Andrew Moore, “Room 348, Hermitage Museum,” from the series “Russia,” 2003 (courtesy Yancey Richardson Gallery)
Park Avenue Armory
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
March 29 – April 1, $25 for one day, $40 for all four days
202-367-1158
www.aipad.com
www.armoryonpark.org
These days everyone seems to think they’re a photographer, taking picture after picture after picture with their digital phones and other electronic devices, then posting the results all over social media and blogs. So we always like when the AIPAD Photography Show New York comes to town, reminding us that there’s actually a whole lotta skill that goes with capturing images of the world at large. The thirty-second gathering sponsored by the Association of International Photography Art Dealers takes place March 29 through April 1 at the Park Avenue Armory, featuring exhibits from seventy-five galleries as well as a series of special events, beginning March 28 with the gala kickoff benefiting inMotion, an organization that provides “justice for all women.” Exhibitors from Beijing, Munich, Toronto, Osaka, Paris, Buenos Aires, and London will join American galleries from across the country at the show, including such New York faves as Howard Greenberg, Nailya Alexander, Bonni Benrubi (which will be displaying photographs by Linda McCartney), Steven Kasher (Weegee, Vivian Meier), Danziger (Karen Knorr), Sasha Wolf (Elinor Carucci), Laurence Miller, Julie Saul (Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao), Bryce Wolkowitz, Yancey Richardson (Laura Letinsky, Rachel Perry Welty), Yossi Milo (Alejandro Chaskielberg), and David Zwirner (Philip-Lorca diCorcia). As you wind your way through the armory, you’ll also find works by Ansel Adams, Man Ray, André Kertész, Flip Schulke, and many others. The panel discussions ($10 in advance) will take place Saturday at Hunter College’s Hunter West Building, beginning at 10:00 am with “A Conversation with Rineke Dijkstra,” who will be interviewed by Guggenheim curator Jennifer Blessing, and will continue at 12 noon with “Curator’s Choice: Emerging Artists in Photography,” with Sarah Meister, Christopher Phillips, and Joshua Chuang, moderated by Lindsay Pollock; “How to Collect Photographs: What Collectors Need to Know Now” at 2:00, with Kenneth Montague and Joseph Baio, moderated by Steven Kasher; “A Celebration of Francesca Woodman” at 4:00 with Julia Bryan-Wilson, Sloan Keck, and Elisabeth Subrin, moderated by Robert Klein; and “Italian Contemporary Photography” at 6:00, with Maria Antonella Pelizzari, Yancey Richardson, Julie Saul, and Olivo Barbieri, moderated by Sandra Phillips.
In films such as Being John Malkovich (Spike Jonze, 1999), Adaptation. (Spike Jonze, 2002), Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (George Clooney, 2002), and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004), writer Charlie Kaufman has created bizarre, compelling alternate views of reality that adventurous moviegoers have embraced, even if they didn’t understand everything they saw. Well, Kaufman has done it again, challenging audiences with his directorial debut, the very strange but mesmerizing Synecdoche, New York. Philip Seymour Hoffman stars as the bedraggled Caden Cotard, a local theater director in Schenectady mounting an inventive production of Death of a Salesman. Just as the show is opening, his wife, avant-garde artist Adele Lack (Catherine Keener), decides to take an extended break in Europe with their four-year-old daughter, Olive (Sadie Goldstein), and Adele’s kooky assistant, Maria (Jennifer Jason Leigh). As Caden starts coming down with a series of unexplainable health problems (his last name, by the way — Cotard — is linked with a neurological syndrome in which a person believes they are dead or dying or do not even exist), he wanders in and out of offbeat personal and professional relationships with box-office girl Hazel (a nearly unrecognizable Samantha Morton), his play’s lead actress, Claire Keen (Michelle Williams), his therapist, Madeleine Gravis (Hope Davis), and Sammy (Tom Noonan), a man who has been secretly following him for years. After winning a MacArthur Genius Grant, Caden begins his grandest production yet, a massive retelling of his life story, resulting in radical shifts between fantasy and reality that will have you laughing as you continually scratch your head, hoping to stimulate your brain in order to figure out just what the heck is happening on-screen.
The Raid: Redemption is a nonstop claustrophobic thrill ride through a fifteen-story apartment complex where danger lurks around every corner and behind nearly every door. The gated, heavily protected building is run by Tama (Ray Sahetapy), a well-connected drug lord who enjoys terrorizing and killing traitors and enemies. Early one morning Jaka (Joe Taslim) leads his elite special forces unit on a raid of the complex, ordered to get Tama and end his brutal reign. As Jaka’s team falls one by one, it is left to a determined young rookie, Rama (Iko Uwais), to complete the mission, which is not quite what it appears to be. Written, directed, and edited by Welsh-born Gareth Huw Evans, The Raid: Redemption is a furious, testosterone-heavy action flick filled with breathtaking scenes of ultraviolence countered by moments of intense, quiet drama where one wrong move will be a character’s last. Primarily shot with a handheld camera that puts the audience in the middle of the battle, the film uses a variety of weapons in the well-choreographed fight scenes, from machine guns and pistols to serrated knives and machetes, while focusing on the martial art of Pencak Silat. Uwais, a former truck driver and Silat champion who was discovered by Evans while the director was researching a documentary on the martial art — the two previously teamed up on 2009’s Merantau — is outstanding as Rama, a father-to-be who might have met his match in Mad Dog (Yayan Ruhian), one of Tama’s chief operatives and a killer who prefers using his hands, fists, and feet to eliminate his opponents. (Uwais, Ruhian, and Evans collaborated on the action choreography.) Buoyed by a pulsating score by Joseph Trapanese and Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda and evoking elements of the first Die Hard, Assault on Precinct 13, and New Jack City, The Raid: Redemption is a pulse-pounding, wildly successful film that has kicked off a franchise, with two sequels in the works. (Here’s hoping the translator does a better job in the next two movies, taking a much-needed crash course in punctuation.) Even the credits are awesome, with dozens of characters listed as Hole Drop Attacker, Riot Van Shooter, Carrying Bowo Fighter, Machete Gang, AK47 Attacker, Panic Man, Tortured Man, and Junkie Guy. “I deal in blood and mayhem,” Evans, who has been based in Indonesia since 2007, states in the film’s production notes. Indeed he does.