twi-ny recommended events

THE GENERAL

Buster Keaton rides to the rescue in classic Civil War comedy, THE GENERAL

THE GENERAL (Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman, 1926)
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Ave. at Second St.
Saturday, December 7, 5:30
212-505-5181
www.anthologyfilmarchives.org

Buster Keaton’s Civil War-set The General was a box-office failure upon its release in 1926-27, but it is now deservedly recognized as a silent-film classic. Based on William Pittenger’s memoir, The Great Locomotive Chase, the film stars Keaton as Johnnie Gray, a Georgia train man who is rejected by the Confederate army when he tries to enlist to impress his fiancée, Annabelle Lee (Marion Mack). Little does he know that he was turned away because the Confederacy believes he will be more valuable to them as a civilian engineer; meanwhile, Annabelle and her family think he’s a coward, not believing he even tried to sign up to fight in the first place. But when Union spies led by Captain Anderson (Glen Cavender) steal his beloved train, affectionately known as the General — and capture Annabelle in the process — Johnnie steams into action, doing whatever it takes to get his two loves back while also trying the save the South from a sneak attack. Directed by the Great Stone Face with regular collaborator Clyde Bruckman, The General is a thrilling ride chock-full of dangerous stunts that Keaton performed himself, often involving the moving Western & Electric Railroad train. Keaton manages to make the South sympathetic, depicting the North as evil and conniving, while avoiding any political aspects of the war. And in another sly turn, he casts his father, Joe, who appeared in more than a dozen of his films, as a Union general. The riotous romp was entered into the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry in its inaugural year, 1989, alongside such other classics as The Best Years of Our Lives, Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Dr. Strangelove, Gone with the Wind, The Grapes of Wrath, High Noon, Modern Times, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, On the Waterfront, Singin’ in the Rain, The Searchers, Sunrise, The Wizard of Oz, and others, which is high praise indeed. The General is screening on December 7 at 5:30 at Anthology Film Archives; at 3:30, Anthology will be showing four of Keaton’s shorts, One Week, Neighbors, The Scarecrow, and The Play House.

SEE IT BIG! GREAT CINEMATOGRAPHERS: MY NIGHT AT MAUD’S

Jean-Louis (Jean-Louis Trintignant) is more than a little intrigued by Maud (Françoise Fabian) in the fourth of Eric Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales

MY NIGHT AT MAUD’S (MA NUIT CHEZ MAUD) (Eric Rohmer, 1969)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Saturday, December 7, free with museum admission, 3:30
Series runs through December 29
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us

Nominated for the Palme d’Or and a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, My Night at Maud’s, Éric Rohmer’s fourth entry in his Six Moral Tales series (Claire’s Knee, Love in the Afternoon), continues the French director’s fascinating exploration of love, marriage, and tangled relationships. Three years removed from playing the romantic racecar driver Jean-Louis in Claude Lelouch’s A Man and a Woman, Jean-Louis Trintignant again stars as a man named Jean-Louis, this time a single thirty-four-year-old Michelin engineer living a relatively solitary life in the French suburb of Clermont. A devout Catholic, he is developing an obsession with a fellow churchgoer, the blonde, beautiful Françoise (Marie-Christine Barrault), about whom he knows practically nothing. After bumping into an old school friend, Vidal (Antoine Vitez), the two men delve into deep discussions of religion, Marxism, Pascal, mathematics, Jansenism, and women. Vidal then invites Jean-Louis to the home of his girlfriend, Maud (Françoise Fabian), a divorced single mother with open thoughts about sexuality, responsibility, and morality that intrigue Jean-Louis, for whom respectability and appearance are so important. The conversation turns to such topics as hypocrisy, grace, infidelity, and principles, but Maud eventually tires of such talk. “Dialectic does nothing for me,” she says shortly after explaining that she always sleeps in the nude. Later, when Jean-Louis and Maud are alone, she tells him, “You’re both a shamefaced Christian and a shamefaced Don Juan.” Soon a clearly conflicted Jean-Louis is involved in several love triangles that are far beyond his understanding, so he again seeks solace in church. My Night at Maud’s is a classic French tale, with characters spouting off philosophically while smoking cigarettes, drinking wine and other cocktails, and getting naked. Shot in black-and-white by Néstor Almendros, the film roams from midnight mass to a single woman’s bed and back to church, as Jean-Louis, played with expert concern by Trintignant, is forced to examine his own deep desires and how they relate to his spirituality. Fabian (Belle de Jour, The Letter) is outstanding as Maud, whose freedom titillates and confuses Jean-Louis. One of Rohmer’s best, most accomplished works despite its haughty intellectualism, My Night at Maud’s is screening December 7 at the Museum of the Moving Image as part of its “See It Big! Great Cinematographers” series, which continues with such films as Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s The Marriage of Maria Braun, shot by Michael Ballhaus; Joseph H. Lewis’s The Big Combo, photographed by John Alton; and Jim Jarmusch’s Down by Law, shot by Robbie Müller.

THE PHILIP K. DICK SCIENCE FICTION FILM FESTIVAL: BENEATH

A group of teenagers are going to need a much bigger boat in Larry Fessenden’s tense thriller BENEATH

BENEATH (Larry Fessenden, 2013)
IndieScreen
289 Kent Ave. at South Second St.
Friday, December 6, 9:30
Festival runs December 6-8 (three-day pass $56)
347-227-8030
www.thephilipkdickfilmfestival.com
www.beneaththewater.com

Jaws and Friday the 13th meet Lifeboat and Lord of the Flies in indie filmmaker Larry Fessenden’s latest thriller, Beneath. Made for Syfy’s Chiller TV channel, Beneath is the first feature film Fessenden (The Last Winter, Habit, Wendigo) has directed but did not write; the occasional actor and musician also served as producer and editor, while the script is by Tony Daniel and Brian D. Smith. The story takes place on a Connecticut lake, where a group of teenagers have gone to celebrate high school graduation. Sexy blonde Kitty (Bonnie Dennison), athletic meathead brothers Matt (Chris Conroy) and Simon (Jonny Orsini), camera-obsessed nerd Zeke (Griffin Newman), demure brunette Deb (MacKenzie Rosman), and pouty townie Johnny (Daniel Zovatto) head out on a rowboat to cross the Black Lake, but they soon learn that they’re going to need a much bigger boat, as there’s something lurking in the water that prefers not to be disturbed. As the teens battle the evil, giant piranha/monkfish, deep, dark secrets float to the surface, leading the kids to fight amongst themselves as much as their mechanical tormentor. Fessenden clearly has fun playing with genre clichés, although there are still plenty of moments in which viewers will find themselves yelling at the screen because of stupid decisions or gigantic plot holes, but he does a good job given his restrictions — because this is essentially a basic-cable movie, there is no cursing or nudity, and the tense action has to have carefully timed pauses built in to allow for eventual commercials. Still, Beneath is an involving, claustrophobic tale in which the characters’ true individual natures emerge as their fear of death grows. To find out more about the history of the lake, a prequel comic book is available, written by Daniel and Smith and illustrated by Brahm Revel. Beneath is being shown December 6 at 9:30 at IndieScreen in Williamsburg as part of the second annual Philip K. Dick Science Fiction Film Festival, three days of shorts and features directly or indirectly inspired by the author of such seminal sci-fi works as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, A Scanner Darkly, Ubik, The Man in the High Castle, and VALIS; among the films based on his writings are Blade Runner, Minority Report, Total Recall, Screamers, Paycheck, and The Adjustment Bureau. The festival runs December 6-8 and also includes such shorts as Nicholas Zafonte’s The First Day, Don Schechter’s Ascendants, Shahab Zargari’s The Crystal Crypt, Efren Ramirez’s Territorial, Suite Zao Wang’s Honeymoon, and Michel Goosens’s Exit and such features as Adam Ciancio’s Vessel, Éric Falardeau’s Thanatomorphose, and Daniel Abella’s The Final Equation..

SOUND: THE ENCOUNTER, NEW MUSIC FROM IRAN AND SYRIA

Naghib Shanbehzadeh, Basel Rajoub, and Saeid Shanbehzadeh will team up with Kenan Adnawi for “Sound: The Encounter” at Asia Society

NEW SOUNDS FROM IRAN
Asia Society, Lila Acheson Wallace Auditorium
725 Park Ave. at 70th St.
Saturday, December 7, $30, 8:00 (free preshow lecture at 7:00)
212-288-6400
www.asiasociety.org

Asia Society will conclude its New Sounds from Iran series on December 7 at 8:00 with “Sound: The Encounter, New Music from Iran and Syria.” Held in conjunction with the Aga Khan Music Initiative and the exhibition “Iran Modern,” which comprises more than one hundred works from twenty-six artists dating from the three decades prior to the 1979 revolution, “Sound” features new compositions and arrangements from Iranian musician and dancer Saied Shanbezadeh (on ney-ban, neyjoti, boogh horns, and voice) and Syrian performer Basel Rajoub (on sax and duclar), joined by Saied’s son Naghib on tombak/zarb and darbuka and Kenan Adnawi on oud. Part of Asia Society’s continuing Creative Voices of Muslim Asia program, the evening will be preceded by a free lecture by Dartmouth music professor Theodore Levin at 7:00.

COUNTRY BRUNCHIN’: McCABE & MRS. MILLER

Warren Beatty and Julie Christie heat up the screen in Robert Altman classic

Warren Beatty and Julie Christie heat up the screen in classic Robert Altman anti-Western

NITEHAWK BRUNCH SCREENINGS: McCABE & MRS. MILLER (Robert Altman, 1971)
Nitehawk Cinema
136 Metropolitan Ave. between Berry St. & Wythe Ave.
Saturday, December 7, and Sunday, December 8, $16, 11:30 am
718-384-3980
www.nitehawkcinema.com

Robert Altman’s self-described “anti-Western” starts off gently enough, as John McCabe (Warren Beatty) rides slowly into a dark, dank northwestern town in 1902, Leonard Cohen’s “The Stranger Song” playing over the opening credits. But Altman (M*A*S*H, Nashville) is merely setting the stage for what is to come, the electric combination of Julie Christie and Beatty as two businesspeople building a new town in the Old West. Beatty plays gentleman gambler John McCabe, who is soon joined by madam Constance Miller (Christie) in running the local brothel, and pretty much the town itself, which catches the eye of a mining company that decides it wants in on the action, something McCabe and Mrs. Miller are not about to let happen, at least not without one helluva fight. Filmed mostly in sequential order, McCabe & Mrs. Miller unfolds like an epic poem, thanks to Altman and cowriter Brian McKay’s imaginative and unpredictable script, based on Edmund Naughton’s 1959 novel, McCabe, and Vilmos Zsigmond’s gorgeous cinematography. The film is visually spectacular, as Altman cuts from the dreamlike red velvet interiors of Mrs. Miller’s brothel to the expansive land outside, bathed in the beautiful yet ominous falling snow. The Oscar-nominated Christie and Beatty do the love-hate thing to perfection, something they would duplicate in 1975 when they teamed up in Hal Ashby’s Shampoo and again in 1978 in Beatty’s Heaven Can Wait. A clear influence on such Clint Eastwood gems as High Plains Drifter and Pale Rider, McCabe & Mrs. Miller is a marvelous picture that ranks right up there with the best Westerns — “anti-“ or otherwise — ever made. The stellar cast also includes Rene Auberjonois, Michael Murphy, Bert Remsen, Shelley Duvall, Keith Carradine, William Devane, and John Schuck, with Cohen contributing several more songs to the soundtrack. And the ending — well, it’s one of cinema’s most unforgettable finales. McCabe & Mrs. Miller is screening December 7 & 8 at 11:30 am as part of Nitehawk Cinema’s “Country Brunchin’” series and will be preceded by a live performance by Brooklyn’s own Birdhive Boys Bluegrass Band.

THE 33rd ANNUAL JOHN LENNON TRIBUTE

Symphony Space, Peter Jay Sharp Theatre
2537 Broadway at 95th St.
Friday, December 6, $65-$105, 8:00
212-864-5400
www.symphonyspace.org
www.lennontribute.org

Every year since 1981, a group of musicians has gotten together to pay tribute to John Lennon, who was shot and killed by Mark David Chapman in front of the Dakota on December 8, 1980. A proponent of peace and love in his life and career, Lennon was only forty years old at the time of his death and had just released his first album in five years, Double Fantasy, with his wife, Yoko Ono. On Friday, December 6, the thirty-third annual John Lennon tribute will be held at Symphony Space, featuring performances by Steve Earle, Raul Malo, Joan Osborne, Teddy Thompson, Dana Fuchs, Bettye LaVette, Dan Bern, Toshi Reagon, Rich Pagano, the Buffers, and Joe Raiola, the MAD magazine senior editor who created the tribute. The event is presented by Music Without Borders and Theatre Within, an organization dedicated to supporting the performing arts. A portion of the proceeds from the concert will go to Spirit Foundations, a nonprofit that was founded by John and Yoko in 1978 to help “charitable and humanitarian causes around the world.”

MASTERCLASS — MARC LEVIN: SLAM: A 15th ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION

Ray Joshua (Saul Williams) writes about his endangered life in award-winning SLAM

SLAM (Marc Levin, 1998)
Dempsey Auditorium
127 West 127th St.
Thursday, December 5, suggested admission $10, 7:00
Series continues through December 8 at Maysles Cinema
212-582-6050
www.maysles.org
www.blowbackproductions.com

Award-winning documentarian Marc Levin is being celebrated this week with a four-day “Masterclass” tribute at the Maysles Cinema in Harlem. The series begins December 5 with a fifteenth-anniversary screening of Levin’s second fiction feature, the genre-defining Slam. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and the Camera d’Or at Cannes, the 1998 film stars Saul Williams as Ray Joshua, a young man arrested for selling weed in the appropriately named Dodge City in southeast D.C. Ray is faced with three options: plead not guilty and go to trial, which means long prison time if he loses; plead guilty and get locked up for eighteen months to two years; or cooperate with the police and walk free after naming names. Unable to make bail, Ray is incarcerated while trying to decide what he is going to do. While behind bars, he lets loose with some remarkable spoken-word rhymes that earns him respect and the attention of writing teacher Lauren Bell (Sonja Sohn). Soon Ray’s artistry might be the only thing that can save him as he continues to fight an unfair system in an unjust world.

Ray (Saul Williams) turns to Lauren Bell (Sonja Sohn) for help in seminal genre film

Real-life spoken-word poets Sonja Sohn and Saul Williams star in seminal genre film

Shot in a compelling cinéma vérité style by Mark Benjamin that adds a heavy dose of grim reality, Slam is a collaboration between Levin and Richard Stratton, an ex-con who started Prison Life magazine after spending eight years in jail for drug smuggling. In addition, Williams, Sohn, and Bonz Malone, who plays prison inmate Hopha, wrote their own dialogue/raps. The score, by DJ Spooky, is supplemented by a soundtrack that includes KRS-One, Pras, Big Pun, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Mobb Deep, Brand Nubian, and others. And yes, that is D.C. mayor Marion Barry Jr. as the judge preaching about the scourge of drugs. Slam, the first of an urban trilogy by Levin that continues with Whiteboyz and Brooklyn Babylon, is screening December 5 at 7:00 at the Dempsey Auditorium, preceded by a live performance by Darian Dauchan, Samantha Thornhill, and Jon Sands and followed by a Q&A with Levin, Stratton, Williams, Sohn, Malone, Bob Holman, and Liza Jessie Peterson. The Masterclass series runs through December 8 at the Maysles Cinema with such other Levin films as Whiteboyz, a double feature of Gang War: Bangin; in Little Rock and Back in the Hood: Gang War 2, and Mr. Untouchable, shown along with a preview of the work-in-progress Freeway: Crack in the System, about Rick Ross. (Fans of Williams can also catch him performing at the December 7 edition of the Brooklyn Museum’s free First Saturdays program.)