this week in film and television

THE HEIST: RESERVOIR DOGS

Not everything in RESERVOIR DOGS is quite so black and white

RESERVOIR DOGS (Quentin Tarantino, 1992)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Friday, October 8, 1:30, 5:20, 9:20
Series runs through October 21
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

Why does Steve Buscemi have to be Mr. Pink? Because Quentin Tarantino said so. Tarantino burst onto the indie film scene with the ultraviolent genre picture RESERVOIR DOGS, about a robbery gone horribly wrong. You know there’s a problem if Mr. White (Harvey Keitel) has to be called in to clean up the mess made by Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen), Mr. Blue (Eddie Bunker), Mr. Brown (Tarantino), Mr. Orange (Tim Roth), and, of course, Mr. Pink. Double crosses, Madonna discussions, and an ear slicing set to the Stealers Wheel song “Stuck in the Middle With You” make things go from funny to frightening in hysterical blasts of bloody irony. RESERVOIR DOGS sent Tarantino on his way, to be followed by his great script for TRUE ROMANCE (1993) and his blockbuster PULP FICTION (1994). RESERVOIR DOGS is being screened October 8 in a double feature with KANSAS CITY CONFIDENTIAL (Phil Karlson, 1952) as part of the outstanding series “The Heist,” playing at Film Forum through October 21.

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS

THE TWO TOWERS will get the deluxe musical treatment at special Radio City performances October 8-9

Radio City Music Hall
1260 Sixth Ave. at 50th St.
October 8-9, $59-$150, 7:30
866-858-0008
www.theradiocitylotrconcert.com
www.lordoftherings.net

Middle-earth returns to Midtown in a big way as Howard Shore’s Grammy-winning score will be performed live October 8 and 9 by three hundred musicians while Peter Jackson’s second installment of the Lord of the Rings is projected on Radio City’s sixty-foot screen. Crowding the stage will be the 21st Century Symphony Orchestra, the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, the Dessoff Symphonic Chorus, and soprano Kaitlyn Lusk, conducted by Ludwig Wicki, following up last year’s deluxe presentation of THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING. In THE TWO TOWERS, Jackson continues J. R. R. Tolkien’s immortal tale as Frodo (Elijah Wood) is off to see the wizard (Christopher Lee) at Mordor, where he can destroy evil by throwing the Ring into a fiery volcano. In addition to loyal Samwise (Sean Astin), Frodo is joined by a creature called Gollum (Andy Serkis), which is what you come up with when you mix Yoda with Steve Buscemi. Throw in a bunch of Ents and Orcs, the kingdoms of Rohan and Gondor, and lots of great music and special effects and you have a three-hour film that surpasses the first part and paves the way for the gripping conclusion.

STRANGER THAN FICTION: AMERICAN SPLENDOR

Paul Giamatti and others will pay tribute to Harvey Pekar at special screening and discussion at the IFC Center

AMERICAN SPLENDOR (Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini, 2003)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at Third St.
Tuesday, October 5, $16, 7:30
www.stfdocs.com/films/american_splendor
www.americansplendormovie.com

AMERICAN SPLENDOR is a vastly creative and entertaining love story should have been nominated for more than just a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar. Paul Giamatti stars as Cleveland comic-book writer and all-around schlub Harvey Pekar, with Hope Davis as his neurotic girlfriend, Joyce. The marvelous script and unique visuals, which mimic comic-book panels, are joined by appearances by the real characters discussing how they are portrayed in the film and what their life is really like. You’ll think that Judah Friedlander is overplaying ultimate nerd Toby Radloff until you meet the real thing. The interweaving of fiction and reality is masterful. The film is screening as part of IFC’s Tuesday night series Stranger Than Fiction, hosted by Thom Powers and Raphaela Neihausen, and will be followed by a Q&A with star Giamatti, producer Ted Hope, artist-collaborator Dean Haspiel, and directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini; the discussion is sure to take on added meaning since Pekar’s death this past July at the age of seventy.

CMJ MUSIC MARATHON & FILM FESTIVAL

Drink Up Buttercup will be back for more groovy fun at CMJ (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Multiple venues
October 19-23
Full Festival Badge: $495; CMJ Play Pass: $149; Film Festival Pass: $50
Individual tickets available
www.cmj2010.com

We’re happy to see many of our favorites among the more than 1,200 bands slated to perform at this year’s CMJ Music Marathon, running October 19-23 — in addition to hundreds of new bands we can’t wait to check out. (Well, we’re going to try to see as many as we can anyway.) There’s an interesting bunch of older dudes as well who will be playing with the younger kids. The festival also features film premieres, panel discussions, and other special events. Over the course of the next two weeks, twi-ny will keep firing early warning shout-outs to our first-out-of-the-gate contenders for don’t-miss status. Even if you can’t afford a festival badge, limited tickets are available to the general public for most shows, but they’re going to go fast, so you better hurry. Here is a sneak peak at twenty to watch out for, all of whom you’ve read about it previously on This Week in New York.

Asobi Seksu / Bear Hands / Das Racist / Dean & Britta / Drink Up Buttercup / the Fleshtones / Four Tet / the Golden Filter / Jean Grae / Heavy Cream / Howlies / Hypernova / Justin Townes Earle / Oberhofer / the Pains of Being Pure at Heart / Robbers on High Street / Savoir Adore / Screaming Females / Surfer Blood / We Are Country Mice

CinémaTuesdays: HOLLYWOOD LOVES FRENCH CINEMA

Richard Gere begs audiences to take another look at his 1983 remake, BREATHLESS

French Institute Alliance Française
Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
October 5-26, $10, separate admission for each screening
212-355-6160
www.fiaf.org

Continually bereft of original ideas, Hollywood producers are constantly mining through foreign films they can remake in English for their next big hit. One of their favorite targets is France, which has led to such American movies as THREE MEN AND A BABY, COUSINS, TRUE LIES, THE BIRDCAGE, and DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS. All this month, the French Institute Alliance Française’s excellent CinémaTuesdays program is taking a look at this fruitful and fruitless relationship, screening four French classics alongside four American remakes. The series begins October 5 with screenings of the fiftieth anniversary restoration print of Jean-Luc Godard’s seminal 1960 Nouvelle Vague stunner À BOUT DE SOUFFLÉ and Jim McBride’s 1983 version of BREATHLESS; let’s just say that Richard Gere and Valérie Kaprisky are no Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg. On October 12, Jean Renoir’s BOUDU SAUVÉ DES EAUX (BOUDU SAVED FROM DROWNING) can be directly compared to its Hollywood offspring, Paul Mazursky’s quirky 1986 comedy DOWN AND OUT IN BEVERLY HILLS. The most fascinating pairing is Henri-Georges Clouzot’s harrowing 1953 drama LE SALAIRE DE LA PEUR (THE WAGES OF FEAR) and William Friedkin’s surprisingly gripping 1977 remake, SORCERER, with Roy Scheider doing an outstanding job playing the torturous Yves Montand role as a driver who must go through hell to try to get a shipment of nitroglycerine to its intended destination. The series concludes with a couple of lesser-known films, Marcel Carné’s LE JOUR SE LÈVE (DAYBREAK, 1939), starring the elegant Jean Gabin, and Anatole Litvak’s 1947 remake, THE LONG NIGHT, with Henry Fonda in the lead role. Please note that separate admission is required for each screening; unfortunately, these are not double features.

Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg star in Jean-Luc Godard’s anarchic, iconic BREATHLESS (courtesy Rialto Pictures/StudioCanal)

BREATHLESS (À BOUT DE SOUFFLE) (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)
French Institute Alliance Française
Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, October 5, $10, 12:30 & 7:00
212-355-6160
www.fiaf.org

The fiftieth-anniversary restoration of Jean-Luc Godard’s Nouvelle Vague classic, BREATHLESS, will leave audiences, well, breathless. Godard’s first feature-length film, buoyed by an original treatment by François Truffaut and with Claude Chabrol serving as technical adviser, is as much about the cinema itself as it is about would-be small-time gangster Michel Poiccard (an iconic Jean-Paul Belmondo), an ultra-cool dude wandering from girl to girl in Paris, looking for extra helpings of sex and money and having trouble getting either. Along the way he steals a car and shoots a cop as if shooing away a fly before teaming up with Patricia Franchini (Jean Seberg) and heading out on the run. Godard references William Faulkner and Dashiell Hammett, Humphrey Bogart and Sam Fuller as Michel and Patricia make faces at each other, discuss death, and are chased by the police. Anarchy prevails, both in Belmondo’s character and the film as a whole, which can go off in any direction at any time. Godard himself shows up as the man who identifies Michel, and there are also cameos by New Wave directors Jean-Pierre Melville and Jacques Rivette. The beautiful restoration, supervised by the film’s director of photography, Raoul Coutard, also includes a brand-new translation and subtitles that breathe new life into one of cinema’s greatest treasures.

UNSILENT FILM SERIES: BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN

Matt Darriau’s Paradox Trio will play a live score to Eisenstein’s classic BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN at (le) poisson rouge

(le) poisson rouge
158 Bleecker St.
Sunday, October 3, $10-$12, 10:00 pm
212-228-4854
www.lepoissonrouge.com

Sergei M. Eisenstein’s classic BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN has had its fair share of scores over the years, and on Sunday night it will be getting the Paradox Trio treatment as part of (le) poisson rouge’s Unsilent Film Series. Matt Darriau, Brad Shepik, Rufus Cappadocia, and Seido Salifoski will be playing such instruments as the kaval, the gaida, Balkan strings, and dumbeks to Eisenstein’s dramatic tale of revolution in Russia. In addition, Vision Fugitive composers Elias (Constantopedos), Lydia (Ainsworth), and Shruti (Kumar) will play live to scenes from René Laloux’s 1973 animated film LA PLANÈTE SAUVAGE (FANTASTIC PLANET).

BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN (Sergei M. Eisenstein, 1925)
Sergei M. Eisenstein’s BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN might be a seminal silent classic that changed the nature of filmmaking, but it is also still a vastly entertaining movie regardless of its cinematic influence and worldwide importance. Divided into five episodes — Men and Maggots, Drama at the Harbour, A Dead Man Calls for Justice, The Odessa Staircase, and The Rendez-vous with a Squadron — the film tells the based-on-fact story of a mutiny on board a sailing vessel, the result of unfair treatment of the workers, a microcosm of the Russian Revolution of 1905 that later led to the bigger revolution of 1917. The film is like an editing primer, its approach to montage causing its own revolution at the time, particularly during the unforgettable Odessa Steps sequence, in which Eisenstein’s cuts manipulate the action in powerful, emotional ways that were new to cinema. The film also features the best mustaches in the history of movies.

THE HEIST: TOPKAPI

Peter Ustinov provides the comic relief in Dassin caper classic

TOPKAPI (Jules Dassin, 1964)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Sunday, October 3, 1:00, 4:10, 7:20
Series runs through October 21
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

We’re suckers for heist films. Just give us THE HOT ROCK (Peter Yates, 1972), THE ANDERSON TAPES (Sidney Lumet, 1972), THE ASPHALT JUNGLE (John Huston, 1950), THE KILLING (Stanley Kubrick, 1956) — heck, even THE BRINK’S JOB (William Friedkin, 1978) — and we’ll settle in for a great coupla hours. But the king of them all just might be Jules Dassin’s ultrahip TOPKAPI, about a group of multicultural thieves who plan to steal the world’s most priceless emerald from a bejeweled dagger in Topkapi Palace in Istanbul. The movie is worth seeing just for Ms. Mercouri herself, who opens the film by talking right to us, luring us in with her alluring sex appeal and endless charm. And oh, those clothes, especially the emerald green outfit with her nails painted to match. Maximilian Schell, Peter Ustinov, Robert Morley, and others join in for the elaborate plan that has been ripped off in so many movies ever since. And we were happy to see that they really got things right, shooting on location in Turkey, because we’ve been to Topkapi Palace, and the Topkapi dagger is indeed breathtaking. We deleted a quarter star because some of the scenes with Ustinov are a bit long and awkward, but the rest is simply marvelous. TOPKAPI is screening with Nick Park’s WALLACE & GROMIT IN THE WRONG TROUSERS (1993), part of Film Forum’s awesome series “The Heist,” which includes all of the aforementioned flicks and more, continuing through October 21.