this week in film and television

FROM CORALINE TO KUBO — THE MAGIC OF LAIKA: CORALINE IN 3-D

Coraline finds a doorway to another dimension in film adapted from popular children’s book

CORALINE IN 3-D (Henry Selick, 2009)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Saturday, December 24, and Sunday, December 25, 12 noon
212-660-0312
metrograph.com
www.coraline.com

Coraline Jones (voiced by Dakota Fanning) is an adventurous eleven-year-old in search of some fun and excitement in her new creaky home in Oregon. She finds just what she thinks she was looking for when a rodent introduces her to a hidden passageway that leads to an alternate universe, where replicas of her parents (Teri Hatcher and John Hodgman) are more interested in her and give her whatever she wants. However, this button-eyed Other Mother and Other Father have other plans for her and her real family as well. Written and directed by Henry Selick, Coraline lacks the frantic, nonstop energy of his breakthrough film, Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, but it is still a fun, creepy trip down the Narnia-esque rabbit hole. Combining his trademark stop-motion animation (James and the Giant Peach) with breathtaking stereoscopic 3-D that adds remarkable depth to the images, Selick does a marvelous job bringing to life the popular children’s novel by Newbery Medal–winning author Neil Gaiman (Sandman), who wrote the book for his young daughters. (Full disclosure: In another part of our life, we work for the company that publishes Gaiman’s children’s books, including Coraline.) The supporting cast of characters includes former music-hall divas Miss Spink and Miss Forcible (the Absolutely Fabulous British comedy team of Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French), the wise Cat (Keith David), mouse circus leader Mr. Bobinsky (Ian McShane), and local boy Wybie Lovat (Robert Bailey Jr.), who was created specifically for the movie. Be sure to stick around for one last cool 3-D effect at the end of the credits. Coraline is screening on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day at 12 noon, concluding the Metrograph series “From Coraline to Kubo: The Magic of LAIKA,” consisting of four 3-D films featuring animation by LAIKA studios in Oregon.

KUROSAWA & MIFUNE: THE BAD SLEEP WELL

Nishi (Toshirô Mifune) is desperate for revenge in Akira Kurosawa’s dark Shakespearean noir, THE BAD SLEEP WELL

WEEKEND CLASSICS: THE BAD SLEEP WELL (悪い奴ほどよく眠る) (Akira Kurosawa, 1960)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
December 23-27, 11:00 am
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com

IFC Center’s eleven-film Weekend Classics series “Kurosawa & Mifune” comes to a close Christmas weekend with one of the pair’s underseen best, the Shakespearean noir, The Bad Sleep Well. The twelfth of sixteen films director Akira Kurosawa and actor Toshirô Mifune made together between 1948 and 1965, The Bad Sleep Well is a tense, gripping thriller in which Kurosawa takes on post-WWII Japanese corporate culture, incorporating elements of Hamlet into the complex narrative. The 1960 film begins with a long wedding scene in which everything is set in motion, from identifying characters (and their flaws) to developing the central storylines. Kōichi Nishi (Mifune) is marrying Yoshiko (Kyōko Kagawa), a young woman with a physical disability whose father is Iwabuchi (Masayuki Mori), the vice president of Public Corporation, a construction company immersed in financial scandal as related by one of the many cynical reporters (Kōji Mitsui) covering the party and anticipating possible arrests. Also at the affair are Iwabuchi’s cohorts in crime, Miura (Gen Shimizu), Moriyama (Takashi Shimura), Shirai (Kō Nishimura), and Wada (Kamatari Fujiwara), as well as Iwabuchi’s rogue son, Tatsuo (Tatsuya Mihashi), who threatens to kill Nishi if he does anything to hurt his sister. It soon becomes clear that Nishi in fact does have more on his mind than just marrying into the company. “Even now they sleep soundly, grins on their faces,” Nishi declares. “I won’t stand for it! I can never hate them enough!”

Akira Kurosawa on set at the abandoned munitions factory in THE BAD SLEEP WELL

Photographed in an enveloping, almost 3-D black-and-white by Yuzuru Aizawa and with a propulsive, jazzy score by Masaru Sato, The Bad Sleep Well is a deeply psychological, eerie tale that finds inspiration in the story of Hamlet, Polonius, Ophelia, Claudius, Gertrude, Laertes, and Horatio. But whereas Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood and Ran were more direct interpretations of Macbeth and King Lear, respectively, Kurosawa, who edited the film and cowrote it with Hideo Oguni, Eijirô Hisaita, Ryûzô Kikushima, and Shinobu Hashimoto, uses the Shakespeare tragedy more subtly as he investigates greed, envy, revenge, betrayal, suicide, torture, ghosts, and murder; in fact, many critical plot points, including those involving violence, occur offscreen. The locations are spectacular, especially a volcano and an abandoned, decimated munitions factory that clearly references the destruction wrought by WWII. The actors wear their hearts on their sleeves, often emoting with silent-film tropes, especially Shimura, Fujiwara, and Nishimura as Iwabuchi’s nervous, perpetually worried underlings and Mihashi as the wild, unpredictable prodigal son. Mifune is stalwart throughout, wearing pristine suits and eyeglasses that mask what is bubbling inside him, threatening to explode, while Mori is a magnificently evil villain. At 150 minutes, it’s a long film, but it’s worth every minute; it could have actually been longer, but Kurosawa, in his first film made through his own independent production company, instead chose an abrupt yet fascinating ending with all kinds of future implications. Made between the period piece The Hidden Fortress and the samurai Western Yojimbo, The Bad Sleep Well was advertised as “a film that will violently jolt the paralyzed soul of modern man back to its senses,” and it still does just that, as corporate corruption seems to never end. Oh, and it also features one of the best wedding cakes ever put on celluloid.

CHRISTMAS DAY: GENE WILDER MARATHON

Gene Wilder is centerpiece of Christmas and Hanukkah celebration at the JCC on December 25

JCC in Manhattan
334 Amsterdam Ave. at 76th St.
Sunday, December 25, 12 noon – 6:00, $7 per film, $18 for all three
646-505-4444
www.jccmanhattan.org

Six years ago, comic legend Gene Wilder was at the JCC in Manhattan, being interviewed by his wife, Karen Boyer, about his latest book, What Is This Thing Called Love? The star of stage and screen passed away on August 29 of this year, at the age of eighty-three, and the JCC is paying tribute to the man born Jerome Silberman in Milwaukee with a Christmas Day marathon featuring three of his best films. The celebration begins at 12 noon with Mel Stuart’s 1971 Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, the beloved classic based on Roald Dahl’s beloved Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Wilder plays candy baron Willy Wonka, who has decided to retire and give his company to a child who passes all the necessary tests during a fantastical visit to his factory. That will be followed at 2:00 by one of the funniest movies ever made, Mel Brooks’s Blazing Saddles, in which Wilder portrays the washed-up Waco Kid, an alcoholic gunslinger who is brought back to life when a new sheriff (Cleavon Little) comes to the racist town of Rock Ridge; the all-star cast also includes Harvey Korman, Madeline Kahn, Alex Karras, Slim Pickens, Dom DeLuise, John Hillerman, David Huddleston, and Rodney Allen Rippy. At 4:00, the festival continues with another comic Western, Robert Aldrich’s underseen, underrated 1979 charmer, The Frisco Kid, with Wilder starring as Avram Belinski, a Jewish immigrant from Poland who partners up with bank robber Tommy Lillard (Harrison Ford) on his way from Philly to San Francisco to serve as a rabbi. The afternoon concludes at 6:00 with a Hanukkah candle lighting and sufganiyot, special jelly donuts that are a Hanukkah treat.

MANIFESTO

Cate Blanchett plays multiple characters in Julian Rosefeldt’s MANIFESTO

Park Ave. Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
Daily through January 8, $20
212-933-5812
www.armoryonpark.org

As visitors go from screen to screen in Julian Rosefeldt’s thirteen-channel installation, Manifesto, at the Park Ave. Armory, they’re bombarded with declarations from cultural missives by artists and philosophers dating back more than 150 years. Various words and phrases stick out, hanging in the air like bees buzzing around flowers: “originality,” “conflict,” “infinite and shapeless variation,” “decay,” “revolution,” “recklessness,” “absolute reality,” “glorious isolation,” “obsession,” freedom,” “everlasting change,” “the unconsciousness of humanity.”

I am against action; I am for continuous contradiction: for affirmation, too. I am neither for nor against and I do not explain because I hate common sense. I am writing a manifesto because I have nothing to say.

Art requires truth, not sincerity.

Logic is a complication. Logic is always wrong.

The words are all spoken by Oscar-winning actress Cate Blanchett (Notes on a Scandal, Blue Jasmine), who plays thirteen characters in twelve of the films, which each runs ten and a half minutes and are looped concurrently. She does not appear in the shorter prologue but does provide the narration. Among the characters she portrays are a homeless man, a grade school teacher, a factory worker, a punk rocker, a scientist, a news anchor, a choreographer, and a puppeteer.

Our art is the art of a revolutionary period, simultaneously the reaction of a world going under and the herald of a new era.

Originality is nonexistent.

Purge the world of intellectual, professional, and commercialized culture!

Rosefeldt (Trilogy of Failure, Deep Gold, The Ship of Fools), a photographer and filmmaker who was born in Munich and lives and works in Berlin, has an MA in architecture, so location plays a key role in the films, many of which take place in spectacular surroundings, interiors and exteriors, that would make Andreas Gursky drool, including an abandoned Olympic village, the Klingenberg CHP Plant, the Palasseum housing project, a former fertilizer factory, the ZDF Hauptstadtstudio, and the Humboldt Universität Department of Engineering Acoustics (in which a 2001-like monolith floats in the air). Each film begins and ends with Christoph Krauss’s camera lingering on the often jaw-dropping visuals.

We must create. That’s the sign of our times.

Fluxus is a pain in art’s ass.

Existence is elsewhere.

Julian Rosefeldt, Manifesto, 2015 © Julian Rosefeldt and VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

The statements are delivered in unique and inventive ways, with Blanchett, looking vastly different in each scene courtesy of Bina Daigeler’s costumes, Morag Ross’s makeup, and Massimo Gattabrusi’s hairstyling, playing a mourner giving a eulogy, a mother saying grace, a teacher presenting a lesson, a choreographer yelling at her troupe, a financial analyst spouting data, a crane operator incinerating garbage, and a CEO offering a new concept at a private board meeting in a seaside villa.

I am for art that is put on and taken off, like pants; which develops holes, like socks; which is eaten, like a piece of pie, or abandoned with great contempt, like a piece of shit.

No to the heroic. No to the anti-heroic.

Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden.

Each section is dedicated to a separate artistic theory, discussing Pop Art, Conceptual Art / Minimalism, Fluxus, Surrealism / Spatialism, Dadaism, Suprematism / Constructivism, Stridentism / Creationism, Abstract Expressionism, Architecture, Futurism, Situationism, and Film. Heard today in this context, the statements range from the very funny to the extremely dry and boring, from the downright elitist to the realistic and relevant, from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Farewell to absurd choices.

Nothing is original.

In this period of change, the role of the artist can only be that of the revolutionary: it is his duty to destroy the last remnants of an empty, irksome aesthetic, arousing the creative instincts still slumbering unconscious in the human mind.

Close-ups of Cate Blanchett appear simultaneously in thirteen-screen installation at Park Ave. Armory (photo by James Ewing)

The quotations come from a wide variety of sources, from little-known essays to major influential texts. They include Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’s Manifesto of the Communist Party, Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematist Manifesto, Dziga Vertov’s WE: Variant of a Manifesto, André Breton’s Manifesto of Surrealism, Lucio Fontana’s White Manifesto, Stan Brakhage’s Metaphors on Vision, Elaine Sturtevant’s Man Is Double Man Is Copy Man Is Clone, Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg’s Dogma 95, and Claes Oldenburg’s I am for an art . . . , in addition to writings by Francis Picabia, Barnett Newman, Yvonne Rainer, Kurt Schwitters, Tristan Tzara, Sol LeWitt, Paul Eluard, Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, Guillaume Apollinaire, and Werner Herzog.

The past we are leaving behind us as carrion. The future we leave to the fortune-tellers. We take the present day.

All of man is fake. All of man is false.

I believe in the pure joy of the man who sets off from whatever point he chooses, along any other path save a reasonable one, and arrives wherever he can.

About two-thirds of the way through each film, all of the characters portrayed by Blanchett, seen in extreme close-up, suddenly speak their lines in monotone unison, a kind of choral cacophony of chanting and singing that echoes throughout the massive Wade Thompson Drill Hall, an exhilarating moment that makes up for some of the pompous diatribe and intellectual masturbation that preceded it. It also is a grand statement for the critical importance of art, especially during tough times when countries face cultural and sociopolitical battles that threaten personal freedoms and liberties. But the best reason to experience Manifesto, which continues through January 8, is to watch a remarkable actress in a marvelous and memorable tour de force; Blanchett fans will also want to catch her in Anton Chekhov’s The Present, which is running on Broadway through March 19.

CHRISTMAS AT METROGRAPH: SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT

Santa goes a little psycho on holiday flasher flick, SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT

SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT (Charles E. Sellier Jr., 1984)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Tuesday, December 20, 9:30
Series runs through January 1
212-660-0312
metrograph.com

“Punishment is good,” Mother Superior (Lilyan Chauvin) tells eight-year-old Billy (Danny Wagner) in Charles E. Sellier Jr.’s Silent Night, Deadly Night. Some might think that watching this 1984 slasher flick is pretty severe punishment itself, while others will revel in its tongue-in-cheek campiness; you can decide for yourself when it screens December 20 at 9:30 as part of the “Christmas at Metrograph” series at the Lower East Side theater, which features such other nontraditional seasonal faves as Die Hard, Eyes Wide Shut, and the Gee Whiz It’s Christmas compilation of various shorts, including Christ Mass Sex Dance and Holidaze. Not exactly a holiday classic, Silent Night, Deadly Night, the working title of which was Slayride, was mired in controversy upon its initial release, with critics and such groups as the PTA, the Catholic Conference, and Citizens Against Movie Madness attacking the film for setting a killer Santa Claus loose on an unsuspecting public. The movie begins in 1971, when five-year-old Billy (Jonathan Best) looks on in horror as his parents (Tara Buckman and Geoff Hansen) are brutally murdered by an insane criminal Kris Kringle (veteran character actor Charles Dierkop). Haunted by nightmares, Billy is mistreated by Mother Superior at St. Mary’s Home for Orphaned Children while being befriended by Sister Margaret (Gilmer McCormick), who wants to take a more sensitive approach with the boy. When Billy (Robert Brian Wilson) turns eighteen — blossoming into quite a handsome hunk — Sister Margaret gets him a job at a local toy store run by Mr. Sims (veteran character actor Britt Leach), but when Christmas comes around, well, everyone better watch out.

Silent Night, Deadly Night has its moments, particularly when it is dealing with Billy’s tortured mind, but then it gets bogged down in genre cliches and loses its psychological focus. But it’s still subversive fun, with a crazy soundtrack that combines Perry Botkin’s synth score with original songs by Morgan Ames that you are unlikely to ever hear performed by neighborhood carolers, among them “Slayrider,” “Christmas Flu,” and the indescribable “Warm Side of the Door.” The film was followed by four sequels, but the less said about them, the better. And yes, that’s scream queen Linnea Quigley getting into some trouble on the pool table. We chose not to give Silent Night, Deadly Night a star (token) rating because our advice is essentially to avoid it at all costs if you have any sense of common decency. (Meanwhile, we’ve watched it several times, especially to see what Santa does to that poor snowman….)

MARTIN SCORSESE IN THE 21st CENTURY: THE DEPARTED

Leonardo DiCaprio gets ready for battle in Martin Scorsese's Oscar-winning THE DEPARTED

THE DEPARTED is part of 21st-century Martin Scorsese retrospective at the Museum of the Moving Image

THE DEPARTED (Martin Scorsese, 2006)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Saturday, December 17, $15, 7:00
Series runs December 16-30
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us

Queens-born auteur Martin Scorsese changed the face of independent film in the 1970s with such hard-hitting dramas as Mean Streets, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, and Taxi Driver, then proceeded to expand the notion of cinema as art with such 1980s and 1990s pictures as The King of Comedy, Goodfellas, and After Hours. His more recent output, however, has been vastly overrated, as evidenced by the first part of the Queens-based Museum of the Moving Image retrospective “Martin Scorsese in the 21st Century,” being held December 16-30 in conjunction with the release of the director’s latest film, Silence, which stars Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver, and Liam Neeson. (The series accompanies the exhibition “Martin Scorsese,” a look at Scorsese’s career divided into Family, Brothers, Men and Women, Lonely Heroes, New York, Cinephile, Cinematography, Editing, and Music.) Scorsese’s best film of the new century just might be 2006’s The Departed, based on Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s awesome 2000 hit, Infernal Affairs. The relatively faithful remake moves the relentless action and intrigue from Hong Kong to the mean streets of Boston, where it is hard to tell cop from criminal. Just out of the academy, Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) rises quickly to detective in the Special Investigations Unit, but he’s actually in cahoots with master crime lord Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson). Meanwhile, Billy Costigan (an excellent Leonardo DiCaprio), training to become a cop, is sent deep undercover (including a prison stint) to infiltrate Costello’s gang, with only Captain Queenan (Martin Sheen) and Sergeant Dignam (a very funny and foul-mouthed Mark Wahlberg) aware of the secret mission.

Sullivan and Costigan are like opposite sides of the same persona; in between them stands Costello — and Madolyn (Vera Farmiga), a psychiatrist who is in a relationship with one and is doctor to the other. As both the cops and the criminals search desperately for their respective rats, no one can trust each other, leading to lots of blood and a spectacular finale. Nicholson has a field day as the aging gangster, chewing up mounds of scenery in his first film with Scorsese, who returned to peak form with his best work since 1990’s Goodfellas. The film was nominated for five Oscars, winning four, for Best Director, Best Film Editing (Thelma Schoonmaker), Best Adapted Screenplay (William Monahan), and Best Picture, while Wahlberg was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. The Departed is screening December 17 at 7:00 in the museum’s Redstone Theater. The series opens December 16 with the bombastic Gangs of New York and continues through December 30 with Shutter Island, the disappointing Howard Hughes flick The Aviator, and the good but overrated films The Wolf of Wall Street and Hugo in 3-D.

ELEMENTS OF OZ

Unique app is key part of ELEMENTS OF OZ (photo by Gennadi Novash, courtesy of Peak Performances @Montclair State University)

3LD Art and Technology Center
80 Greenwich St. at Rector St.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 18, $25
866-811-4111
www.3ldnyc.org
www.thebuildersassociation.org

The Builders Association (Sontag:Reborn, Invisible Cities) takes audiences on a wild trip down the yellow brick road as it deconstructs and reconstructs The Wizard of Oz in its fun and innovative multimedia experimental production Elements of Oz. Conceived by Marianne Weems, Moe Angelos, and James Gibbs, directed by Weems, and cowritten by Gibbs and Angelos, Elements of Oz delves into the legend and legacy of the classic 1939 film, sharing little-known stories, reenacting key scenes, and examining its online presence, including theories about how the book and movie are metaphors for the U.S. monetary system and gold standard. Continuing at the 3LD Art and Technology Center through December 18, the show presents a small corp of actors who reenact and reshoot key scenes, creating a new version via multiple monitors that project what is happening onstage and freeze-frames taken from previous scenes. The piece is performed by Angelos, Sean Donovan, and Hannah Heller, who each portray several characters — all three play Dorothy Gale at various points. They not only switch roles, they also shift from commenting on the film to acting in its re-creation, and from past to present, telling tales of 1939 moviemaking and its ongoing reverberations in popular culture. Following a YouTube overture, Angelos delivers the first of many “talking points,” giving inside information to the audience. “It’s a masterpiece,” she says about the film, “but all we see is the magic. We don’t see all the brutal work and failure.” Elements of Oz reveals how much of that magic was made as stage manager April Sigler, associate lighting designer Elliott Jenetopulos, video designer Austin Switser, production manager Brendan Regimbal, and technical director Carl Whipple set up and break down Neal Wilkinson’s sets, filming short scenes that are then edited live to mimic the original, shot by shot, and played back on a large onstage screen as well as the monitors that fill the theater. Meanwhile, Moe relates stories about Margaret Hamilton and her double, Betty Denko, suffering major injuries; how “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” was almost left on the cutting-room floor; that some of the munchkins were repurposed as flying monkeys; and what really happened when the film went from black-and-white to color.

Hannah Heller and Sean Donovan play multiple characters in experimental exploration of the making of THE WIZARD OF OZ (photo by Gennadi Novash, courtesy of Peak Performances @Montclair State University)

Just as The Wizard of Oz made use of cutting-edge technology, so does Elements of Oz, which has a unique innovation of its own. During the show, which is based on both the film and the book by L. Frank Baum, there are moments that are best viewed through your smart phone or tablet via a free augmented reality app, designed by John Cleater, that enhances what you’re watching by adding visual and aural effects, from snow to giggling munchkins to other cool surprises. Angelos (the Five Lesbian Brothers), Donovan (Thank You for Coming: Play), and Heller (The World Is Round) are hysterical as they change from role to role, with Angelos as Dorothy and Glinda, the mustachioed Donovan as Dorothy, Uncle Henry, Mike Wallace, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, Salman Rushdie, and the Wizard, and Heller as Dorothy, Aunt Em, the Wicked Witch, the Scarecrow, Judy Garland, and Ayn Rand. (The costumes are by Andreea Mincic, with lighting by Jennifer Tipton, sound design and original music by Dan Dobson, and interactive design and programming by Jesse Garrison.) Originally presented by Peak Performances @ Montclair State University, the goofy and charming Elements of Oz is probably about twenty minutes too long, as things get a little repetitive, and as fun as the app is, you’ll find yourself at times looking at your phone, waiting for the next bit of AR to take place, instead of watching what is happening onstage. But like the original book and film, Elements of Oz is an enjoyable mind-expanding journey; and be sure to keep that app on as you exit 3LD and head down Greenwich St.