The life and career of James Baldwin will be celebrated at second annual Live Ideas festival at New York Live Arts this week
New York Live Arts
219 West 19th St.
April 23-27
212-691-6500
www.newyorklivearts.org
Last year, New York Live Arts presented its inaugural Live Ideas festival, honoring Dr. Oliver Sacks with a series of dance performances, special talks, and other programs. For the 2014 edition, as part of the citywide Year of James Baldwin celebration, NYLA is hosting “Live Ideas: James Baldwin, This Time!,” which runs April 23-27 at its home on West Nineteenth St. Every day at twelve o’clock, “Jimmy at High Noon” (free with advance RSVP) will feature actors, musicians, artists, and others reading from Baldwin’s works, which include Go Tell It on the Mountain, Giovanni’s Room, The Amen Corner, Another Country, and Jimmy’s Blues; among those scheduled to participate are Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Laurie Anderson, André DeShields, Kathleen Chalfant, Jesse L. Martin, Tonya Pinkins, Vijay Isher, and Toshi Reagon. In addition, Hank Willis Thomas’s free video installation, A person is more important than anything else…, will play continuously in the lobby, where the mural “Letter from a Region of My Mind,” incorporating the text of a piece Baldwin wrote for the November 17, 1962, issue of the New Yorker, will be on view. On April 23 at 2:30 ($15), Live Ideas curator Lawrence Weschler will moderate the discussion “Baldwin’s Capacious Imagination & Influence” with Roberta Uno and Margo Jefferson. That night the Opening Keynote Conversation ($40-$70, 8:00) brings together the impressive trio of choreographer and NYLA executive artistic director Bill T. Jones, photographer Carrie Mae Weems, and author Jamaica Kincaid. On April 23 at 5:00 and April 24 at 8:00 ($15-$40), director Patricia McGregor and actor Colman Domingo will premiere Nothing Personal, a stage adaptation of the collaboration between Baldwin and Richard Avedon, who went to high school together. The festival also includes “Baldwin & Delaney” (April 24, $10, 2:00), consisting of a reading by Rachel Cohen and a panel discussion about Baldwin’s encounter with painter Beauford Delaney; the multidisciplinary conversation “After Giovanni’s Room: Baldwin and Queer Futurity” (April 25, $10, 2:00) with Kyle Abraham, Rich Blint, Matthew Brim, Laura Flanders, and Jones; and “Jimmy’s Blues: Discussing the Poetry of James Baldwin,” comprising discussion and readings by poets Nikky Finney, Edward Hirsch, Yusef Komunyakaa, Ed Pavlić, Meghan O’Rourke, and Nathalie Handal.
With the music magazine she works for facing financial difficulties, longtime rock writer Ellie Klug (Toni Colette) is assigned by her editor, Giles (Oliver Platt), the one story she doesn’t want to cover: the mysterious death of Seattle musician Matthew Smith, who made one highly influential album, then drove his car over a waterfall. The main problem is that the jaded Ellie, who has a penchant for sleeping with her subjects, had a relationship with Matthew, one she wants to keep buried. But soon she is on the road with former fling Charlie (Thomas Haden Church), a straitlaced, wealthy bore who decides to make a documentary about her search. At the same time, Ellie is pursued by singer-songwriter Lucas (Ryan Eggold), a younger man who has the hots for her. When she gets a tip that Matthew might actually still be alive, she has to decide whether holding on to her career is worth dredging up the past. Inspired by cowriter and producer Emily Wachtel’s real life as a singles columnist for the Fairfield County Weekly and a contributing writer for Westport magazine, for which she used the pseudonym Ellie Klug, Lucky Them can’t decide whether it’s Eddie and the Cruisers, Velvet Goldmine, or Almost Famous, resulting in a tedious drama filled with genre clichés and dull, predictable scenes. Even a supposed shock near the end ultimately feels trite and obvious. Haden Church’s character is so ludicrously unbelievable that it drags down the entire film by itself, but he gets no help from the overwrought script, mediocre music, and stagnant direction by Megan Griffiths (Eden, The Off Hours). The film is dedicated to Paul Newman, whose widow, Joanne Woodward, is one of the executive producers; Woodward and Wachtel previously teamed up with director Treva Wurmfeld on the documentary Shepard & Dark. But this disappointing follow-up is more like a vanity project that should never have seen the light of day.
After working on two previous fashion-related films, Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel and Valentino: The Last Emperor, Frédéric Tcheng makes his solo directorial debut with Dior and I. In April 2012, fashion designer Raf Simons was named the new creative director of Christian Dior, bringing along his right-hand man, Pieter Mulier. Tcheng goes behind the scenes to follow Simons as he prepares his first-ever haute couture collection, which is due in a mere two months. Tcheng zooms in on the Belgian designer’s working methods and general anxiety as he takes over at the legendary company, developing important relationships with Dior CEO Sidney Toledano, première atelier flou Florence Chehet, première atelier tailleur Monique Bailly, the seamstresses, the models, and other employees. Simons chooses to pay homage to Dior’s past with his new collection while attempting to rid himself of the designation of “minimalist designer.” One of his most fascinating directions is attempting to incorporate the work of artist Sterling Ruby into his designs. All the while he is haunted by the ghost of company founder and New Look creator Christian Dior, who is shown by Tcheng in archival footage accompanied by a voice-over of Omar Berrada reading from Dior’s memoirs. Dior and I is a slight but affecting race against time, as one man in the present honors the past while laying the groundwork for a bright future.
In Ballet 422, Jody Lee Lipes takes viewers behind the scenes as twenty-five-year-old New York City Ballet dancer Justin Peck choreographs the 422nd original piece for the prestigious company, Paz de la Jolla. One of fifty dancers in the Corps de Ballet, which the film calls “the lowest rank” of the NYCB, Peck was named by company head Peter Martins to be the New York Choreographic Institute’s first active choreographer-in-residence for the 2011-12 season, and he is the only current NYCB dancer to choreograph for the company. Documentarian and cinematographer Lipes (NY Export: Opus Jazz, Tiny Furniture) focuses on the fascinating collaboration that goes into creating a ballet. “As a former soloist with New York City Ballet, I had long dreamed about pulling back the veil on the making of a new ballet,” producer Ellen Bar explains on the film’s 
In 2005, futurist Ray Kurzweil wrote The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, forecasting the next stages of artificial intelligence and its effects on humanity. That idea is taken to a whole new level in Wally Pfister’s overblown and ultimately ridiculous Transcendence. Johnny Depp stars as Dr. Will Caster, an AI expert targeted by R.I.F.T. (Revolutionary Independence from Technology), a terrorist group led by Bree (Kate Mara) that is calling for “Evolution without Technology.” After a conference, Will is shot, and his wife, Evelyn (Rebecca Hall), and best friend, Max (Paul Bettany), consider uploading Will’s brain into his supercomputer, PINN (Physically Independent Neural Network), before he dies. While Evelyn wants to keep her lover alive any way possible, Max considers the potential ramifications if they succeed. And succeed they do, beyond their wildest expectations — and far beyond any kind of plausibility, leaving the audience openmouthed in amazement.
In her 2010 book Good as Gold: 1 Woman, 9 Sports, 10 Countries, and a 2-Year Quest to Make the Summer Olympics, athlete and journalist Kathryn Bertine detailed her attempts to participate in the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing. A former figure skater who shared her experiences on ice in 2003’s All the Sundays Yet to Come, Bertine has now made her first documentary, Half the Road: The Passion, Pitfalls & Power of Women’s Professional Cycling. Filmed for less than $10,000 and then funded by an