this week in film and television

ZERO MOTIVATION

Daffi (Nelly Tagar) and Zohar (Dana Ivgy) are on their way to more exciting military service in ZERO MOTIVATION

ZERO MOTIVATION (Talya Lavie, 2014)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
December 3-16
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org
www.kinolorber.com

Writer-director Talya Lavie makes a smashing debut with the outrageously funny black comedy Zero Motivation. Inspired by her own mandatory service in the Israeli army, where she served as a secretary, Lavie skewers both military life and office work as she focuses on a group of woman NCOs who spend most of their time fetching coffee for the male officers, singing, poking fun at one another, and trying to break the Minesweeper record on their aging computers. When Tehila (Yonit Tobi) arrives, Daffi (Nelly Tagar) is positive that the mousy young woman is her replacement and that her request for a transfer to Tel Aviv has finally been approved. Daffi’s best friend, Zohar (Dana Ivgy), refuses to follow orders, continually getting into trouble as she disobeys their commander, Rama (Shani Klein), who is gung ho on joining the men at the big boys’ table, and not just to make sure their cups and plates are full. Irena (Tamara Klingon) is a beautiful blond Russian who develops a curious problem of her own. And Livnat (Heli Twito) and Liat (Meytal Gal) enjoy needling the clueless Daffi and the dour Zohar as often as they possibly can. Not much real work gets done in this office, but with an important inspection on the horizon, the women have to shift into gear, although not all of them are exactly on the same page.

Military black comedy was a huge critical and commercial success in Israel

Named Best Narrative Feature at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival and winner of five Israeli Academy Awards — Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Editing (Arik Leibovitch), Best Music (Ran Bagno), and Best Actress (Ivgy, who also won Best Supporting Actress for Next to Her) — Zero Motivation is a madcap romp through the lives of these women, tinged with just the right amount of seriousness. Evoking M*A*S*H mixed with The Office and Orange Is the New Black, the film explores such themes as sex, feminism, power, war, office politics, and love, mostly with its tongue placed firmly in its cheek, along with some genuinely tender moments and a truly devastating scene following a harsh breakup, reminding everyone what really matters. But through it all, Lavie keeps the jokes coming, many of them of the laugh-out-loud, fall-off-your-chair variety, even while sharing telling insights on the mundanity of human existence and the ever-present gender-inequality divide. Zero Motivation is playing December 3-16 at Film Forum, with Lavie and Ivgy on hand for Q&As following the 7:15 shows on December 3, 4, and 5.

FIRST SATURDAYS: BROOKLYN FASHION

Christian Louboutin, “Printz,” Spring/Summer 2013 (courtesy of Christian Louboutin; photograph by Jay Zukerkorn)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, December 6, free, 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum has fun with its new exhibit, “Killer Heels: The Art of the High-Heeled Shoe,” in the December edition of its free First Saturdays program. “Brooklyn Fashion” will feature live performances by the Hot Sardines and TK Wonder; a shoe-making art workshop; a talk with Manufacture New York CEO Bob Bland; screenings of Julie Benasra’s 2011 documentary, God Save My Shoes, and Tom Kalin’s Alternate Endings, short films made in collaboration with artists Rhys Ernst, Glen Fogel, Lyle Ashton Harris, Derek Jackson, My Barbarian, and Julie Tolentino in honor of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Visual AIDS’ Day With(out) Art; a talk with “Killer Heels: The Art of the High-Heeled Shoe” curator Lisa Small; an interactive story hour with Aunt Helen’s Closet; a “Killer Heels” photo booth; and a social club with dapperQ.com that includes pop-up shops, a Dapper Academy, and a fashion show. In addition, you can check out such exhibitions as “Revolution! Works from the Black Arts Movement,” “Judith Scott — Bound and Unbound,” and “Crossing Brooklyn: Art from Bushwick, Bed-Stuy, and Beyond.”

FILM SOCIETY FREE TALKS: LIV ULLMANN

The lovely Liv Ullmann will be at Lincoln Center for free talk about her adaptation of MISS JULIE

Film Society of Lincoln Center Amphitheater
144 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Tuesday, December 2, free, 6:30
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.com
www.wildbunch.biz

A dozen years ago, we had the pleasure of attending the U.S. premiere of Arne Skouen’s 1969 film, An-Margritt, at Scandinavia House, which was followed by a wonderful discussion with Skouen and his ever-charming star, Liv Ullmann. The Japan-born Norwegian actress, who was raised partly in New York, will be back in town on December 2 to talk about her new cinematic adaptation of August Strindberg’s 1888 play, Miss Julie. Her fifth film as director — she previously helmed Sofie, Kristin Lavransdatter, Private Confessions, and Faithless — Miss Julie, which opens December 5, features Jessica Chastain as the title character, Colin Farrell as John, and Samantha Morton as Kathleen. “I feel the play has always been a part of me. I had hoped to have the chance to play the role on stage when I was younger but it never happened,” Ullmann, who also wrote the screenplay, says in the film’s press kit. “When the producers first contacted me, they asked me if I would be interested in making a film on the theme of a ‘femme fatale,’ a proposal they had also made to a French and a Spanish director. I thought of Miss Julie straightaway and they agreed it was a marvelous idea. As soon as I started to work on the adaptation, I fell in love with it, and not only because of Strindberg’s writing but also because of the themes that are important to me on a personal level: to be seen or to remain invisible, to present an image of oneself which does not correspond to whom one really is, to be loved for oneself and not for what others see in you, the relations between the sexes, and the crises that stem from them….” What should be a lovely, intimate discussion is part of the ongoing series “Film Society Free Talks” at Lincoln Center; free tickets will be given out beginning at 5:30, one per person.

THE CONTENDERS 2014: SNOWPIERCER

Curtis (Chris Evans) leads a revolt in Bong Joon-ho’s SNOWPIERCER

SNOWPIERCER (Bong Joon-ho, 2014)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Sunday, November 30, 6:00
Series runs through January 16
Tickets: $12, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk beginning at 9:30 am
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
www.snowpiercer-film.com

Korean director Bong Joon-ho, who had a huge international hit in 2006 with The Host and a major critical success with 2009’s Mother, makes his English-language feature debut with Snowpiercer, a nonstop postapocalyptic thrill ride that takes its place with such other memorable train films as The Great Train Robbery, From Russia with Love, The Train, and Murder on the Orient Express. It’s 2031, seventeen years after the chemical C7, which was supposed to end climate change, instead froze the earth, killing all living beings except for a group of survivors on board a train run by a perpetual motion machine. In the rear of the train, men, women, and children are treated like prisoners, beaten, tortured, dressed in rags, their only food mysterious gelatin blocks. Soldiers led by the cold-hearted Mason (Tilda Swinton) and the yellow-clad Claude (Emma Levie), whose outift brings virtually the only color to this dark, dank, deeply depressing setting, violently keep the peace as the two women heartlessly dictate orders and abscond with the children. But Curtis Everett (Chris Evans) and Edgar (Jamie Bell) hatch a plan to get past the guards and make their way to the front of the train in order to find out just what is really going on and to meet with Wilford, the wealthy entrepreneur running the engine. With the help of defiant mother Tanya (Octavia Spencer), elder statesman Gilliam (John Hurt), train engineer Namgoong Minsu (Bong regular Song Kang-ho), and Namgoong’s daughter, Yona (Go Ah-sung), Curtis attempts to lead a small revolution that is seemingly doomed to failure.

Mason (Tilda Swinton) has something to say about potential revolution on board train to nowhere

Inspired by the French graphic novel Le Transperceneige by Jean-Marc Rochette and Benjamin Legrand (who both make cameos in the film), Snowpiercer is a tense, gripping thriller that unfolds as a microcosm of contemporary society, intelligently taking on race, class, poverty, drug addiction, education, and corporate greed and power. Evans (Captain America, Push) is almost unrecognizable as Everett, a flawed hero trying to make things right, followed every step of the way by cold-blooded killer Franco the Elder (Romanian star Vlad Ivanov of Police, Adjective and 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days). The film features splendid production design by Ondrej Nekvasil; each train car offers a completely different look and feel as Curtis heads toward the front, leading to a finale that is everything the conclusion to the Matrix trilogy wanted to be. Bong (Memories of Murder), who cowrote the film with Kelly Masterson (Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead), doesn’t shy away from violence in telling this complex story – of course, it doesn’t hurt that one of the producers is Korean master Park Chan-woo (the Vengeance trilogy, Thirst), who recently made his first English-language film as well, last year’s Stoker. A fantastically claustrophobic chase film, Snowpiercer is screening November 30 at 6:00 in MoMA’s annual series “The Contenders” and will be followed by a Q&A with Swinton. The series, which consists of films the institution believes will stand the test of time, continues with such other 2014 works as Richard Linklater’s Boyhood (followed by a discussion with Linklater and costar Ethan Hawke), Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice, Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner, and Isao Takahata’s The Tale of Princess Kaguya.

DAY WITH(OUT) ART: ALTERNATE ENDINGS

Glen Fogel’s 7 YEARS LATER is one of seven ALTERNATE ENDING shorts being shown on World AIDS Day

Glen Fogel’s 7 YEARS LATER is one of seven ALTERNATE ENDINGS shorts being shown on World AIDS Day

ALTERNATE ENDINGS (multiple directors, 2014)
SVA Theatre (and other locations)
333 West 23rd St between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Monday, December 1, free, 7:00
www.visualaids.org

In honor or the twenty-fifth anniversary of World AIDS Day’s Day with(out) Art on December 1, Visual AIDS is presenting a screening of the specially commissioned Alternate Endings, an omnibus of seven short films that examine AIDS in both personal and public ways. Alternate Endings consists of Rhys Ernst’s Dear Lou Sullivan, Glen Fogel’s 7 Years Later, Lyle Ashton Harris’s Selections from the Ektachrome Archive 1986-1996, Hi Tiger’s The Village, Tom Kalin’s Ashes, My Barbarian’s Counterpublicity, and Julie Tolentino’s evidence. The screening, taking place at 7:00 at the SVA Theatre in Chelsea, will be followed by a panel discussion with Kalin, Ashton Harris, and Hi Tiger’s Derek Jackson, moderated by VOCAL-NY’s Wanda Hernandez-Parks and SVA profesor and film critic Amy Taubin. On December 1, Alternate Endings will also be shown at BRIC in Brooklyn and at Hunter College’s Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Art Gallery, as well as on December 4 at the New School, December 5 at the New Museum (followed by a Q&A with Fogel, Kalin, and My Barbarian’s Malik Gaines, Jade Gordon, and Alexandro Segade), December 6 at the Queens Museum (accompanied by a series of workshops, presentations, discussions, and performances) and the Brooklyn Museum (with Jackson and Fogel), and December 7 at the Studio Museum in Harlem (with Kalin).

HOLIDAY LIGHTINGS 2014

The Sigafoos’ Christmas tree pulls into Rock Center earlier this month (photo courtesy TODAY show)

The Sigafoos’ Norwegian spruce pulls into Rock Center earlier this month from Pennsylvania (photo courtesy TODAY show)

Over the next few weeks, Christmas trees and menorahs will be lit all over the city, accompanied by live performances, seasonal treats, special guests, and family-friendly activities, all free. Below are only some of the many highlights as the Big Apple prepares for the holidays.

Park Slope Holiday Tree Lighting
Fifth Ave. at Third St.
Saturday, November 29, 6:30
www.parkslopefifthavenuebid.com
Live music by Amy Miles, carols by Opera on Tap, crafts, puppet shows, cookies, marshmallows, hot chocolate, popcorn, children’s activities, Santa and Frosty the Snowman

Fifteenth Annual Winter’s Eve at Lincoln Square
Dante Park, Broadway between 63rd & 64th Sts., Time Warner Center, David Rubenstein Atrium
Monday, December 1, 5:30 – 9:00
www.winterseve.nyc
Emcee Billy Porter, ice sculpting, live performances by Arlo Guthrie and family, Alice Farley Dance Theater, Golem, Spuyten Duyvil, Batala NYC, the Lucky Chops Brass Band, M.A.K.U. SoundSystem, the N’Harmonics, Uptown Vocal, the Cafe Wha? House Band, the Jazzmeia Horn Quartet, Bach Vespers, Annika, Hungry March Band, Raya Brass Band, Shinbone Alley Stilt Band, Dylan Meek, Elena Ayodele Pinderhughes, the Hot Sardines, Yaz Band, Mariachi Real De Mexico, the Suzi Shelton Band, the Big Apple Circus, Chinese Lion Dancers, Kinky Boots, Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella, dance groups, WNET characters, a screening of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, food tastings ($1-$4), Sesame Street’s Digital Playground & Walkaround Abby Cadabby

The South Street Seaport’s Annual Tree Lighting Ceremony
Fulton St. at Front St.
Tuesday, December 2, 5:45
Live music, family-friendly activities, more
www.southstreetseaport.com

Winter Village Tree Lighting
Bryant Park
40th – 42nd Sts. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Tuesday, December 2, 6:00
www.wintervillage.org
Details to be announced

Eighty-Second Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting
Rockefeller Plaza, between West 48th and West 51st Streets and Fifth and Sixth Avenues
Wednesday, December 3, 7:00 – 9:00
www.rockefellercenter.com
Musical guests to be announced; tree will remain lit through January 7

Central Park Conservancy’s Eighteenth Annual Dana Holiday Lighting
Charles A. Dana Discovery Center inside the park at 110th St. & Malcolm X Blvd.
Thursday, December 4, 5:30 – 6:30
www.centralparknyc.org
Flotilla of more than twenty illuminated trees on Harlem Meer, live ice carving, photos with Santa and his elves, Christmas carols, and hot cocoa and cookies

Christmas in Richmond Town: Traditional Tree Lighting
Historic Richmond Town, Staten Island
441 Clarke Ave.
Sunday, December 7, 5:00
www.historicrichmondtown.org
Festivities begin at 11:00 am ($2 per person, six and under free) with shopping village, carolers, storytelling, Santa Claus, tours, Bell Choir, horse & carriage rides ($2, two and under free), free Christmas tree lighting at 5:00

Carl Schurz Park Holiday Tree Lighting
East 86th St. at East End Ave.
Sunday, December 7, 5:00
www.carlschurzparknyc.etapwss.com
Christmas carols, Cantori choir, Orbital Brass, candlelight, candy canes, and hot chocolate

The Park Avenue Tree Lighting
Outside Brick Presbyterian Church, Park Ave. at 91st St.
Sunday, December 7, 6:30
www.fundforparkavenue.org
Annual lighting of trees along Park Ave. Malls between 54th & 97th Sts., starting with tree outside Brick Presbyterian Church

Mad. Sq. Holiday 2014
Madison Square Park
23rd – 26th Sts. between Madison & Fifth Aves.
Tuesday, December 9, 3:30
www.madisonsquarepark.org
Live performances by Audra Rox and cast members of Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella, horticultural workshop with a red twig dogwood planting led by Gardener Steph, Reading Rangers storytelling, Gingerbread Boulevard, seasonal treats from Hill Country Chicken, SD26, and Frittering Away, tree lighting at 5:00

Washington Square Park tree will be lit on December 10 (photo courtesy Washington Square Park Blog)

The Washington Square Park Tree Lighting
Washington Square Park Arch at Fifth Ave.
Wednesday, December 10, 6:00
www.washingtonsquarenyc.org
Live music by the Rob Susman Brass Quartet, songbooks for caroling, Santa Claus

Holiday on the Hudson
West Harlem Piers Park, West 125th & Marginal Sts.
Saturday, December 13, 5:00
www.riversideparknyc.org
Live music by the All-City High School Chorus, holiday decorations workshop, more

Zuccotti Park Holiday Lighting
Broadway & Liberty St.
Saturday, December 13, 5:30
www.artsbrookfield.com
Live music by the Manhattan Dolls and Metropolitan Klezmer, sweet treats, more

World’s Largest Menorah will be lit nightly in Grand Army Plaza (photo courtesy Chabad Park Slope)

World’s Largest Menorah will be lit nightly during Hanukkah in Grand Army Plaza (photo courtesy Chabad Park Slope)

World’s Largest Menorah
Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn
December 16-23, 6:00
Live music, hot latkes, gifts for kids
www.chabadparkslope.com

World’s Largest Hanukkah Menorah
Grand Army Plaza, Manhattan
Fifth Ave. between 58th & 59th Sts.
December 16-23, 6:00

THE CONTENDERS 2014: BOYHOOD

Mason Jr. (Ellar Coltrane) and Mason Sr. (Ethan Hawke) take a look at their lives in Richard Linklater’s brilliant BOYHOOD

BOYHOOD (Richard Linklater, 2014)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Sunday, November 30, 2:00
Series runs through January 16
Tickets: $12, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk beginning at 9:30 am
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
www.boyhoodmovie.tumblr.com

Since 2002, Austin auteur Richard Linklater has made a wide range of successful films, from the family-friendly School of Rock and Bad News Bears to the second and third parts of the more adult Before series (Before Sunset, Before Midnight), with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, in addition to the Philip K. Dick thriller A Scanner Darkly and the Jack Black black comedy Bernie. But during that entire period he was also making one of the grandest films ever about childhood, the deceptively simple yet mind-blowingly complex Boyhood. The work follows Mason Evans Jr. (Ellar Coltrane) as he goes from six years old to eighteen, maturing for real as both the actor and the character grow up before our eyes. As the film begins, Mason, his older sister, Samantha (Linklater’s real-life daughter, Lorelei), and their mother, Olivia (Patricia Arquette), are preparing to move to Houston just as their usually absent father, Mason Sr. (Hawke), returns from a job in Alaska, supposedly ready to be a more regular part of their lives. But his emotional immaturity leads to divorce, and Mason Jr. spends the next dozen years dealing with school, stepfathers, and the normal machinations of everyday life, including sex, drugs, rock and roll, and, for him, a determination from an early age to become an artist. Along the way, his sister and parents experience significant changes as well as they all learn lessons about life, love, and loss.

Olivia (Patricia Arquette) reads to children Samantha (Lorelei Linklater) and Mason Jr. (Ellar Coltrane) in BOYHOOD

To make the film, the cast and crew met every year for three or four days of shooting, with writer-director Linklater moving the story ahead by incorporating real elements from Coltrane’s life that add to the natural ease and flow of the story. Despite the obvious difficulties of maintaining continuity over a dozen years, cinematographers Lee Daniel and Shane Kelly and editor Sandra Adair do a masterful job of keeping the narrative right on track. It’s breathtaking to see Mason Jr. go upstairs in one scene, then come downstairs a year later, ready for something new, dressed slightly differently, with a little more facial hair, to signal the change in time. (Linklater also uses the soundtrack to note the passing years, with songs by Coldplay, the Hives, Cat Power, Gnarls Barkley, the Flaming Lips, and others.) Mason Jr.’s unique relationship with each parent and his sister is utterly believable, complete with all the pluses and minuses that entails; at one point, Lorelei, tired of being in the movie, asked her father to kill off her character, and even that energy is apparent onscreen. In addition to Coltrane’s career-making performance, Hawke and Arquette are sensational, doing something no other actors before them have ever done. You won’t be bored for a second of this two-hour, forty-minute journey with a relatively average American family that helps define the modern human condition like no other single film before it. “Photography is truth . . . and cinema is truth twenty-four times a second,” Bruno Forestier (Michel Subor) tells Véronica Dreyer (Anna Karina) in Jean-Luc Godard’s Le Petit Soldat. With Boyhood, that statement has rarely been so true. Boyhood is screening November 30 at 2:00 in MoMA’s annual series “The Contenders” and will be followed by a Q&A with Linklater and Hawke. The series, which consists of films the institution believes will stand the test of time, continues with such other 2014 works as Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer (followed by a discussion with star Tilda Swinton), Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice, Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner, and Isao Takahata’s The Tale of Princess Kaguya.