this week in film and television

FILMS FOR FOODIES! LA GRANDE BOUFFE

Four legendary movie stars attempt to eat themselves to death in LA GRANDE BOUFFE

CINÉMATUESDAYS: LA GRANDE BOUFFE (THE BIG FEAST) (BLOW-OUT) (Marco Ferreri, 1973)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, October 9, $10, 7:00
Series continues through October 30
212-355-6160
www.fiaf.org

Fed up with their lives, four old friends decide to literally eat themselves to death in one last grand blow-out. Cowritten and directed by Marco Ferreri (Chiedo asilo, La casa del sorriso), La Grande Bouffe features a cast that is an assured recipe for success, bringing together a quartet of legendary actors, all playing characters with their real first names: Marcello Mastroianni as sex-crazed airplane pilot Marcello, Philippe Noiret as mama’s boy and judge Philippe, Michel Piccoli as effete television host Michel, and Ugo Tognazzi as master gourmet chef Ugo. They move into Philippe’s hidden-away family villa, where they plan to eat and screw themselves to death, with the help of a group of prostitutes led by Andréa (Andréa Ferréol). Gluttons for punishment, the four men start out having a gas, but as the feeding frenzy continues, so does the flatulence level, and the men start dropping one by one. While the film might not be quite the grand feast it sets out to be, it still is one very tasty meal. Just be thankful that it’s not shown in Odoroma. Winner of the FIPRESCI Prize at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, La Grande Bouffe is screening October 9 at 12:30, 4:00, and 7:00 as part of the FIAF CinémaTuesdays series “Films for Foodies!” The 7:00 showing will be introduced by pâtissier François Payard and series curator John Mariani and followed by a Q&A. The series continues October 16 with Roland Joffe’s Vatel (presented by Mariani and chef André Soltner), October 23 with Jean-Pierre Améris’s Romantics Anonymous (including a chocolate tasting with Mariani and chocolatier Laurent Gerbaud), and October 30 with Paul Lacoste’s Step Up to the Plate (presented by Mariani, chef Jean-Louis Gerin, and film producer Jaime Mateus-Tique). Bon appetit!

NYFF50: LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE

The lives of three very different individuals intertwine in Abbas Kiarostami’s remarkable LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE

NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL MAIN SLATE: LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE (Abbas Kiarostami, 2012)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Alice Tully Hall
1941 Broadway at 66th St.
Monday, October 8, Francesca Beale Theater, 6:15
Festival runs through October 14
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com

Following the Tuscany-set Certified Copy, his first film made outside of his home country, master Iranian auteur Abbas Kiarostami heads to Japan for the beautifully told Like Someone in Love. Rin Takanashi stars as Akiko, a sociology student supporting herself as an escort working for bar owner and pimp Hiroshi (Denden). An older, classy businessman, Hiroshi insists that Akiko is the only person to handle a certain client, so, despite her loud objections, she is put in a cab and taken to meet Takashi (Tadashi Okuno), an elderly professor who seems to just want some company. But soon Akiko unwittingly puts the gentle old man in the middle of her complicated life, which includes her extremely jealous and potentially violent boyfriend, Noriaki (Ryō Kase), and a surprise visit from her grandmother (Kaneko Kubota). Taking its title from the song made famous by, among others, Ella Fitzgerald, Like Someone in Love is an intelligent character-driven narrative that investigates different forms of love and romance in unique and engaging ways. Kiarostami (Taste of Cherry, Close-Up) and cinematographer Katsumi Yanagijima, who has worked on numerous films by Takeshi Kitano, establish their visual style from the very beginning, as an unseen woman, later revealed to be Akiko, is on the phone lying to her abusive boyfriend about where she is, the camera not moving for extended periods of time as people bustle around her in a crowded bar. As is often the case with Kiarostami, who has said that his next film will be set in Italy, much of the film takes place in close quarters, including many in cars, both moving and parked, forcing characters to have to deal with one another and face certain realities they might otherwise avoid. Takanashi is excellent as Akiko, a young woman trapped in several bad situations of her own making, but octogenarian Okuno steals the show in the first lead role of a long career that has primarily consisted of being an extra. The soft look in his eyes, the tender way he shuffles through his apartment, and his very careful diction are simply captivating. Despite his outstanding performance, Okuno is committed to returning to the background in future films, shunning the limelight. A jazz-filled film that at times evokes the more serious work of Woody Allen, another director most associated with a home base but who has been making movies in other cities for a number of years now, Like Someone in Love is like a great jazz song, especially one in which the notes that are not played are more important than those that are.

NYFF50 HBO DIRECTORS DIALOGUE: ABBAS KIAROSTAMI

The always engaging Abbas Kiarostami will talk about his life and career in a special Directors Dialogue at the fiftieth New York Film Festival (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Film Society of Lincoln Center, Bruno Walter Auditorium
111 Amsterdam Ave. at 66th St.
Saturday, October 6, $15, 6:00
Festival runs through October 14
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com

A decade ago, master Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami was denied a visa to come to the New York Film Festival to present his latest film, Ten. “It’s a terrible sign of what’s happening in my country today that no one seems to realize or care about the kind of negative signal this sends out to the entire Muslim world,” festival director Richard Peña said at the time. Ten years later, Kiarostami (Close-Up, Taste of Cherry) will be making a special appearance at the fiftieth New York Film Festival, the last one organized by Peña, who is stepping down after twenty-five years. Kiarostami will be speaking with Brooklyn-born writer Phillip Lopate at the Bruno Walter Auditorium on October 6 at 6:00 as part of the HBO Directors Dialogue series. A visual artist who had an exceptional dual show at MoMA and PS1, “Image Maker,” in 2007, Kiarostami has brought the remarkable Like Someone to Love to this year’s festival; the film, set in Japan and featuring outstanding performances by Tadashi Okuno and Rin Takanashi, will have its second and final screening October 8 at the Francesca Beale Theater. Kiarostami is a fascinating figure, a stylish cool cat in ever-present dark glasses who has an engaging knowledge of art and cinema that always makes for a lively discussion. The series continues October 7 with David Chase in conversation with Scott Foundas and October 13 with Robert Zemeckis speaking with Peña.

NYFF50 CENTERPIECE: NOT FADE AWAY

The British Invasion changes the life of a suburban New Jersey high school kid in David Chase’s NOT FADE AWAY

NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL GALA TRIBUTES: NOT FADE AWAY (David Chase, 2012)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Alice Tully Hall
1941 Broadway at 66th St.
Saturday, October 6, 6:00 & 9:00
Festival runs through October 14
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com

Inspired by his brief stint as a suburban New Jersey garage-band drummer with rock-and-roll dreams, Sopranos creator David Chase makes his feature-film debt with the musical coming-of-age drama Not Fade Away. Written and directed by Chase, the film focuses on Douglas (John Magaro), a suburban New Jersey high school kid obsessed with music and The Twilight Zone. It’s the early 1960s, and Douglas soon becomes transformed when he first hears the Beatles and the Stones — while also noticing how girls go for musicians, particularly Grace (Bella Heathcote), whom he has an intense crush on but who only seems to date guys in bands. When his friends Eugene (Jack Huston) and Wells (Will Brill) ask him to join their group, Douglas jumps at the chance, but it’s not until he gets the opportunity to sing lead one night that he really begins to think that music — and Grace — could be his life. Not Fade Away has all the trappings of being just another clichéd sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll movie, but Chase and musical supervisor (and executive producer) Steven “Silvio” Van Zandt circumvent genre expectations and limitations by, first and foremost, nailing the music. Van Zandt spent three months teaching the main actors how to sing, play their instruments, and, essentially, be a band, making the film feel real as the unnamed group goes from British Invasion covers to writing their own song. Even Douglas’s fights with his conservative middle-class father (James Gandolfini) and his battle with Eugene over the direction of the band are handled with an intelligence and sensitivity not usually seen in these kinds of films. Not Fade Away does make a few wrong turns along the way, but it always gets right back on track, leading to an open-ended conclusion that celebrates the power, the glory, and, ultimately, the mystery of rock and roll. Not Fade Away is having its world premiere October 6 as the centerpiece of the fiftieth New York Film Festival before opening theatrically in December. In addition, Chase, a rather reserved man who is not always generous and forthcoming in interviews, will take part in an HBO Directors Dialogue on October 7 at 1:45, sitting down with festival selection committee member Scott Foundas.

NYFF50: SOMETHING IN THE AIR

The cultural revolution on the early 1970s is back in Olivier Assayas’s SOMETHING IN THE AIR

NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL MAIN SLATE: SOMETHING IN THE AIR (APRÈS MAI) (Olivier Assayas, 2012)
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Friday, October 5, Alice Tully Hall, 9:15
Monday, October 8, Alice Tully Hall, 12 noon
Friday, October 12, Francesca Beale Theater, 6:30
Festival runs through October 14
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com

Olivier Assayas’s autobiographical coming-of-age tale Something in the Air is a fresh, exhilarating look back at a critical period in twentieth-century French history. In this sort-of follow-up to his 1994 film about 1970s teenagers, Cold Water, which starred Virginie Ledoyen as Christine and Cyprien Fouquet as Gilles, Something in the Air features newcomer Clément Métayer as a boy named Gilles and Lola Créton (Goodbye First Love) as a girl named Christine, a pair of high school students who are part of a growing underground anarchist movement. Following a planned demonstration that is violently broken up by a special brigade police force, some of the students cover their school in spray paint and political posters, leading to a confrontation with security guards that results in the arrest of the innocent Jean-Pierre (Hugo Conzelmann), which only further emboldens the anarchists. But their seething rage slowly changes as they explore the transformative world of free love, drugs, art, music, travel, and experimental film. Assayas (Les Destinées sentimentales, Summer Hours) doesn’t turn Something in the Air — the original French title is actually Après Mai, or After May, referring to the May 1968 riots — into a personal nostalgia trip. Instead it’s an engaging and charming examination of a time when young people truly cared about something other than themselves and genuinely believed they could change the world, filled with what Assayas described as a “crazy utopian hope for the future” at a New York Film Festival press conference. The talented cast also includes Félix Armand, India Salvor Menuez, Léa Rougeron, and Carole Combes as Laure, both Gilles’s and Assayas’s muse.

Writer-director Olivier Assayas will be on hand October 5 to talk about his latest work, SOMETHING IN THE AIR (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Assayas fills Something in the Air with direct and indirect references to such writers, artists, philosophers, and musicians as Syd Barrett, Gregory Corso, Amazing Blondel, Blaise Pascal, Kasimir Malevitch, Max Stirner, Alighiero Boetti, Joe Hill, Soft Machine, Georges Simenon, Frans Hals, and Simon Ley (The Chairman’s New Clothes: Mao and the Cultural Revolution), not necessarily your usual batch of 1970s heroes who show up in hippie-era films. Writer-director Assayas, editors Luc Barnier and Mathilde Van de Moortel, and cinematographer Éric Gautier move effortlessly from France to Italy to England, from thrilling, fast-paced chases to intimate scenes of young love to a groovy psychedelic concert, wonderfully capturing a moment in time that is too often marginally idealized and made overly sentimental on celluloid. “We’ve got to get together sooner or later / Because the revolution’s here,” Thunderclap Newman sings in their 1969 hit “Something in the Air,” which oddly is not used in Assayas’s film, continuing, “And you know it’s right / and you know that it’s right.” Indeed, Assayas gets it right in Something in the Air, depicting a generation when revolution required a lot more than clicking a button on the internet. A critical thinker who speaks intelligently about his work, Assayas will be at the October 5 New York Film Festival screening of Something in the Air, which is also being shown October 8 and 12 before opening theatrically next spring.

WUTHERING HEIGHTS

Heathcliffe (Solomon Glave) and Cathy (Shannon Beer) explore forbidden love in new version of classic novel (photo by Agatha Nitecka)

WUTHERING HEIGHTS (Andrea Arnold, 2011)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Opens Friday, October 5
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org
www.oscilloscope.net

Digging deep into Emily Brontё’s classic — and only — novel, writer-director Andrea Arnold creates a radically different Wuthering Heights from such previous versions starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon (1939), Keith Michell and Claire Bloom (1962), and Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche (1992). Setting the bar high following her exceptional first two films, Red Road and Fish Tank, Arnold’s Wuthering Heights is told from the point of view of a black Heathcliffe, played as a teenager by Solomon Glave and an adult by James Howson, both of whom make their acting debut in the film. Although Cathy (newcomer Shannon Beer, then Kaya Scodelario) takes a nearly instant liking to the poor Heathcliffe, who has been brought in off the streets by her father, Earnshaw (Paul Hilton), her brother, Hindley (Lee Shaw), treats Heathcliffe like a slave, continually beating him and shouting racial epithets at him. Heathcliffe and Cathy try to take advantage of their every stolen moment together by wandering across the Yorkshire moors, but when he learns that she is considering marrying Edgar (Jonathan Powell, then James Northcote), Heathcliffe disappears, only to return later a changed man with a new mission. Working with Oscar-nominated screenwriter Olivia Hetreed (Girl with a Pearl Earring), Arnold streamlines Wuthering Heights down to its bare emotions, eschewing an epic costume drama in favor of a more intimate story that is often more faithful to the book. Shot by Robbie Ryan, who won the Best Cinematography award at the 2011 Venice Film Festival, Wuthering Heights has a look that is dark and captivating, focusing more on character than period dress and sweeping locations. Unfortunately, however, Heathcliffe is significantly lacking in character; his younger self, in particular, broods about, rarely speaking, letting things happen to him and not fighting back. He might be in a precarious situation, but his continued silence grows tired fast, detracting from the overall impact of the film, a shortcoming that is nearly overridden by Beer’s more energetic and interesting Cathy. This might not be a Wuthering Heights for the ages, but it most certainly is a fascinating version of a familiar, sometimes misunderstood classic romantic drama.

DEAN AND BRITTA — 13 MOST BEAUTIFUL: SONGS FOR ANDY WARHOL’S SCREEN TESTS

Dean & Britta will reprise their audiovisual Andy Warhol tribute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on October 6 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Metropolitan Museum of Art
Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium
1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd St.
Saturday, October 6, $35, 7:00
www.metmuseum.org
www.deanandbritta.com

Two years ago, at the CMJ Festival, Dean & Britta announced that they would play “13 Most Beautiful: Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests” for the last time ever in New York City at the Skirball Center in October 2010. Well, it seems that the Met has gotten them to change their mind, as they will once again be performing their outstanding set piece on October 6 in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, in conjunction with the new exhibit “Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years.” In 2006, the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh commissioned Dean & Britta to compose scores for screen tests that the silver-haired artist shot at the Factory from 1964 to 1966; they searched through hundreds of the black-and-white films (each four minutes and sixteen seconds in length) until they decided on Lou Reed, Nico, Edie Sedgwick, Dennis Hopper, Paul America, Susan Bottomly, Ann Buchanan, Freddy Herko, Jane Holzer, Billy Name, Richard Rheem, Ingrid Superstar, and Mary Woronov. The result is a stunning collection of gorgeous instrumentals (“Silver Factory Theme,” “Incandescent Innocence”), covers (Bob Dylan’s “I’ll Keep It with Mine” and the Velvet Underground’s “I’m Not a Young Man Anymore”), “Knives from Bavaria” from the Dean & Britta record L’Avventura, and other trippy tracks, including the phenomenal “Teenage Lightning (and Lonely Highways),” that the duo, accompanied by Anthony Lamarca and Matt Sumrow, performs live while the screen tests are projected behind them. Dean, who was previously in Luna and Galaxie 500, introduces most of the songs/films with a little historical detail about the subject, adding both nostalgia and, unfortunately, tragedy to the proceedings, as most of the people being shown on the screen are no longer with us.