Barnes & Noble
555 Fifth Ave. at 46th St.
Tuesday, October 23, free, 5:30
212-697-3048
www.randomhouse.com
www.rodstewart.com
“Obviously I was a mistake,” rock legend Rod Stewart writes in the beginning of his brand-new tome, Rod: The Autobiography (Crown, October 23, 2012, $27). But it’s no mistake that Stewart is one of the greatest performers in rock-and-roll history, having released such hit albums as Gasoline Alley, Every Picture Tells a Story, Blondes Have More Fun, Tonight I’m Yours, It Had to Be You: The Great American Songbook, and others over the course of a career that has spanned more than fifty years. In his book — which joins such other recent rock-star tell-alls as Keith Richards’s Life, Neil Young’s Waging Heavy Peace, and Pete Townshend’s Who I Am, Stewart shares tales of his youth, his friendships with the likes of Elton John and Ronnie Wood, his numerous sexual relationships, and the true story behind an ugly rumor that has followed him around for decades. “No one ever forgets their first view of Manhattan, rising into the sky ahead of them, nor their first drive up its concrete canyons,” he writes about his first trip to New York City, with Ron Wood. “Woody and I were in ecstasy – possibly even silenced momentarily, gawping at the scale of it all.” Rod the Mod has returned to New York City many times since then, selling out Madison Square Garden and other venues, and he will be back in town on October 23, making his only NYC literary appearance at 5:30 at the Fifth Ave. Barnes & Noble at 46th St., signing copies of Rod; there is a three-book maximum, and he will not be signing any other memorabilia. In addition, photography is not allowed once patrons approach the table, so you will not be able to take a posed picture with him. But how often do you get to be thisclose to the man behind “Maggie May,” “Hot Leg,” “Mandolin Wind,” “(I Know) I’m Losing You,” “Young Turks,” and “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?”
“Your eminence, I am not happy,” Guido (Marcello Mastroianni) tells the cardinal (Tito Masini) halfway through Federico Fellini’s self-reflexive masterpiece 8½. “Why should you be happy?” the cardinal responds. “That is not your task in life. Who said we were put on this earth to be happy?” Well, film makes people happy, and it’s because of works such as 8½, which will be screening October 19 as part of the Rubin Museum Cabaret Cinema series “Happiness is . . .” and will be introduced by Mexican-born, New York-based cartoonist Felipe Galindo. Fellini’s Oscar-winning eighth-and-a-half movie is a sensational self-examination of film and fame, a hysterically funny, surreal story of a famous Italian auteur who finds his life and career in need of a major overhaul. Mastroianni is magnificent as Guido Anselmi, a man in a personal and professional crisis who has gone to a healing spa for some much-needed relaxation, but he doesn’t get any as he is continually harassed by producers, screenwriters, would-be actresses, and various other oddball hangers-on. He also has to deal both with his mistress, Carla (Sandra Milo), who is quite a handful, as well as his wife, Luisa (Anouk Aimée), who is losing patience with his lies. Trapped in a strange world of his own creation, Guido has dreams where he flies over claustrophobic traffic and makes out with his dead mother, and his next film involves a spaceship; it doesn’t take a psychiatrist to figure out the many inner demons that are haunting him. Marvelously shot by Gianni Di Venanzo in black-and-white, scored with a vast sense of humor by Nino Rota, and featuring some of the most amazing hats ever seen on film — costume designer Piero Gherardi won an Oscar for all the great dresses and chapeaux — 8½ is an endlessly fascinating and wildly entertaining exploration of the creative process and the bizarre world of filmmaking itself. And after seeing 8½, you’ll appreciate Woody Allen’s 1980 homage, Stardust Memories, a whole lot more. “Happiness is . . .” continues through December 28 with such other Allen favorites as Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers, Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca, and George Cukor’s Camille, held in conjunction with the larger Rubin Museum program “
Yoga has come a long way, baby, as shown in the award-winning documentary Yogawoman. Unfortunately, however, this eighty-four-minute look at the transition of the art and practice of yoga from a male-exclusive method of finding inner peace to a woman-dominated community is a self-congratulatory infomercial that basically preaches to the converted. Dryly narrated by yoga enthusiast Annette Bening, who sounds like she had something better to do, Yogawoman is a family affair, written and directed by Kate McIntyre Clere (A Hard Place, Gaining Ground) and her sister Saraswati Clere and produced and photographed by Kate’s husband, Michael McIntyre. The film portrays the yoga world — indeed, it’s an international affair, visiting Japan, Australia, India, Germany, Kenya, and the UK in addition to various cities in the US (primarily New York and San Francisco) — as a tight-knit collection of women who use yoga not only for physical exercise and easing the mind but to play a key role in the overall life cycle, having positive effects on menstruation, sexuality, pregnancy, eating habits, the aging process, and battling cancer. Among the parade of talking heads who speak while sitting in front of the same blue background are Seane Corn, Angela Farmer, Cyndi Lee, Tari Prinster, and Patricia Walden, superstars in the field who sing the praises of the ever-growing discipline, but it all comes off as New Agey and self-important. There’s no doubt that yoga is beneficial and empowering in so many ways, but Yogawoman sells it like it’s a magic elixir that will cure all of your — and this troubled world’s — ills. Yogawoman opens October 19 at the Angelika; the filmmakers and various women who appear in the movie will participate in Q&A sessions following the screenings at 7:00 on Friday and Saturday and 3:00 on Sunday.
The first half of Julia Loktev’s second feature film, The Loneliest Planet, is a dazzling tour de force, as young lovers Alex (Gael García Bernal) and Nica (Hani Furstenberg) revel in all that life has to offer. Shortly before getting married, they have decided to go on a hiking trip through the Caucasus Mountains in Georgia, led by a guide named Dato (real-life mountaineer Bidzina Gudjabidze, in his first acting role). Alex and Nica are fresh and alive, their eyes filled with wonder, their faces in perpetual, infectious smiles as they make their way through spectacular landscapes gorgeously photographed by cinematographer Inti Briones. In several shots, the three hikers are barely visible walking in the distance as Briones focuses on breathtaking views of the lush green mountainside and vast Central Asian landscape (as well as, in close-up, Furstenburg’s dazzling red hair). What little dialogue there is doesn’t really matter; in fact, much of it is hard to hear, more like background noise, and what is spoken in foreign languages isn’t even translated. But when the travelers run into three locals, something happens that upends the dynamic and severely changes the relationship among Alex, Nica, and Dato, something that requires the kind of split-second decision that one can never take back, resulting in a return journey that is much darker, the smiles, laughter, and romance disappearing in a stark moment. Based on Tom Bissell’s short story “Expensive Trips Nowhere,” The Loneliest Planet recalls such seminal works as Mikhail Kalatozov’s The Letter Never Sent, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, John Boorman’s Deliverance, Akira Kurosawa’s Dersu Uzala, and Roberto Rosselini’s Voyage in Italy, in which location serves as a character of mystery and potential danger. Loktev, a visual artist who previously made the 1998 documentary Moment of Impact, which details her family’s very personal experiences after her father was hit by a car, and her 2006 narrative debut, Day Night Day Night, about a female Palestinian suicide bomber, has crafted a mesmerizing tale built around small subtleties and the tender, fragile nature of human relationships, in which one misstep can have shattering consequences. Mexican actor García Bernal and New York-born Israeli star Furstenberg make a terrifically believable couple, so vibrant in the first half, so tentative and subdued in the latter sections. The Loneliest Planet is having a special preview screening on October 17 as part of the Museum of the Moving Image’s “See It Big!” series, with Loktev and Furstenberg on hand to talk about the film, which opens October 26 at the IFC Center.