this week in film and television

VINCERE

Ida Alser (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) and Benito Mussolini (Filippo Timi) have a tumultuous relationship in VINCERE

VINCERE (Marco Bellocchio, 2009)
Opens Friday, March 19
IFC Center, 323 Sixth Ave. at Third St., 212-924-7771
Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, 1886 Broadway at 63rd St., 212-757-2280
www.ifcfilms.com/films/vincere
www.ifccenter.com
www.lincolnplazacinema.com

In the historical romantic drama VINCERE (WIN), Italian master filmmaker Marco Bellocchio delivers the little-known real-life story of Ida Alser (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), Benito Mussolini’s (Filippo Timi) first wife and the mother of Il Duce’s first-born son, Benito Albino (Fabrizio Costella). Alser and Mussolini first meet in Milan in 1907, when she is a fashion and beauty entrepreneur and he is a newspaper journalist championing a religion-free Socialist. They feel an immediate connection and have passionate meetings. Soon they have a child and are married. But as Mussolini’s power in the Fascist movement grows, he takes a more traditional wife (Michela Cescon) and has another child, disavowing any relationship with Ida and young Benito and going to any lengths to cover up their very existence. Set amid the swirling turmoil that pervaded Italy during the two World Wars, VINCERE, featuring an epic score by Carlo Crivelli, is a beautifully shot melodrama, able to focus on two strong, unrelenting characters who know what they want – and what they don’t. Bellocchio (FISTS IN THE POCKET, DEVIL IN THE FLESH) interweaves archival newsreel footage, lending the film not only more reality but firmly placing it in historical context. Mezzogiorno is brilliant as Alser, a modern-day woman ahead of her time who fought for what she believed in and what she deserved, even if it meant going up against one of the most powerful men in the world.

SOUNDS FROM THE BLACK BOX

Philip Miller and Ensemble Pi team up with William Kentridge at free show at the World Financial Center (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

THE MUSIC OF PHILIP MILLER FOR THE FILMS OF WILLIAM KENTRIDGE
World Financial Center Winter Garden
200 Vesey St.
Sunday, March 21, and Monday, March 22, free, 8:00
212-945-0505
www.artsworldfinancialcenter.com

The celebration of South African multimedia artist William Kentridge continues on March 21-22 with two free screenings of his latest animation work at the World Financial Center, with Philip Miller’s score performed live by Ensemble Pi. Kentridge’s abstract narrative films are made through a series of charcoal drawings on the same paper, with erasures and additions to create the appearance of motion. The majority of his work has focused on the story of industrialist Soho Eckstein and common man Felix Teitlebaum, who is having an affair with Mrs. Eckstein. In June 2005, Kentridge’s “9 Drawings for Projection,” featuring all of his Eckstein/Teitlebaum shorts, was screened for free in both Prospect Park and Central Park to adoring crowds, with Miller’s score performed live by pianist Jill Richards, the Sontonga Quartet, trumpeter Adam Howard, and vocalist Tumelo Moloi. This time around the music is being handled by the nonprofit eight-piece Ensemble Pi, led by artistic director and pianist Idith Meshulam, along with Miller and singer Tshidi Manye. Kentridge’s subtle, surreal films are beautiful to look at, filled with imagination and resonating with meaning, its primarily black, white, and gray color scheme sparked with splashes of blue and occasional reds. The ninety-minute program at the Winter Garden consists of a dozen Kentridge films, including the rarely screened “Medicine Chest,” “Hot-el,” and the Black Box duo of “Dance of the Rhino” and “Priest’s Lament.” If you’ve seen his terrific retrospective at MoMA, you must catch this as well — not all of these works are part of the museum show — while you’ll be running over to MoMA to take in everything you can if this serves as your introduction to the genius that is William Kentridge.

SCRIPT TO SCREEN CONFERENCE

Oscar-nominated writer-director Terry George (HOTEL RWANDA, THE BOXER) is one of the featured guests at annual Script to Screen Conference at 92YTribeca

92YTribeca
200 Hudson St.
Weekend Pass: Members $150, Nonmembers $200
($150 with the discount code FREE2010)
www.conference.ifp.org

Looking to be the next Geoffrey Fletcher or Mark Boal, both of whom won screenwriting Oscars earlier this month for independently produced films? (Fletcher won for PRECIOUS, Boal for THE HURT LOCKER.) The Independent Filmmaker Project will be holding its annual Script to Screen Conference at 92YTribeca this weekend, featuring two days of panel discussions, in-depth conversations, workshops, networking opportunities, and more with award-winning screenwriters, producers, casting directors, film festival programmers, executives, and other industry insiders and outsiders. Among the participants at last year’s conference, the first after a five-year hiatus, were Lee Daniels, James Schamus, Nelson George, Ramin Bahrani, and Ted Hope, with such seminal figures as Paul Schrader, Allison Anders, James Toback, Gale Ann Hurd, and Tom Fontana having attended in previous years.

Saturday (9:00 am – 4:30 pm) is devoted to “Launching Your Next Project,” with such events as “Development Demystified,” with Sophie Barthes, Anne Carey, and Jonathan Shukat, moderated by Susan Lewis, and “The Art of Selling & Storytelling,” with Rodney Evans, John Hadity, and Jenny Schweitzer, moderated by Monty Ross, in addition to DAILY SHOW head writer Steve Bodow in conversation with Filmmaker magazine’s Jason Guerrasio. Sunday’s theme is “Sustaining Your Filmmaking Career,” beginning at 2:00 with Terry George (HOTEL RWANDA, IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER) in conversation with Filmmaker’s Scott Macaulay and followed by “Writing for a New Landscape: New Media & Cross-Platform Opportunities,” with Keith Bunin, Lena Dunham, Ryan Bilsborrow-Koo, and Zack Lieberman, moderated by Christian Vesper; “Now What? A Screenwriting Career with Peter Hedges,” with Hedges (PIECES OF APRIL, WHAT’S EATING GILBERT GRAPE) discussing his work with moderator Adam Brooks (ALMOST YOU, DEFINITELY, MAYBE); and concluding with Brian Koppelman (ROUNDERS, SOLITARY MAN) in conversation with film critic Elvis Mitchell. Weekend passes are $150 for IFP members and $200 for nonmembers, but nonmembers can get the member price with the discount code FREE2010.

THE NOSE

THE NOSE is making its long-awaited Met debut this month, directed by William Kentridge and conducted by Valery Gergiev

The Metropolitan Opera, Lincoln Center
Between West 62nd & 65th Sts. and Columbus & Amsterdam Aves.
March 18 & 25, $15 standing room – $375
212-362-6000
www.metoperafamily.org

Prior to the March 11 performance of THE NOSE at the Metropolitan Opera House, artist and mensch William Kentridge could be seen in the Met lobby greeting friends and fans as everyone awaited the second night of his production of THE NOSE, which had made its highly anticipated Met debut on March 5. Kentridge brings that same mensch spirit to his absurdist version of Dmitri Shostakovich’s absurdist opera, based on Nikolai Gogol’s absurdist short story about a young man who wakes up one day to discover that his nose has disappeared. The story, which deals with political hierarchy, social division, and the perils of bureaucracy, is set in 1830s St. Petersburg, but it also relates to Kentridge’s native South Africa under apartheid. Kentridge’s multimedia production features black-and-white animation, lofty sets that suddenly appear well off the ground or are dragged around by characters, and a Russian constructivist collage that serves as a backdrop for much of the action.

Kentridge, who designed the stunning sets with Sabine Theunissen, infuses the opera with the same playful humor evident in Shostakovich’s controversial score, which ranges from classical to folk to polka and includes a three-minute percussion intermezzo, all under the inventive baton of Valery Gergiev. Paulo Szot, who won a Tony for his role as Emile De Becque in Lincoln Center’s production of SOUTH PACIFIC, plays the noseless Kovalyov, but it is often difficult to hear his too-soft delivery. The cast of more than seventy also includes Andrei Popov as the police inspector, Vladimir Ognovenko as barber Ivan Yakolevich, and Gordon Gietz as the Nose. The English subtitles are projected onto the bottom of the set, sometimes hard to read or blocked by the performers, although they are also occasionally blasted onto the backdrop collage in unusual ways. THE NOSE is an unconventional opera, with unconventional sets, an unconventional score, and an unconventional length, clocking in at a mere 104 minutes, and it is playing to an unconventional audience of regular opera aficionados as well as fans of Kentridge, whose work is being celebrated all over the city this month, with a retrospective at MoMA, a drawing show at Dieu Donné, screenings with live music at the World Financial Center, and other special events and appearances. Be sure to stop by Gallery Met before the show to see “Ad Hoc,” a small display of Kentridge’s preparatory sketches, notes, costume cutouts, and a three-dimensional sculpture of Shostakovich.

TIBET IN NEW YORK

secretlives

SECRET LIVES OF THE DALAI LAMA by Alexander Norman (Doubleday Religion, February 2010, $15)
www.broadway-books.crownpublishing.com

Those Brits do tell a ripping yarn! And what better subject than Tibet, the nation once mythologized as Shangri-La? Alexander Norman is a British scholar and writer at Oxford; the Dalai Lama is a world-renowned Nobel Peace Prize–winning, sometimes controversial Tibetan spiritual leader. And a temporal leader. And a monk. And . . . Well, what, exactly? Westerners are often awed by Tenzin Gyatso, the current incarnation of Chenrezig, the bodhisattva of compassion, and frequently mistake him for something like the Pope of Buddhism, or at least of Tibetan Buddhists. Not so, not so at all, and Norman explains the how and why in SECRET LIVES OF THE DALAI LAMA. Norman’s excellent book looks at the whole span of Tibetan history and culture through the prism of the Dalai Lama. Trying to explain exactly who and what the Dalai Lamas (all fourteen of them) are and have been to the Tibetan people and the world creates a tome that does not shy away from troubling aspects of the society and its history while still conveying the magic and wisdom of Tibetan culture. (In fact, the current Dalai Lama even contributes the foreword.)

The book sparkles with insightful flashes of history, art, monastic life, magic and folklore, politics, military history, foreign affairs—the Tibetan world as a whole, warts, jewels, and all. Face it: Any book that starts with a politically motivated murder in the Dalai Lama’s compound in 1997 and proceeds to a discussion of both the doctrine of dependent origination (emptiness, or shunyata) and the living embodiment of compassion could be either dry or sensationalist. But not this one; Norman is too expert a storyteller and so devoted to the tale that one can’t help but be swept along—surprised, touched, exhilarated, and, finally, awed.

tibet in harlem

Norman was supposed to come to New York City for several talks and book signings, but those events were unexpectedly canceled. But that doesn’t mean there’s not a whole bunch of other things to do in relation to Tibet and its spiritual leader. The Dalai Lama himself will be teaching May 20-23 at Radio City Music Hall, discussing Nagarjuna’s Commentary on Bodhicitta and Shantideva’s Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life (tickets on sale now, $100-$360) and also giving a public lecture on “Awakening the Heart of Selflessness” (tickets on sale March 18, $25-$40). From March 14 to 20, the Maysles Institute’s Tibet in Harlem 2: Origins series features screenings of Sherwood Hu’s PRINCE OF THE HIMALAYAS (March 14, followed by the opening-night reception), Duan Jinchuan’s 16 BARKOR SOUTH STREET (March 15), Dorje Tsering Chenaktsang’s TANTRIC YOGI and ANI LHACHAM (March 16), Padma Tseten’s THE SILENT HOLY STONES (March 17, followed by a Q&A with the director), Sonam’s MILAREPA (March 18), Tseten’s THE GRASSLAND and Rigdan Gyatso’s THE GIRL LHARI (March 19, followed by a panel discussion and reception with Tseten and Gyatso), and Tseten’s THE SEARCH (March 20, followed by a Q&A with Tseten and the closing-night reception). The Maysles Institute will also host a short film showcase on March 22 featuring works by Tibetan filmmakers from around the world, with a number of the directors and actors present for a postscreening Q&A.

Evan Brenner will perform one-man show THE BUDDHA PLAY at Village Zendo on March 19

On March 19 at Village Zendo, you can catch a special one-night-only performance of Evan Brenner’s one-man show, THE BUDDHA PLAY—THE LIFE OF BUDDHA, which uses original texts to examine the “Triumph & Tragedy in the Life of the Great Sage.” At Tibet House, “Modern Buddhist Visions: Paintings by Pema Namdol Thaye” continues through April 16, comprising mandalas, tangkas, sculptures, and 3-D artworks. And at the Rubin Museum,“Bardo: The Tibetan Art of the Afterlife” runs through September 6, along with other exhibitions and special programs.

THE EXPLODING GIRL

Ivy has trouble showing her true feelings in Bradley Rust Gray drama THE EXPLODING GIRL

THE EXPLODING GIRL (Bradley Rust Gray, 2009)
Landmark Sunshine
143 East Houston St.
Opens Friday, March 12
212-330-8182
www.soandbrad.com/theexplodinggirl
www.landmarktheatres.com

In 1985, the Cure released a song called “Inbetween Days” that included the line “And I know I was wrong / when I said it was true / that it couldn’t be me and be her / inbetween without you.” On the flip side of the single, “The Exploding Boy,” Robert Smith sang, “I knew if I turned / I’d turn away from you / and I couldn’t look back.” In 2006, South Korean native So Yong Kim made IN BETWEEN DAYS, the tender story of Aimee (Jiseon Kim), a young Korean immigrant on the cusp of her burgeoning sexuality who spends most of her time with her best friend, Tran (Taegu Andy Kang), who is ready for more as well. Three years later, Bradley Rust Gray, Kim’s husband and cinematic partner, made what he calls the flip side to IN BETWEEN DAYS, the gentle, touching coming-of-age drama THE EXPLODING GIRL, with Kim serving as one of the film’s producers and editing it with her husband. In THE EXPLODING GIRL, Zoe Kazan stars as Ivy, a young woman who comes home from college break ready to spend time with her best friend, Al (Mark Rendall). While Ivy attempts to see her new boyfriend, Greg, her relationship with Al threatens to unravel as she is unwilling to face her real feelings. Both films are beautifully paced slices of life shot in a cinema verité style that adds to their believability and charm. THE EXPLODING GIRL opens March 12 at the Landmark Sunshine theater on the Lower East Side; we highly recommend checking it out, then renting IN BETWEEN DAYS for an outstanding double feature.

GREEN ZONE

Chief Miller (Matt Damon) doesn't like what he's found in GREEN ZONE

GREEN ZONE (Paul Greengrass, 2010)
Opens Friday, March 12
www.greenzonemovie.com

Paul Greengrass, who teamed up with Matt Damon on the last two Bourne movies and made the excellent UNITED 93, is back with Damon for GREEN ZONE, an Iraq War thriller that is ultimately as misguided as America’s decision to attack Iraq in the first place. Damon stars as Roy Miller, the head of a unit that is using information from the Pentagon to find WMD. But after a third straight mission that comes up empty and costs lives, Miller begins questioning the intel, opening his mouth to his superiors and soon finding himself in the middle of a government conspiracy being protected by administration official Clark Poundstone (Greg Kinnear). While unwitting Wall Street Journal reporter Lawrie Dayne (Amy Ryan) keeps writing about the WMD, Miller gets help from CIA agent Martin Brown (Brendan Gleeson), who smells a big fat rat. Inspired by Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s book IMPERIAL LIFE IN THE EMERALD CITY, the story, though set in 2003, feels much older, tackling a situation that has long since been dealt with. GREEN ZONE lacks surprises and even devolves into the ridiculous in the second half, which includes a chase scene pretty much just so the movie can have a chase scene. Screenwriter Brian Helgeland, who did such a terrific job adapting L.A. CONFIDENTIAL, continues his streak of overwrought work; he is also responsible for such tripe as the remake of THE TAKING OF PELHAM 123, the overrated MYSTIC RIVER, and the just plain awful MAN ON FIRE, BLOOD WORK, and THE POSTMAN. Although it begins with promise, GREEN ZONE ends up being a disappointing piece of leftist propaganda, too little, too late.