this week in film and television

DAYBREAKERS

Ethan Hawke and Willem Dafoe fight for humanity in DAYBREAKERS

DAYBREAKERS (the Spierig Brothers, 2010)
Opens Friday, January 8
www.daybreakersmovie.com

Australian brothers Michael and Peter Spierig, who played with the zombie genre in their feature-length debut, 2003’s UNDEAD, dig their teeth into vampires in their follow-up, DAYBREAKERS. It’s 2019, and the world has been turned upside down — one infected bat has led to ninety-five percent of the population being vampires, living in a nocturnal society that shuts down during the day. At night, the vamps put on their suits, board the subways, and go to work, getting their blood at coffee shops and acting fairly normal. But with the dwindling supply of human blood — as humanity itself is on the brink of extinction — some vampires are turning into evil, bloodthirsty winged creatures ready to tear apart anything, including themselves, for a shot of the red stuff.

At Bromley Marks Pharmaceuticals, hematologist Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke) is desperately researching a blood substitute that can save civilization even as he disagrees with many of the policies of his smarmy boss, powerful CEO Charles Bromley (Sam Neill), who is harvesting humans for their blood, sucking them dry. But when Dalton meets human Audrey Bennett (Claudia Karvan) and Elvis Cormac (Willem Dafoe), a former auto mechanic who claims that he was a vampire but is now human again, having accidentally discovered what might be a cure, the lines are drawn and a new battle is on, one that might not be quite what it was originally about. Filled with sly twists on the vampire genre, including exploding bodies and specially equipped daytime cars, DAYBREAKERS is a bloody good thriller that also manages to comment on politics, business, and immigration without becoming didactic and melodramatic. The Spierig brothers set just the right look and mood from the very beginning to the gory conclusion.

POLICE, ADJECTIVE

: Cristi (Dragos Bucur) is on one helluva boring stakeout in Romanian black comedy

POLICE, ADJECTIVE (Corneliu Porumboiu, 2009)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
212-924-7771
www.ifcfilms.com

The first half of Corneliu Porumboiu’s POLICE, ADJECTIVE is as dreadfully boring as detective Cristi’s (Dragos Bucur) assignment, tailing a student, Victor (Radu Costin), who enjoys a joint with two of his friends every day after school. While Cristi wants to nail the kid’s supplier, the cop’s boss has him on a tight deadline, insisting he arrest Victor if the investigation continues to go nowhere, but Cristi strongly disagrees with putting the teenager away for up to seven years for a crime he believes will soon be abolished by the government. However, the film picks up considerably as Cristi seeks help from various contacts, getting caught up in red tape and public servants who would really rather not be bothered. And when he gets called in by the chief (Vlad Ivanov from 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS, and 2 DAYS) and gets a long lecture in linguistics, well, you won’t be able to control yourself from laughing out loud. Porumboiu (12:08 EAST OF BUCHAREST) keeps the pace very slow and very steady, but hang in there, because the end is a riot. POLICE, ADJECTIVE won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, screened at the New York Film Festival and at MoMA as part of the “Contenders, 2009,” series, and is Romania’s official entry for the Foreign Language Film Academy Award.

KOREAN MOVIE NIGHT: MEMBERS OF THE FUNERAL

Dysfunctional family comes together unexpectedly in MEMBERS OF THE FUNERAL

MEMBERS OF THE FUNERAL (Baek Seung-bin, 2008)
Tribeca Cinemas
54 Varick St. at Laight St.
Tuesday, January 26, free, 7:00
Reservations accepted at info@koreanculture.org or 212-759-9550
www.subwaycinema.com
www.tribecacinemas.com

The Korean Cultural Service is presenting Korean Movie Night on the second and fourth Tuesdays of January and February at Tribeca Cinemas, with free screenings of contemporary Korean cinema. Things got under way on January 12 with the New York premiere of Noh Young-seok’s DAYTIME DRINKING and continue on January 26 with the North American premiere of Baek Seung-bin’s 2008 dysfunctional family drama MEMBERS OF THE FUNERAL. The death of a teenage boy brings together an estranged father (Yoo Ha-bok), who is attracted to younger men, mother (Park Myeong-sin), who is a mean-spirited teacher but desperately wants to be a mystery writer, and daughter (Kim Byeol), who has a thing for dead people. Flashbacks reveal how they each came to be the way they are, deeply scarred by nasty grandparents, closeted therapists, and other odd figures. Meanwhile, one of the mother’s students (Lee Joo-seung) is writing a novel that seems to mimic the family’s life. It’s all kind of creepy and tongue in cheek, especially the awesome score. It’s a compelling tale, and one that was made for a mere sixty grand. Junh Jai-hong’s 2008 debut feature, BEAUTIFUL, based on an unfinished script by Kim Ki-duk, screens on February 9, followed by BREATHLESS on February 23, a film written, directed by, and starring Yang Ik-june. Korean cinema has been gradually infiltrating North America; this free series is a great way to see what all the fuss is about.

FIRST SATURDAYS: BLACK HISTORY MONTH

Become a Brooklyn Museum 1stfan for $20 and receive a free limited-edition print of Valerie Hegarty’s “First Harvest in the Wilderness with Pileated Woodpecker,” inspired by Asher Durand

Brooklyn Museum of Art
200 Eastern Parkway
Saturday, February 6, free after 5:00 (some events require advance free tickets available an hour or two before showtime)
718-638-5000
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum’s monthly First Saturdays program celebrates Black History Month with another evening of free activities, featuring live performances by the Igmar Thomas Group, Impact Repertory Theatre, and Dja-rara, screenings of Jeremy Robins and Magali Damas’s 2008 Haitian documentary THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WATER and Mel Stuart’s 1973 classic WATTSTAX, a Hands-On wearable art workshop, gallery tours, a book club meeting discussing THE BLACK BODY, and a Mardi Gras dance party hosted by DJ Ian Friday. Also, 1stfans will receive a free print by Valerie Hegarty. In addition, all of the exhibitions will be open, including “Healing the Wounds of War: The Brooklyn Sanitary Fair of 1864,” “Body Parts: Ancient Egyptian Fragments and Amulets,” and “From the Village to Vogue: The Modernist Jewelry of Art Smith.”

THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC

Dreyer classic will get impassioned screening with live music at Encounter festival

THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC (Carl Th. Dreyer, 1928)
New York Marriott Marquis, sixth floor
1535 Broadway
Sunday, January 17, $30, 8:00
www.crossroadsculturalcenter.org

As part of the New York Encounter festival, Carl Th. Dreyer’s controversial 1928 classic silent film, THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC, will be screened at the Marriott Marquis, accompanied by a live performance of Richard Einhorn’s “Voices of Light,” the composer’s 1994 oratorio inspired by the film. The composition will be performed by the Metro Chamber Orchestra, directed by Phil Nuzzo, and the Communion and Liberation Choir, directed by Christopher Vath. The film stars Renée Jeanne Falconetti, in her second and final movie role, as the title character, facing her final days. Dreyer (ORDET, VAMPYR) created a stunning look for the film, featuring extreme close-ups that get right in the viewer’s face. Thought to be lost, the complete film was discovered in a Norwegian mental institution in 1981 and ultimately released on DVD by Criterion.

NEW YORK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL

EYES WIDE OPEN examines forbidden passion at Jewish Film Festival

Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
January 13-28, $11
212-721-6500
www.filmlinc.com

The nineteenth annual Jewish Film Festival at Lincoln Center consists of thirty-two films, nearly every one a New York or U.S. premiere, examining topics both familiar and new, including photojournalism, Israeli cinema, WWII, the Middle East, religious tradition, homosexuality, anti-Semitism, and activism, ranging from Michaël Prazan’s three-hour EINSATGRUPPEN: THE DEATH BRIGADES to Adam Elliot’s claymation MARY AND MAX and restorations of Henry Lynn’s BAR MITZVAH (1935) and Falk Harnack’s THE AXE OF WANDSBEK (1951). This year’s crop once again comes from all over the Jewish diaspora, with feature-length narratives, shorts, and documentaries from Australia, Germany, France, Poland, Belgium, Romania, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, the UK, Israel, and the United States. Ludi Boeken’s SAVIORS IN THE NIGHT, about German farmers protecting a Jewish family during World War II, is the opening-night selection, while Marleen Gorris’s WITHIN THE WHIRLWIND, about the struggles of poet and teacher Evgenia Ginzburg (Emily Watson), is the closing-night choice. Many of the films will feature introductions or postscreening discussions with directors, producers, and subjects. In addition to the Walter Reade Theater, several special screenings will take place at the JCC in Manhattan and the Jewish Museum.

GEORGIA O’KEEFFE / RONI HORN / ALICE GUY BLACHÉ / OMER FAST

Roni Horn, “Becoming a Landscape,” detail, twenty chromogenic prints, 1999–2001 / © Roni Horn

Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Ave. at 75th St.
Wednesday – Sunday 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
Admission: $18 (Pay-what-you-wish Fridays 6:00 – 9:00)
212-570-3600
www.whitney.org

This might be the last weekend to catch “Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstraction,” an examination of the painter’s development from dark abstract works to her more familiar, repetitive flowery canvases that often feature a palette tailor-made for warm-weather living rooms (however, be sure not to miss the room of intimate photographs of O’Keeffe taken by her longtime lover, Alfred Stieglitz), but there’s a little more time to see the far more interesting and rewarding “Roni Horn AKA Roni Horn,” which runs through January 24. In this wide-ranging midcareer retrospective, Horn searches for the nature of identity in photography, sculpture, drawing, and installation, incorporating images of landscape and language while playing with perception and duality. Horn forces the viewer to question their own place in an ever-changing world in such works as “You are the weather,” comprising one hundred photos of the same woman in Iceland gazing into the camera, her mood shifting based on how hot or cold she is; “Becoming a Landscape,” in which Horn places side by side pairs of photographs taken an instant apart, with only the barest hint of difference evident; “This Is me, This is you,” two large grids of multiple pictures taken of her niece over a few years, consisting of pairs of shots that seem like duplicates but are not; and “Dead Owl,” two pictures of the title subject that are indeed the same. Spread over two floors, “Roni Horn AKA Roni Horn” offers a unique and fascinating perspective on both art and reality.

Alice Guy Blaché, A HOUSE DIVIDED, 1913 (courtesy of the Library of Congress MBRS Division / photograph by George Willeman)

Also continuing through January 24 is “Alice Guy Blaché: Cinema Pioneer,” screenings of the little-seen films of the first woman director and studio owner, a series of shorts and longer works that are worth sitting down and spending time with in the Kaufman Astoria Studios Film & Video & Video Galleries, while “Omer Fast: Nostalgia,” in the first-floor Anne & Joel Ehrenkranz Gallery through February 14, displays Fast’s three-part film that investigates fact vs. fiction, reality vs. invention. (Fast fans can also check out his new exhibit at Postmasters in Chelsea, which includes the videos TAKE A DEEP BREATH and DE GROTE BOODSCHAP.)