Brooklyn-based duo Widowspeak has followed up its sophomore full-length, the doomsday-inspired Almanac — which was also influenced by the sudden departures of founding member Michael Stasiak and bassist Pamela Garabano-Coolbaugh — with the six-track EP The Swamps (Captured Tracks, October 2013). “I burned my share of sage / closed up the mouth of our cave /and tried to keep it all from you,” singer-guitarist Molly Hamilton sings on the new disc’s “Smoke and Mirrors,” but she and guitarist Robert Earl Thomas have emerged relatively unscathed from their end-of-the-world worries. The EP serves as a bridge between their second and third albums, one that they firmly set in the southeastern swamps of America. As with Almanac, the EP creates an immersive, cinematic atmosphere, transporting the listener to the swamps on such songs as “Calico” and “True Believer.” As she sings in the exquisite title track, “And in the swamps I’d rest / I’d think about it less / or maybe I’d let it sink in / I want to tell the truth again.” The EP cover is also an important part of the whole, a photograph taken by Hamilton on the night of the Supermoon this past June of a swamp diorama she built. Thomas, who hails from Chicago, and Tacoma native Hamilton will be at Bowery Ballroom on November 8 with Pure Bathing Culture and Spires.
this week in music
SEE IT BIG! I’M NOT THERE
One of six versions of Bob Dylan (Cate Blanchett) hangs out with Allen Ginsberg (David Cross) in Todd Haynes’s I’M NOT THERE
I’M NOT THERE (Todd Haynes, 2007)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Friday, November 8, $12, 7:00
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us
Todd Haynes’s dramatization of the musical life of Bob Dylan is ambitious, innovative, and, ultimately, overblown and disappointing. Working with Dylan’s permission (though not artistic input), Haynes crafts a nonlinear tale in which six actors play different parts of Dylan’s psyche as the Great White Wonder develops from a humble folksinger to an internationally renowned and revered figure. Dylan is seen as an eleven-year-old black traveling hobo who goes by the name Woody Guthrie (Marcus Carl Franklin); Jack (Christian Bale), a Greenwich Village protest singer who later becomes a pastor; Robbie (Heath Ledger), an actor who has portrayed a Dylan entity and is having marital problems with his wife, Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg); Arthur Rimbaud (Ben Whishaw), a staunch defender of poetry and revolution; an old Billy the Kid (Richard Gere), who has settled down peacefully in the small town of Riddle; and Jude Quinn (Cate Blanchett), who is attacked by her audience when she goes electric. Each story line is shot in a different style; for example, Jude’s is influenced by Fellini and the Dylan documentary Eat This Document!, Robbie’s by Godard, and Billy’s by Peckinpah. Excerpts from Dylan’s own version of his songs are interwoven with interpretations by Tom Verlaine, Yo La Tengo, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Stephen Malkmus, the Hold Steady, Sonic Youth (who do a killer version of the unreleased Basement Tapes–era title track over the closing credits), and many more, with cameos by Kris Kristofferson (as the opening narrator), Richie Havens, Julianne Moore, Kim Gordon, Paul Van Dyck, Michelle Williams, and David Cross (looking ridiculous as Allen Ginsberg). The most successful section by far is Blanchett’s; she takes over the role with relish, and cinematographer Edward Lachman and production designer Judy Becker nail the feel of the mid-’60s energy surrounding Dylan. But the rest of the film is all over the place, a great concept that bit off more than it could chew. I’m Not There is screening November 8 at 7:00 as part of the Museum of the Moving Image’s “See It Big!” series, with Lachman present to talk about the making of the film.
FIRST SATURDAYS: JEAN PAUL GAULTIER
Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, November 2, free, 5:00 – 11:00 (some events require free tickets distributed in advance at the Visitor Center)
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org
The career of French fashion designer John Paul Gaultier will be celebrated at the Brooklyn Museum’s November edition of its free First Saturdays program. In conjunction with the opening of the multimedia exhibition “The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk,” there will be a curator talk by Lisa Small, an arts workshop demonstrating how to make Gaultier-inspired fashion plates, fashion-related pop-up gallery talks, a lecture on fashion, ethics, and the law by Susan Scafidi, a special performance by Company XIV and Dances of Vice with Miss Ekat and DJ Johanna Constantine, a discussion with photographer Richard Corman about his book Madonna NYC 83, and screenings of Loic Prigent’s 2009 documentary The Day Before, which follows Gaultier as he prepares for a fashion show, and Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element, for which Gaultier designed the costumes. The night will also include live music by Au Revoir Simone, Watermelon, and Tamar-kali. In addition, the galleries will be open late, giving visitors plenty of opportunity to check out “Valerie Hegarty: Alternative Histories,” “Käthe Kollwitz: Prints from the ‘War’ and ‘Death’ Portfolios,” “Divine Felines: Cats of Ancient Egypt,” “Life, Death, and Transformation in the Americas,” “Connecting Cultures: A World in Brooklyn,” “Wangechi Mutu: A Fantastic Journey,” and other exhibits.
NOSFERATU: A SYMPHONY OF HORROR / NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE
F. W. Murnau’s 1922 version of NOSFERATU is a German expressionist classic
NOSFERATU: A SYMPHONY OF HORROR (NOSFERATU, EINE SYMPHONIE DES GRAUENS) (F. W. Murnau, 1922)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Monday, November 4, $12.50, 7:30
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org
In F. W. Murnau’s classic horror film, Max Schreck stars as Count Orlok, a creepy, inhuman-looking Transylvanian who is meeting with real estate agent Thomas Hutter (Gustav von Wangenheim) in order to buy a house in Germany. Hutter soon learns that the count has a taste for blood, as well as lust for his wife, Ellen (Greta Schröder), whom he has left behind in Germany. When Count Orlok, a bunch of rats, and a group of coffins filled with Transylvanian earth head out on a ship bound for Wisborg, the race is on to save Ellen, and Germany. Murnau’s Nosferatu is set in an expressionist world of liminal shadows and fear, as he and cinematographers Fritz Arno Wagner and Günther Krampf continually place the menacing Orlok in oddly shaped doorways that help exaggerate his long, spiny fingers and pointed nose and ears. Unable to acquire the rights from Bram Stoker’s estate to adapt the Gothic horror novel Dracula into a film, writer Henrik Galeen (The Golem, The Student of Prague) and director Murnau (Sunrise, The Last Laugh) instead made Nosferatu, paring down the Dracula legend, changing the names of the characters, and tweaking the story in various parts. Upon its 1922 release, they were sued anyway, and all prints were destroyed except for one, ensuring the survival of what became a defining genre classic. In 1979, German auteur Werner Herzog (Woyzeck, Fitzcarraldo) paid tribute to the earlier film with Nosferatu the Vampyre, a near scene-by-scene homage to Murnau’s original but with Stoker’s character names restored, as the book was by then in the public domain. Hans Erdmann’s complete score no longer exists, so numerous musical compositions have accompanied screenings and DVD/VHS releases over the years; at Film Forum, pianist Steve Sterner will offer his take on November 4 at 7:30.
Werner Herzog pays tribute to Murnau classic with his 1979 remake of NOSFERATU
NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE (NOSFERATU: PHANTOM DER NACHT) (Werner Herzog, 1979)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Through Thursday, November 7, $12.50
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org
Nearly sixty years after Murnau battled the Stoker estate, Herzog remade Nosferatu with an all-star cast featuring Bruno Ganz as real estate agent Jonathan Harker, Isabelle Adjani as his wife, Lucy, and Klaus Kinski as Count Dracula. Shot in flat colors by Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein and set to a score by German electronica band Popol Vuh, Herzog’s Nosferatu follows the same path as Murnau’s, as Jonathan Harker travels to Transylvania to have the count sign a contract, discovers that Dracula likes blood and sleeps in a coffin, then tries to save his wife when the count and thousands of (purportedly mistreated) rats sail to Wismar, renewing fears of plague. Kinski plays the count as a sad, lonely figure who no longer belongs in the modern world. He’s desperate for human contact, and his castle has seen much better days. Kinski often seems to be shot in black-and-white, surrounded by color, as if he were from another time, except for his shockingly red lipstick. It’s a virtuoso performance that is significantly more nuanced than Schreck’s, which is a more direct take on the character. Both films are gems; Film Forum is showing a new 35mm print of the rare German-language version of Herzog’s remake through November 7; on November 4 you can see them both, with separate paid admission.
VIDEO OF THE DAY: “HALLOWEEN PARADE” BY LOU REED WITH LAURIE ANDERSON
“This Halloween is something to be sure / Especially to be here without you” — Lou Reed, March 2, 1942, Brooklyn, NY – October 27, 2013, Southampton, NY
TRIBUTE TO LOU REED: LOU REED’S BERLIN
Museum of the Moving Image pays tribute to the late, great Lou Reed with special BERLIN screening on November 2
LOU REED’S BERLIN (Julian Schnabel, 2007)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Saturday, November 2, $12, 7:30
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us
www.loureed.com/inmemoriam
In December 2006, Lou Reed resurrected his 1973 masterwork, Berlin, a deeply dark and personal song cycle that was a critical and commercial flop upon its initial release but has grown in stature over the years. (As Reed sings on the album’s closer, “Sad Song”: “Just goes to show how wrong you can be.”) The superbly staged adaptation, directed by Academy Award nominee Julian Schnabel (Basquiat, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), took place at Brooklyn’s intimate St. Ann’s Warehouse, featuring Rob Wasserman and longtime Reed sideman Fernando Saunders on bass, Tony “Thunder” Smith on drums, Rupert Christie on keyboards, and guitarist extraordinaire Steve Hunter, reunited with Lou for the first time in three decades. The band is joined onstage by backup singers Sharon Jones and Antony, the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, and a seven-piece orchestra (including cello, viola, flute, trumpet, clarinet, and flugel). Amid dreamlike video montages shot by Schnabel’s daughter, Lola, depicting Emmanuelle Seigner as the main character in Berlin, as well as experimental imagery by Alejandro Garmendia, Reed tells the impossibly bleak story of Caroline, a young mother whose life crashes and burns in a dangerously divided and debauched Germany. “It was very nice / It was paradise,” Reed sings on the opening title track, but it’s all downhill from there. “It was very nice / It was paradise” might also now serve as a kind of epitaph for one of the most important poets of the last fifty years. Berlin is having a special screening November 2 at 7:30 at the Museum of the Moving Image in honor of Reed, who passed away on October 27 at the age of seventy-one.
TICKET ALERT: ENNIO MORRICONE AT BARCLAYS CENTER
Tickets have just gone on sale to see movie maestro Ennio Morricone at Barclays Center next March
THE MUSIC THE MOVIES THE LEGEND: ENNIO MORRICONE US TOUR 2014
Barclays Center
620 Atlantic Ave.
Sunday, March 23, $80-$355, 7:00
917-618-6700
www.barclayscenter.com
www.enniomorricone-usa-2014.com
Maestro Ennio Morricone will be performing in New York City for the first time in more than six years, leading an orchestra and choir of more than two hundred on March 23 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Born in Rome in 1928, the composer of such classic soundtracks as Once Upon a Time in the West, The Battle of Algiers, The Mission, Cinema Paradiso, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly will conduct pieces from throughout his long and storied career, which includes five Oscar nominations (and an honorary Academy Award), three Grammys, and myriad other international honors. His U.S. “tour” consists of two appearances, March 20 at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles, followed by the March 23 show in Brooklyn. Tickets are now on sale for this rare opportunity to see one of cinema’s all-time greats in action.