx. Every establishment has been featured on the pages of the Voice; among the other participating restaurants are Devi, Fonda, Max, Pete Zaaz, Sheep Station, the Pines, Bear, and Egg. Buy now; all the VIP tickets are already gone, and general admission will also sell out well in advance of the twenty-one-and-over-only March 25 event at Basketball City.