Sally Timms and Jon Langford fight the curse of the Mekons in stirring documentary
SONIC CINEMA: REVENGE OF THE MEKONS (Joe Angio, 2013)
SVA Theatre
333 West 23rd St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Friday, November 15, 9:45
Festival runs November 14-21
212-924-7771
www.mekonsmovie.com
www.docnyc.net
Called “the most revolutionary group in the history of rock ‘n’ roll” by Lester Bangs, the Mekons have been making some of the best music on the planet for more than thirty-five years. But despite a rabid fan base and constant critical adoration, the band, which formed at the University of Leeds back in 1977, has never quite made the big time. Joe Angio captures the wild, DIY spirit of this unique music and art collective in the stirring documentary Revenge of the Mekons. Angio (How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company [and Enjoy It]) follows the self-deprecating band — the members of which are quick to joke about their lack of financial and popular success, especially when they’re onstage and learn from fans that an upcoming gig has been canceled — as they celebrate their thirtieth anniversary and record their most recent excellent album, Ancient and Modern. Angio talks with the current Mekons lineup, which includes cofounders Tom Greenhalgh and Jon Langford along with Susie Honeyman, Rico Bell, Lu Edmonds, Sarah Corina, Steve Goulding, and Sally Timms, as well as such former members as Kevin Lycett, Mark “Chalkie” White, Andy Corrigan, and Dick Taylor, as they recount the band’s rollicking history, beginning with its Leeds days as a socialist punk band battling over shows with Gang of Four through its mid-1980s transformation into alt-country folk rockers.
Mekons doc is one helluva wild and crazy ride, just like their long career
Angio mixes in amazing raw footage from the 1970s with more contemporary scenes as the Mekons, with their usual reckless abandon and utter joyfulness, play such songs as “Where Were You,” “The Hope and the Anchor,” “Ghosts of American Astronauts,” “Millionaire,” “Hello Cruel World,” “Hard to Be Human,” “Memphis, Egypt,” and “The Curse.” Sharing their love of all things Mekons are such wide-ranging pundits as Jonathan Franzen, Greil Marcus, Gang of Four’s Hugo Burnham and Andy Gill, Will Oldham, Greg Kot, Craig Finn, Luc Sante, Mary Harron, and performance artist Vito Acconci. Back in October 2011, we wrote that “a world that includes the Mekons is just a better place for everyone,” and that still holds true. So start by watching this wonderfully crazy documentary, about a group of crazy characters who have formed a crazy kind of family, then go out and pick up such seminal records as Fear and Whiskey, The Mekons Honky Tonkin’, So Good It Hurts, The Mekons Rock‘n’Roll, Natural, Ancient Modern, etc., and be sure to catch them live when they come anywhere near your town. Revenge of the Mekons is having its world premiere November 15 at 9:45 at the SVA Theatre as part of the “Sonic Cinema” section of this year’s DOC NYC festival, with Angio, Langford, Timms, Bell, and Goulding on hand to talk about the film. DOC NYC, which seeks to “cultivate new audiences [by] attracting newcomers with the excitement of a festival atmosphere,” runs November 14-21 at the IFC Center and the SVA Theatre; among the other “Sonic Cinema” selections are Rodrigo H. Vila’s Mercedes Sosa: Voice of Latin America, Trevor Laurence and Simeon Hutner’s Harlem Street Singer, and Jeremy Xido’s Death Metal Angola.
“Epic and boring,” Russian newspaper Vedomosti wrote in a review of Ilya and Emilia Kabakov’s highly anticipated 2008 Moscow exhibition; the same can be said about Amei Wallach’s documentary about the renowned Russian art couple, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: Enter Here. Wallach assembled the same team she worked with on 2008’s 
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.