Frank Stella, “The Whiteness of the Whale (IRS-1, 2X),” paint on aluminum, 1987 (© 2015 Frank Stella/Artists Rights Society; photograph by Steven Sloman)
Whitney Museum of American Art
Neil Bluhm Family Galleries, fifth floor
99 Gansevoort St.
Friday, November 13, 11:00 am – 10:00 pm
Saturday, November 14, 11:00 am – finish
Free with museum admission of $18-$22
212-570-3600
whitney.org
Last November’s second biennial Moby-Dick Marathon took place over the course of three days at the Ace Hotel, the South Street Seaport Museum, and the Housing Works Bookstore Cafe. This year a bonus marathon is being held November 13-14 on the fifth floor of the new Whitney, where more than 150 artists, writers, curators, editors, and others will celebrate the 164th anniversary of Herman Melville’s thousand-page 1851 epic with a two-day marathon reading in conjunction with Frank Stella’s Moby-Dick series, part of a major retrospective of the work of the Massachusetts-born, New York-based artist that continues through February 7. Stella created the works for a special 150th anniversary publication of Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, containing reproductions of sculptures, reliefs, prints, and a mural inspired by the tale of Captain Ahab’s desperate hunt for the title mammal. Among the myriad scheduled readers of the massive tome are Ben Greenman, Brian Floca, Trisha Baga, Alan Light, Morgan Parker, AK Burns, Lucky DeBellevue, Monica de la Torre, Salman Rushdie, Melissa Febos, Paul Rome, Rebecca Dinerstein, Kurt Andersen, Ben Fama, Angela Flournoy, and Rowan Ricardo-Phillips, with more to be announced.
When old man Fletcher (Danny Glover) takes off for a week, leaving Mike (Mos Def) in charge of his soon-to-be-demolished video store called Be Kind Rewind (they don’t have any DVDs or recent movies), his most important rule is to “Keep Jerry Out.” Jerry (Jack Black) is a crazy conspiracy theorist who covers himself in metal to ward off alien rays. After a botched attack on the local power plant, Jerry becomes a walking magnet (in a laugh-out-loud hysterical scene) and unknowingly erases all the videos in the store. Taking a page from the Little Rascals plots when Spanky and Alfalfa would suddenly put on a show for some local cause, Mike and Jerry recruit Alma (Melonie Diaz) as they proceed on their very strange attempts at Sweding — making their own versions of such films as Ghostbusters, Rush Hour 2, and Robocop and renting them out as if they were the real thing. Following the brilliant Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the extremely strange The Science of Sleep, writer-director Michel Gondry has fashioned a really stupid movie that has an overabundance of heart and charm. Glover and Mos Def are soft and gentle in this Capra-esque comedy, offsetting Black’s hyperactivity. Every time you’re ready to write the film off as being just too silly and ridiculous, something comes along to make you double over in laughter. Be Kind Rewind kicks off the Museum of the Moving Image series “Walkers: Hollywood Afterlives in Art and Artifact,” being held in conjunction with the