Tom Sachs takes visitors on a trip to Mars in the Park Avenue Armory (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Park Avenue Armory
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 17, $12, 12 noon – 7:00 pm (open till 9:00 on Fridays)
212-933-5812
www.armoryonpark.org
tomsachsmars.com
space program: mars slideshow
You don’t have to have grown up dreaming of becoming an astronaut to get a huge kick out of Tom Sachs’s immersive “Space Program: Mars” experience at the Park Avenue Armory. In September 2007, the New York native and his well-trained team traveled to the moon at the Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles, but this time around he sets his sights much bigger, as Sachs and crew have filled the armory’s expansive Wade Thompson Drill Hall with all the elements needed to journey to and explore the Red Planet. Curated by Creative Time’s Anne Pasternak and the armory’s Kristy Edmunds, “Space Program: Mars” begins with “Working to Code,” a series of short films (10 Bullets, Color, Love Letter to Plywood, Space Camp, How to Sweep, several made with Van Neistat) that detail Sachs’s bricolage DIY artistic process and hysterically precise rules (“When in doubt, leave it out! Or Die!”) that must be followed while toiling in the studio. You need to pay close attention to the very droll and funny movies if you want to pass the indoctrination test that is the only way to gain entrance to the life-size Lunar Excursion Module. (If you want a head start, you can check out all of the films in advance here.) And you’re going to want to get into the LEM, which is loaded with fascinating pieces that playfully evoke the real thing.
The Mission Control station makes sure everything is up and running in immersive space experience (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Working with NASA, Sachs and his crew of thirteen men and women painstakingly, and with a fabulous dose of tongue-in-cheek humor, re-created a multimedia Mission Control station, surveillance cameras, refrigeration units (including the Vader Fridge in the shape of the evil Death Lord), a miniature launch pad and docking target, a Mars Excursion Roving Vehicle, helmets and space suits, an ID station, an Incinolet, a Mobile Quarantine Facility inside a 1972 Winnebago, a cooking area, a clean air room, and other items necessary for achieving and surviving intergalactic travel, all put together with wood, metal, foam core, glue, nails, and other found materials ― resulting in a number of essential parts that actually work. NASA might have canceled the space shuttle program, but Sachs is reaffirming the continuing need for manned missions ― while also displaying his unique and endearing artistic sensibilities. And don’t miss the Museum of the Moon in the Veterans Room out in the hallway, where you can delve into the previous moon mission. The installation is up through June 17 and features several special activities. On June 7, Sachs and his team will conduct live demonstrations of the program’s flight plan. From June 9 through 16, Sachs and his Grummans will be holding mini-demonstrations, including a rescue mission, daily at 1:00 and 3:00, along with a Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse bicycle race scheduled for 6:00 every evening. On June 9-10 at 10:00 am, children ages five to twelve and their parents or guardians can take part in the interactive workshop “Life on Mars: Imagining the Incredible” with members of the Armory Artists Corps. On June 16, you can have “Breakfast with Mars Scientists,” as Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists Gregg Vane, Kevin Hand, and Tommaso Rivellini will join Sachs and moderator Lawrence Weschler for an in-depth conversation. The grand finale takes off immediately following, as Sachs and company will lead a real-time flight-plan endurance demonstration that runs until around midnight, with visitors allowed to come and go as they please, although you’ll have to get back in line for reentry.
Korean filmmaker Im Kwon-taek’s exploration of the life and work of nineteenth-century painter Jang seung-up (Choi Min-shik) is beautiful to look at but overly long and drawn out. We get it: The iconoclastic artist struggles with his identity, drinks too much, battles with his mentor (Ahn Sung-ki) over selling out, gets caught amid a political revolution, and has a complicated love life. However, it is always a thrill to watch Choi; Chihwaseon is screening on June 3 as part of the Museum of the Moving Image series “The Many Faces of Choi Min-shik,” which began May 20 with Song Hae-sung’s Failan and concludes July 1 with the Park Chan-wook classic Oldboy. This summer’s 
Written and directed by Wes Craven, who went on to create the Nightmare on Elm Street films as well as The Hills Have Eyes and Swamp Thing, and produced by Sean S. Cunningham, who went on to create the Friday the 13th movie series, Last House on the Left is an insipid piece of vile trash, an embarrassingly exploitative hour and a half of sheer, repulsive filth. Mari Collingwood (Sandra Cassel) and Phyllis Stone (Lucy Grantham) are on their way to see the band Bloodlust for Mari’s seventeenth birthday when they stop to pick up some pot, but they really picked the wrong place to do that. They are abducted by Krug Stillo (David Hess), Krug’s son, Junior (Marc Sheffler), Fred “Weasel” Podowski (Fred J. Lincoln), and (Jeramie Rain), who do horrible things to them while Mari’s parents (Richard Towers and Cynthia Carr) worry about their daughter, getting no help from the ridiculous local cops (Marshall Anker and Martin Kove) who are supposed to serve as comic relief. Dennis Iliadis’s 2009 remake, starring Monica Potter, Sara Paxton, Tony Goldwyn, and Garret Dillahunt, produced by Craven and Cunningham along with Marianne Maddalena, is actually much better.
“What’s going on here? What is it with all these pink ribbons everywhere?” activist and writer Barbara Ehrenreich says at the beginning of Canadian director Léa Pool’s revelatory documentary, Pink Ribbons, Inc. “I think the effect of the whole pink ribbon culture was to drain and deflect the kind of militancy we had as women who were appalled to have a disease that is epidemic and yet that we don’t know the cause of.” Inspired by Samantha King’s 2006 book Pink Ribbons, Inc.: Breast Cancer and the Politics of Philanthropy, Pool’s film explores the breast cancer culture that celebrates survivorship through feel-good cause-marketing events while tens of thousands of American women continue to die from the disease every year. Pool speaks with such experts as King, Judy Brady of Greenaction, Barbara A. Brenner of Breast Cancer Action, Dr. Marion Kavanaugh-Lynch of the California Breast Cancer Research Program, Dr. Susan Love of the National Breast Cancer Coalition and Y-ME National Breast Cancer Organization, and Dr. Olufunmilayo L. Olopade of the University of Chicago Medical Center, who discuss how despite all the money raised by running, walking, jumping, and racing for the cure, breast cancer is still a deadly disease that should be taken a lot more seriously and dealt with more honestly. Pool also talks to Susan G. Komen for the Cure founder Nancy G. Brinker (who recently found herself immersed in a battle over Planned Parenthood funding), “the mother of cause marketing” Carol Cone of Edelman Purpose, Dr. Marc Hurlbert of the Avon Foundation for Women and the Avon Breast Cancer Crusade, Breast Cancer Research Foundation founder Evelyn H. Lauder of the Estée Lauder Companies, Kim McInerney of Ford Motor Company, and others who sponsor products and events that raise money and awareness — even though some arguably participate in pink-washing, manufacturing and selling items that might be linked to causing cancer. Pool visits the Revlon Run/Walk for Women in New York, the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure in Washington, DC, the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer in San Francisco, and the Pharmaprix Weekend to End Women’s Cancers in Montreal, where pink-clad women (and men) are vibrant and happy, but it’s the IV League of Austin, a group of women with stage four metastatic breast cancer, that might provide the most truthful assessment of the disease, explaining that succumbing to breast cancer “is not a failure. You can die in a perfectly healed state.” Pink Ribbons, Inc. is not afraid to look at the pervading, popular breast cancer culture and tackle it head-on in ways that are illuminating, educational, and, surprisingly, life-affirming.