Northside Festival
Multiple venues in Greenpoint and Williamsburg
June 16-19
www.thelmagazine.com/blogs/NorthsideFestivalNews
After a terrific opening year in 2010, the Northside Festival is back June 16-19 with an even more impressive lineup of bands, including Guided by Voices, Beirut, Wavves, Surfer Blood, Sharon van Etten, Theophilus London, DOM, Takka Takka, Grooms, the Black Hollies, Pillow Theory, and dozens more, with tickets on sale now for some of the more higher profile shows (as well as festival badges [$60-$200] that will get you in to just about everything). But another component of the festival involves art and film. In fact, today (May 1) is the deadline to enter ($10 fee) the Northside DIY Film Festival, comprising shorts and feature-length works that will be screening at UnionDocs in Williamsburg and will be judged by such panelists as Rosie Perez, Ted Hope, and Todd P; features must be between 50 and 130 minutes and have a budget of $100,000 or less, while shorts must be less than 30 minutes and cost $20,000 or less, with all films having been made after January 1, 2008. The grand prize is $250, a Rooftop Films screening, and a camera rental package. In addition, Williamsburg and Greenpoint artists can register ($20 fee) through May 15 to be part of Northside Open Studios. Don’t hesitate to become part of one of Brooklyn’s most highly anticipated and growing new festivals.
Japanese director Takashi Miike’s first foray into the samurai epic is a nearly flawless film, perhaps his most accomplished work. Evoking such classics as Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, Mizoguchi’s 47 Ronin, Aldrich’s The Dirty Dozen, and Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter, 13 Assassins is a thrilling tale of honor and revenge, inspired by a true story. In mid-nineteenth-century feudal Japan, during a time of peace just prior to the Meiji Restoration, Lord Naritsugu (Gorô Inagaki), the son of the former shogun and half-brother to the current one, is abusing his power, raping and killing at will, even using his servants and their families as target practice with a bow and arrow. Because of his connections, he is officially untouchable, but Sir Doi (Mikijiro Hira) secretly hires Shinzaemon Shimada (Kôji Yakusho) to gather a small team and put an end to Naritsugu’s brutal tyranny. But the lord’s protector, Hanbei (Masachika Ichimura), a former nemesis of Shinzaemon’s, has vowed to defend his master to the death, even though he despises Naritsugu’s actions. As the thirteen samurai make a plan to get to Naritsugu, they are eager to finally break out their long-unused swords and do what they were born to do. “He who values his life dies a dog’s death,” Shinzaemon proclaims, knowing that the task is virtually impossible but willing to die for a just cause. Although there are occasional flashes of extreme gore in the first part of the film, Miike keeps the audience waiting until he unleashes the gripping battle, an extended scene of blood and violence that highlights death before dishonor. Selected for the 2009 Cannes Film Festival and nominated for the Silver Lion at the 2010 Venice Film Festival, 13 Assassins is one of Miike’s best-crafted tales; nominated for ten Japanese Academy Prizes, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay (Daisuke Tengan), Best Editing (Kenji Yamashita), Best Original Score (Koji Endo), and Best Actor (Yakusho), it won awards for cinematography (Nobuyasu Kita), lighting direction (Yoshiya Watanabe), art direction (Yuji Hayashida), and sound recording (Jun Nakamura).
Winner of numerous awards at film festivals all over the country, Earthwork is an uninspiring, uninvolving look at the true story behind one man’s obsession with his unique brand of art. Based in Kansas, crop artist Stan Herd (John Hawkes) — who designs portraits, still-lifes, and corporate logos on the ground using grass, trees, bushes, soil, flowers, rock, and other natural elements, with the final work best seen from high above in airplanes and helicopters — was determined to make a name for himself in the New York art world. In 1994, he submitted a proposal for a public art project on an acre of wasteland on the West Side of Manhattan, part of the old Penn Central rail yards bought by Donald Trump. Herd got the job when he offered to do it for free, financing it himself by forging his wife’s (Laura Kirk) signature on a loan. He ends up working with a motley crew of homeless men who live in the nearby tunnels, consisting of young graffiti artist Ryan (Chris Bachand), elderly poet El-Trac (novelist Sam Greenlee), the mute Cage (Brendon Glad), the mentally unstable Lone Wolf (James McDaniel), and the dapper Mayor (Zach Grenier). As the obstacles continue to mount, Herd perseveres, but writer-producer-director Chris Ordal is unable to get any emotional depth out of the script or the actors. Flat and frustrating, Earthwork comes off more like a reality TV show reenactment than a full-fledged feature-length film. If it never feels like it’s set in New York, that’s because it was mostly shot in Kansas, killing off any chance of building the inherent dramatic tension that exists between the big city and the country and removing the irony of Herd’s creating a beautiful, colorful work of natural art amid a land of towering skyscrapers. Earthwork is like a chapter of a book way off in the corner by itself, desperately in need of the rest of the story. Ordal and Herd will be at the Angelika to talk about the film at several screenings on Friday and Saturday.