this week in film and television

THE FUTURE

Sophie (Miranda July) and Jason (Hamish Linklater) worry about what comes next in THE FUTURE

THE FUTURE (Miranda July, 2011)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Friday, July 29
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.thefuturethefuture.com
eleven heavy things in union square park 2010

Multimedia performance artist and indie darling Miranda July scored a major breakthrough with her 2005 cinematic debut, the utterly charming romantic comedy Me and You and Everyone We Know. While her follow-up, The Future, lacks many of the endearing qualities that made her first film such a success, it is still a quirky, beguiling drama that offers a breath of fresh air from the usual summer movie doldrums — er, blockbusters. July stars as Sophie, a children’s dance teacher living with Jason (Hamish Linklater), a work-at-home IT dude. The slackers spend their time sitting on the couch, both on their laptops, having offbeat conversations and pretending they can stop time. But when they are told that the sick cat they want to adopt won’t be well enough to leave the veterinary hospital for another month, they decide that this will be their last thirty days of freedom, thinking that the arrival of the feline will confer upon them the responsibilities of adulthood they have been so good at avoiding up to now. Given this last bastion of hope, they quit their jobs to pursue their dreams: Jason starts going door-to-door selling trees, while Sophie sets out to perform a dance a day and post them on YouTube. No, this oddball, somewhat freakish couple doesn’t exactly dream big. And, of course, their idea of freedom doesn’t turn out to be exactly what they had hoped. The Future veers off in way too many directions, some good, some bad, but it is held together by July’s bright eyes and lanky, comedic body even as she explores the horrors of mainstream suburban living. As with much of her performance art, she challenges the audience to stay with her as she defies standard narrative and turns to the surreal, including a talking moon. The film is nearly stolen by Joe Putterlik, an elderly man whom Jason meets through a Pennysaver ad for a three-dollar used hair dryer; Putterlik, who also is the voice of the moon, was actually discovered by July through a Pennysaver ad, and much of his dialogue is improvised and set in his own apartment as he talks about his real life. Sadly, he died immediately after shooting was concluded. The film is narrated by the ill cat, Paw Paw (voiced by July in a creepy monotone), who dreams of her own freedom, wanting desperately to get out of her cage and be taken in by people who will love her. And after all, isn’t that what we all want? As an added treat, the California-based July, who installed the fun installation “Eleven Heavy Things” in Union Square Park last year and has also written the terrific short-story collection No one belongs here more than you, will be at the IFC Center for the 6:10 and 8:20 screenings on July 29 & 30.

EPIX OUTDOOR SCREENING ON THE INTREPID: THE CAPTAINS

Old Captain Kirk (William Shatner) battles it out with young Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) in Epix documentary THE CAPTAINS

Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum
Pier 86, 12th Ave. & 46th St.
Saturday, July 30, free, gates at 7:30, film at 8:45
www.intrepidmuseum.org
www.epixhd.com

As far as we’re concerned, there is only one Star Trek captain, and his name is James T. Kirk, played by the ever-lovable William Shatner. Sure, we have a soft spot for the inimitable Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and we also got a kick out of Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) of Star Trek: Voyager. We never got quite as involved with Captain Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine or Captain Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula) of Star Trek: Enterprise. In the Epix HD original documentary The Captains, writer-director-producer Shatner goes in search of all the other starship captains — each of the aforementioned leaders, in addition to Chris Pine, who played the young Kirk in J. J. Abrams’s recent Star Trek big-screen reboot — and he’ll do whatever it takes to get them to talk about their part in the continuing adventures of the Starship Enterprise and beyond. The film will be screening for free on Saturday night, July 30, on board the Intrepid, where Shatner will be on hand to introduce the movie and give out prizes. The first one thousand people to show up in costume — the Intrepid strongly advises against bringing anything that even resembles a weapon — will receive a commemorative Captains poster. The best costumes will vie for T-shirts and the opportunity to take a photo with Shatner. Epix is in the midst of Shatnerpalooza, offering online HD screenings of the first six Star Trek films in addition to such other stellar Shatner fare as The Intruder, Big Bad Mama, Pioneer Woman, Broken Angel, The Outer Limits, Disaster on the Coastliner, and William Shatner’s Gonzo Ballet. (What, no Kingdom of the Spiders or the Esperanto classic Incubus?)

PAUL NEWMAN: SLAP SHOT

Paul Newman is ready to do whatever it takes to win in classic hockey flick

SLAP SHOT (George Roy Hill, 1977)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Friday, July 29, $10, 7:00, and Sunday, July 31, free with museum admission, 4:00
Series continues through August 7
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us
www.hansonbrothers.net

One of the best sports films ever made, Slap Shot is a riotously bloody look at minor-league hockey. Paul Newman — who declared this one of his favorite pictures — stars as Reggie Dunlop, an aging loser serving as player-coach of the Charlestown Chiefs. When the general manager (Strother Martin) tells him that the team is being shut down at the end of the season, Dunlop decides to send it off with a bang. Lying to his team that if the Chiefs fill the seats and start winning they will move to Florida, he incorporates a different style of play into their game, led by the brutal, vicious, and utterly hilarious Hanson brothers (real-life brothers Jeff and Steve Carlson and their Johnstown Jets teammate Dave Hanson), who never met an opponent they wouldn’t punch, trip, slash, spear, or slam face-first into the boards well after the whistle. Even Dunlop gets in on the fun, throwing his share of right hands. The only player not participating in the hijinks is Ned Braden (Michael Ontkean), who believes in sportsmanship and a more gentlemanly game of skill and beauty, not exactly what men like Ogie Oglethorpe (minor-league player Ned Dowd, whose sister, Nancy, wrote the book that the movie is based on, inspired by the real-life antics of the Johnstown Jets) have in mind. You don’t have to be a hockey fan to love Slap Shot, which is really, when it comes right down to it, just a little film about the trials and tribulations of everyday life. Slap Shot is screening July 29 & 31 as part of the Museum of the Moving Image’s tribute to Paul Newman, which continues July 30 with Torn Curtain (Alfred Hitchcock, 1966), July 30-31 with Hombre (Martin Ritt, 1967), and August 6-7 with Nobody’s Fool (Robert Benton, 1994) and Twilight (Robert Benton, 1998).

MASTER CLASS: STEVE JAMES

NO CROSSOVER: THE TRIAL OF ALLEN IVERSON kicks off Master Class series with Steve James at the Maysles Institute

Maysles Institute
343 Malcolm X Blvd. between 127th & 128th Sts.
July 28 – August 4, suggested donation $10, 7:30
212-582-6050
www.mayslesinstitute.org

Award-winning director, producer, and editor Steve James has made some of the most fascinating, entertaining, and important documentaries of the past twenty years, delving into the American psyche through sports, death row, and inner-city violence. The Maysles Institute will be celebrating the release of his latest film, The Interrupters, a powerful examination of gang violence in Chicago, with Master Class, a series curated by Sylvia Savadjian that begins Thursday night with a screening of James’s No Crossover: The Trial of Allen Iverson, a look back at a major event in the basketball superstar’s youth that took place in James’s own hometown of Hampton, Virginia. The film screens at 7:30 and will be followed by a Q&A and reception with James. On Friday night, the instant classic Hoop Dreams will be shown, a seminal work that follows the dreams of two high school athletes, William Gates and Arthur Agee, seeking to make it big in the NBA. The series continues August 4 with James and Peter Gilbert’s At the Death House Door and August 5-11 with The Interrupters; look for our rave reviews of both coming soon.

EIKO & KOMA: WATER / RESIDUE

Eiko and Koma will perform in Lincoln Center’s Paul Milstein Pool as part of free Out of Doors Festival (photo by Robert G. Sanchez)

Lincoln Center Out of Doors
Paul Milstein Pool, Hearst Plaza
July 27-31, free, 9:30
212-875-5000
www.lcoutofdoors.org
www.eikoandkoma.org

In the spring, innovative New York-based dancers and choreographers Eiko Otake and Takashi Koma performed the powerful Naked at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, a free, haunting “living installation” in which the longtime couple moved perilously slowly in a postapocalyptic organic environment that included tantalizing drips of water coming from the ceiling. For their latest site-specific work, Eiko and Koma will perform in the Paul Milstein Pool at Hearst Plaza, July 27-31 at 9:30, as part of the Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival. Native American flutist-composer Robert Mirabal will accompany the dancers in the water, playing his original score live. Also on hand will be Henry Moore’s “Reclining Figure,” which has occupied the pool for years. The new piece was partly inspired by Eiko and Koma’s 1995 River, which takes place in moving water and was recently reconstructed for the 2011 American Dance Festival; water has also played a role in such previous productions as Elegy (1984), Thirst (1985), and Passage (1989). “In this most urban landscape of midtown Manhattan, we also intend to remember and imagine the ancient water all living things came from and each of us was born from,” they explain in a program note. “Finally, many recent disasters remind us that water’s seeming calm is illusory.” It is appropriate that Water is taking place in a reflecting pool, as Lincoln Center is also hosting “Residue,” a multimedia exhibition that looks back at Eiko and Koma’s long career in conjunction with their ongoing Retrospective Project, featuring video, sets, costumes, and the extraordinary structure built for Naked. The display continues at the Astor Gallery at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts through October 30. On July 28 at 6:00, Dance magazine editor in chief Wendy Perron will speak with Eiko and Koma and show several of their short videos, including My Parents, The Retrospective Project, Dancing in Water: The Making of River, and The Making of Cambodian Stories. All events are free and open to the public.

PRINCE OF THE CITY: REMEMBERING SIDNEY LUMET

Al Pacino gives a fiery performance as a would-be bank robber in Sidney Lumet's DOG DAY AFTERNOON

DOG DAY AFTERNOON (Sidney Lumet, 1975) and SERPICO (Sidney Lumet, 1973)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Serpico: Saturday, July 23, 9:00
Dog Day Afternoon: Saturday, July 23, 6:30, and Monday, July 25, 1:00
Series continues through July 19-25
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com

The Film Society of Lincoln Center’s tribute to the late Sidney Lumet continues tonight with two of the Philadelphia-born New Yorker’s greatest works, a pair of tense, powerful fact-based dramas starring Bronx native Al Pacino that helped define the 1970s, both onscreen and off. First up, at 6:30, is one of the most bizarre bank robberies gone wrong you’ll ever see, Dog Day Afternoon. Pacino stars as Sonny, a confused young man desperate to get money to pay for his boyfriend’s (Chris Sarandon) sex-change operation. But things don’t go quite as planned, and soon Sonny is leading the gathered crowd in chants of “Attica! Attica!” while his partner, Sal (John Cazale), wants a plane to take them to Wyoming and Det. Moretti (Charles Durning) is trying to get them to surrender without hurting anyone, primarily themselves. Dog Day Afternoon is a blistering, funny, biting commentary on mid-’70s New York as well as a fascinating character study of a deeply conflicted man. Following at 9:00 is another gritty, realistic drama, Serpico, with Pacino giving an unforgettable performance as an undercover cop single-handedly trying to end the rampant corruption that has spread like a disease throughout the NYPD. When his fellow officers and supposed friends turn their back on him, he is left on his own, vulnerable but still committed, risking both his career and his life to do what he thinks is right. Pacino is explosive in both films, playing two very different protagonists on different sides of the law yet similar in so many ways. “Prince of the City: Remembering Sidney Lumet” features three other Lumet films today, 1978’s The Wiz (10:30 am), 1968’s The Sea Gull (1:15), and 1988’s Running on Empty (4:00), while tomorrow’s schedule includes 1962’s Long Day’s Journey into Night (12:30), 1990’s Q&A (4:00), and 1981’s Prince of the City (7:15), the latter two followed by Q&As with cast members and real characters depicted in the films.

TWI-NY TALK: JOE SIMON

Joe Simon shows off his colorful autobiography in his New York City apartment (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

JOE SIMON: MY LIFE IN COMICS (Titan, June 2011, $24.95)
www.titanbooks.com

The potential summer blockbuster Captain America opens in theaters today, but that would not have been possible without Joe Simon. Back in 1941, Simon, a native New Yorker born and raised in Rochester, teamed up with Jacob Kurtzberg, better known as Jack Kirby, and created the red, white, and blue superhero. The villain for the cover of the first issue? They came up with just the right one. “Adolf Hitler would be the perfect foil for our next new character, what with his hair and that stupid-looking moustache and his goose-stepping. He was like a cartoon anyway,” Simon writes in his entertaining, intimate, and refreshingly honest memoir, My Life in Comics (Titan, June 2011, $24.95). “We knew what was happening in Europe, and we were outraged by the Nazis — totally outraged. We thought it was a good time for a patriotic hero. . . . And that’s how Captain America was created.”

Today the ninety-seven-year-old Simon spends most of his time in his cluttered apartment just west of the Theater District, surrounded by classic drawings, sketches, and comic book covers. His works line the walls, a veritable history of the industry in black and white and color. One of the many highlights is a grand depiction of the Last Supper populated with his characters, a painting he completed with his daughter Gail. Sitting in his large, comfortable recliner in the middle of the living room, Simon is thrilled to tell tales of his days serving in the Coast Guard with Jack Dempsey, meeting Damon Runyon and Max Baer while a journalist, riding horses in Forest Park, and mentoring such comic book legends as Stan Lee. As we talk, he pulls out stunning works accumulated from throughout his fascinating career. He pauses to congratulate one of his granddaughters for passing an important college test; seven of his eight grandkids were scheduled to fly to Hollywood to walk the red carpet at the star-studded Captain America premiere. Among the other characters Simon had a hand in either creating or developing were the Fiery Mask, the Fly, the Blue Bolt, Sandman, the Newsboy Legion, Manhunter, and the Boy Commandos. An engaging character himself with a sharp memory and a wicked sense of humor, Simon discussed his book and life with twi-ny shortly before the release of the Captain America movie.

twi-ny: What was the experience like going through your past to put together My Life in Comics? Were there any particular parts of your life that were more difficult to talk about than others?

Joe Simon: This was the first time I revealed some of the more intimate details of my life, talking about my wife Harriet and my family, and some of the challenges we’ve faced. It wasn’t really difficult, but it was something I’d never really talked about before.

I feel very lucky because I have my memory. There are things that happened to me ninety years ago — such as the time I met a Civil War veteran — which I remember clearly. I’ve had a lot of exciting things happen to me over the course of ninety-seven years, and it was wonderful to be able to get them down on paper, for everyone to experience.

twi-ny: In the book, you note that you and many of your earliest colleagues come from immigrant Jewish families working in the clothing business in New York City. Do you think that might have had some impact on your eventual career path, creating superheroes and villains dressed in fairy-tale costumes?

JS: That’s a good question. Since tailoring involves creativity, I suppose my parents influenced me in that way, and I’d never really realized it. They also influenced me with their attempts at true romance writing, as badly as they turned out, and with the sense that you stick to it, no matter what you’re trying to accomplish. So in both of those ways they helped me throughout my career. (And of course, thanks to my father, when I came to New York City, I was the best-dressed guy in the comic book business.)

twi-ny: The Captain America movie comes out on July 22. What was your involvement with the picture? What are your thoughts about the film, and about superhero movies in general as they continually get transferred from comic books to the big screen?

JS: Stephen Broussard at Marvel Studios has been keeping me up-to-date, and he arranged for them to film an interview with me. I’ve been liking everything I’ve seen, and am very excited to see how it turns out.

I haven’t seen all of the superhero movies, especially in recent years, but I understand that the Marvel films have been very good. I’ve always thought that Captain America would make a terrific movie and could never understand why all of the earlier attempts sucked so badly. This time, though, they’re sticking to the story that Jack Kirby and I created, so I think they’ll get it right. That’s always the best way to do it — stick with what works.

[Joe Simon: My Life in Comics is available through Amazon and in bookstores everywhere.]