twi-ny recommended events

CUTIE AND THE BOXER

Documentary tells the engaging story of a pair of Japanese artists and the life they have made for themselves in Brooklyn

CUTIE AND THE BOXER (Zachary Heinzerling, 2013)
IndieScreen
289 Kent Ave.
October 5 (5:00 & 7:00), 8 (7:00), 9 (7:00)
347-227-8030
www.indiescreen.us
www.facebook.com/cutieandtheboxer

Zachary Heinzerling’s Cutie and the Boxer is a beautifully told story of love and art and the many sacrifices one must make to try to succeed in both. In 1969, controversial Japanese Neo Dada action painter and sculptor Ushio Shinohara came to New York City, looking to expand his career. According to the catalog for the recent MoMA show “Tokyo 1955-1970: A New Avant-Garde,” which featured four works by Ushio, “American art had seemed to him to be ‘marching toward the glorious prairie of the rainbow and oasis of the future, carrying all the world’s expectations of modern painting.’” Four years later, he met nineteen-year-old Noriko, who had left Japan to become an artist in New York as well. The two fell in love and have been together ever since, immersed in a fascinating relationship that Heinzerling explores over a five-year period in his splendid feature-length theatrical debut. Ushio and Noriko live in a cramped apartment and studio in DUMBO, where he puts on boxing gloves, dips them in paint, and pounds away at large, rectangular canvases and builds oversized motorcycle sculptures out of found materials. Meanwhile, Noriko, who has spent most of the last forty years taking care of her often childlike husband and staying with him through some rowdy times and battles with the bottle, is finally creating her own work, an R. Crumb-like series of drawings detailing the life of her alter ego, Cutie, and her often cruel husband, Bullie. (“Ushi” means “bull” in Japanese.) While Ushio is more forthcoming verbally in the film, mugging for the camera and speaking his mind, the pig-tailed Noriko is far more tentative, so director and cinematographer Heinzerling brings her tale to life by animating her work, her characters jumping off the page to show Cutie’s constant frustration with Bullie.

Ushio Shinohara creates one of his action paintings in CUTIE AND THE BOXER

During the course of the too-short eighty-two-minute film — it would have been great to spend even more time with these unique and compelling figures — the audience is introduced to the couple’s forty-year-old son, who has some issues of his own; Guggenheim senior curator of Asian Art Alexandra Munroe, who stops by the studio to consider purchasing one of Ushio’s boxing paintings for the museum; and Chelsea gallery owner Ethan Cohen, who represents Ushio. But things never quite take off for Ushio, who seems to always be right on the cusp of making it. Instead, the couple struggles to pay their rent. One of the funniest, yet somehow tragic, scenes in the film involves Ushio packing up some of his sculptures — forcing them into a suitcase like clothing — and heading back to Japan to try to sell some pieces. Cutie and the Boxer is a special documentary that gets to the heart of the creative process as it applies both to art and love, focusing on two disparate people who have made a strange yet thoroughly charming life for themselves. Cutie and the Boxer is currently showing in Ushio and Noriko’s home borough of Brooklyn, where it will continue at IndieScreen through October 9.

Academy Award Nomination: Best Documentary Feature

FIRST SATURDAYS: ¡VIVA BROOKLYN!

José Campeche, “Doña María de los Dolores Gutiérrez del Mazo y Pérez,” oil on canvas, circa 1796

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, March 3, free, 5:00 – 11:00 (some events require free tickets distributed in advance at the Visitor Center)
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

After taking September off for the annual West Indian festivities over Labor Day Weekend, the Brooklyn Museum’s free First Saturdays program returns October 5 with ¡Viva Brooklyn!, celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month. The evening will feature live performances by trombonist Chris Washburne and SYOTOS, Sofía Rei, and Cumbiagra; Richard Aste will give a curator talk on “Behind Closed Doors: Art in the Spanish American Home, 1492–1898”; there will be a screening of Icíar Bollaín’s 2010 film, También La Lluvia, which deals with Christopher Columbus and the local water supply; an art workshop will teach attendees how to make a home medallion using metal tooling; Marymount Manhattan College’s Blanca E. Vega will lead a talk and audience Q&A with writers about contemporary Latino literature; scenes from the moving play La Ruta, which deals with illegal immigration, will be read, followed by a discussion; the Calpulli Mexican Dance Company will host a participatory workshop; pop-up gallery talks will explore “American Identities: A New Look”; El Puente will present a social justice forum with community activists; and Las Comadres Para Las Americas founder and CEO Nora de Hoyos Comstock and a panel of writers will discuss Count on Me: Tales of Sisterhoods and Fierce Friendships. In addition, the galleries will be open late, giving visitors plenty of opportunity to check out “Valerie Hegarty: Alternative Histories,” “Käthe Kollwitz: Prints from the ‘War’ and ‘Death’ Portfolios,” “Divine Felines: Cats of Ancient Egypt,” “Life, Death, and Transformation in the Americas,” “Connecting Cultures: A World in Brooklyn,” and other exhibits.

GRAVITY

Space debris from a Russian satellite threatens an American shuttle crew in GRAVITY

GRAVITY (Alfonso Cuarón, 2013)
Opens Friday, October 4
www.gravitymovie.warnerbros.com

Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity is a breathtaking thriller that instantly enters the pantheon of such classic space fare as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien, and The Right Stuff. While medical engineer Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is fixing a computer glitch outside the shuttle Explorer, veteran astronaut and wisecracker Matt Kowalski (George Clooney), on his final mission before retirement, is playing around with a new jetpack and Shariff (voiced by Paul Sharma) is having fun going on a brief spacewalk. But disaster strikes when debris from a destroyed Russian satellite suddenly comes their way, killing Shariff and the rest of the crew and crippling the shuttle, leaving Stone and Kowalski on their own in deep space, their communication with Mission Control in Houston (voiced by Ed Harris, in a nod to his participation in Apollo 13 and The Right Stuff) gone as well. Kowalski is cool and calm, listening to country music as he tries to come up with a plan that will get them to the International Space Station, but the inexperienced Stone is running out of oxygen fast as she tumbles through the emptiness, Earth in the background, so close yet so far. Written by Cuarón (Y Tu Mamá También, Children of Men) with his son Jonás, Gravity is spectacularly photographed by Emmanuel Lubezki, the master behind numerous works by Cuarón and Terrence Malick (The New World, The Tree of Life), among others. Lubezki and his team even created a new LED light box to increase the film’s realism, which is nothing less than awe-inspiring and mind-bending as it takes place in real time. Despite the vastness of space, Gravity often feels claustrophobic, particularly as Stone struggles to get a breath or attempts to operate a foreign module.

Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) and Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) try to remain together in Alfonso Cuarón’s masterful space epic

Close-ups of Stone and Kowalski reveal reflections of the shuttle and Earth, emphasizing the astronauts’ dire situation as they engage in a very different kind of pas de deux. Gravity also succeeds where directors like James Cameron often fail, as a solid, relatively unsentimental and unpredictable script accompanies the remarkable visuals, which evoke both harrowing underwater adventures as well as dangerous mountain-climbing journeys. (Cuarón also manages to bring it all in in a terrifically paced ninety minutes.) Cuarón and Lubezki favor long takes, including an opening shot lasting more than thirteen minutes, immersing the viewer in the film, further enhanced by being projected in IMAX 3D, which is not used as merely a gimmick here. Stephen Price’s score increases the tension as well until getting melodramatic near the end. Clooney is ever dapper and charming and Bullock is appropriately nervous and fearful in their first screen pairing, even though they only make contact with each other through bulky spacesuits, their connection primarily via speaking. Cuarón, who also edited Gravity with Mark Sanger, has made an endlessly exciting film for the ages, a technological marvel that should have a tremendous impact on the future of the industry.

Nominated for ten Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director (Alfonso Cuarón), Best Actress (Sandra Bullock), Best Cinematography (Emmanuel Lubezki), Best Film Editing (Alfonso Cuarón and Mark Sanger), Best Original Score (Steven Price), Best Visual Effects (Tim Webber, Chris Lawrence, Dave Shirk, and Neil Corbould), Best Sound Editing (Glenn Freemantle), Best Sound Mixing (Skip Lievsay, Niv Adiri, Christopher Benstead, and Chris Munro), and Best Production Design (Andy Nicholson, Rosie Goodwin, and Joanne Woollard)

A TOUCH OF SIN

Zhao San (Wang Baoqiang) is one of four protagonists who break out into sudden acts of shocking violence in Jia Zhangke’s A TOUCH OF SIN

A TOUCH OF SIN (TIAN ZHU DING) (Jia Zhangke, 2013)
IFC Center, 323 Sixth Ave. at Third St., 212-924-7771
Lincoln Plaza Cinema, 1886 Broadway at 63rd St., 212-757-2280
www.kinolorber.com

During his sixteen-year career, Sixth Generation Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke has made both narrative works (The World, Platform, Still Life) and documentaries (Useless, I Wish I Knew), with his fiction films containing elements of nonfiction and vice versa. Such is the case with his latest film, the powerful A Touch of Sin, which explores four based-on-fact outbreaks of shocking violence in four different regions of China. In Shanxi, outspoken miner Dahai (Jiang Wu) won’t stay quiet about the rampant corruption of the village elders. In Chongqing, married migrant worker and father Zhao San (Wang Baoqiang) obtains a handgun and is not afraid to use it. In Hubei, brothel receptionist Ziao Yu (Zhao Tao, Jia’s longtime muse and now wife) can no longer take the abuse and assumptions of the male clientele. And in Dongguan, young Xiao Hui (Luo Lanshan) tries to make a life for himself but is soon overwhelmed by his lack of success. Inspired by King Hu’s 1971 wuxia film A Touch of Zen, Jia also owes a debt to Max Ophüls’s 1950 bittersweet romance La Ronde, in which a character from one segment continues into the next, linking the stories. In A Touch of Sin, there is also a character connection in each successive tale, though not as overt, as Jia makes a wry, understated comment on the changing ways that people connect in modern society. In depicting these four acts of violence, Jia also exposes the widening economic gap between the rich and the poor and the social injustice that is prevalent all over contemporary China — as well as the rest of the world — leading to dissatisfied individuals fighting for their dignity in extreme ways. A gripping, frightening film that earned Jia the Best Screenplay Award at Cannes this year, A Touch of Zen opens October 4 at Lincoln Plaza and the IFC Center, with Jia and Zhao appearing at Lincoln Plaza for a Q&A following the 4:55 screening and to introduce the 7:25 show, after which they will head over to IFC for a Q&A following the 7:00 screening and to introduce the 9:35 show.

I DON’T KNOW: CABARET

Joel Grey will introduce CABARET at Rubin Museum screening on October 4

CABARET CINEMA: CABARET (Bob Fosse, 1972)
Rubin Museum of Art
150 West 17th St. at Seventh Ave.
Friday, October 4, free with $7 bar minimum, 9:30
212-620-5000
www.rmanyc.org

There’s nothing ignorant about this presentation from the Rubin Museum. In conjunction with the Rubin’s impressive “Ignorance” series of talks, films, live music, and more, the museum will be screening Bob Fosse’s Cabaret as part of, well, its weekly Cabaret Cinema program. And to up the ante, the one and only Joel Grey, who won a Tony for playing the Emcee in the original Broadway production, followed by an Oscar for the 1972 film, will “Willkommen” everyone, serving as emcee at the Rubin, introducing the film. Winner of more Academy Awards (eight) than any other non-Best Picture honoree, Cabaret is set in 1930s Berlin, where American singer Sally Bowles (Liza Minnelli) is trying to establish a career and a relationship with a British writer (Michael York) while Germany is preparing for major changes. The film includes such classic Kander and Ebb tunes as “Willkommen,” “Maybe This Time,” “Tomorrow Belongs to Me,” and “Money, Money.” You actually won’t need much money, money on Friday night, as admission to the museum is free starting at 6:00, and a seven-dollar bar tab gets you into the film as well. The “I Don’t Know” series — “about what we don’t know, or choose not to know” — continues October 11 with Pam MacKinnon introducing Sidney Lumet’s Network, October 18 with the Coen brothers’ Blood Simple, and October 25 with Michael Mayer introducing Otto Preminger’s Laura.

RIOULT DANCE NY

CELESTIAL TIDES will be part of RIOULT Dance NY programs at the Queens Theatre and the Manhattan School of Music (photo by Sofia Negron)

Saturday, October 5, 2:00 & 8:00, Sunday, October 6, 3:00, Queens Theatre, 14 United Nations Ave. South in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, 718-760-0064, $25-$46
Wednesday, October 9, Manhattan School of Music, 120 Claremont Ave., 917-493-4428, $12, 7:30
www.rioult.org

“I have always loved Bach’s music, instinctively and without understanding where the magic came from,” New York-based French choreographer explained to us in a June 2011 twi-ny talk about the Joyce debut of his Bach Dances program. “I also want with my dances to show that Bach’s music, contrary to common belief, is unbelievably rich emotionally.” As part of its twentieth anniversary season, RIOULT Dance NY will be at the Queens Theatre in Flushing Meadows Corona Park on October 5-6, performing 2010’s City, set to Bach’s “Sonata for Violin and Piano #6 in G major,” 2011’s Celestial Tides (Bach’s “Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 in B-flat major”), 1995’s Wien (Maurice Ravel’s “La Valse”), and 2011’s On Distant Shores (with music by Aaron Jay Kernis). Artistic director and choreographer Rioult, along with his wife, associate artistic director Joyce Herring, will then take the company over to the Manhattan School of Music’s John C. Borden Auditorium on October 9 for the New York City premiere of the Bach Dances program with live music, as the twelve-person troupe will be accompanied by an MSM student orchestra; the evening includes Views of a Fleeting World, set to Bach’s “The Art of Fugue,” along with City and Celestial Tides. Tickets for the Queens Theatre shows range from $25 to $46, while it costs a mere $12 to see the one-night-only MSM performance.

REVENGE AND GUILT

Cal (Peter Buck Dettmann) and Gina (Emily Russell) have it in for Marvin “Major” Cohen (Tom Vaught) in REVENGE AND GUILT (photo by Bryan Smith)

Kraine Theater
85 East Fourth St. between Bowery & Second Ave.
Thursday – Saturday through October 19, $!8, 8:00
www.facebook.com/RevengeandGuilt

Three lonely losers, each one haunted by a single episode from their past that has defined their miserable lives, come together in Marc Spitz’s latest play, Revenge and Guilt. As the show opens, the nervous, jittery Cal (Peter Buck Dettmann) arrives in the ratty Long Island home of onetime local guitar hero Marvin “Major” Cohen (Tom Vaught). Just as Major seems to recognize Cal, Gina (Emily Russell) enters and cracks Major in the head with a liquor bottle, knocking him out. The story then shifts back in time to a dive bar where Cal and Gina, both broke, argue over whether they just had sex as well as debating the value of Cal’s prized watch. While Cal is tentative and unsure of himself, Gina is strong-willed and angry, ready to do whatever it takes to get out of her terrible situation. As they seemingly grow more comfortable with each other, they share the secrets that have been tearing them apart inside, and Gina comes up with a plan to rid Cal of his inner demon, involving going back to the scene of the “crime,” Major’s house, to finally right a wrong. Longtime music journalist Spitz, who has written such books as We Got the Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of L.A. Punk, Poseur: A Memoir of Downtown New York City in the ’90s, and How Soon Is Never? and such plays as The Rise and Fall of the Farewell Drugs, The Hobo Got Too High, and Your Face Is a Mess, makes his directorial debut with Revenge and Guilt, a well-written and solidly paced black comedy filled with musical references (the Clash, Gene Loves Jezebel, Thin Lizzy, Nirvana, Morrissey, Steely Dan). The title comes from a quote by Elvis Costello, who early in his career said, “The only two things that motivate me and that matter to me are revenge and guilt.” Both of those things figure prominently in the 105-minute play (with intermission), as all three characters blame a past event for their current failure. Vaught outshines his competent costars, giving a thoroughly convincing and entertaining performance as Major, a fading relic of a time gone by. Revenge and Guilt, which contains more than a few elements of Lyle Kessler’s Orphans, is a thought-provoking work that just might make you look back into your own past and finally try to get over that one thing that has been stuck in your gut for years, because you definitely don’t want to wind up like Cal, Gina, or Major. (To read our twi-ny talk with Spitz from earlier this year, go here.)