twi-ny recommended events

JEAN-LUC GODARD — THE SPIRIT OF THE FORMS: BAND OF OUTSIDERS

Jean-Luc Godard’s BAND OF OUTSIDERS is a different kind of heist movie

BANDE À PART (BAND OF OUTSIDERS) (Jean-Luc Godard, 1964)
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, Francesca Beale Theater
144 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Friday, October 18, 7:40
Series continues through October 31
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com

When a pair of disaffected Parisians, Arthur (Claude Brasseur) and Franz (Sami Frey), meet an adorable young woman, Odile (Anna Karina), in English class, they decide to team up and steal a ton of money from a man living in Odile’s aunt’s house. As they meander through the streets of cinematographer Raoul Coutard’s black-and-white Paris, they talk about English and wealth, dance in a cafe while director Jean-Luc Godard breaks in with voice-over narration about their character, run through the Louvre in record time, and pause for a near-moment of pure silence. Godard throws in plenty of commentary on politics, the cinema, and the bourgeoisie in the midst of some genuinely funny scenes. Band of Outsiders is no ordinary heist movie; based on Dolores Hitchens’s novel Fool’s Gold, it is the story of three offbeat individuals who just happen to decide to attempt a robbery while living their strange existence, as if they were outside from the rest of the world. The trio of ne’er-do-wells might remind Jim Jarmusch fans of the main threesome from Stranger Than Paradise (1984), except Godard’s characters are more aggressively persistent. One of Godard’s most accessible films, Band of Outsiders is screening October 18 at the Francesca Beale Theater as part of the expansive Film Society of Lincoln Center series “Jean-Luc Godard — The Spirit of the Forms,” which continues through October 31 with such other Godard works as Les Carabiniers, La Chinoise, Contempt, Film Socialisme, King Lear, Nôtre musique, and many more.

PATRICK-EARL BARNES: SHOTGUN HOUSE

Patrick-Earl Barnes’s “Shotgun House” continues at the Heath Gallery in Harlem through October 19 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The Heath Gallery
24 West 120th St.
Thursday – Saturday through October 19
646-872-0419
www.patrick-earl.com
www.heathgallery.squarespace.com

A few years ago, we met self-taught deep-folk artist Patrick-Earl Barnes on a SoHo street, selling his compelling artwork. Barnes concentrates on two primary series: “Family Ties,” paintings and fabric collages inspired by his late father, and “Shotgun House,” acrylic paintings on canvas or wood of the historical architectural dwelling. The latter is the subject of his current show at the Heath Gallery in Harlem, which continues through October 19. In the front room, fourteen works of different sizes line the walls, primarily paintings of multiple rows of tiny shotgun houses with names based on their color scheme: “Pink Agboile,” “Powder Blue Agboile,” “Kool Aid Red Agboile,” “Black Denim Agboile.” Two of the works feature a male figure in the foreground. Barnes, who was raised in Shreveport, Louisiana, and is now based in Brooklyn, gives the repeated images a sociocultural power that goes well beyond their apparent simplicity; shotgun houses are small, inexpensive residences that began in West Africa and spread throughout the American South following the Civil War. Among the stories behind their curious name, and the one Barnes favors, is that if you opened the front and back doors, you could fire a shotgun right through the house, the pellets not hitting anything as they entered one end and exited the other. “I’ve used my open air art gallery in SoHo to educate everyday people about a cultural and aesthetic experience that remains misinformed and underrepresented,” Barnes said about an earlier show at Heath, but that statement relates to “Shotgun House” as well. Be sure to check out the back room, which is displaying gallery owner Thomas “Hat Man” Heath’s beautiful, complex paintings of men, women, and children of the African Diaspora.

CAMILLE CLAUDEL 1915

Juliette Binoche stars as sculptor and mental patient Camille Claudel in heartbreaking film

CAMILLE CLAUDEL 1915 (Bruno Dumont, 2013)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
October 16-29
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org
www.kinolorber.com

Juliette Binoche gives a gut-wrenching performance as the traumatized title character in Bruno Dumont’s heartbreaking Camille Claudel 1915. The film takes place over the course of several days in 1915, as the sculptor and former mistress of Auguste Rodin awaits a visit from her younger brother, poet, devout Christian, and diplomat Paul Claudel. Camille has been moved to an asylum in Montdevergues, where she prepares her own meals for fear of being poisoned on orders from Rodin, who she believes is still trying to ruin her life and career twenty years after their personal and professional relationships ended. Run by nuns, the asylum is home primarily to deeply disturbed women incapable of taking care of themselves and barely able to speak coherent sentences. Claudel, a loner who was committed by her family shortly after the death of her father, desperately wants to be released and get her life back, but everything seems to be poised against her. Binoche, her pale face appearing to have been chiseled like one of Claudel’s sculptures, plays Camille with a subtle yet stern beauty, giving several long, impassioned speeches that writer-director Dumont (Twentynine Palms, L’humanité) and cinematographer Guillaume Deffontaines shoot in single takes, the camera remaining still, Camille framed like a painting. Throughout the film, Camille is seen amid mostly blacks, grays, browns, and whites, a monochromatic color scheme that echoes her work. The film has a cinéma vérité feel, as much of the sparse dialogue is improvised, many of the nuns are nurses at the asylum, and several of the patients are actually committed there, lending a neo-Realist quality to the austere setting. The film, which is “freely adapted from” Paul’s writings and letters, Camille’s letters, and medical records, is not a biopic; instead, it’s a fascinating study of a talented artist and the mental anguish that ultimately overwhelmed her.

CMJ 2013: DAY TWO

No, Jamaican Queens has nothing to do with changing trains on the LIRR. Instead, it’s a Detroit-based duo that has numerous CMJ gigs scheduled this week; you can catch Ryan Spencer and Adam Pressley and their “satanic doo wop” October 16 at Pianos at 6:00 and Webster Hall’s Marlin Room at 9:20, followed on October 17 at Muchmore’s at 3:00 and at Littlefield at 7:00. See below for our other top picks for CMJ Day Two.

KEXP Live Broadcast: Bear Ceuse, 10:00; Cub Sport, 12 noon; Weekend, 2:00; the Helio Sequence, 4:30

“The New Curators,” with Kenna, David Adams, and Matthew Perpetua, NYU Kimmel Center, room 802 Shorin, 12:30

Kanine Records and SESAC’s Trick or Treat Party: the History of Apple Pie, 2:00; the Valleys, 2:45; Joanna Gruesome, 3:30; Beach Day, 4:15; Eagulls, 5:45; Eternal Summers, 6:30, Pianos, 158 Ludlow St.

Julia Weldon, Alphabet Lounge, 104 Ave. C, 7:00

Glenn Tilbrook, with the Fabulous Miss Wendy and Awake, Stage 48, 605 West 48th St., 8:00

Tijuana Gift Shop: Amy Lynn & the Gun Show, 8:30; These Animals, 9:20; Mia Dyson, 10:10; Firehorse, 11:00; Wake Island, 11:50; Pool Cosby, 12:40, Bowery Electric, 327 Bowery

NME showcase: Theo Verney, 8:45; Porcelain Raft, 9:30; Courtney Barnett, 10:15; Eagulls, 11:00; Yuck, 12 midnight, Tammany Hall, 152 Orchard St.

Duck Down/Javotti showcase: Black Moon LIVE backed by Phony Ppl (Enta Da Stage 20-year anniversary set), Cory Mo, DJ Set by Meka of 2dopeboyz, Res of Idle Warship, Smif N Wessun Reggae Jam Session, T’Nah Apex (Pro Era), Talib Kweli, the Underachievers, Children of the Night, F. Stokes, Music Hall of Williamsburg, 9:00

Au Revoir Simone, Highline Ballroom, 431 West 16th St., 10:30

Megafauna, Left Field, 87 Ludlow St., 10:45

RICHIE’S FANTASTIC FIVE — KUROSAWA, MIZOGUCHI, OZU, YANAGIMACHI & KORE-EDA: HIGH AND LOW

A group of men try to find kidnappers in Akira Kurosawa’s tense noir / police procedural

HIGH AND LOW (TENGOKU TO JIGOKU) (Akira Kurosawa, 1963)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Friday, October 18, $12, 7:00
Series runs monthly through February
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

On the verge of being forced out of the company he has dedicated his life to, National Shoes executive Kingo Gondo’s (Toshirō Mifune) life is thrown into further disarray when kidnappers claim to have taken his son, Jun (Toshio Egi), and are demanding a huge ransom for his safe return. But when Gondo discovers that they have mistakenly grabbed Shinichi (Masahiko Shimazu), the son of his chauffeur, Aoki (Yutaka Sada), he at first refuses to pay. But at the insistence of his wife (Kyogo Kagawa), the begging of Aoki, and the advice of police inspector Taguchi (Kenjiro Ishiyama), he reconsiders his decision, setting in motion a riveting police procedural that is filled with tense emotion. Loosely based on Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct novel King’s Ransom, Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low is divided into two primary sections: the first half takes place in Gondo’s luxury home, orchestrated like a stage play as the characters are developed and the plan takes hold. The second part of the film follows the police, under the leadership of Chief Detective Tokura (Tatsuya Nakadai), as they hit the streets of the seedier side of Yokohama in search of the kidnappers. Known in Japan as Tengoku to Jigoku, which translates as Heaven and Hell, High and Low is an expert noir, a subtle masterpiece that tackles numerous socioeconomic and cultural issues as Gondo weighs the fate of his business against the fate of a small child; it all manages to feel as fresh and relevant today as it probably did back in the ’60s.

Kingo Gondo (Toshirō Mifune) has some tough decisions to make in HIGH AND LOW

High and Low is screening on October 18 at 7:00 at Japan Society, kicking off the first section of the monthly tribute series “Richie’s Fantastic Five: Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, Ozu, Yanagimachi & Kore-eda,” which honors Ohio-born writer, critic, scholar, curator, and filmmaker Donald Richie, who died in February at the age of eighty-eight. Richie was a tireless champion of Japanese culture and, particularly, cinema, and the series features six works by five of his favorite directors. Richie called High and Low, which will be introduced by series curator Kyoko Hirano and followed by a reception, “a morality play in the form of an exciting thriller. A self-made man (Mifune) is ruined by a jealous nobody ([Tsutomu] Yamazaki in his first important screen role) but goes on to do the right thing and in the end the camera observes more similarities than differences between the two. With a memorable mid-film climax on a high-speed bullet-train.” The series continues in November with Kenji Mizoguchi’s The Life of Oharu, in December with Yasujiro Ozu’s Late Autumn (screening on Ozu’s birthday, which will also mark the fiftieth anniversary of his death), in January with Mitsuo Yanagimachi’s Himatsuri, and in February with Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After Life, appropriately on the one-year anniversary of Richie’s passing. “Thanks to Richie,” Hirano explained in a statement about the festival, “the world knows the greatness of Japanese cinema.”

WALLS AND BRIDGES — THE ANIMAL VISION: IN CONNECTION WITH THE DRAWING CENTER EXHIBIT “ALEXIS ROCKMAN: DRAWINGS FROM ‘LIFE OF PI’”

Alexis Rockman will discuss his fantastical creations he made, such as the above watercolor, for Ang Lee’s LIFE OF PI in special Walls and Bridges program

The Drawing Center
35 Wooster St. between Grand & Broome Sts.
Thursday, October 17, free, 6:30
www.wallsandbridges.net
www.drawingcenter.org

When making his 2012 hit film Life of Pi, director Ang Lee turned to artist Alexis Rockman to create aquatic species for the central part of the narrative, which takes place on the open sea. Rockman’s watercolor drawings are now on view at the Drawing Center, which is the site for the special October 17 program “The Animal Vision,” part of the third annual Franco-American Walls and Bridges festival. New York native Rockman will discuss his hallucinatory work with Belgian philosopher and ethologist Vinciane Despret; the event will be hosted by Rice University English professor Cary Wolfe (Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of Species, and Posthumanist Theory). Rockman’s “Drawings from Life of Pi” continues at the Drawing Center through November 3; in addition, Rockman’s “Rubicon,” consisting of such new paintings as the large-scale “Bronx Zoo” and “Gowanus,” which depict a heavily detailed, surreal animal world, are on view through November 2 at Sperone Westwater. The ten-day Walls and Bridges festival also includes the multimedia presentation “Unrest” October 18 at the Whitney, featuring the live performance “Meurtrière” by Philippe Grandrieux, a screening of Grandrieux’s film White Epilepsy, and a discussion with Grandrieux, Avital Ronell, and Lynne Tillman; “City Shapes,” in which French geographer Michel Lussault and American photographer Matthew Pillsbury discuss the changing urban environment, October 19 at the Aperture Gallery; and the Oh! Oui… company’s music and theater production Stille Nacht October 20 at the Invisible Dog Art Center.

THE GLASS MENAGERIE

Cherry Jones and Zachary Quinto play mother and son in glorious revival of Tennessee Williams’s THE GLASS MENAGERIE (photo by Michael J. Lutch)

Booth Theatre
222 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through February 23, $42 – $147
theglassmenageriebroadway.com

In the past eighteen months, two of America’s greatest playwrights have experienced glorious Broadway revivals — Mike Nichols’s version of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Pam MacKinnon’s Steppenwolf production of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, with Tracy Letts and Amy Morton battling it out for three hours — but Tennessee Williams has not fared nearly so well. Until now. On the heels of disappointing adaptations of A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, John Tiffany’s The Glass Menagerie, which originated at Harvard’s American Repertory Theater earlier this year, is a spectacular celebration of one of Williams’s best plays, a haunting examination of a fragile family and the concept of memory. In depression-era St. Louis, Tom Wingfield (Zachary Quinto, of American Horror Story and the Star Trek reboot) and his sister, Laura (two-time Tony nominee Celia Keenan-Bolger), live in a small apartment with their caring yet domineering mother, Amanda (two-time Tony winner Cherry Jones). Tom works in a local warehouse but dreams of becoming a writer and traveling the world. Laura has a lame foot that has turned her into a shy, mousey girl who collects glass animal figurines and treats them like friends. Amanda, who has never quite gotten over the departure of her husband, is desperate for Laura to entertain “gentleman callers” and get married. So when Tom brings home a coworker, Jim (Stargate Universe’s Brian J. Smith), Amanda jumps all over the sudden opportunity to make sure things are just right for this potential suitor.

Amanda Wingfield (Cherry Jones) will do anything she can to find her daughter (Celia Keenan-Bolger) a suitor (photo by Michael J. Lutch)

The story unfolds on Bob Crowley’s relatively spare set, which includes a refrigerator and a small kitchen table on the left, a couch in the middle, and a Victrola and a fire escape on the right, the latter seemingly rising to the heavens. Front and center is a small table on which Laura keeps a single figurine that stands in for her larger collection, which is occasionally represented by glittering specs on a reflecting pool of water that surrounds the stage. Every so often the neon shape of a shark’s fin rises ominously above the surface, psychologically threatening the proceedings. Natasha Katz’s lighting demarcates the past (memory) from the present (reality), and Nico Muhly’s music adds texture between scenes. While Quinto, in his Broadway debut, and Smith are both exceptional, Jones and Keenan-Bolger virtually redefine these long-familiar characters, Jones delivering a performance for the ages as Amanda, words rolling off her tongue as if they were written just for her, Keenan-Bolger embodying Laura’s fears in subtle ways that offer a kind of catharsis for the audience. It’s heartbreaking when she kneels down in front of her figurine and its glow spreads across her face as if illuminating her soul. In his opening monologue, Tom explains that the “play is memory,” and that relates to both the story and Williams himself, as Laura is based on Williams’s sister, Rose (at one point, Laura remembers a high school boy calling her “Blue Roses” after mishearing her say that she has “pleurosis”), and Williams’s given name is Thomas. Tiffany’s version of this deeply personal play is indeed unforgettable, a sparkling example of the power of live theater and a mesmerizing examination of the conflicting emotions that complicate memory.