this week in film and television

THE BELLS: A DAYLONG CELEBRATION OF LOU REED

The life and legacy of Lou Reed will be celebrated on July 30 with free all-day festival at Lincoln Center

LINCOLN CENTER OUT OF DOORS
Damrosch Park Bandshell, Josie Robertson Plaza, Hearst Plaza,
Alice Tully Hall lobby, Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center Amphitheater
Saturday, July 30, free, 10:15 am – 12 midnight
www.lcoutofdoors.org
www.loureed.com

I think I took Lou Reed for granted. I’d see him regularly, either performing onstage, wandering through downtown art galleries, seeing shows at BAM, or grabbing a cab with his wife, Laurie Anderson. He was just one of those icons you thought would always be around, but it was not to be. On October 27, 2013, he succumbed to liver disease at the age of seventy-one. Less than three weeks later, on November 14, Lincoln Center hosted a low-key tribute to the Godfather of Punk at the Paul Milstein Pool & Terrace, three hours of his recorded music, with no speeches and no live performances. On July 30, Lincoln Center Out of Doors will be putting on a much bigger and broader festival in honor of Reed’s influential life and career with “The Bells: A Daylong Celebration of Lou Reed,” curated by Anderson and Hal Willner. The party gets under way at 10:15 on Josie Robertson Plaza with a tai chi lesson with Master Ren GuangYi; Reed recorded six original songs with Sarth Calhoun for the master’s Power and Serenity instructional DVD. From 11:00 to 4:00, the immersive sound installation “Lou Reed DRONES,” consisting of six guitars and amps emitting feedback, will continue in the Alice Tully Hall lobby. At 11:30 in the Damrosch Park Bandshell, the house band of Don Fleming, Sal Maida, Kenny Margolis, Lee Ranaldo, Steve Shelley, and Matt Sweeney will be joined by vocalists Joan as Police Woman, David Johansen, Lenny Kaye, Jesse Malin, Kembra Pfahler, Felice Rosser, Harper Simon, Jon Spencer, Bush Tetras, JG Thirlwell, and the Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls for some rock & roll. From 12 noon to 7:00, the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center Amphitheater will present Reed’s 2010 documentary, Red Shirley (12 noon & 3:00), about his one-hundred-year-old cousin; A Night with Lou Reed (1:30 & 5:30), a video document of his 1983 Bottom Line stand; and the American Masters program Lou Reed: Rock and Roll Heart (4:00). At 2:00 in Hearst Plaza, Master Ren GuangYi will give a tai chi chuan and weapons demonstration, along with an eagle claw weapons demonstration by Masters Emmanuel Sam and Paul Lee. At 3:00, “Pass Thru Fire: Lyrics of Lou Reed” features Elizabeth Ashley, Steve Buscemi, Anne Carson, Kim Cattrall, Willem Dafoe, A. M. Homes, Natasha Lyonne, Julian Schnabel, Fisher Stevens, and Anne Waldman reading Reed’s words. At 7:00, Anderson, Anohni, Emily Haines, Garland Jeffreys, David Johansen, Mark Kozelek, Bill Laswell, John Cameron Mitchell, Maxim Moston, Jenni Muldaur, Jane Scarpantoni, Victoria Williams, Jim White, John Zorn, and others will gather at the bandshell for live performances of “Lou Reed’s Love Songs,” showing off his gentler side. The celebration, named after his 1979 album The Bells, concludes with a 10:30 screening (with headphones) of Julian Schnabel’s film Lou Reed’s Berlin, a concert film of Reed’s performance of the 1973 album at St. Ann’s Warehouse in 2006. It should be quite a day and night; try not to take it for granted.

LOU REED’S BERLIN (Julian Schnabel, 2007)
Damrosch Park Bandshell
Saturday, July 30, free, 10:30
www.loureed.com/inmemoriam

In December 2006, Lou Reed resurrected his 1973 masterwork, Berlin, a deeply dark and personal song cycle that was a critical and commercial flop upon its initial release but has grown in stature over the years. (As Reed sings on the album’s closer, “Sad Song”: “Just goes to show how wrong you can be.”) The superbly staged adaptation, directed by Academy Award nominee Julian Schnabel (Basquiat, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), took place at Brooklyn’s intimate St. Ann’s Warehouse, featuring Rob Wasserman and longtime Reed sideman Fernando Saunders on bass, Tony “Thunder” Smith on drums, Rupert Christie on keyboards, and guitarist extraordinaire Steve Hunter, reunited with Lou for the first time in three decades. The band is joined onstage by backup singers Sharon Jones and Antony, the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, and a seven-piece orchestra (including cello, viola, flute, trumpet, clarinet, and flugel). Amid dreamlike video montages shot by Schnabel’s daughter, Lola, depicting Emmanuelle Seigner as the main character in Berlin, as well as experimental imagery by Alejandro Garmendia, Reed tells the impossibly bleak story of Caroline, a young mother whose life crashes and burns in a dangerously divided and debauched Germany. “It was very nice / It was paradise,” Reed sings on the opening title track, but it’s all downhill from there. “It was very nice / It was paradise” might also now serve as a kind of epitaph for one of the most important poets of the last fifty years. Berlin is being shown at Damrosch Park Bandshell at 10:30 on July 30, with headphones available.

TICKET ALERT: MULTIPLE MANIACS

Divine is the star of “Cavalcade of Perversions” in John Waters’s splendidly lurid MULTIPLE MANIACS

MULTIPLE MANIACS (John Waters, 1970)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Friday, August 5, 7:20 & 9:40
Other screenings to be announced August 1 at 6:00
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.janusfilms.com

John Waters will be at IFC Center on August 5 for two special screenings of a newly restored version of one of the Baltimore-born auteur’s craziest early works, Multiple Maniacs, made when the King of Bad Taste, serving as writer, director, producer, cinematographer, and editor, was only twenty-four. The extremely low budget romp begins with barker Mr. David (David Lochary) inviting people into “Lady Divine’s Cavalcade of Perversions,” proclaiming, “This is the show you want. . . . the sleaziest show on earth. Not actors, not paid imposters, but real, actual filth who have been carefully screened in order to present to you the most flagrant violation of natural law known to man.” Of course, that serves as the perfect introduction to the cinematic world of Waters, one dominated by the celebration of sexual proclivities, fetish, salaciousness, indecency, violence, and marginalized weirdos living on the fringes of society. Lady Divine, played by Divine, turns out to be a cheat, the freak show just a set-up for a robbery. Soon Divine is jealous of David’s relationship with Bonnie (Mary Vivian Pearce), hanging out with her topless daughter, Cookie (Cookie Mueller), and being led into a church by the Infant of Prague (Michael Renner Jr.), where she’s brought to sexual ecstasy by Mink (Mink Stole). There’s also rape, murder, Jesus (George Figgs), the Virgin Mary (Edith Massey), and the famed Lobstura. Shot in lurid black-and-white, Multiple Maniacs is a divine freak show all its own, an underground classic that redefined just what a movie could be, a crude, disturbing tale that you can’t turn away from. Waters will participate in a Q&A following the 7:20 show and will introduce the 9:40 show; more screenings of this restored version, from Janus Films, will be announced on August 1 at 6:00 pm.

CASSAVETES / ROWLANDS: SHADOWS

Rupert Crosse, Hugh Hurd, and Lelia Goldoni examine racism in John Cassavetes’s seminal underground film SHADOWS

SHADOWS (John Cassavetes, 1959)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Saturday, July 23, 5:00
Series runs July 15-24
212-660-0312
metrograph.com

John Cassavetes’s directorial debut, Shadows, is a landmark moment in the history of independent cinema and one of the most influential films ever made. Shot in black-and-white with a 16mm handheld camera on a modest budget of $40,000, much of which was raised following Cassavetes’s appearance on Jean Shepherd’s radio show — the credits include the line “Presented by Jean Shepherd’s Night People” — Shadows is a gritty, underground examination of race in New York City, one of the first major anti-Hollywood American movies. Although the script is credited to Cassavetes, the film is primarily improvised by a group of mostly nonprofessional or first-time actors using their real first names, set to a jazzy, moody score by Charles Mingus saxophonist Shafi Hadi. Lelia Goldoni stars as twenty-year-old Lelia, a confused young woman who loses her virginity to Tony (Anthony Ray), who thought it was a one-night stand but then decides they should start dating after she becomes clingy. However, Tony freaks out when he meets one of Lelia’s brothers, singer Hugh (Hugh Hurd), who is black. Meanwhile, their other brother, trumpeter Ben (Ben Carruthers), spends his nights with his two buddies, Dennis (Dennis Sallas) and Tom (Tom Reese), bumming money and trying to pick up chicks. Amid Bohemian parties, street fights, and visits to Central Park, Port Authority, Grand Central Terminal, and MoMA’s sculpture garden, Cassavetes and the cast explore life, love, and racism in realistic ways, even if some of the actors are a lot better than others and certain scenes fall flat. Gordon is particularly annoying through much of the film; the most interesting relationship exists between Hugh and his devoted agent, Rupert (Rupert Crosse, who spent the next thirteen years appearing in myriad television series). Look for Cassavetes in the scene in which a stranger harasses Lelia in Times Square. Shadows, which comes alive with the rhythm and energy of late 1950s New York, is screening July 23 at 5:00 at Metrograph in the series “Cassavetes/Rowlands,” celebrating the king and queen of independent cinema by showing all twelve of Cassavetes’s films. Cassavetes died in 1989 at the age of fifty-nine, leaving behind quite a legacy. The series continues through July 24 with such other works as Love Streams, Faces, and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie.

DON’T THINK TWICE

A close-knit improv group dreams of bigger things in Mike Birbiglia’s DON’T THINK TWICE

DON’T THINK TWICE (Mike Birbiglia, 2016)
Landmark Sunshine Cinema
143 East Houston St. between First & Second Aves.
Opens Thursday, July 21
212-330-8182
www.landmarktheatres.com
dontthinktwicemovie.com

Massachusetts-born, Brooklyn-based actor, comedian, writer, and director Mike Birbiglia turns to the improv scene in the bittersweet and very funny Don’t Think Twice. The follow-up to his 2012 indie hit Sleepwalk with Me, which was adapted from his one-man show of the same name, Don’t Think Twice focuses on a close-knit group of friends who have been performing together as the Commune for eleven years, always holding on to the dream that they will be discovered and asked to join the cast of Weekend Live, a Saturday Night Live-style network sketch comedy program. Miles (Birbiglia), who still sleeps in a bunk bed like he’s a college student, is the ersatz leader of the troupe, which also includes Sam (Gillian Jacobs) and Jack (Keegan-Michael Key), who are in love; Allison (Kate Micucci), who also wants to be a graphic novelist; Bill (Chris Gethard), who lives in the shadow of his tough-as-nails father (Seth Barrish); and Lindsay (Tami Sagher), the only one for whom money is not a problem, supported by her wealthy family. Just as the Commune finds out that it is losing its lease and will have to find a new home, talent scouts from Weekend Live watch a performance and ask two of the six members to audition for the show, creating friction within the group, which only gets worse when one actually gets the gig. Jealousy, ego, and envy threaten to end long-held friendships while the six comics reevaluate their lives and careers, trying to figure out what they really want and whether there’s a real chance to achieve those goals.

Improv group struts its stuff in Mike Birbiglia’s sophomore film

Inspired by real-life events (but not a true story), Don’t Think Twice is an honest and poignant look at the fragility of love and friendship. Birbiglia transfers the playful feeling of the hysterical onstage improv comedy scenes — which were filmed at the Lynn Redgrave Theater, where his latest one-man show, Thank God for Jokes, recently completed a successful run — to the offstage drama as the remaining members of the aptly named Commune consider their future as individuals and as a unit. Jacobs (Community, Love), the only one of the protagonists who did not have previous improv experience (the others were part of either Second City or the Upright Citizens Brigade), takes to the comedic form with an intoxicating glee, fitting in exceptionally well with the veterans and particularly with Key (Key and Peele); they share a tender chemistry that propels the film. Birbiglia, who has toured with Gethard (The Chris Gethard Show), plays the schlumpy Miles with a natural ease that keeps it all real. Cinematographer Joe Anderson (Simon Killer, The Benefactor) weaves in and around the comedians as they perform (the improv scenes were filmed twice, once scripted, once not), putting viewers onstage instead of in the audience, resulting in a more cathartic experience. The film features several cameos, from Richard Masur and Richard Kline to — well, we wouldn’t want to spoil the surprises. Don’t think twice about seeing Don’t Think Twice, which is opening July 21 at the Landmark Sunshine, with Birbiglia and producer Ira Glass — Birbiglia is a regular contributor to Glass’s NPR show, This American Life — participating in Q&As after multiple screenings July 21-24, but they’re selling out quick.

JAPAN CUTS 2016: BURST CITY

Japanese punk culture explodes in Sogo Ishii’s mind-blowing BURST CITY

FESTIVAL OF NEW JAPANESE FILM: BURST CITY (BAKURETSU TOSHI) (爆裂都市) (Sogo Ishii, aka Gakuryū Ishii, 1982)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Saturday, July 23, 10:00
Series runs July 14-24
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

“These streets have calmed down quite a bit, sir,” a man tells his yakuza boss at the beginning of Sogo Ishii’s crazy, nonstop thrill ride, Burst City, which is screening July 23 at 10:00 in Japan Society’s tenth annual Japan Cuts Festival. Conceived as a platform to showcase several early 1980s Japanese punk bands, including the Battle Rockers, the Roosters, the Stalin, and Inu, the film is a fast-paced, psychotic journey through a postapocalyptic nightmare world where disenchanted youth gather for hard-driving music and car races while they protest the construction of a nuclear facility on the outskirts of what’s left of Tokyo. It’s a crazy conflagration of Mad Max, The Warriors, A Clockwork Orange, Quadrophenia, Koyaanisqatsi, Streets of Fire, Rebel without a Cause, Star Wars, and Rude Boy, with lots of screaming, violence, and singing and very little dialogue or plot. It’s essentially a two-hour free-for-all, an explosive release of urban angst where there are no rules, no winners, and no losers (save for one unfortunate couple). And the music, produced by Roosters leader Shozo Kashiwagi, kicks some serious ass.

The large, spectacularly costumed cast features such longtime character actors as Takanori Jinnai and Shigeru Muroi, but aside from a minor subplot about an unwilling prostitute, the film is not driven by narrative or Method acting. Art director Shigeru Izumiya, who also appears in the film, creates sinister sets that promise the coming destruction, photographed by Norimichi Kasamatsu (Face, Villain) in an ever-changing cycle of lurid color and grainy black-and-white and lunatic editing that makes MTV videos of the time look like home movies of boring families. The art/decoration is credited to Katsuro Ogami and Junji Sakamoto; Sakamoto went on to become a successful director in his own right, making such films as My House, Someday, Face, and Danchi; the latter two are being shown at the 2016 Japan Cuts festival as well. Sogo Ishii, who recently changed his name to Gakuryū Ishii, has also directed such works as Panic in High School, Electric Dragon 80.000V, and Isn’t Anyone Alive? Bursting with a high-powered energy that never lets up, Burst City is screening in the “Flash-Back / Flash-Forward” section of Japan Cuts, along with Ishii’s latest film, Bitter Honey, in which a young woman (Fumi Nikaido) embodies a human-size goldfish.

FOUR MORE YEARS — AN ELECTION SPECIAL: THE CANDIDATE

Political newcomer Bill McKay (Robert Redford) runs for the Senate in THE CANDIDATE

THE CANDIDATE (Michael Ritchie, 1972)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Saturday, July 23, 2:00, 7:00, 9:30
Series runs July 15 – August 3
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

Four years before playing real-life Washington Post investigative reporter Bob Woodward, who along with Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) blew the lid off the Watergate cover-up, in the Oscar-nominated All the President’s Men, Robert Redford found himself portraying the other side of the political spectrum, starring as a progressive legal aid lawyer who is chosen to run for the Senate in Michael Ritchie’s savvy, documentary-style film The Candidate. The Democratic Party needs someone to run against incumbent Republican Senator Crocker Jarmon (Gidget’s Don Porter), so political operative Marvin Lucas (Peter Boyle) approaches McKay, an attractive, well-respected, and popular community activist whose father, John J. McKay (Melvyn Douglas), was California governor. At first the younger McKay has no interest in running for office, but when Lucas tells him he can say whatever he wants to get his message out — because he’ll have no chance to win — McKay signs on. He hits the streets shaking hands and spreading his philosophy, closely followed by media man Howard Klein (Allen Garfield), who is amassing footage for television advertisements promoting “the better way” with Bill McKay. (McKay’s ads are narrated by Barry Sullivan, who appeared with Redford in Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here, Jarmon’s commercials by Broderick Crawford, who won an Oscar for playing the Huey Long–like Louisiana governor Willie Stark in All the King’s Men in 1949.) It’s clear from the start that McKay is a political newbie while Jarmon is a seasoned pro who knows all the right things to say and do, but McKay’s grass-roots approach soon begins taking hold, and as the race heats up, the challenger is suddenly faced with tough decisions about taking power, compromising his principles, and falling in line with the party machine instead of fighting the good fight as he has done all his life.

Ritchie (Smile, The Bad News Bears) and Redford, who previously collaborated on the director’s first film, Downhill Racer, shoot The Candidate in a cinéma vérité style, blending fiction and reality with cameos by television newsmen Howard K. Smith and Rollin Post, reporter Mike Barnicle, actress Natalie Wood (who starred with Redford in This Property Is Condemned), and such politicians as Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, Alan Cranston, and John Tunney, whom McKay is loosely based on (along with Jerry Brown). Ritchie had worked on Tunney’s 1970 Senate campaign, which was run by Candidate associate producer Nelson Rising. In addition, screenwriter Jeremy Larner, who won an Oscar for his script, had been the principal speechwriter for Eugene McCarthy’s 1968 presidential bid. (And as a bonus, Douglas’s wife, Helen Gahagan, was the first California Democratic woman to be elected to Congress and ran against Richard M. Nixon for Senate in 1950, losing while coining the nickname “Tricky Dick.”) The excellent cast also features Michael Lerner, Quinn Redeker, Morgan Upton, Kenneth Tobey as a union man, and Karen Carlson as McKay’s wife, Nancy. Photographed by Victor J. Kemper (Husbands, Dog Day Afternoon) and with a score by actor-musician John Rubinstein (son of concert pianist Artur Rubinstein), the film gets right to the heart of the faults of the two-party political system and the manipulation of the media, feeling as relevant as ever despite all the major changes in technology, the 24/7 news cycle, and the advent of social media over the ensuing forty-plus years. There have been many McKay-like candidates over the years, from Dan Quayle to John Edwards to even Barack Obama, with varying degrees of success. But especially with the 2016 Republican National Convention under way, The Candidate seems as fresh and alive, as believable and engaging as ever. “He’s got the name, the looks, and the power,” Nancy McKay says in the film, which concludes with one of the great lines in cinema history. The Candidate is screening July 23 in the BAMcinématek series “Four More Years: An Election Special,” which continues through August 3 with such other politically tinged works as Robert Altman’s Nashville, Barry Levinson’s Wag the Dog, D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus’s The War Room, and Mike Nichols’s Primary Colors.

JAPAN CUTS 2016: THE PROJECTS

Hinako (Naomi Fujiyama) and Seiji Yamashita’s (Ittoku Kishibe) lives change once again with the return of Shinjo (Takumi Saitoh) in THE PROJECTS

FESTIVAL OF NEW JAPANESE FILM: THE PROJECTS (DANCHI) (団地) (Junji Sakamoto, 2016)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Tuesday, July 19, 7:30
Series runs July 14-24
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org
danchi-movie.com

“Nothing is impossible in a housing project,” several people say in Junji Sakamoto’s delightfully absurdist and downright weird black comedy The Projects, making its North American debut on July 19 at Japan Society’s tenth annual Japan Cuts Festival. Elderly couple Hinako (Naomi Fujiyama) and Seiji Yamashita (Ittoku Kishibe) have moved to an inexpensive suburban Osaka housing project, known as a danchi, after closing their popular herbal remedies shop following the tragic death of their son, Naoya. The couple lives quietly, unable to process their grief or move forward, but they’re back in business when one of their strangest customers, the well-dressed, oddly speaking Shinjo (Takumi Saitoh), tracks them down and essentially demands, in his calm, direct manner, that they begin making his special remedy again. Meanwhile, Seiji, who would rather be left alone, is dragged into the race for head of the tenant association, running against Gyotoku (Renji Ishibashi), who is having an affair with a younger resident and is married to Kimiko (Michiyo Okusu), who is obsessed with properly separating the danchi’s garbage, and young upstart Yoshizumi (Takayuki Takuma), who is not afraid to discipline his son, Kitaro (Hiroaki Ogasawara), in full view of his neighbors. After Seiji loses, he decides to hide from everyone, retreating under the floorboards whenever someone stops by, which leads a gossiping group of ladies (Hikaru Horiguchi, Yukari Taki, Mayu Harada, Mari Hamada, and Miyako Takeuchi) to believe that Hinako has actually killed her husband and chopped up the body. As the media and police get involved, things get crazier and crazier as the totally bizarre conclusion approaches.

Fujiyama and Kishibe are absolutely charming as the Yamashitas, moving and talking with a sweetly warm, slow demeanor, asking little from a life that has let them down. Sakamoto wrote The Projects specifically for comedian and stage actress Fujiyama; the two last worked together on the award-winning 2000 film Face, Fujiyama’s first film, and the pairing is another marvel. Fujiyama is wonderful in the role, imbuing Hinako with a wry, very funny sense of humor that is splendidly complemented by Kishibe’s more serious Seiji. Lovingly shot by Ryo Ohtsuka and featuring a playful score by Gorô Yasukawa, The Projects is pure fun all the way through, with many laugh-out-loud moments even as it deals with some heavy subjects, right up to its out-of-this-world finale. Don’t let the title fool you; “projects” in Japan were much-desired apartment complexes originally built in the 1950s to supply suburban public housing for the growing post-WWII Japanese population. Although they are not as popular today, they are not the kind of projects associated with drugs and crime in America. The Projects is being shown on July 19 at 6:30, followed by Face as part of the “Flash-Back / Flash-Forward” section of Japan Cuts, which continues through July 24.