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    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      Girls to the Front: Punk Pioneers Are Coming to Lincoln Center

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      The institution’s annual American Songbook series honors “singer outsiders” including Fanny and Poly Styrene in events curated by Kathleen Hanna and Tamar-kali.For more than 65 years, Lincoln Center has hosted virtuoso concert musicians, opera singers and ballet stars.But a noise queen with ripped tights and a screeching guitar?Enter Kathleen Hanna and Tamar-kali, musicians with big bootprints in the punk scene, and curators of the latest iteration of Lincoln Center’s venerable American Songbook series. Their version honors “singer outsiders,” which includes a series of concerts and tributes to acts like the Slits, Poly Styrene of X-Ray Spex and more, this month and next. It’s the first time Lincoln Center has celebrated the raw, propulsive D.I.Y. genre of punk, let alone the women who kicked their way through.The idea was to introduce an uptown audience to “our canon,” as Hanna, the Bikini Kill and Le Tigre frontwoman, and riot grrrl originator, put it. They booked contemporary artists to showcase punk’s elasticity, and to highlight styles that have historically been overlooked.“As a songwriter, there’s a lot of delegitimizing of aggressive music,” Tamar-kali said. But curating for Lincoln Center offered validation: “It just feels like I’m real musician now,” Hanna said, and they both laughed.Tamar-kali, a Brooklyn singer and composer (born Tamar-kali Brown), helped found the New York collective Sista Grrrl Riot, an outlet for feminist Afropunk, in the late ’90s; she and Hanna met in the early aughts and have been seeking ways to work together since.“As a songwriter, there’s a lot of delegitimizing of aggressive music,” said Tamar-kali, one of the series’ curators.Jack Vartoogian/Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      The Comedian Who Anticipated Our Reality-Bent World

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      You’re in a comedy club, and the guy onstage has gone quiet. He looks down at his feet, fidgets with the microphone, smiles a queasy, tight-lipped smile and, after nearly a minute of this, looks as if he might be about to cry.Listen to this article, read by Eric Jason MartinHis name is Andy Kaufman, and it’s 1977. Maybe you’re unfamiliar with him, or maybe you’ve heard he’s an up-and-coming comedian with a gift for prankish anti-bits. He has performed on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” and “Saturday Night Live,” and he killed on those shows. But tonight, taping his part in an HBO “Young Comedians Special,” he has told one stinker after another, and the people who have laughed have laughed in the wrong places: at him, not with him. Other people have started to groan and boo, and Kaufman seems to be breaking down. “I don’t understand one thing,” he finally says. People laugh again, sure it’s a put-on, or hoping it is, because the alternative would be too embarrassing. He goes on: “No, seriously, why everyone is going booo, on, like, when I told some of the jokes, and then when I don’t want you to laugh, you’re laughing? Like right now.”He continues to stammer, and then he’s sobbing outright, scolding the crowd through tears. “You really showed me where I’m at tonight,” he says, emitting a raw, ugly sound, like the honk of a sick goose: Heegh-heegh. “I was just trying to do my best heegh-heegh.” He keeps scolding and honking, but as he does, the honks form a rhythm. With one hand, then both hands, he begins to play bongos in time with the honks, shaping it all into a ridiculous song. The crowd laughs harder at this twist than they’ve laughed all night, and their delight seems mixed with gratitude — for this reassurance that Kaufman wasn’t really upset, for this slippery return to terra firma.In the history of comedy, no one has shown a fuller commitment to cultivating silence, awkwardness, concern, bewilderment and vitriol than Andy Kaufman. Any comedian trades in misdirection on the way to the surprise of a punchline. But Kaufman, as much of a performance artist as he was a stand-up, saw misdirection as the main event. “I’ve never told a joke in my life,” he once said. Laughter was one among many responses he sought to engineer. “He just behaved strangely, in order to get a reaction of any kind,” Jay Leno, who worked the same clubs as Kaufman in the ’70s, has recalled. “Even hostile.”Trading against his air of childlike sweetness, Kaufman scrambled the line between entertainment, tedium, self-indulgence and combativeness. For years, he assumed the persona of a snarling misogynist and wrestled women in clubs and on TV. Some of the women were plants, some were volunteers. Kaufman beat them all. This routine, along with his belligerent lounge-act alter ego, Tony Clifton, proved so unpopular that Kaufman’s manager feared it was ruining his career. But Kaufman, more interested in provocation than adulation, only dug in more.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 88 Shares159 Views

      in Movies

      In ‘Meanwhile,’ a Nation Remembers to Breathe

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      The director Catherine Gund fuses work from multiple artists with archival footage and interviews to craft an exploration of Black resilience.The makers of “Meanwhile” (in theaters) describe it as a “docu-poem,” which is a bold choice: Not many people encounter feature-length nonfiction poetry onscreen. But in about 90 minutes, the director Catherine Gund fuses work from multidisciplinary artists, words from the author Jacqueline Woodson, soundscapes by the musician Meshell Ndegeocello, archival footage and interviews in a way that elevates each of those elements, crafting an exploration of Black resilience. If in verbal poetry the meaning often resides in surprising juxtapositions, words used in ways that surprise and unsettle us, then this is, indeed, poetry.The spine of the film is breath: the act of breathing, the suppression of breathing, the absolute necessity of sharing breath, and space, with one another. Throughout the film, the sound of someone breathing is layered into images of artworks, threaded through conversations, quietly present beneath spoken lines. It’s intimate, an invitation to consider the theme.And to expand it, too: Artists and activists, the film suggests, generate breath for a community to take in — and breath is what makes survival possible. In this case, the focus is on Black Americans, as illustrated by clips of grief and police violence toward civilians in the wake of George Floyd’s death. But more than simply meditating on a community’s turmoil and pain in a single historical moment, “Meanwhile” extends its gaze forward and backward, asking what joy looks like, and what it takes to keep on breathing when the world wants you to stop.Near the start, onscreen text provides a twofold definition of the word “meanwhile.” The first is sequential: “in the intervening period of time.” The second is simultaneous: “at the same time.” The two seem a bit contradictory, but as “Meanwhile” builds to a crescendo, it becomes clear how in harmony they are. In an archival interview, the musician Nina Simone says that “freedom is a feeling,” and that it means “no fear.” Thus, the movie suggests, freedom is something you can experience while also working toward freedom’s creation. Artists know that for sure — “Meanwhile” aims to make it clear to everyone.Poetry by nature is allusive rather than literal. It gestures at meaning while trusting readers to lean in and discover significance for themselves. “Meanwhile” works the same way, and thus feels like both a provocation and a request to consider what flourishing looks like in this chaotic moment — for Black Americans, and for anyone who finds themselves drowning, struggling to breathe. More

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      in Movies

      Florida Mayor Threatens Cinema Over Israeli-Palestinian Film

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      The mayor of Miami Beach wants to end the lease of a group renting a city-owned property because it is screening the Academy Award-winning “No Other Land” there.The mayor of Miami Beach is seeking to oust a nonprofit art house cinema from a city-owned property for showing “No Other Land,” the Oscar-winning documentary that chronicles the Israeli demolition of Palestinian homes in Masafer Yatta in the southern West Bank.The mayor, Steven Meiner, introduced a resolution to revoke the lease under which O Cinema rents the space, he announced in a newsletter this week. He described the film as “a false, one-sided propaganda attack on the Jewish people that is not consistent with the values of our city and residents.”Kareem Tabsch, the co-founder of O Cinema, said that the threat of losing its physical location in Miami Beach was “very grave and we take it very seriously.”“At the time, we take very seriously our responsibility as a cultural organization that presents works that are engaging and thought provoking and that foster dialogue,” he said. “And we take very seriously our responsibility to do that without interference of government.”The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, which is now co-counsel for the theater, criticized the mayor’s move, as did the makers of the film, which won the Academy Award for best documentary earlier this month but has not been acquired in the United States by a traditional distributor for either a theatrical or streaming release. Distributors in two dozen other countries had picked up the film even before it won the award.Daniel Tilley, the legal director of the Florida branch of the ACLU, said in an interview that “what’s at stake is the government’s ability to use unchecked power to punish those who dare to express views that the government disagrees with.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Television

      ‘The Devil in the Family’ Is a Poignant and Terrifying Docu-Series

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      The story of the disgraced mommy vlogger Ruby Franke has been covered extensively by the news media. A Hulu documentary offers surprising new insights.The three-part documentary “The Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke,” on Hulu, follows the chilling case of the popular mommy vlogger who eventually pleaded guilty to child abuse for the horrific torture of her children. The case has already been international news, tabloid fodder and discourse grist, but unlike a lot of buzzy streaming documentaries, “Devil” is not a sloppy rehash. Instead, it is pointed and insightful.“Devil” includes interviews with Franke’s two oldest children, Shari and Chad, and with her husband, Kevin. (According to the documentary, he has filed for divorce.) Its other big draw is unreleased footage that Franke recorded over several years, outtakes that include startling and cruel exchanges. “Just be yourself!” she snaps at one of her young daughters.“That is myself,” the little girl pleads.“Well then change it,” Ruby says.She admonishes her husband and Chad for not being chatty and expressive on camera. “Be excited,” she tells her son icily. “Even if you have to fake it. Fake being happy. ’Kay?” In another clip, she prods him to participate more, reminding him that he gets $10 for doing so. Kevin says in the documentary that the family’s YouTube channel brought in $100,000 per month at its peak.There are a lot of disturbing details here, and the director Olly Lambert manages the scope of the story well while still acknowledging its larger context. As much as “Devil” is a story about control, faith and abuse, it is also a story about YouTube, fame and performance.Some of the most arresting footage here looks just like any other peppy family vlog: the super-close-up, self-shot footage of a pert blonde woman in bright lipstick, chirping at her brood. Only she isn’t delivering chummy tips on the surprising versatility of tater tots or on how even mommy needs big belly breaths sometimes. She is berating a little girl, or describing how “selfish” her children are — children who are barely old enough for kindergarten.Part of the allure of social media is its claim that you can actually see what’s going on behind closed doors, that people are being “real.” They aren’t. They’re selling you something, be it lifestyle products or eschatology. The rule remains: Buyer beware. More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Last Take: Rust and the Story of Halyna’ Review: Confusing Accounts

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      The Hulu documentary challenges ideas around who is responsible for the death of the cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of “Rust.”“I don’t know how you get justice from an accident.” In 2021, the cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was fatally shot on the set of the movie “Rust.” The new Hulu documentary “Last Take: Rust and the Story of Halyna,” directed by Rachel Mason, a friend of Hutchins, is not a chronicle of Hutchins’s life, nor a tribute to it. The film is instead a plodding but cleareyed account of the confusion, blame and scandal around her death.The documentary begins with a brief overview of the case, highlighting some of the crew members who were involved. The film goes on to challenge a schematic reading of who is responsible for Hutchins’s death, and even suggests that certain “Rust” producers were never held accountable for mismanaging the production.One compelling section highlights an email received by the armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, which scolded her for neglecting her prop duties to focus on firearm supervision. The revelations offer new perspectives on a tragedy that was already thoroughly covered in the media.The film’s biggest letdown lies in its cursory tour of who Hutchins was apart from her final hours. Despite testimony from Hutchins’s friends that repeatedly references her artistry, Mason rarely incorporates clips of Hutchins’s cinematography outside “Rust.” When the documentary does find time for a montage of her work, it is only to illustrate a point about where the guns onscreen are being aimed.Last Take: Rust and the Story of HalynaNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. Watch on Hulu. More

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      in Movies

      Jonas Mekas, Master of Avant-Garde Film, Shows His Tender Side

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      Mekas’s diaristic film clips, left behind when he died, fuel a new documentary that renders an intimate portrait of a man who often trafficked in the abstract.For 70 years Jonas Mekas, widely seen as the godfather of American avant-garde film, created nearly daily visual documents that showed elements of his life.He called them “film diaries.” They were recorded on film reels and tapes that were stored in cardboard sleeves with labels like “angry dog,” “small memorabilia” and “Warhol.” Those were stacked throughout Mekas’s loft in the Clinton Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn, organized in a way that only he fully understood.After Mekas died in 2019 at 96, a re-creation of the cluttered loft was installed on the fifth floor of an arts center in New Jersey, including the recordings and other possessions: Mekas’s old film editing equipment. A cardboard box with trimmings from the beard of his longtime friend Allen Ginsberg. A scarf he brought when fleeing his home country, Lithuania, in the 1940’s and held onto while surviving a Nazi labor camp.In the summer of 2020, the filmmaker KD Davison started sifting through those archives to create a documentary about Mekas. That film, “Fragments of Paradise,” will begin streaming on Amazon Prime Video on March 13.The documentary draws heavily from Mekas’s visual diaries, which Davison said seemed to reflect the rootlessness he experienced as a refugee during World War II and his enduring search for moments of beauty or calm.“I began to see this melancholy that I think isn’t often associated with Jonas,” she said. “It was like watching someone through the course of their life reconcile themselves with loss and begin to find freedom and joy just in the present moment.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      ‘Housewife of the Year’: Contestants Look Back in Dismay

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      Ciaran Cassidy’s film revisits an Irish television show that judged stay-at-home moms on budgeting and appearance.There’s a temptation, when making a documentary about some obviously retrograde practice from the past, for filmmakers to treat their subject like something to gawk at. Can you believe how backward earlier generations were? Let’s all point and stare and wince.“Housewife of the Year” (in theaters), directed by Ciaran Cassidy, could very easily have gone in that direction. The film is about (and named after) a live, prime-time televised competition that took place from 1969 to 1995 in Ireland — and it’s pretty much what it sounds like. Women, generally married and raising a large family, were judged on qualities ranging from sense of humor and civic-mindedness to budgeting, preparing a simple meal and, of course, keeping up their appearance. All of this, the movie briefly explains via text onscreen, can be seen as an effort to prop up the social order in a deeply religious, deeply traditionalist country where it was virtually impossible for a married woman to maintain many kinds of employment. “The state shall endeavor to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home,” Article 41.2 of the Irish Constitution proclaims. The competition helped reinforce those values.As Irish society changed, especially with respect to women’s rights and reproductive freedoms, the competition eventually turned into “Homemaker of the Year,” open to all genders. But that’s not the focus of the documentary, nor is there ponderous narration explaining to us what happened. Instead, “Housewife of the Year” focuses on two main ways of telling its story. The first is archival footage from the competition, which reinforces how much of it focused on patronizing and even belittling the women as they participated, via the male host, Gay Byrne, interviewing them onstage. It’s remarkable to watch.But woven throughout are present-day interviews with many of the participants, now much older, who see things differently than they probably did back then. They tell stories of what was really going on in the background: alcoholic or deadbeat husbands, economic catastrophes, backbreaking labor. One woman, Ena, talks about having given birth to 14 children by the time she was 31, owing largely to the ban on contraception.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More