Brooklyn-based alterna-trio Radical Dads are promising quite a show for their next gig, October 2 at 285 Kent. As it’s a Wednesday night, guitarists Lindsay Baker and Chrissy Diken and drummer Robbie Guertin are calling it the Radical Dads Complete Hump Seminar and will be joined by Haybaby, Dead Stars, Boytoy, and Honduras. Although the indefatigable band is already working on a new seven-inch for November and are planning on their third full-length for the spring, they’re still out on the road in support of their latest album, the delightful Rapid Reality (Uninhabitable Mansions, May 2013), which includes such primo indie rock tracks as “Mountain Town,” “Pink Flag,” “Dust USA,” and “Stampede.” Part of the Uninhabitable Mansions arts collective, Radical Dads got Dana Schutz to create the album art for the new disc; Michael Deforge did the same for their 2011 debut, Mega Rama. You can check out all of Radical Dads’ music here before catching the show on Wednesday, because as they say on their website, “Do not be the last on your block or in your community garden association to hump or get humped.”
twi-ny recommended events
TICKET GIVEAWAY: THE ART OF THE BRICK
“Shape Heads” are part of Nathan Sawaya’s LEGO exhibition at Discovery Times Square
NATHAN SAWAYA: THE ART OF THE BRICK
Discovery Times Square
26 West 44th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Through January 5, $16.50 – $21.50
866-987-9692
www.brickartist.com
www.discoverytsx.com
For more than ten years, New York-based artist Nathan Sawaya has been using a rather unique material to create his sculptures: LEGO bricks. And not any kind of special LEGO bricks; Sawaya, a former lawyer and LEGO employee who was born in Washington and raised in Oregon, uses only store-bought LEGOs to make his awe-inspiring replicas of human bodies, animals, fruit, bridges, dinosaurs, slot machines, bowling pins, chess pieces, motorcycles, buildings, sports equipment, cars, landmarks, houses, celebrity portraits, and more. Essentially just a big kid, Sawaya, an NYU graduate, has now brought together approximately one hundred of his unique, colorful works for “The Art of the Brick,” a playful exhibition at Discovery Times Square. Put together by hand based on drawings and computer research and using glue to keep them from falling apart (primarily during shipping), the sculptures can take Sawaya anywhere from a few hours to a few months to complete, depending on their size and detail. A life-size human, for example, consists of fifteen to twenty-five thousand bricks and takes between two and three weeks to finish. In addition to the Discovery Times Square show, his miniature versions of Patience and Fortitude, the lions who guard the New York Public Library, can be seen just inside the Fortieth St. entrance.
TICKET GIVEAWAY: “The Art of the Brick” is open daily from ten a.m. until seven, eight, or nine o’clock through January 5, and twi-ny has two sets of four tickets to give away for free. Just send your name, daytime phone number, and all-time-favorite childhood building toy to contest@twi-ny.com by Friday, October 4, at 3:00 to be eligible. All entrants must be twenty-one years of age or older; two winners will be selected at random.
MASSIVE ATTACK V ADAM CURTIS
Park Avenue Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
Through October 4, $60
212-933-5812
www.armoryonpark.org
For twenty-five years, Robert “3D” Del Naja has been half of the British trip-hop group Massive Attack, along with Grant “Daddy G” Marshall, releasing such seminal records as Blue Lines, Protection, Mezzanine, and 100th Window. For thirty years, BBC journalist and filmmaker Adam Curtis has been making such award-winning documentaries and nonfiction series as Pandora’s Box, Modern Times: The Way of All Flesh, The Century of the Self, and The Power of Nightmares. Del Naja and Curtis have now teamed up to create the immersive multimedia production Massive Attack v Adam Curtis, co-commissioned by the Manchester International Festival, the Ruhrtriennale International Festival of the Arts, and the Park Avenue Armory. Former graffiti artist Del Naja and Curtis are joined by United Visual Artists, which has been providing LED installations for Massive Attack’s live shows since 2003, set designer Es Devlin (Howie the Rookie, The Master and Margarita), and vocalists Liz Fraser and Horace Andy as they delve into what Del Naja calls “a collective hallucination” and Curtis refers to as “a musical entertainment about the power of illusion and the illusion of power.” In the general admission show, multiple screens project a dizzying array of images examining the global sociopolitical culture of the last fifty years, declaring that “you are the centre of everything” while also including stories of individuals trying to find some hope for a better future. Massive Attack v Adam Curtis runs through October 4 in the armory’s Wade Thompson Drill Hall; the October 3 performance will be preceded by the ticketed panel discussion “Viewing Media Through an Artistic Lens” with Simon Critchley, Joyce Barnathan, and Alexis Goldstein, moderated by Graham Sheffield.
Massive Attack and Adam Curtis fight the power in multimedia show (photo by James Medcraft)
Update: The title Massive Attack v Adam Curtis might suggest that the trip-hop band and the controversial experimental filmmaker are locked in some kind of competition, but instead Robert Del Naja and Curtis come together in exciting ways in their thrilling multimedia show. The ninety-minute production takes place in an elongated rectangular section of the Park Avenue Armory’s Wade Thompson Drill Hall, where fifteen hundred people squeeze in, with four large screens to the right and left and three more in the front, behind which Massive Attack plays a wide variety of cover songs (as well as a few snippets of their own tunes), joined by the Cocteau Twins’ Liz Fraser and Jamaican singer Horace Andy, both of whom have collaborated with the British band before. Curtis’s Everything Is Going According to Plan flashes across the eleven screens, as archival news footage, superimposed text, and narration by David Warner focus in on such figures as Donald Trump, Nicolae Ceaușescu, Ted Turner and Jane Fonda, economist Fischer Black, Jess “the Automat” Marcum, and others who Curtis believes have contributed to the economic and political downfall of the world. He also tells the powerful, tragic stories of British painter Pauline Boty and Russian postpunk musician Yegor Letov. Meanwhile, Massive Attack performs the Shirelles’ “Baby, It’s You,” the Archies’ “Sugar, Sugar,” Jesus and Mary Chain’s “Just Like Honey,” Dusty Springfield’s “The Look of Love,” This Mortal Coil’s “Dreams Are Like Water,” “Yanka’s Song,” “Safe from Harm,” and other songs, accompanying Curtis’s brutal, funny, cynical, and ironic images that portend the end of the world as we know it. The finale implores people to take action and save the planet from certain destruction, but you might be too dizzy and depressed by that point to care.
DAVID BROMBERG BIG BAND: CD RELEASE PARTY
City Winery
155 Varick St.
Tuesday, October 1, $45-$60, 8:00
212-608-0555
www.davidbromberg.net
www.citywinery.com
Since coming out of semiretirement in 2007, master folk bluesman and violin maker extraordinaire David Bromberg has been experiencing a continuing, well-deserved resurgence. That year he released his first album in seventeen years, the outstanding Try Me One More Time. On 2011’s Use Me, he collaborated with John Hiatt, Tim O’Brien, Dr. John, Los Lobos, Vince Gill, Keb’ Mo’, Widespread Panic, Levon Helm, and others. Last year, his life and career were explored in Beth Toni Kruvant’s delightful and revealing documentary, David Bromberg Unsung Treasure. And now, on October 1, Bromberg will be at City Winery celebrating the release of his latest record, the sparkling Only Slightly Mad (Appleseed, September 2013), which combines his skills at multiple genres with his wry sense of humor (“Everything but the kitchen sink,” he writes in the liner notes), featuring four originals along with songs by Big Bill Broonzy, Floyd Cramer and Conway Twitty, Bill Monroe, the Stanley Brothers, and others.
David Bromberg is only slightly mad on new album (photo by Jim McGuire)
“Yeah, sure, I’ll take you back / just, uh, not at this particular point in time,” he sings on longtime live favorite “I’ll Take You Back,” adding, “I’ll take you back, baby / when no means yes and more means less / when ice is hot and fire is not / I’ll take you back, baby / when water ain’t wet and congress pays off the national debt / I’ll take you back.” Only Slightly Mad also includes the Grateful Dead-like ballad “Drivin’ Wheel,” the New Orleans ramble “Nobody Knows the Way I Feel This Mornin’,” the country folk lament “The Fields Have Turned Brown,” and the bluegrass stomp “Cattle in the Cane / Forked Deer / Monroe’s Hornpipe.” Throughout the record, the sixty-eight-year-old Bromberg makes references to his longevity and his ability to bounce back. In the a cappella original “The Strongest Man Alive,” he explains, “I have fought in many battles / though I have not won them all / It’s a miracle this bruised and battered body breathes at all / Oh, they say a cat has nine lives / Well, I’ve lived through four or five / I am the strongest man alive.” And on the gospel-tinged “I’ll Rise Again,” another original, Bromberg warbles, “I may be down / but I’ll rise again / someway, somehow / I’ll rise again.” He also takes full responsibility for all that has happened in his life in the album’s sizzling opener, “Nobody’s Fault But Mine” — a Blind Willie Johnson song he previously recorded on 1977’s Reckless Abandon — declaring, “I know right from wrong / I know right from wrong / If I do wrong, and my soul be lost / ain’t nobody’s fault but mine.” A relentless road warrior and consummate storyteller who always delivers an exciting and entertaining live show, Bromberg will be joined by his big band at City Winery, with Nate Grower on fiddle, Mark Cosgrove on guitar and mandolin, Josh Kanusky on drums, Curtis Fowlkes on trombone, Butch Amiot on bass, Peter Ecklund on trumpet, John Firmin on sax, and wife Nancy Josephson on backing vocals.
DANTE FERRETTI: DESIGNING FOR THE BIG SCREEN — SWEENEY TODD, THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET
Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter hide a dark secret in SWEENEY TODD
SWEENEY TODD, THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET (Tim Burton, 2007)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Monday, September 30, 4:00
Tickets: $12, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
www.sweeneytoddmovie.com
Oh yes, there will be blood. Tim Burton’s adaptation of the hit Broadway musical Sweeney Todd is bloody good fun. After being sent to prison for fifteen years by Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman), who had designs on his wife (Laura Michelle Kelly), innocent barber Benjamin Barker (Johnny Depp) returns to nineteenth-century London, reborn as Sweeney Todd, now a dark, ominous figure dead set on gaining his dastardly revenge. He gets back his coveted silver razors, which he considers an extension of his arm, and sets up shop in his old place, above the store where Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter) sells meat pies crawling with cockroaches. When Todd begins slicing throats with expert precision, Lovett has a novel way of doing away with the bodies — while increasing business. Burton and screenwriter John Logan (The Aviator, The Last Samurai) terrifically translate the show onto the big screen, as Depp, Bonham Carter, and the rest of the cast — including Sacha Baron Cohen as a magical elixir salesman, Timothy Spall as the judge’s wingman, and Jayne Wisener as Todd’s daughter, who is doomed to marry the judge — do a wonderful job with such Stephen Sondheim songs as “No Place Like London,” “Poor Thing,” “My Friends,” “Pretty Women,” and “Not While I’m Around.” Depp is marvelous as the demon barber of Fleet Street, wearing a fright wig with a shocking streak of white, singing most of his dialogue with a gentle devilishness, enhanced by his haunting, penetrating eyes. The goth opera not only sounds good but looks even better, courtesy of cinematographer Dariusz Wolski, Oscar-winning production designer Dante Ferretti, and costume designer Colleen Atwood. Burton and Depp, who previously collaborated on Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Corpse Bride, have another winner on their hands. Sweeney Todd is screening September 30 at 4:00 as part of the MoMA series “Dante Ferretti: Designing for the Big Screen,” being held in conjunction with the exhibit “Dante Ferretti: Design and Construction for the Cinema” and continues through February 9 with such other fab-looking works as Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Medea, Federico Fellini’s City of Women, and Julie Taymor’s Titus.
NYFF51 — AFTERNOON OF A FAUN: TANAQUIL LE CLERCQ
The tragic career of dancer Tanaquil Le Clercq is examined in new documentary
AFTERNOON OF A FAUN: TANAQUIL LE CLERCQ (Nancy Buirski, 2013)
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Walter Reade Theater, 165 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Monday, September 30, 6:00 pm
Howard Gilman Theater, 144 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Friday, October 11, 1:00
Francesca Beale Theater, 144 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Sunday, October 13, 6:00
Festival runs September 27 – October 13
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com
“Tanny’s body created inspiration for choreographers,” one of the interviewees says in Nancy Buirski’s documentary Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq. “They could do things that they hadn’t seen before.” The American Masters presentation examines the life and career of prima ballerina Tanaquil Le Clercq, affectionately known as Tanny, who took the dance world by storm in the 1940s and ’50s before tragically being struck down by polio in 1956 at the age of twenty-seven. Le Clercq served as muse to both Jerome Robbins, who made Afternoon of a Faun for her, and George Balanchine, who created such seminal works as Western Symphony, La Valse, and Symphony in C for Le Clercq — and married Tanny in 1952. In the documentary, Buirski (The Loving Story) speaks with Arthur Mitchell and Jacques D’Amboise, who both danced with Le Clercq, her childhood friend Pat McBride Lousada, and Barbara Horgan, Balanchine’s longtime assistant, while also including an old interview with Robbins, who deeply loved Le Clercq as well. The film features spectacular, rarely seen archival footage of Le Clercq performing many of the New York City Ballet’s classic works, both onstage and even on The Red Skelton Show. The name Tanaquil relates to the word “omen” — in history, Tanaquil, the wife of the fifth king of Rome, was somewhat of a prophetess who believed in omens — and the film details several shocking omens surrounding her contracting polio. The film would benefit from sharing more information about Le Clercq’s life post-1957 — she died on New Year’s Eve in 2000 at the age of seventy-one — but Afternoon of a Faun is still a lovely, compassionate, and heartbreaking look at a one-of-a-kind performer. Afternoon of a Faun is screening at the New York Film Festival on September 30 at the Walter Reade Theater (followed by a Q&A with the director), on October 11 at the Howard Gilman Theater, and on October 13 at the Francesca Beale Theater.
NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL: NOBODY’S DAUGHTER HAEWON
A couple considers rekindling their romance in NOBODY’S DAUGHTER HAEWON
NOBODY’S DAUGHTER HAEWON (NUGU-UI TTAL-DO ANIN HAEWON) (Hong Sang-soo, 2013)
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Alice Tully Hall, 1941 Broadway at 65th St.
Sunday, September 29, 9:00 pm
Francesca Beale Theater, 144 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Monday, September 30, 3:30
Festival runs September 27 – October 13
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com
In South Korean director Hong Sang-soo’s latest bittersweet tale, Nobody’s Daughter Haewon, nearly everyone who meets college student Haewon (Jeong Eun-chae) tells her that she’s “pretty,” from her mother (Kim Ja-ok), who has decided to pack up and move to Canada, to legendary star Jane Birkin (playing herself), whom she bumps into on the street, to a hot bookstore owner, to fellow students and teachers. Rather stuck up and direct on the outside but much more tender and lost on the inside, Haewon reaches out to a former lover, film professor Seongjun (Lee Sun-kyun), who is married with a baby. As they contemplate rekindling their affair, they wind up getting drunk on sake with a group of Seongjun’s students, who suspect the teacher-student romance and clearly do not like Haewon. Meanwhile, Haewon, who is reading Norbert Elias’s The Loneliness of the Dying, is intrigued by the flirtations of another film professor, Jungwon (Kim Eui-sung), who teaches in San Diego. From Seoul’s West Village to the historic Fort Namhan, Haewon tries to find her place in the world as writer-director Hong employs a chronological narrative that combines her dreams with reality over the course of a few weeks in springtime.
A drunken night at a sake restaurant reveals some hard truths in Hong Sang-soo’s latest New York Film Festival entry
Hong has explored similar terrain in such previous films as Like You Know It All, Oki’s Movie, Woman on the Beach, and Tale of Cinema, but there’s just enough of an edge to Nobody’s Daughter Haewon to prevent it from feeling repetitive and more of the same. As always, Hong favors long establishing shots and a stationary camera that suddenly and awkwardly zooms in, instantly reminding viewers that they are watching a film. However, the scene in the restaurant goes on for several minutes with no cuts or camera movements, letting the acting and the dialogue tell the story without cinematic interference. Nobody’s Daughter Haewon also clocks in at a mere hour and a half, much shorter than most of his earlier work, which tends to go on way too long, but this one feels a little lighter in substance as well. Nobody’s Daughter Haewon is screening at the New York Film Festival on September 29 at Alice Tully Hall and on September 30 at the Francesca Beale Theater; Hong was initially scheduled to appear at one of the shows for a Q&A but is now unable to do so.