The Kills’ latest single from 2011’s Blood Pressures album, “The Last Goodbye,” has been turned into a classy, claustrophobic black-and-white video directed by actress Samantha Morton (Sweet and Lowdown, Minority Report) in which Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince play around in a photo booth while Mosshart proclaims, “It’s the last goodbye, I swear / I can’t survive on a half-hearted love / that will never be whole.” Also on the cinematic front, Giorgio Testi has made the short documentary Into the Unknown, in which the duo talk about their music right before taking the stage at Brixton Academy in London. The Kills will be back in New York City on February 11, playing a sold-out show at Terminal 5 with one of our favorites, Jeff the Brotherhood, and Hunters.
this week in film and television
THE GREY
Liam Neeson goes all primal in the gripping adventure thriller THE GREY
THE GREY (Joe Carnahan, 2012)
Opens Friday, January 27
www.thegreythemovie.com
Shortly after suicidal sharpshooter John Ottway (Liam Neeson) decides to kill a big grey instead of himself, the desperate man is fighting for his life, leading a small group of men who have survived a horrific plane crash only to find themselves right smack in wolf territory — and the wolves are none too happy that their territory has been intruded upon. Based on the short story “Ghost Walker” by Ian Mackenzie Jeffers, who wrote the taut screenplay with director Joe Carnahan (Narc,) The Grey is an intense, gripping thriller set in the vast Alaskan wilderness. In the middle of nowhere, a gang of societal outcasts — Ottway, Diaz (Frank Grillo), Talget (Dermot Mulroney), Henrick (Dallas Roberts), Flannery (Joe Anderson), Burke (Nonso Anozie), Hernandez (Ben Bray), and Lewenden (James Badge Dale), who all work at an oil refinery at the end of the earth, since no one else will have them — must band together if they want to survive, something that is a whole lot easier said than done with this collection of miscreants. As the men battle the increasingly dangerous elements, the wolves hover just on the periphery, seemingly always at the ready to attack, especially at night. Meanwhile, Ottway has tender memories of being in bed with his wife (Anne Openshaw), who has left him, the flashbacks helping him focus on his natural survival instincts. But even the skilled hunter might have finally met his match with these fierce, vengeful wolves. Beautifully photographed by Masanobu Takayanagi, The Grey expertly mixes action-adventure with horror, filled with thrills and chills galore. Evoking Sigourney Weaver in the Alien series, Neeson lends class to the film with his sensitive portrayal of the severely damaged Ottway, a good man who is more than a little down on his luck. Carnahan rarely settles for the lowest common denominator, instead telling the primal story of Ottway’s inner and outer journeys with wit and intelligence — and plenty of scares. The new year is less than a month old, but The Grey is destined to be one of the best films of 2012. (And be sure to stick around for the end of the credits for a brief bonus.)
HOW MUCH DOES YOUR BUILDING WEIGH, MR. FOSTER?
The life and career of architect Norman Foster is examined in beautifully filmed documentary
HOW MUCH DOES YOUR BUILDING WEIGH, MR. FOSTER? (Norberto López Amado & Carlos Carcas, 2011)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Wednesday, January 25
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.mrfostermovie.com
Born into a working-class family in Manchester in 1935, knighted architect Sir Norman Foster has spent the last forty years building some of the most impressive structures in the world. Titled after a question asked of him by Buckminster Fuller, How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster? examines the life and career of the intriguing character behind such innovative constructions as the London Stansted Airport terminal, the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, the Sage Gateshead, the renovated Wembley Stadium, the Great Court at the British Museum, Millennium Bridge, Hong Kong International Airport at Check Lap Kok, and the futuristic Masdar City in Abu Dhabi. Written and narrated by architecture critic Deyan Sudjic, the director of London’s Design Museum, in a steady but worshipful tone, the film features interviews with artists Anish Kapoor, Richard Serra, Anthony Caro, and Cai Guo-Qiang, journalist Paul Goldberger, musician Bono, and numerous people from Foster + Partners, which employs thousands of men and women around the world. Directors Norberto López Amado and Carlos Carcas also speak at length with Foster himself, who waxes prophetic about artistic creation, environmental responsibility, and integrating his work with nature. The film examines Foster’s drawing method, the importance of building models even in the digital age, and his dedication to improving humanity’s existence on the planet in addition to delving into his personal life, from the tragic loss of his first wife to his obsession with flight and cross-country skiing. Director of photography Valentín Álvarez lovingly moves his camera in and around such remarkable Foster creations as the Hearst Tower in New York, the Reichstag restoration in Berlin, the Millau Viaduct in France, the Swiss Re Tower in London, HSBC headquarters in Hong Kong, and Beijing Airport, shooting them as if they were majestic cathedrals, accompanied by Joan Valent’s evocative score performed by the Bratislava Symphony Orchestra. Amado and Carcas steer clear of any controversy, which has accompanied numerous Foster projects, instead concentrating on his many successes and the mind of the man behind the myth, which is itself a remarkable creation. How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster? flows like one of Foster’s buildings: elegant, organic, unique, and endlessly fascinating.
BROOKLYN ISRAEL FILM FESTIVAL: THE DEBT (HAHOV)
Israeli Mossad agents are after the “Surgeon of Birkenau” in THE DEBT, screening at the Brooklyn Israel Film Festival on Thursday night
THE DEBT (HAHOV) (Assaf Bernstein, 2007)
Kane Street Synagogue
236 Kane St., Cobble Hill
Thursday, January 26, $12, 8:00 (festival pass $30)
Festival runs through January 29
718-875-1550
www.kanestreet.org
www.thedebt-movie.com
Following a launch party for her book about how she and two fellow Mossad agents in 1964 captured and killed Max Reiner (Edgar Selge), the notorious “Surgeon of Birkenau,” Rachel Brener (Gila Almagor) immediately learns that there is an old man in a Ukrainian nursing home claiming that he is in fact the doctor who performed horrific experiments on Jewish men, women, and children in the German concentration camp during World War II. Rachel is reunited with Zvi (Alex Peleg) and Ehud (Oded Teomi), who come up with a plan to eliminate the doctor once again to protect a secret that has been haunting them for forty years. But they’re no longer the brash, finely chiseled spies they were when they were young, leading to crises of conscience and other physical and psychological dilemmas. Nominated for four Israeli Academy Awards, The Debt is a tense thriller from director Assaf Bernstein, who cowrote the screenplay with Ido Rosenblum. The story weaves back and forth between the present day, as Rachel meets Ehud in Ukraine and they hash out their plan, neither one having done anything like this in decades, and 1964, when Rachel (Neta Garty), Zvi (Itay Tiran), and Ehud (Yehezkel Lazarov) were younger and more idealistic. The scenes in which the young Rachel visits the doctor, who has become a gynecologist, and pretends she is trying to conceive a child are particularly gripping, setting up a powerful conclusion. The Debt, which was recently remade in English by John Madden with Helen Mirren, Ciarán Hinds, Sam Worthington, Jessica Chastain, and Tom Wilkinson and evokes such films as The Wild Geese, The Boys from Brazil, and QB VII, will open the Brooklyn Israel Film Festival on Thursday night at the Kane Street Synagogue in Cobble Hill, followed on Saturday night by Yossi Madmony’s Restoration, which was named Best Feature at the 2011 Jerusalem Film Festival, and Dolphin Boy on Sunday night, which will be followed by a Q&A with codirector Dani Menkin and producer Judith Manassen-Ramon.
WHO TOOK THE BOMP? LE TIGRE ON TOUR
Le Tigre concert documentary will screen January 25 at the Nitehawk Cinema, with members of the band on hand to discuss the film and more
WHO TOOK THE BOMP? LE TIGRE ON TOUR (Kerthy Fix, 2010)
Nitehawk Cinema
136 Metropolitan Ave.
Wednesday, January 25, 9:00
718-384-3980
www.nitehawkcinema.com
www.letigreworld.com
In 1961, Barry Mann and Gerry Goffin wrote, “I’d like to thank the guy / who wrote the song / that made my baby / fall in love with me.” The title of that be-bop song, “Who Put the Bomp,” inspired one of music’s first fanzines and later the punk record label Bomp! Records. In their 1999 song “Deceptacon,” the riot grrrl group Le Tigre flipped that question around, asking, “Who took the bomp from the bompalompalomp? / Who took the ram from the ramalamadingdong?” In the song they also dare, “Let me hear you depoliticise my rhyme.” Formed in 1998 by former Bikini Kill leader Kathleen Hanna, zine writer Johanna Fateman, and visual artist Sadie Benning, who was replaced in 2000 by DJ and projectionist JD Samson, Le Tigre challenged the male-dominated world of rock and punk, championing individuality and sexual freedom while redefining gender roles. In 2004, Hanna, Fateman, and Samson set out on a world tour in support of their third and final album, This Island, and asked their lighting designer, Carmine Covelli, to capture it all on film. The result is the engaging Who Took the Bomp? Le Tigre on Tour, in which Covelli and director Kerthy Fix go onstage, backstage, and behind the scenes as the influential trio heads across four continents and ten countries, playing exciting live shows, meeting the media, taking pictures with Slipknot, revealing what they pack in their luggage, exercising in the gym, and talking about facial hair. They also discuss more serious issues such as gender identity, lesbianism, and their DIY mentality, which flew in the face of the music industry. The seventy-two-minute film, which features live multimedia performances of such songs as “Hot Topic,” “Keep on Livin’,” “Viz,” and “Deceptacon,” is screening on January 25 at 9:00 at the Nitehawk Cinema in Brooklyn and will be followed by a Q&A with members of the band.
ESSENTIAL CINEMA: KINO-EYE
KINO-EYE (KINO-GLAZ) (Dziga Vertov, 1925)
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Ave. at Second St.
Saturday, January 21, 5:15
212-505-5181
www.anthologyfilmarchives.org
“Kino-eye has managed to find its way in the struggle with bourgeois cinema,” Russian filmmaker Dziga Vertov wrote in 1925, “and we seriously doubt that the latter (despite its present international dominance) can long withstand our revolutionary onslaught. There is another, greater danger — the distortion of our ideas.” One of the early masters of the new art form, Vertov, along with such contemporaries as Sergei Eisenstein, Lev Kuleshov, and Vsevolod Pudovkin, explored the potential power of the cinema in both fiction and nonfiction storytelling and as a propaganda tool. Vertov, whose most famous film is 1929’s Man with a Movie Camera, a revolutionary work about cinema itself, searched for truth in his films, what he referred to as “kino-pravda,” employing a unique cinema-verité style to capture real life. Not that he also didn’t have a very specific agenda. In the seminal Kino-Eye, what Vertov called a “tapestry of life,” Vertov and one of his brothers, cameraman Mikhail Kaufman, depict Soviet life of the 1920s, exploiting the technology of the medium while following a group of Young Pioneers marching through towns putting up political banners and waving flags. Along the way they stop by a village party filled with drunken revelers, wander through a street market, camp out in the fields, watch a Chinese magician perform, and come upon such health issues as tuberculosis and mental illness. Several scenes are projected in reverse, including the butchering of meat, the baking of bread, and even the sport of diving, as Vertov and Kaufman play with the story while also revealing the methods of production. By focusing on the children, Vertov is forming a blueprint for the future of the nation, just as in the film itself he is laying the groundwork for the future of cinema. Kino-Eye is screening on January 21 at 5:15 as part of Anthology Film Archives’ continuing “Essential Cinema” series, which followed by Vertov’s Forward, Soviet! at 7:00 and A Sixth of the World at 8:45.
CINEMA TROPICAL FESTIVAL: NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT
NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT offers a breathtaking look at memory and the past, from above and below
NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT (NOSTALGIA DE LA LUZ) (Patricio Guzmán, 2010)
92YTribeca
200 Hudson St.
Sunday, January 22, $12, 1:00
212-415-5500
www.92y.org
www.nostalgiaforthelight.com
Master documentarian Patricio Guzmán’s Nostalgia for the Light is a brilliant examination of memory and the past, one of the most intelligent and intellectual films you’re ever likely to see. But don’t let that scare you off — it is also a vastly entertaining, deeply emotional work that will blow you away with its stunning visuals and heartbreaking stories. Guzmán, who chronicled the assassination of Salvador Allende and the rise of Augusto Pinochet in the landmark three-part political documentary The Battle of Chile, this time visits the Atacama Desert in his native Chile, considered to be the driest place on Earth. Situated ten thousand feet above sea level, the desert is home to La Silla and Paranal Observatories, where astronomers come from all over the world to get unobstructed views of the stars and galaxies, unimpeded by pollution or electronic interference. However, it is also a place where women still desperately search for the remains of their loved ones murdered by Pinochet’s military regime and hidden away in mass graves. In addition, archaeologists have discovered mummies and other fossilized bones dating from pre-Columbian times there. Guzmán seamlessly weaves together these three journeys into the past — as astronomers such as Gaspar Galaz and Luis Hernandez note, by the time they see stars either with the naked eye or through the lens of their massive telescopes, the celestial bodies have been long dead — creating a fascinating narrative that is as thrilling as it is breathtaking. Constructing a riveting tale of memory, Guzmán speaks with architect Miguel Lawner, who draws detailed maps of the Chacabuca desert concentration camp where he and so many other political prisoners were held; Valentina, a young astronomer whose grandparents had to give up her parents in order to save her when she was a baby; archaeologist Lautaro Nunez, who digs up mummies while trying to help the women find “los desaparecidos”; and Victoria and Violeta, who regularly comb the barren landscape in search of their relatives. “I wish the telescopes didn’t just look into the sky but could also see through the earth so that we could find them,” Violeta says at one point. Spectacularly photographed by Katell Dijan, Nostalgia for the Light is a modern masterpiece, an unparalleled cinematic experience that has to be seen to be believed. The film is screening January 22 at 92YTribeca as Best Documentary at the Cinema Tropical Festival, which also includes Daniel Vega & Diego Vega’s Octubre, Michael Rowe’s Camera d’Or winner Leap Year (Año Bisiesto), and Tatiana Huezo’s The Tiniest Place (El Lugar Más Pequeño).