Free public walk will take ticket holders to wild part of High Line to see Carol Bove’s “Caterpillar” installation (photo by Juan Valentin / courtesy of Friends of the High Line)
High Line at the Rail Yards
Saturdays & Sundays, November – December, free with advance RSVP, 10:00 am, 11:00, 12 noon, 2:00, 3:00
December RSVPs start November 12 at 4:00 pm
“Caterpillar” remains on view through May 2014
www.art.thehighline.org
Red Hook–based artist Carol Bove has installed a specially commissioned series of large-scale sculptures across a three-hundred-yard section of the High Line that is still in its wild, self-seeded state, scheduled to become the third part of the park’s miraculous renovation project next year. Bove, who was born in Geneva and raised in Berkeley, has presented the site-specific “Caterpillar,” seven pieces that alternate between white powder-coated twisting steel (“Celeste,” “Prudence”), a silicon bronze and stainless-steel platform (“Monel”), a brass and concrete vertical object (“Visible Things and Colors”), and rigid, rusted steel beam constructions (“14,” “Cow Watched by Argus”). A kind of contemporary Zen garden on the West Side of Manhattan, “Caterpillar” can only be seen up close as part of public walks being held on Saturdays and Sundays at 10:00, 11:00, 12 noon, 2:00, and 3:00. Tickets are free but must be obtained in advance; RSVPs for the December walks can be made beginning at 4:00 on November 12. To go on the forty-five-minute walk, you’ll have to sign a safety waiver, and it is recommended that you wear sturdy shoes, because you’ll be going over uneven terrain. No one under eighteen will be allowed on the tour. The High Line has been transformed into a glorious outdoor elevated park with wonderful views, cutting-edge art, live performances, food and drink stations, and more, but this is a rare opportunity to experience what it was like before the change. The walks fill up quickly, so don’t hesitate to reserve your spot. (Through January 2014, you can also catch Bove’s indoor installation “The Equinox” on the fourth floor of MoMA.)
Photographer Edward Burtynsky has been traveling the world with his large-format viewfinder camera, taking remarkable photographs of environmental landscapes undergoing industrial change. For Manufactured Landscapes, cinematographer Peter Mettler and director Jennifer Baichwal joined Burtynsky on his journey as he documented ships being broken down in Chittagong, Bangladesh; the controversial development of the Three Gorges Dam Project in China, which displaced more than a million people; the uniformity at a factory in Cankun that makes irons and the Deda Chicken Processing Plant in Dehui City; as well as various mines and quarries. Burtynsky’s photos, which were on view at the Brooklyn Museum in late 2005 and often can be seen in New York City galleries (two shows just closed last week), are filled with gorgeous colors and a horrible sadness at the lack of humanity they portray. As in the exhibit, the audience is not hit over the head with facts and figures and environmental rhetoric; instead, the pictures pretty much speak for themselves, although Burtynsky does give some limited narration. Baichwal lets the camera linger on its subject, as in the remarkable opening shot, a long, slow pan across a seemingly endless factory. She is also able to get inside the photographs, making them appear to be three-dimensional as Mettler slowly pulls away. Manufactured Landscapes is screening November 12 as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center series “Peter Mettler: Pictures of Light,” a midcareer retrospective of the innovative Canadian artist that also features eight shorts and full-length documentaries he directed, including Picture of Light, The End of Time, Plastikman, Petropolis, and Gambling, Gods, and LSD, with Mettler on hand to talk about his work at most shows. In addition, Mettler will participate in the free White Light Festival panel discussion “It’s a Matter of Time” on November 9 at 4:30 with Sylvia Boorstein, Daniel Casasanto, Georg Friedrich Haas, and Alan Lightman and a performance of Steve Reich’s “Clapping Music” by Alan Pierson and Chris Thompson, moderated by John Schaefer.
Woody Allen’s best film in years, Blue Jasmine is a modern-day Streetcar Named Desire filtered through the Bernie Madoff scandal. Cate Blanchett gives a marvelously nuanced and deeply textured performance as Jasmine French, an elegant socialite whose immensely wealthy husband, Hal (a wonderfully smarmy Alec Baldwin), amassed his fortune the new-fashioned way: by lying and cheating—only he was the rare financier who got caught and ended up in jail. Now broke and distraught, Jasmine moves in with her sister, Ginger (the delightful Sally Hawkins), a single mother with two kids living in a cramped apartment in San Francisco. Ginger and her ex-husband, Augie (an excellent Andrew Dice Clay), lost all their money by investing with Hal, and she is now trying to rebuild her life, working as a cashier and dating the gruff but dedicated Chili (a strong Bobby Cannavale). Not used to taking care of herself, Jasmine seems lost in a world that no longer treats her like a princess; she takes a job working for a dentist (Michael Stuhlbarg) and attends a computer class, but she is determined to regain her previous status. And that chance comes when she meets Dwight (a gentle Peter Sarsgaard), a man with grand plans who just might be the one to lead her back to the level to which she is accustomed.
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.