twi-ny recommended events

SELECTED SHORTS: THE STORIES OF JOHN UPDIKE

Symphony Space, Peter Jay Sharp Theatre
2537 Broadway at 95th St.
Wednesday, October 16, $28, 7:30
212-864-5400
www.symphonyspace.org

Winner of multiple Pulitzer Prizes, National Book Critics Circle Awards, National Book Awards, O. Henry Prizes, and others, literary master John Updike was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, so it is appropriate that a group of actors and writers will be paying tribute to him by reading from his work at the latest edition of Symphony Space’s Selected Shorts series. (We know that the town in Pennsylvania is pronounced differently from the verb, but we couldn’t help ourselves.) The event will feature Tony Kushner, Sally Field, Alec Baldwin, Jane Kaczmarek, and others introducing and/or reading from the new eight-hundred-page Updike: Collected Early Stories (Library of America, September 2013, $24.49), comprising 102 stories published between 1953 and 1975, 80 of which first appeared in The New Yorker. Selected Shorts continues November 6 with Colum McCann, Gabriel Byrne, Terry Tempest, Tea Obreht, Rebecca Naomi Jones, and others presenting stories from the new collection The Book of Men.

JEAN-LUC GODARD — THE SPIRIT OF THE FORMS: BREATHLESS

They don’t come much cooler than Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg in Jean-Luc Godard’s Nouvelle Vague classic

BREATHLESS (À BOUT DE SOUFFLE) (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Tuesday, October 15, 9:30
Series continues through October 31
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com

The recent fiftieth-anniversary restoration of Jean-Luc Godard’s Nouvelle Vague classic, Breathless, which came out in 2010, will leave audiences, well, breathless. Godard’s first feature-length film, buoyed by an original treatment by François Truffaut and with Claude Chabrol serving as technical adviser, is as much about the cinema itself as it is about would-be small-time gangster Michel Poiccard (an iconic Jean-Paul Belmondo), an ultra-cool dude wandering from girl to girl in Paris, looking for extra helpings of sex and money and having trouble getting either. Along the way he steals a car and shoots a cop as if shooing away a fly before teaming up with Patricia Franchini (Jean Seberg) and heading out on the run. Godard references William Faulkner and Dashiell Hammett, Humphrey Bogart and Sam Fuller as Michel and Patricia make faces at each other, discuss death, and are chased by the police. Anarchy prevails, both in Belmondo’s character and the film as a whole, which can go off in any direction at any time. Godard himself shows up as the man who identifies Michel, and there are also cameos by New Wave directors Jean-Pierre Melville and Jacques Rivette. The beautiful restoration, supervised by the film’s director of photography, Raoul Coutard, also includes a new translation and subtitles that breathe new life into one of cinema’s greatest treasures. Breathless is screening in a 35mm print October 15 at 9:30 at the Walter Reade 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 British Sounds, Comment ça va, Détective, Every Man for Himself, First Name: Carmen, France/Tour/Detour/Deux enfants, and many more.

REMEMBERING PARK CHEOL SOO — A KOREAN FILMMAKING LEGEND: THE GREEN CHAIR

Hyun (Shim Ji-ho) and Kim Mun-hee (Seo Jung) have a torrid affair in Park Cheol Soo’s THE GREEN CHAIR

KOREAN MOVIE NIGHT: THE GREEN CHAIR (NOKSAEK UIJA) (Park Cheol Soo, 2005)
Tribeca Cinemas
54 Varick St. at Laight St.
Tuesday, October 15, free, 7:00
212-759-9550
www.koreanculture.org
www.tribecacinemas.com

Korean Cultural Service continues its three-part tribute to South Korean auteur Park Cheol Soo, who died in a traffic accident earlier this year at the age of sixty-four, with the erotically charged The Green Chair. Shortly after being arrested for having sex with a minor, thirty-two-year-old Kim Mun-hee (Seo Jung) rejoins her barely underage lover, nineteen-year-old Hyun (Shim Ji-ho), as they continue their torrid affair, which led to Mun-hee’s divorce. Mun-hee is sentenced to one hundred hours of social service, working in a ward with women suffering from dementia. A concerned police detective (Sun Wook-hyun) and a sneaky journalist (Kim Jun-han) try to keep close tabs on the lovers, so Hyun and Mun-hee soon end up at the country home of her best friend, Jean (Oh Yun-hong), as things keep heating up, both sexually and emotionally. Park fills the first half of The Green Chair with beautiful shots of Mun-hee’s and Hyun’s naked bodies in artistic arrangements, almost like they are one. But in the second half, things get a bit more abstract, culminating in a bizarre, surreal party that incorporates some of the stranger elements of the French New Wave. The Green Chair ends up being a satisfying, if at times extremely confusing and even maddening, exploration of fantasy, desire, and responsibility, not shy in the least. The Green Chair is screening for free October 15 at Tribeca Cinemas as part of the Korean Movie Night series “Remembering Park Cheol Soo: A Korean Filmmaking Legend,” which began October 1 with Park’s 301, 302 and concludes October 29 with B.E.D.

Early Saturday afternoon, curators Arnaud Delecolle and Marcella Zimmerman of the New York Art Department were still cleaning up after what appeared to have been a wild opening night party Friday for the weekend exhibition “You Are Here” at the Hole. The show in the Hole’s secondary gallery space examines the way art is created, experienced, and consumed over the internet and through digital technology, complete with all the randomness that can entail. Six sets of eyes stare out of Josh Reames’s acrylic painting “Somewhat Paranoid,” evoking the surveillance state of the web, along with a tongue sticking out, reminding us there is nothing we can do about it. Kathy Grayson, who runs the Hole, contributes a trio of oil paintings, one based on tennis star Venus Williams, that reconfigure and rupture digital imagery via datamoshing. In Jacob Ciocci’s “Take Me” video, a group of young girls star in their own YouTube-like amateur video set to Katy Perry’s “E.T.” Visitors are invited to sit down at a small desk and immerse themselves in Rick Silva’s “The Endless Summer,” a 3D audiovisual environment that takes its name from the seminal surfing movie. There are also works by Big Egypt 2020, #BEENTRILL#, Trudy Benson, Thomas Pregiato, Ryder Ripps, and Phillip Stearns; the exhibit includes an individual eight-page foldout paper zine for each artist. As an added bonus, Kadar Brock’s terrific “dredge” show, which was supposed to close October 5, has been extended, consisting of older artworks that he covered with pastel pigments, then perforated, sanded, and scraped, resulting in powerful, eye-catching canvases, as well as one multilayered, multicolored piece made up of the paint chips and detritus from his studio floor.

THE RATIONALIST: ALAN ALDA AS HAWKEYE PIERCE IN MAS*H

Alan Alda will sit down for an in-depth conversation about his role in M*A*S*H at the Museum of the Moving Image

ICONIC CHARACTERS OF COMEDY: A CONVERSATION WITH ALAN ALDA MODERATED BY JEFF GREENFIELD
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Tuesday, October 15, $25, 7:00
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us
www.comedyhalloffame.com

From 1972 to 1983, Larry Gelbart’s M*A*S*H television series ran on CBS, garnering fourteen Emmys as it explored the nature of war, politics, and the military industrial complex through the daily life of the men and women of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean War. The show’s centerpiece was Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce, played by Alan Alda, taking on the role originally played by Donald Sutherland in Robert Altman’s Oscar-nominated 1970 film. Surrounded by such characters as Hot Lips Houlihan (Loretta Swit), Max Klinger (Jamie Farr), Trapper John McIntyre (Wayne Rogers), Henry Blake (McLean Stevenson), Frank “Ferret Face” Burns (Larry Linville), B. J. Hunnicut (Mike Farrell), Sherman Potter (Harry Morgan), Charles Emerson Winchester III (David Ogden Stiers), Radar O’Reilly (Gary Burghoff), and Father Mulcahy (William Christopher), expert surgeon Pierce regularly took on the establishment, fighting against absurd rules and regulations while trying to save lives — and score with as many nurses as possible. On October 15, Alda, who won five Emmys for M*A*S*H — three for acting, one for writing, and one for directing — will sit down with moderator Jeff Greenfield at the Museum of the Moving Image for “The Rationalist: Alan Alda as Hawkeye Pierce in M*A*S*H,” an in-depth conversation copresented with the Comedy Hall of Fame, the first installment of the new series “Iconic Characters of Comedy.”

THE NEXT LEVEL: EAST SIDE ACCESS PHOTOGRAPHS BY HIROYUKI SUZUKI

Hiroyuki Suzuki documents construction of LIRR/GCT tunnel in show at Transit Museum Gallery Annex (photo by Hiroyuki Suzuki)

New York Transit Museum Gallery Annex
Grand Central Terminal Shuttle Passage
Shuttle Passage next to the Station Masters’ Office
Open daily through October 27, free, 8:00/10:00 am – 6:00/8:00 pm
718-694-1600
www.grandcentralterminal.com

The New York Transit Museum Gallery Annex concludes its yearlong celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of Grand Central Terminal with a gorgeous exhibit that looks to the future. In “The Next Level: East Side Access Photographs by Hiroyuki Suzuki,” the Japanese photographer documents the construction of the tunnel that will link the Long Island Rail Road’s Main and Port Washington lines to a new portal eighteen stories beneath Grand Central, a project now expected to cost more than eight billion dollars and that won’t be completed until 2019. Suzuki — not to be confused with the world yo-yo champion of the same name — is a short-story writer and fashion-show producer (his wife is designer Junko Koshino) who turned to photography in 2006, previously documenting such construction sites as the Metro in Dubai, a downtown Tokyo expressway, the Tokyo Gate Bridge, natural gas production facilities in Qatar, and the rebuilding following the Tohoku earthquake. Using a Nikon D90, Suzuki ventured far below the ground to capture stunning black-and-white images of long, dark passageways with small circles of light and puddles of water, sandhogs either hard at work or taking a break, complicated equipment, and other mesmerizing scenes. Weaving your way through the exhibit, which includes fifty-five photographs, gives you the feeling that you’re underground with Suzuki, which is both thrilling and a little frightening. “The Next Level” is on view daily through October 27, and admission is free.

LONE STAR CINEMA — TEXAS ON SCREEN: THE LAST PICTURE SHOW

Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, and Cybill Shepherd prepare for adulthood in THE LAST PICTURE SHOW

WEEKEND CLASSICS: THE LAST PICTURE SHOW (Peter Bogdanovich, 1971)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
October 11-14, 11:00 am
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com

Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show is a tender-hearted, poignant portrait of sexual awakening and coming-of-age in a sleepy Texas town. Adapted from the Larry McMurtry novel by the author and the director, the film is set in the early 1950s, focusing on Sonny Crawford (Timothy Bottoms), a teenager who works at the local pool hall with Billy (Timothy’s brother Sam), a simple-minded boy who needs special caring. Sonny’s best friend, Duane Jackson (Oscar-nominated Jeff Bridges), is dating the prettiest girl in school, Jacy Farrow (Cybill Shepherd, in her film debut), who is getting ready to test out the sexual waters, sneaking away on a date with Lester Marlow (Randy Quaid), who takes her to a naked-swimming party in a wealthier suburb of Wichita Falls. Meanwhile, Sonny breaks up with his girlfriend, Charlene Druggs (Sharon Taggart), and becomes drawn to the sad, unhappy Ruth Popper (an Oscar-winning Cloris Leachman), the wife of his football coach (Bill Thurman). The outstanding all-star cast also features Oscar-nominated Ellen Burstyn as Lois, Jacy’s mother; Eileen Brennan as a waitress in the local diner who makes cheeseburgers for Sonny; Clu Gulager as a working man who has a thing for Lois; Frank Marshall, who went on to become a big-time producer, as high school student Tommy Logan; and Oscar winner Ben Johnson as Sam the Lion, the moral center of the town and owner of the pool hall, diner, and movie theater, which shows such films as Father of the Bride and Red River. Cinematographer Robert Surtees shoots The Last Picture Show in a sentimental black-and-white that gives the film an old-fashioned feel, as if it’s a part of Americana that is fading away. Bogdanovich also chose to have no original score, instead populating the tale with country songs by Hank Williams, Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, Lefty Frizzell, Tony Bennett, and others singing tales of woe. In many ways the film is the flip side of George Lucas’s 1973 hit American Graffiti, which is set ten years later but looks like it’s from another century; it also has a lot in common with François Truffaut’s 1962 classic Jules and Jim. Nominated for eight Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director, The Last Picture Show is an unforgettable slice-of-life drama that will break your heart over and over again. It is screening in a DCP projection at the IFC Center October 11-14 at 11:00 am as part of the Weekend Classics series “Lone Star Cinema: Texas On Screen,” which continues October 18-20 with Robert Mulligan’s Baby the Rain Must Fall and October 25-27 with S. R. Bindler’s Hands on a Hard Body.