twi-ny recommended events

WAVERLY MIDNIGHTS: EL TOPO

Alejandro Jodorowsky takes viewers on quite an acid trip in surreal Western EL TOPO

LATE-NIGHT FAVORITES: EL TOPO (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1970)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
February 15-17, $13.50, 12:15 am
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com

Chilean-born Mexican filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo is a psychedelic head trip, an acid Western that will blow your mind. Jodorowsky stars as the title character, a gunslinger traveling through a deserted landscape accompanied by his naked young son, who already knows his way around a firearm. After coming upon a town that has been decimated by a nasty group of marauders working for the Colonel, El Topo seeks violent revenge, eventually taking off with a woman and leaving his boy behind as he meets four masters on his path to proving he is the best there is. But soon El Topo is praying for redemption with a community of inbred cripples trapped in a cave. El Topo is a wild and bizarre journey through religious imagery, romance, and vengeance, a surreal spaghetti Western strained through the mad mind of Jodorowsky, widely hailed as the creator of the midnight movie. The film melds Bergman with Leone, Tod Browning’s Freaks with Hiroshi Inagaki’s Samurai Trilogy, filtered through Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima’s Lone Wolf and Cub. It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before and, despite your better instincts, will lure you into the cult of Jodorowsky. El Topo is screening Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night at 12:15 am in a high-definition digital restoration as part of the IFC Center series “Waverly Midnights: Late-Night Favorites,” which continues March 1-2 with James Cameron’s Aliens, March 8-9 with a new 4K digital restoration of Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, and March 15-16 with a 35mm print of Jodorowsky’s radical 1973 flick The Holy Mountain.

OSCAR BUZZ: DETROPIA

Performance artists find their muse in downtrodden Detroit in Oscar-nominated documentary

DETROPIA (Rachel Grady & Heidi Ewing, 2012)
Maysles Cinema
343 Malcolm X Blvd. between 127th & 128th Sts.
Friday, February 15, and Saturday, February 16, $10, 7:30
212-582-6050
www.mayslesinstitute.org
www.detropiathefilm.com

In his 1994 autobiography, Hard Stuff, former Detroit mayor Coleman Young wrote, “In the evolutionary urban order, Detroit today has always been your town tomorrow.” That’s precisely the warning that permeates Detropia, the latest documentary by director-producers Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing, who have previously teamed up on such films as The Boys of Baraka, the Oscar-nominated Jesus Camp, and the Peabody-winning 12th & Delaware. Detroit native Ewing and former private investigator Grady examine the current sad state of the once-proud city, which has seen its population plummet, unemployment skyrocket, and its infrastructure being torn away piece by piece. At one point, Mayor Dave Bing, an NBA Hall of Famer who played for the Pistons, talks about downsizing the city as a whole — but not wanting to use that exact word when revealing the plan to the people. Grady and Ewing, along with cinematographers Tony Hardmon and Craig Atkinson (who also served as a producer), follow around such fascinating characters as UAW local 22 president George McGregor, who speaks with union members and retirees and describes in detail the loss of jobs and plants; Crystal Starr, a young video blogger giving her take on the city’s myriad problems; and Tommy Stevens, a former schoolteacher who now runs the popular Raven Lounge and wonders, at an auto show, how Detroit can possibly keep up with China, especially regarding the electric car known as the Volt. In one particularly poignant scene, a group of men tear down an old Cadillac repair shop, saving the metal to resell and burning the rest to keep warm. The film regularly cuts back to performances at the Detroit Opera House, which is struggling to stay alive, desperate to bring culture to what is quickly becoming a ghost town visited by tourists interested in gawking at the immense decay. Even a performance of Gilbert & Sullivan’s Mikado slyly references the fall of the automobile industry. The soundtrack mixes hip-hop from the Detroit-based Blair French, better known as Dial.81, along with old-time R&B and songs from experimental band Victoire, providing unique sounds to the extraordinary visuals. It’s hard not to watch the film and see Detroit as a microcosm for America, which is trying to pull itself out of a deep, dark recession that won’t seem to go away. Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, Detropia is screening February 15 & 16 as part of the Maysles Institute series “Oscar Buzz,” with the Saturday show followed by a Q&A with Grady and Ewing; the series culminates with a free Oscar viewing party on February 24 that includes unlimited organic popcorn.

WEEKEND CLASSICS — JOHN FORD: THE SEARCHERS

In iconic Western, Jeffrey Hunter and Ethan Edwards search for Natalie Wood, with very different motives

THE SEARCHERS (John Ford, 1956)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
February 15-18, $13.50, 11:00 am
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com

That’ll be the day when someone tries to claim there’s a better Western than John Ford’s ethnocentric look at the dying of the Old West and the birth of the modern era. Essentially about a gunfighter’s attempt to find and kill his young niece, who has been kidnapped and, ostensibly, ruined by Indians, The Searchers is laden with iconic imagery, inside messages, and not-so-subtle metaphors. Hence, it is no accident that John Wayne’s son, Patrick, plays an ambitious yet inept officer named Greenhill. The elder Wayne stars as Ethan Edwards, a tough-as-nails Confederate veteran seeking revenge for the murder of his brother’s family; he’s also out to save Debbie (Natalie Wood) from the Comanches, led by a chief known as Scar (Henry Brandon), by ending her life, because in his world view, it’s better to be dead than red. Joining him on his trek is Debbie’s adopted brother, Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter), who wants to save her from Edwards. The magnificent film balances its serious center with a large dose of humor, particularly in the relationships between Ethan and Martin and Ethan with his Indian companion, Look (Beulah Archuletta). And keep your eye on that blanket in front of the house. The Searchers is screening in a DCP projection February 15-18 at 11:00 as part of the IFC Center series “Weekend Classics: John Ford,” which continues with such other Ford fare as Young Mr. Lincoln, The Whole Town’s Talking, and The Last Hurrah.

LOVE

Robert Indiana’s “Love” sculpture continues to attract attention on Sixth Ave. in Midtown (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

LOVE by Robert Indiana
Southeast corner of 55th St. & Sixth Ave.
www.robertindiana.com

Pop artist and Warhol protege Robert Indiana, who was born Robert Clark but changed his last name to the state where he was born, has work in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery in Washington, DC, the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, the Whitney, and other prestigious locales, but the self-described “American painter of signs” is most famous for a single four-letter word. His iconic Midtown depiction of the word “Love,” which rests on two levels, in red letters with a tilted “O,” continues to attract tourist photos and people looking for a place to sit on their lunch hour. Dating from 1966, the statue, which has a smaller sibling in Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, evokes a “so-what” attitude from many native New Yorkers, but it’s hard to pass by and not be enamored with the bold splash of color it brings to an otherwise gray corner. The big red letters with blue interiors brashly proclaim a word so many people are afraid to say, except perhaps at this time of year, when Valentine’s Day brings out the romantic in us all, for completely artificial reasons.

BOOK LAUNCH: LOUISE LAWLER

Louise Lawler, “Still Life (Candle),” digital cibachrome on aluminum museum box, 2003

Metro Pictures
519 West 24th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Thursday, February 14, free, 6:00 – 7:30
212-206-7100
www.metropicturesgallery.com

For more than forty years, Pictures Generation artist Louise Lawler has been appropriating works through installation and photography, recontextualizing art and the art market in shots of paintings taken in auction house, in collectors’ homes, and before shows are hung, taking them out of their element, where they are usually seen on walls in galleries and museums. Now sixty-five, the New York-born conceptualist will be at Metro Pictures on Valentine’s Day, where she has shown since 1982, to celebrate the release of Louise Lawler: October Files (MIT Press, February 8, $35) as well as last year’s Louise Lawler and/or Gerhard Richter (Schirmer/Mosel, June 2012, $59.95). She will be joined by Helen Molesworth, editor of the former tome, and Tim Griffin, who contributed an essay for the latter. While at Metro Pictures, be sure to go upstairs to see some early works by Lawler, in addition to the main-floor exhibition featuring Trevor Paglen, which continues through March 9.

OSCAR BUZZ: HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE

HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE provides a fascinating inside look at AIDS activists fighting the power

HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE (David France, 2012)
Maysles Cinema
343 Malcolm X Blvd. between 127th & 128th Sts.
Thursday, February 14, $10, 7:30
212-582-6050
www.mayslesinstitute.org
www.surviveaplague.com

Contemporary activists stand to learn a lot from the gripping documentary How to Survive a Plague. For his directorial debut, longtime journalist David France, one of the first reporters to cover the AIDS crisis that began in the early 1980s, scoured through more than seven hundred hours of mostly never-before-seen archival footage and home movies of protests, meetings, public actions, and other elements of the concerted effort to get politicians and the pharmaceutical industry to recognize the growing health epidemic and do something as the death toll quickly rose into the millions. Focusing on radical groups ACT UP and TAG (Treatment Action Group), France follows such activist leaders as Peter Staley, Mark Harrington, Larry Kramer, Bob Rafsky, and Dr. Iris Long as they attack the policies of President George H. W. Bush, famously heckle presidential candidate Bill Clinton, and battle to get drug companies to create affordable, effective AIDS medicine, all while continuing to bury loved ones in both public and private ceremonies. France includes new interviews with many key activists who reveal surprising details about the movement, providing a sort of fight-the-power primer about how to get things done. The film also shines a light on lesser-known heroes, several filled with anger and rage, others much calmer, who fought through tremendous adversity to make a difference and ultimately save millions of lives. Nominated for Best Documentary Feature, How to Survive a Plague is screening February 14 at the Maysles Institute as part of the “Oscar Buzz” series, which continues February 15-16 with the Oscar-nominated Detropia, with the Saturday show followed by a Q&A with codirectors Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing, and culminates with a free Oscar viewing party on February 24 that includes unlimited refills of organic popcorn.

VALENTINE’S DAY DINNER & A MOVIE: ROMAN HOLIDAY

Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck go for a romantic spin through Rome in William Wyler classic

Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck go for a spin in William Wyler classic ROMAN HOLIDAY

ROMAN HOLIDAY (William Wyler, 1953)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Thursday, February 14, 6:15 & 8:45
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

Audrey Hepburn won an Oscar for her delightful performance in William Wyler’s romantic charmer about a foreign princess who gets to spend a day of anonymity in the city of Rome with a good-looking American newsman (Gregory Peck) who knows at least some of her secrets. The film was nominated for a total of seven Oscars, also capturing the prize for Dalton Trumbo’s script and Edith Head’s costume design. Roman Holiday is screening at 6:15 and 8:45 on Valentine’s Day at BAM, with an optional $67 prix-fixe menu that includes a glass of champagne, an amuse bouche of green-pea flan with poached shrimp, a choice of baby arugula salad, lobster bisque, or spaetzle with Brussels sprout leaves and duck confit for appetizers, and an entrée choice of red-wine braised short ribs, spice-crusted salmon, roasted French-cut chicken breast gnocchi, or crispy wild mushroom risotto cake, followed by a shared lovers dessert of warm chocolate cake with fresh raspberries and vanilla ice cream.