twi-ny recommended events

BLUTH’S ORIGINAL FROZEN BANANA STAND

ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT will celebrate its return with free frozen bananas in New York on May 13 (photo by Stuart Wilson/Getty Images for Netflix)

ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT will celebrate its return with free frozen bananas in New York on May 13 & 14 (photo by Stuart Wilson/Getty Images for Netflix)

Monday, May 13, Sixth Ave. at 50th St., free, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
Tuesday, May 14, Columbus Circle, free, 12 noon – 7:00 pm
Wednesday, May 15, Yankee Stadium, Gate 6, 3:30 – 8:00
Thursday, May 16, Times Square, 11:00 am – 5:00 pm
www.netflix.com

Mitchell Hurwitz’s Arrested Development seems to have been in its own state of arrested development for years. The cult sitcom, which follows the trials and tribulations of the rather dysfunctional Bluth family, ran on Fox from 2003 to 2006, after which rumors have persisted that it would move to another network or maybe even be turned into a feature film. Ten years after its debut, however, Arrested Development is finally back, with fifteen new episodes airing on Netflix beginning on May 26. Everyone is joining in the fun, with Jason Bateman as Michael, Portia de Rossi as Lindsay, Will as Gob, Michael Cera as George Michael, David Cross as Tobias, Jeffrey Tambor as George, Jessica Walter as Lucille, and Ron Howard as the narrator; among the returning cast of guest characters are Henry Winkler as Barry Zuckerkorn, Mae Whitman as Ann Veal, Scott Baio as Bob Loblaw, and Liza Minnelli as Lucille Austero. To celebrate this new stage in the bizarre life of this wacky series, Bluth’s Original Frozen Banana stand, which the Bluth family started sixty years ago and had its official ribbon cutting fifty years ago, will be serving free treats across from Radio City Music Hall on Monday, May 13, from 11:00 am to 6:00 pm; in Columbus Circle on Tuesday, May 14, from 12 noon to 7:00 pm; in front of Gate 6 at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday, May 15, from 3:30 to 8:00; and in front of the Marriott Marquis in Times Square on Thursday, May 16, from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm, with a 12 noon reunion of the Never Nudes. Be on the lookout for stray fox feet, Mr. Bananagrabber, and spliffs, and never forget that “there’s always money in the banana stand.” And now, everyone join in: “Big yellow joint / big yellow joint / I’ll meet you down at the big yellow joint!”

I’LL EAT YOU LAST: A CHAT WITH SUE MENGERS

Bette Midler makes her long-awaited return to Broadway in one-woman show about Hollywood superagent (photo by Richard Termine)

Booth Theatre
222 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Friday – Wednesday, $87 – $152
www.illeatyoulast.com

In her long-awaited return to the Great White Way, the Divine Miss M inhabits the role of Hollywood superagent Sue Mengers in the one-woman show I’ll Eat You Last. Midler, making her first nonconcert Broadway appearance since 1967, when she played Tzeitel in Fiddler on the Roof, is, well, simply divine as the aggressive, ultra-determined Mengers, who was both loved and hated while tirelessly working for such big-time clients as Julie Harris, Steve McQueen, Ali McGraw, Gene Hackman, Faye Dunaway, and Ryan O’Neal. Midler spends ninety minutes as Mengers, wearing a lovely sparkly blue caftan designed by Ann Roth, lounging on a couch in Scott Pask’s elegant living-room set, drinking, smoking, and cursing as she shares intimate moments from her life and career while waiting for a critical phone call from her number one client, Barbra Streisand. She even invites an audience member onstage to get her some booze and a cigarette, revealing her power to get men to do her bidding. Unfortunately, John Logan has not given Midler much of a play to work with. The show is subtitled A Chat with Sue Mengers, and that’s pretty much exactly what it is: a mere chat, not a Broadway production. Logan, who has penned such films as The Last Samurai, Hugo, Rango, Star Trek: Nemesis, and The Aviator in addition to Red, for which he won a Tony, was inspired to write I’ll Eat You Last after meeting Mengers at a 2008 dinner party. His script contains plenty of funny one-liners but is primarily superficial and reverential, paying tribute to Mengers, who died in 2011 at the age of seventy-nine, in a series of worshipful anecdotes that don’t quite come full circle. Midler is delightful gossiping about such Hollywood celebs as McGraw, McQueen, producer Bob Evans, and director William Friedkin, but this chat is more of a pleasing appetizer than a full, satisfying meal.

THALIA DOCS — A FIERCE GREEN FIRE: THE BATTLE FOR A LIVING PLANET

Environmental activists and just plain folk fight the power in A FIERCE GREEN FIRE

A FIERCE GREEN FIRE: THE BATTLE FOR A LIVING PLANET (Mark Kitchell, 2012)
Symphony Space, Leonard Nimoy Thalia
2537 Broadway at 95th St.
Sunday, May 12 & 19, $14, 8:00
212-864-5400
www.symphonyspace.org
www.afiercegreenfire.com

A lot of documentaries wear their hearts on their sleeves, pushing a specific agenda, but as far as agenda go, A Fierce Green Fire: The Battle for a Living Planet has a pretty good one. Directed by Mark Kitchell (Berkeley in the Sixties), the film serves not only as a history of the environmental movement around the world but also demonstrates how one person can indeed make a difference. But the hundred-minute documentary does itself no favors by using several narrators who are certain to infuriate conservative Republicans and naysayers, ensuring that the film is most likely going to preach only to the converted and not spread its vital message to a more mainstream audience. A Fierce Green Fire is divided into five thematic sections, narrated by Robert Redford, Ashley Judd, Van Jones, Isabel Allende, and Meryl Streep, respectively. Using archival footage and new interviews, Kitchell examines David Brower and the Sierra Club’s fight to prevent a dam project in the Grand Canyon; Lois Gibbs’s struggle to prove the alarming health problems at Love Canal; Paul Watson, Sea Shepherd, and Greenpeace’s mission to save the whales; Chico Mendes’s bravery trying to protect the Amazon rainforest; and the continuing controversy over climate change as seen through the work of such activist organizations as Paul Hawken’s Blessed Unrest. Inspired by Philip Shabecoff’s 1993 book, the film features such talking heads as Whole Earth Catalog publisher Stewart Brand, Earth Day organizer Doug Scott, NRDC founder John Adams, former Sierra Club leader Carl Pope, environmental justice advocate Robert Bullard, Greenpeace cofounder Rex Weyler, WWF conservation biologist Thomas Lovejoy, and legendary naturalist Bill McKibben in addition to Gibbs, Hawken, and Watson. While it’s fascinating to learn that the environmental movement really took off once NASA broadcast images of the earth taken from space, revealing the beautiful fragility of the planet, much of the documentary is told in a fairly stagnant manner, more like an expanded news report than a theatrical film. Still, it shares some intriguing insights and, in celebrating a group of individuals from around the world who fought the power (and sometimes even won), goes a long way in showing that every little step matters. A Fierce Green Fire: is screening May 12 & 19 at 8:00 as part of the ongoing Symphony Space series Thalia Docs.

DEGAS, MISS LA LA, AND THE CIRQUE FERNANDO

Edgar Degas, “Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando,” oil on canvas, 1879, (© National Gallery, London / Art Resource, NY)

Morgan Library & Museum
225 Madison Ave. at 36th St.
Through May 12, $10-$15
212-685-0008
www.themorgan.org

The arrival of Edgar Degas’s lovely 1879 painting “Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando” on these shores is reason enough to cheer. But curator Linda Wolk-Simon has taken the canvas, on loan from the National Gallery in London, and made it the focus of the wonderful exhibit “Degas, Miss La La, and the Cirque Fernando,” continuing at the Morgan Library through May 12. Shown at the Fourth Impressionist Exhibition in Paris in 1879, the painting depicts popular circus performer Miss La La suspended in midair, her teeth clenched on a rope. The Prussian-born Miss La La, who was also known as the Black Venus and La Femme Cannon, among other nicknames, is like an angel rising to the heavens, her angled limbs and white boots and costume echoing the big top’s unique architectural structure, something that Degas actually struggled to re-create. The lines and colors of the rope, the windows, the arches, the dress, and her body come together in spectacular fashion, albeit with a gentleness that was probably not apparent at the live performance itself, which Degas attended several times. No other circus or audience members are shown; it is as if the viewer is experiencing a private show performed only for them. Degas chose to paint this act instead of another of Miss La La’s highly touted tricks, in which she uses her teeth to hold up a cannon weighing more than 150 pounds while it fires away, perhaps because this one is more elegant and spiritual. Hanging in the middle of the far wall on the second floor of the Morgan, the painting is surrounded by preparatory sketches, books, posters, letters, and related works by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Henry-Gabriel Ibels, and Tiepolo that place Degas’s masterpiece in historical context while also revealing his fascinating creative process. It all comes together in a kind of artistic three-ring circus, highlighted by a dynamic centerpiece that deservedly rises to the top.

THALIA DOCS — HAPPY PEOPLE: A YEAR IN THE TAIGA

HAPPY PEOPLE explores the fascinating world of Siberian hunters living in virtual solitude year-round

HAPPY PEOPLE: A YEAR IN THE TAIGA (Dmitry Vasyukov & Werner Herzog, 2010)
Symphony Space, Leonard Nimoy Thalia
2537 Broadway at 95th St.
Sunday, May 12 & 19, 6:00
212-864-5400
www.symphonyspace.org
www.musicboxfilms.com

In just the last few years, master German filmmaker Werner Herzog has ventured deep into space for Wild Blue Yonder, explored the mysteries of Antarctica in Encounters at the End of the World, went spelunking through a prehistoric French cave in the 3D Cave of Forgotten Dreams, and visited an inmate on Death Row in Texas in Into the Abyss. In Happy People: A Year in the Taiga, Herzog and codirector Dmitry Vasyukov follow Russian fur trapper Gennady Soloviev and others as they set their traps and capture their prey, living a solitary existence away from friends and family, but that is exactly how they like it. They do things the old-fashioned way, using the tools and methods of their fathers and their fathers before that, getting by with their hands, their ingenuity, and their brute strength, along with the help of their ever-faithful dogs. Soloviev, who first came to Siberia under the communist regime, decided to stay, doing his part to support the local economy while continuing the Muzhik traditions. He speaks openly and honestly about his daily existence, getting emotional when talking about the bonds he forms with his dogs, and one in particular. The footage was shot several years ago by Vasyukov, and Herzog came upon it quite accidentally, seeing it when paying a surprise visit to a friend. He got in touch with Vasyukov, who allowed Herzog to edit the footage, add a musical score by Klaus Badelt, and write his own English-language narration, which he delivers with great admiration, often getting philosophical about what is being shown onscreen. Unfortunately, the film does not have quite the visual vibrancy of Herzog’s original films, usually shot by cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger, and Herzog’s words lack the personal touch that has made such works as Grizzly Man and My Best Fiend, among many others, so magical. Still, Happy People is a fascinating look at a little-known group of men who live a very different kind of life in the twenty-first century. “You don’t need to pity us; we are proud,” Soloviev told Vasyukov upon learning that Herzog wanted to repurpose the footage. Happy People in no way pities these men, instead celebrating their adherence to the old ways and honoring their intimate connections to nature. Happy People is screening May 12 & 19 at 6:00 at Symphony Space as part of the Sunday series Thalia Docs.

THE GREAT GATSBY

Nick (Tobey Maguire), Jay (Leonardo DiCaprio), Daisy (Carey Mulligan), and Tom (Joel Edgerton) are caught up in matters of the heart in THE GREAT GATSBY

THE GREAT GATSBY (Baz Luhrmann, 2013)
Opens Friday, May 10
www.thegreatgatsby.warnerbros.com

Baz Luhrmann’s sumptuous version of The Great Gatsby is a dazzling reimagining of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel of old and new money and the American dream. The Australian director and his wife, costume and production designer extraordinaire Catherine Martin, have turned the classic tale into a lush spectacle without losing focus on the main story of life and love during the Roaring Twenties. Leonardo DiCaprio, who played the male lead in Lurhmann’s contemporary take on Romeo + Juliet, is superb as Jay Gatsby, the mystery man previously portrayed by Warner Baxter in 1926, Alan Ladd in 1949, Robert Redford in 1974, and Toby Stephens in 2000, adding a compelling level of vulnerability to the character. Gatsby has built a magnificent palace for himself on Long Island, hosting wild parties that he doesn’t care about; all he truly wants is Daisy (Carey Mulligan), a former love who has married successful businessman Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton) and lives in a mansion right across the bay. The villainous Tom is having an affair with the lower-class Myrtle Wilson (Isla Fisher), whose unaware husband, George (Jason Clarke), runs a gas station and garage in the Valley of Ashes. Although a loner, Gatsby befriends his neighbor, Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire), a young, innocent bond trader who rents a modest home at the base of Gatsby’s enormous estate and whose cousin just happens to be Daisy. As Carraway is sucked into this glamorous, debauched society, which also includes wild and elegant golf champion Jordan Baker (Elizabeth Debicki), he is forced to reexamine his own hopes and dreams as he tries to find his place in the world.

Baz Luhrmann throws one helluva party in his reimagining of THE GREAT GATSBY

Luhrmann and cowriter Craig Pearce have framed the tale by putting Carraway, the narrator of the book and film, in a sanitarium, where a doctor (Jack Thompson) convinces him that writing down what happened with Gatsby will help him overcome his alcoholism and depression; the device, which is not part of the novel, is based on Fitzgerald’s own time spent in a sanitarium. Luhrmann and Pearce, who did extensive research for the project, also include elements from Fitzgerald’s Trimalchio, the first draft of The Great Gatsby, which will certainly anger purists. Purists are also likely to be furious at the soundtrack, which features songs by Jay Z (one of the film’s producers), his wife, Beyoncé, André 3000, will.i.am, Lana Del Rey, Gotye, and the xx alongside Jazz Age re-creations by the Bryan Ferry Orchestra of Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love” and Roxy Music’s “Love Is the Drug.” But this is not your high school English teacher’s Gatsby; instead, it’s F. Scott Fitzgerald for the twenty-first century, not meant to be seen through the billboard spectacles of oculist Dr. T. J. Eckleburg but through 3-D glasses that invite viewers into the oh-so-fashionable goings-on in eye-popping ways. “Is all this made entirely from your own imagination?” Daisy asks Gatsby at one point. In this case, it’s made from the minds of two wildly inventive men, Luhrmann and Fitzgerald, who together throw one helluva party.

Nominated for two Academy Awards: Best Costume Design (Catherine Martin), Best Production Design (Catherine Martin and Beverley Dunn)

FRIEZE NEW YORK 2013

Paul McCarthy’s giant “Balloon Dog” welcomes visitors to the 2013 Frieze New York art fair (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Randall’s Island Park
May 10-13, $42 ($75 with catalog), 11:00 am – 6:00/7:00 pm
646-346-2845
friezenewyork.com
frieze new york 2013 slideshow

The Frieze Art Fair returns to Randall’s Island for its second year, after having made quite a splash in its New York debut last May. Filled with pomp and circumstance, the fair is set in and around a long, winding tent designed by the SO-IL firm, housing displays by more than 180 international galleries, featuring works by an all-star lineup of artists that includes Ai Weiwei, Andreas Gursky, Brice Marden, Carl Andre, Carsten Höller, Catherine Opie, Chris Ofili, Dan Graham, Dan Perjovschi, Danh Vo, Do Ho Suh, Dorothea Tanning, Douglas Gordon, Ernesto Neto — and that’s just the first part of the alphabet (going by first name, per the Frieze website). Outside, the sculpture park boasts pieces by Tom Burr, Saint Clair Cemin, Tom Friedman, Paul McCarthy, Nick Van Woert, Franz West, and others, several created specifically for Frieze. There will be special projects by Liz Glynn, Maria Loboda, Mateo Tannatt, Marianne Vitale, and Andra Ursuta; Glynn has created a secret bar that serves cocktails and magic, while Ursuta’s “Would It Were Closing Time, and All Well” reimagines the fair as a village, complete with cemetery. Haroon Mirza, Trisha Baga, and Charles Atlas and New Humans will provide audio-based installations. Among the discussions are “Suzanne Lacy in Conversation with Nato Thompson” dealing with public art and activism, “Readings: Art in Literature” with Katie Kitamura, Rachel Kushner, and Ben Marcus, who wrote a specially commissioned story for Frieze, and talks with Lydia Davis, John Maus, Joan Jonas, and Douglas Crimp. Admission is a whopping $42, which is difficult to justify, especially for the casual art fan, who might be better served by checking out some of the other art fairs this weekend — NADA, Parallax, Pulse, cutlog, and Collective .1 are all up and running, with tickets ranging from free to $25. In addition, to get to Randall’s Island, visitors have to book a ferry ($12.50 round trip) or bus ($5.50) in advance or take a car service, taxi, or drive themselves (parking is $20 – $40), so attendance is quite a commitment. Is it all worth it? That’s the $42 question.

Martha Friedman lets her art speak for itself in “Amygdalas” installation in Frieze Sculpture Park (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Update: The second edition of Frieze turns out to be a rather pleasurable experience, with strong work, a well-laid-out space, and lots of food and drink (from Roberta’s, Mission Chinese, Saint Ambroeus, the Fat Radish, Frankies Spuntino, and others). Here are our highlights: Seung-taek Lee’s rock and frame pieces at Gallery Hyundai, Ryan McGinley’s nude photographs at Team, Adrian Lohmüller’s “The Ivory Girl” at Sommer & Kohl, Anish Kapoor’s pair of mind-bending optic charmers at Lisson, Daniel Arsham’s glass and resin life-size figures at Galerie Perrotin, Doug Aitken’s sonic table at 303, Daniel Firman’s “Linda” hiding near KAWS’s “NTY” painting, Tom Burr’s “Blue Smoke and Blue Mirrors,” Martha Friedman’s tonguelike “Amygdalas” in the Sculpture Park, Paul McCarthy’s giant red “Balloon Dog” at the entrance, Tom Friedman’s lip-smacking pizza, Twinkie, Ding Dong, and Sno Ball at Luhring Augustine, and Mateo Tannatt’s “The Smile Goes Round,” consisting of seven different-colored resting benches that feature live performances and written text that examines the differences between the sexes.