this week in film and television

WHY MAN CREATES — THE WORK OF SAUL BASS

Saul Bass (middle) on the set of his Oscar-winning short Why Man Creates

Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Wednesday, August 2, 7:00, and Monday, August 7, 8:45
212-660-0312
metrograph.com

Bronx-born graphic designer Saul Bass had a long and fruitful career designing titles and posters for movies, from 1954’s Carmen to 1995’s Casino, including such all-time greats as Vertigo, The Man with the Golden Arm, Anatomy of a Murder, and Spartacus. He is also responsible for logos for the Girl Scouts, the United Way, Bell Telephone, Geffen Records, AT&T, ALCOA, and many more. But Bass, who passed away in 1996 at the age of seventy-five, was also an Oscar-winning film director, and his legacy is being celebrated on August 2 and 7 at Metrograph with the special program “Why Man Creates — the Work of Saul Bass.” The evening, which will be introduced by visual artist and director Chris Rubino and writer Mayo Simon, is named for Bass’s hugely entertaining 1968 short, Why Man Creates, which won the Academy Award for Best Short Documentary Subject. The twenty-five-minute film traces the history of artistic, scientific, and technological innovation, divided into “The Edifice,” “Fooling Around,” “The Process,” “The Judgment,” “The Search,” and “The Mark” as well as “A Parable” and “A Digression,” using playful animation, an unpredictable score, man-on-the-street interviews, and more, taking on such important issues as hunger, the Big Bang theory, and death, all with a wickedly wry sense of humor. Also on the bill are Bass’s 1980 Oscar-nominated The Solar Film, an early look at solar energy, with Michael Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells” lending it all an Exorcist-like feel; Saul Bass: In His Own Words; a trailer reel; a commercial reel; title sequences; and a special guest. Be sure not to get there late; as Bass, who partnered with his wife, Elaine, on much of his work, noted in a 1977 interview, looking back at the start of his title-designing career, “I had felt for some time that the audience involvement with a film should really begin with the very first frame.” The Bass program, which also includes a week-long revival (August 4-10) of his only full-length feature film, 1974’s Phase IV, is part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ new year-long residency at Metrograph, which began last week with George Stevens’s A Place in the Sun.

ATOMIC BLONDE

Charlize Theron is a force to be reckoned with as title character in Atomic Blonde

ATOMIC BLONDE (David Leitch, 2017)
Opens Friday, July 28
www.atomicblonde.com

Charlize Theron is nothing less than awesome in the action spy thriller Atomic Blonde, but that should come as no surprise; she was also awesome as a secret agent in 2005’s Æon Flux and as a one-armed, one-woman wrecking crew in 2015’s feminist Mad Max: Fury Road. But she’s not quite awesome enough to save this overloaded, overstylized mess, the solo directorial debut of former stuntman David Leitch, who previously made John Wick with Chad Stahelski. It’s November 1989, and the Berlin Wall is about to come down. But before that happens, secret agent Lorraine Broughton (Theron) is dispatched by her boss at MI6, Eric Gray (Toby Jones), to Berlin to locate a stolen list of spies with severely damaging ramifications should it get into the wrong hands. In Germany, Broughton teams up with maverick station chief David Percival (James McAvoy), a pro who refuses to play by the rules. She also must help protect Stasi defector Spyglass (Eddie Marsan), who originally obtained the list, while seeking to exact revenge on German operative Merkel (Bill Skarsgård), who killed her friend and colleague James Gasciogne (Sam Hargrave). Among those looking to buy the information is arms dealer Aleksander Bremovych (Roland Møller), who doesn’t care how many dead bodies he leaves in his path. Also entering the fray is French spy Delphine Lasalle (Sofia Boutella), who quickly takes a rather personal liking to Broughton. Most of the film is told through flashbacks as Broughton is being interrogated by Gray and CIA agent Emmett Kurzfeld (John Goodman), who not only want the list but need to uncover who the elusive traitor “Satchel” is. If the plot sounds both clichéd and convoluted, that’s because it is.

Charlize Theron goes from blonde to brunette and back again in Cold War spy thriller

Atomic Blonde is based on the 2012 graphic novel The Coldest City by Antony Johnston and Sam Hart, and Leitch is unable to take the story to the next level. Instead, it looks and feels like a series of comic-book panels turned into music videos filled with ultraviolence, set to a throwback score of such 1980s hits as “99 Luftballoons,” “Voices Carry,” “Under Pressure,” “Blue Monday,” “Der Kommissar,” and “I Ran (So Far Away),” performed by the original artists or in new cover versions in a specific effort to bring in a younger audience. Individually the fight scenes and chases are extremely well made, but they bring the ridiculous plot to a halt each time, becoming merely opportunities to display spectacular fight choreography and sound editing. Theron trained extensively for the role, working with Keanu Reeves, who was preparing to film John Wick: Chapter 2 with Strahelski, and she’s a powerful force, dispatching villains like Uma Thurman did as Black Mamba in Kill Bill,.When Theron rises naked from a tub of ice, it’s as if Broughton is from another galaxy. But she’s not; instead, she’s the main character in an overblown Cold War spy thriller that favors style over substance, technological flashiness over at least some semblance of narrative. Atomic Blonde could have been a great music video or short film, but at nearly two hours, it’s just a waste of time and talent.

THE LAST DALAI LAMA?

Documentary celebrates the eightieth birthday of the Dalai Lama while looking at the future of the lineage

THE LAST DALAI LAMA? (Mickey Lemle, 2016)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Friday, July 28
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.thelastdalailamafilm.com

“So long space remains, so long sentient beings remain, so long suffering remains, I will remain. In order to serve. That is the real purpose of our life,” His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama says at the beginning of Mickey Lemle’s documentary, The Last Dalai Lama. For nearly 450 years, the spiritual leader of Tibet has been known as the Dalai Lama, reincarnated to continue the lineage and guide the Tibetan people through his wisdom and compassion. But China, in its ongoing suppression of Tibet, has now decided it will choose the next Dalai Lama, so His Holiness, born Tenzin Gyatso in 1935, has vowed that if necessary, he will reincarnate as someone other than a Dalai Lama, bringing an end to the chain. Lemle introduced the world to the 14th Dalai Lama in 1993 with the release of Compassion in Exile: The Story of the 14th Dalai Lama; the new film, which Lemle wrote, produced, directed, and coedited, was made in conjunction with His Holiness’s eightieth birthday, which was celebrated with a Long Life Ceremony at the Javits Center in New York City (that we attended). The film reveals the Dalai Lama, a Buddhist meditation practitioner who escaped Tibet in 1959 and set up a new home in Dharamsala, India, to be both a mensch and a superstar, a man of deep, philosophical wisdom and great compassion for all sentient beings, as well as a very funny man with an infectious laugh. Lemle (The Other Side of the Moon, Ram Dass Fierce Grace) investigates the history of Tibetan relations with China while exploring the biography of the Dalai Lama, including interviews he made with him in the early 1990s.

Lemle speaks with Richen Khando Choegyal of the Tibetan Nuns Project about the self-immolation of young monks as a protest to Chinese policies, visits two classrooms in New York, and meets with HH’s younger brother, Tendzin Choegyal; HH’s personal physician, Tenzin Choedrak; chant master and longtime political prisoner Thupten Chokdhen; Dr. Daniel Goleman, author of A Force for Good: The Dalai Lama’s Vision for Our World; the Very Reverend James Parks Morton and the Very Reverend James A. Kowalski of the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, where Philip Glass, who composed the film’s score with Tenzin Choegyal, plays the pipe organ; Ling Rinpoche, the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama’s childhood teacher; Buddhist monk Dr. Mathieu Ricard, author of The Monk and the Philosopher: Buddhism Today; and HH’s translator, Dr. Thupten Jinpa. George W. Bush, who was the first U.S. president to make a public appearance with the Dalai Lama, awarding him the Congressional Gold Medal in 2007, shows off his portrait of HH. There’s also an intriguing section, with colorful animation, about the Dalai Lama’s interest in cutting-edge brain science, as he’s funding a project in which Dr. Eve Ekman and her father are creating an “atlas of emotions,” mapping enjoyment, ecstasy, fear, sadness, anguish, disgust, anxiety, and many others. Despite the problems with China, which are only getting worse, the Dalai Lama even has compassion for his enemies. He also discusses how this is not just about Buddhism. “We are working for seven billion human beings,” he tells Dr. Ekman. “That’s my view.” Meanwhile, the Very Reverend Kowalski asks, “Can human beings be this special?” According to His Holiness, every one of us has the potential to reach selfless levels of compassion, empathy, and peace of mind. The film can be scattershot and bumpy, jumping around too much, but the message is clear: Together we can change the world, but we must change ourselves first. The Last Dalai Lama? opens July 28 at IFC, with Lemle participating in Q&As following the 7:25 screenings on Friday and Saturday.

BLOW-UP

Thomas (David Hemmings) focuses on Veruschka in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up

BLOW-UP (BLOWUP) (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
July 28 – August 3
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

Italian auteur Michelangelo Antonioni calls into question everything we see and hear, in photographs, on film, and in real life, in his 1966 counterculture masterpiece, Blow-Up, which is being shown July 28 to August 3 in a new DCP restoration at Film Forum. Antonioni’s first English-language film — part of a three-picture deal with producer Carlo Ponti that would also include the disappointing Zabriskie Point and the quirky existential suspense thriller The Passenger — lets viewers know from the very start that their eyes and ears are going to be tested as the letters of the opening credits frame indecipherable action, frustrating the viewer’s desire to understand what is going on. David Hemmings stars as Thomas, a successful fashion photographer in 1960s Swinging London who is tired of the phoniness and artifice inherent in his profession and instead has ambitions to become a black-and-white documentary photographer, as he and his agent, Ron (Peter Bowles), put together a book focusing on the many ills of society. Of course, he does so while riding around in a Rolls-Royce convertible and in between shooting such models as Veruschka (von Lehndorff), whom he practically makes love to during their session but doesn’t give a hoot about once he puts down the camera. He also gets fed up easily with a quartet of fabulously dressed models (the makeup and clothes come courtesy of costume designer Jocelyn Rickards), telling them to shut their eyes as he leaves, controlling what they see and don’t see, much like a film director. Thomas eventually heads out to lush, green Maryon Park, where he takes pictures of two people, a younger woman (Vanessa Redgrave) cavorting with an older man (Ronan O’Casey), apparently in the midst of a secret tryst. The woman, Jane, rushes over to Thomas and demands he give her the film; he invites her to his studio, where she is willing to do just about anything to get back the negatives. Wondering what was so incriminating about the photographs, Thomas soon makes blow-up after blow-up, examining them closely and ultimately believing that he has captured a murder on film. He also finds out that getting to the truth isn’t going to be easy, especially when he keeps allowing himself to become distracted by his wild lifestyle.

Jane (Vanessa Redgrave) is worried about photos Thomas (David Hemmings) took in Blow-Up

Blow-Up, which was parodied in Mel Brooks’s High Anxiety, reimagined by Brian De Palma as Blow Out, and a direct influence on Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation, was inspired by Julio Cortázar’s short story about a translator, “Las babas del diablo” (“The Devil’s Drool”), and written by Antonioni and regular collaborator Tonino Guerra (L’avventura, L’eclisse, The Red Desert), with English-language dialogue by poet and playwright Edward Bond. Antonioni dances all over the line between fiction and reality: Thomas’s studio belongs to photographer Jon Cowan; many of Thomas’s pictures were taken by photojournalist Don McCullin; Thomas himself is based on London photographer David Bailey; the abstract paintings by Thomas’s neighbor, Bill (John Castle), are by Ian Stephenson; the band in the club scene is the Yardbirds; and the tennis-playing mimes are husband and wife real mimes Claude and Julian Chagrin. Herbie Hancock’s groovy score is primarily heard when Thomas turns on a radio or puts on a record, ambient sound instead of soundtrack music coming from nowhere. Meanwhile, Antonioni challenges the viewer again and again to think twice about what they see and hear. At one point Antonioni follows Thomas’s gaze up into the trees, but when the camera returns to Thomas, he is looking elsewhere. While Thomas is studying the photos he took in the park, trying to uncover what happened as if editing a film, the wind from the park can impossibly be heard. Thomas is often peering through blinds, not sure of what he is seeing. A pair of wannabe models (Jane Birkin and Gillian Hills) tear apart Thomas’s fake photographic background as if breaking the boundaries between the real and the fabricated. When Thomas shows one of the park photographs to Bill’s girlfriend, Patricia (Sarah Miles), she says, “It looks like one of Bill’s paintings.”

And when Yardbirds guitarist Jeff Beck gets frustrated with one of the speakers behind him, he destroys his guitar as bandmates Jimmy Page and singer Keith Relf continue playing “Stroll On” as if nothing is happening. Meanwhile, the crowd stands still like a bunch of zombies, refusing to stroll on or move at all, until Beck throws the broken neck of his guitar, now an object that can no longer emit sounds, into the audience, where it’s up to others to determine its value. The stagnation also relates to a huge propeller Thomas buys from an antiques store, as if he’s desperate to propel his life forward. Does Antonioni really get that literal? It’s hard to tell, but nearly every shot is ripe for interpretation, every directorial decision a careful choice imbued with meaning. When Thomas drives through an antiwar march, two protesters put a sign saying “Go away!” in his backseat, where the propeller will be put later. Blow-Up concludes with one of the most creative finales in the history of cinema. The troupe of mimes seen earlier returns, playing tennis in the park, but without a ball. Just follow the gazes of the mimes and Thomas, and listen closely as well, then watch what he does with his camera. It ingeniously encapsulates everything that has come before, but without a single word being spoken. It’s an absolutely bravura ending to an absolutely bravura film.

FILMS ON THE GREEN: ELENA AND HER MEN

Count Henri de Chevincourt (Mel Ferrer) seeks a better view with Princess Elena Sokorowska (Ingrid Bergman) in Jean Renoir farce

ELENA AND HER MEN (PARIS DOES STRANGE THINGS) (ELENA ET LES HOMMES) (Jean Renoir, 1956)
Riverside Park, Pier 1
500 West 70th St.
Friday, July 28, free, 8:30
Series concludes September 7
frenchculture.org
www.nycgovparks.org

The tenth anniversary of the Films on the Green series, in which such artists as Wes Anderson, Wanda Sykes, Jim Jarmusch, Laurie Anderson, and Saul Williams selected French films to be shown for free in parks around the city, continues July 28 with Isabella Rossellini’s pick, Jean Renoir’s intriguing, lesser-known 1956 “musical fantasy,” Elena and Her Men, starring her mother, Ingrid Bergman. In this small gem of a film, also known as Paris Does Strange Things, Bergman plays Elena Sokorowska, a splendiferous Polish princess living the high life in fin de siècle Paris, quickly running out of money and strongly advised by her aunt to find a rich husband. After dispatching one lover, composer Lionel Villaret (Jean Claudio), the princess has a trio of suitors: the much older Martin-Michaud (Pierre Bertin), a stuffy, aristocratic shoe mogul; the heroic General François Rollan (Jean Marais, playing a character based on the real-life General Georges Boulanger), who is being celebrated on Bastille Day; and the playboy Count Henri de Chevincourt (Mel Ferrer), who instantly falls madly in love with her — and wishes to take her home the very day he meets her. It’s 1915, and the streets are filled with French men, women, and children singing the praises of General Rollan while wondering what will come next for the government, with talk of a coup and a dictatorship making the rounds. In the middle of it all is Princess Sokorowska, whose lavish charm beguiles nearly everyone she meets, except, of course, the general’s mistress, Paulette Escoffier (Elina Labourdette). As the men fight over her, the princess hands out daisies to bring various people good luck.

The people in Paris party in the streets in Jean Renoir farce about love, war, politics, and sex

Elena and Her Men was Bergman’s first film after leaving Roberto Rossellini (Isabella’s father), and French was the fourth language she’d spoken onscreen, following Swedish, English, and Italian. Renoir and cinematographer Claude Renoir, Jean’s nephew, bathe Bergman in an effervescent glow, as if she is an angel making her way through her would-be lovers and the always-crowded Paris. The film is not a musical in the traditional sense; no one suddenly bursts out into song to further the plot or flesh out characters. Instead, all of the singing is natural, from the princess playing piano to people singing in the streets to a visit to the opera. The color is sensational, with bright and cheerful rainbow hues popping up everywhere; the spectacular costumes — and oh, those amazing hats on Bergman — are by Rosine Delamare and Monique Plotin. This is Renoir, so there is plenty of social and political commentary as well, with a healthy dose of dark comedy and cynicism, evoking the auteur’s masterpiece, The Rules of the Game, but it’s primarily a wild farce that has fun playing with the image of Frenchmen as suave and sophisticated, especially when Eugène (Jacques Jouanneau), a goofball who’s engaged to Martin-Michaud’s daughter, Denise (Michèle Nadal), repeatedly chases after Elena’s alluring maid, Lolotte (Magali Noël), like he’s Harpo Marx. More than love and war, the film is about sex and power, as the men want it, and the women decide who is going to get it. It’s also about having faith in humanity, which is what drives the princess. “This is ridiculous! I’m ending this farce,” Henri says at one point; thank goodness Renoir keeps it going, full speed ahead, even if it often gets too silly. Elena and Her Men is the third in an unofficial trilogy, following 1953’s The Golden Coach and 1955’s French Cancan, that Criterion has packaged as “Stage & Spectacle,” as it’s also about art and the theatricality of film, which is by its very nature a fantasy, not reality. Elena and Her Men is screening with Georges Méliès’s 1902 classic, The Trip to the Moon, July 28 at 8:30 at Pier I in Riverside Park; the celebration of a decade of Films on the Green skips August, concluding September 7 with François Truffaut’s The Wild Child, selected by James Ivory.

JAPAN CUTS: ANTI-PORNO

Ami Tomite stars in Sion Sono’s bizarre, beguiling, anarchistic Anti-Porno

FESTIVAL OF NEW JAPANESE FILM: ANTI-PORNO (ANCHI PORUNO) (アンチポルノ) (Sion Sono, 2016)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Sunday, July 16, 8:45
Festival runs July 13-23
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org
www.nikkatsu-romanporno.com

“I’m a virgin. A virgin, but a whore,” successful novelist, painter, and fashion designer Kyoko (Ami Tomite) says at the beginning of Sion Sono’s bizarre, deliciously candy-colored and anarchic Anti-Porno, making its East Coast premiere July 22 at 10:30 in Japan Society’s Japan Cuts: Festival of New Japanese Cinema. You never know what to expect from Siono, whose previous films include the wild and wacky Love & Peace, the wild and crazy Why Don’t You Play in Hell? and the strangely beautiful and touching Himizu. Anti-Porno is part of Nikkatsu’s Roman Porno Reboot Project, a celebration of the forty-fifth anniversary of the studio’s Japanese softcore films, which began in 1971 with Shōgorō Nishimura’s Apartment Wife: Affair in the Afternoon and continued through 1988 with Daisuke Gotō’s Bed Partner. In true Sono style, he honors the format by confusing fiction with reality, star characters with minor newbies, and the past with the present in ways that are as exhilarating as they are confounding. The story takes place primarily in a spectacular apartment decked out in bright yellows, blues, and reds, with large-scale paintings and a lushly alluring open bathroom. Kyoko is a self-obsessed terror who abuses her dedicated assistant, Noriko (Mariko Tsutsui) — or is it the other way around? “I want to be a whore like you,” Noriko begs. There’s fetishism galore, plenty of nudity, a lizard trapped in a bottle, incest, an audience of girls in Sailor Moon outfits, sycophantic hangers-on, a mysterious sex film, and then a man yells, “Cut!” Soon you’re not sure who’s in charge, who’s the lead, and whether you’re watching a movie, a movie-within-a-movie, or a novel-within-a-movie-within-a-movie. “This isn’t my life!” Kyoko screams. Or is it? Sono, who also wrote the script, uses the porn format to question ideas of sexuality, misogyny, freedom, abuse, feminism, exploitation, dominance, art, power, and pornography itself, resulting in a rousing, er, climax. The gorgeous production design is by Takashi Matsuzuka, with striking cinematography by Maki Ito, raunchy costumes by Kazuhiro Sawataishi, and an inventive, wide-ranging score by Susumu Akizuki. Because of the film’s graphic nature, no one under eighteen will be admitted to the Japan Society screening, which will be preceded by Sawako Kabuki’s hysterical three-minute X-rated animated vomitfest Summer’s Puke Is Winter’s Delight.

THE PULITZER AT 100

Junot Diaz talks about winning the Pulitzer in documentary about the coveted prize

THE PULITZER AT 100 (Kirk Simon, 2016)
Lincoln Plaza Cinema
1886 Broadway at 63rd St.
Opens Friday, July 21
212-757-2280
www.thepulitzerat100.com
www.lincolnplazacinema.com

Oscar- and Emmy-winning director Kirk Simon’s The Pulitzer at 100 boasts a remarkable cast and some of the best lines ever written in the history of American arts and letters. It’s also a self-congratulatory bore. Simon celebrates the centennial of the Pulitzer Prize, first awarded by Columbia University in four categories in 1917, by speaking with a vast array of winners from the worlds of journalism (Carl Bernstein, Martin Baron, Thomas Friedman, Nicholas Kristof, Sheri Fink, David Remnick), fiction (Toni Morrison, Michael Chabon, Junot Díaz, Jeffrey Eugenides), drama (Tony Kushner, Paula Vogel, Ayad Akhtar), music (Wynton Marsalis, John Adams), biography (Robert A. Caro), poetry (Yusef Komunyakaa), photography (John Filo, Nick Ut), and more. He also films Martin Scorsese, Helen Mirren, Natalie Portman, Liev Schreiber, John Lithgow, and Yara Shahidi performing selections from the works of some of their favorite writers, including Philip Roth, Harper Lee, and Eugene O’Neill. Interspersed between all of the literary lathering are interesting tidbits — delivered by such historians as Cyrus Patell, Theodore L. Glasser, Roy Harris, and James McGrath Morris — from the life and times of one Joseph Pulitzer, an Austro-Hungarian merchant’s son who came to America as a mercenary to fight in the Civil War. Pulitzer eventually got involved in newspaper publishing, had yellow-journalism battles with William Randolph Hearst, and left money for Columbia to start the Graduate School of Journalism.

Simon lets the prize winners glory in their success, explaining what winning the award meant for their careers; the journalism awardees also delve into the stories they covered to win the trophy, including Kent State, Watergate, Hurricane Katrina, the Vietnam War, Tiananmen Square, and 9/11. While there are some fascinating revelations — particularly by Ut, describing how he took the famous photo of young Vietnamese girl Kim Phuc running from a napalm blast, then poured water over her back to help her (Kim also appears in the film) — most of the news stories are already overly familiar to the viewer, with not enough time to really tackle the subjects properly here. Of course, that’s not really what the film is centrally about, anyway. And it gets especially glib when several of the winners poke fun at the physical award itself, as if it’s really no big deal. Meanwhile, the performances by the stellar actors are far too serious and feel like their readings are just time fillers. Simon (Chimps: So Like Us, Strangers No More) can’t seem to decide what kind of film he’s making. It would have been more interesting learning further about Pulitzer himself rather than listening to terrific writers lavish praise on themselves, their colleagues, and their forebears. Oh, the film, which has no voice-over narration, does put to rest one important part of the Pulitzer legacy: Only one of the speakers says “Pyew-litzer,” while all the others pronounce Joseph’s last name as “Pull-itzer.” The Pulitzer at 100 opens July 21 at Lincoln Plaza, with Simon participating in Q&As at the 7:00 shows on Friday and Saturday night.