Marcus Samuelsson, Madhur Jaffrey, and Maangchi will join Leonard Lopate for discussions, demonstrations, and tastings at the Greene Space
Who: Leonard Lopate, Marcus Samuelsson, Maangchi, and Madhur Jaffrey
What: “Lopate and Locavores: Eating Around the World”
Where: The Greene Space at WNYC, the Jerome L. Greene Performance Space, 44 Charlton St. at Varick St., 646-829-4000
When: Wednesday, October 7, 14, 21, $25 (includes one drink), 7:00
Why: Three-time James Beard Award winner Leonard Lopate will host his annual food series this month at the Greene Space at WNYC, featuring three celebrity chefs joining him for a discussion, demonstration, and tasting. On October 7, the WNYC legend will welcome Marcus Samuelsson (Red Rooster Harlem, Streetbird Rotisserie, Marcus Off Duty: The Recipes I Cook at Home) to talk about Ethiopian and Swedish cuisine, followed by the Korean Julia Child, Maangchi, author of Maangchi’s Real Korean Cooking, on October 14, and Madhur Jaffrey, the Godmother of Indian Cooking and author of Vegetarian India: A Journey Through the Best of Indian Home Cooking, on October 21.
The related concepts of time and reality wind through Olivier Assayas’s beautifully poetic, melancholy Clouds of Sils Maria much like actual snakelike clouds slither through the twisting Maloja Pass in the Swiss Alps, as life imitates art and vice versa. Juliette Binoche stars as Maria Enders, a famous French actress who is on her way to Zurich to accept an award for her mentor, playwright Wilhelm Melchior, who eschews such mundane ceremonies. But while en route, Maria and her personal assistant, the extremely attentive and capable Valentine (Kristen Stewart), learn that Wilhelm has suddenly and unexpectedly passed away, and Maria considers turning back, especially when she later finds out that Henryk Wald (Hanns Zischler), an old nemesis, will be there to pay homage to Wilhelm as well, but she decides to go ahead after all. At a cocktail party, Maria meets with hot director Klaus Diesterweg (Lars Eidinger), who is preparing a new stage production of Wilhelm and Maria’s first big hit, The Maloja Snake, but this time Maria would play Helena, an older woman obsessed with ambitious eighteen-year-old Sigrid, the role she originally performed twenty years earlier, to great acclaim. Klaus is planning to cast Lindsay Lohan-like troublemaking star and walking tabloid headline Jo-Ann Ellis (Chloë Grace Moretz) as Sigrid, which does not thrill Maria as her past and present meld together in an almost dreamlike narrative punctuated by the music of Handel and cinematographer Yorick Le Saux’s gorgeous shots of vast mountain landscapes.
Rebecca Miller channels her inner Woody Allen and Noah Baumbach with the bittersweet romantic comedy Maggie’s Plan, making its U.S. premiere at the fifty-third New York Film Festival. Greta Gerwig is at her loopy best as Maggie, a thirtysomething college arts administrator who, after failing to maintain any relationship for more than six months, decides to become a single mother by impregnating herself with the sperm of an old classmate, Guy (Travis Fimmel), a Brooklyn hipster trying to become a pickle mogul. (He works for the real Brooklyn Brine Co.) Maggie’s married best buds, former boyfriend Tony (Bill Hader) and Felicia (Maya Rudolph), who have just had a baby themselves, debate her decision, but she is determined to forge ahead. As she prepares for the artificial insemination, which she is performing herself, she grows close with older New School adjunct professor John (Ethan Hawke), a ficto-crypto-anthropologist working on his novel. John has two kids of his own but is feeling overwhelmed by his wife, Georgette (Julianne Moore), a wickedly ambitious educator who has just been offered a lofty position at Columbia. Soon Maggie, John, and Georgette are in the midst of a complicated love triangle that is at times as frustrating to watch as it is endearing. 