New York City

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares129 Views

      in Theater

      Curtains Down, Bottoms Up: When the Show Ends, the Night’s Just Getting Started

      by

      “Dead Letter No. 9,” “Cocktail Magique” and “Hypnotique” are offering theatergoers a taste of nightlife.A funny thing happened at Dead Letter No. 9, a new performance space in Brooklyn. It was just after 10 p.m. on a Saturday in late October. The evening’s show had finished, but the audience wouldn’t leave — crowding instead into the adjoining bar for cocktails, mocktails and flatbreads.Though New York City has its cabaret spaces and piano bars, theater and nightlife mostly occupy separate addresses. Blame temperament or real estate or the lingering effects of cabaret laws (finally repealed in 2017), which required a license to allow patrons to dance, but in general those who long for a drink and a show at the same time have had to settle for overpriced chardonnay in sippy cups. Ah, the glamour.New shows and new venues are blurring those lines. Though I am a lady with a hilariously low tolerance for alcohol who likes to be in bed just as the cable TV shows are getting good, I attended three of these performances over the last few weeks, trading a good night’s sleep for this superabundant approach (drinks, snacks, dance, card tricks, elaborate lingerie) to evening entertainment.Audience members sit facing the stage at “Cocktail Magique.”Justin J Wee for The New York TimesStrong cocktails complement the dance routines at the show.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in Music

      Second Woman Accuses Steven Tyler of Sexually Assaulting Her in the 1970s

      by

      In a lawsuit, a woman says that the Aerosmith frontman groped and fondled her in a New York phone booth when she was about 17.For the second time in the past year, Steven Tyler has been accused in a lawsuit of sexually assaulting a teenage girl in the 1970s, when his band Aerosmith was rising to fame.In the new lawsuit, which was filed in New York on Thursday, Jeanne Bellino accuses Mr. Tyler of assaulting her twice in one day in approximately 1975, when she was about 17 years old and a model living in Queens. He would have been in his late 20s at the time.While Ms. Bellino was visiting Manhattan for work, the lawsuit says, a friend arranged for them to meet Aerosmith. As Ms. Bellino was walking down the street with Mr. Tyler and his entourage, which included his bandmates, he forced her into a phone booth, where he aggressively kissed, groped and fondled her, according to the lawsuit.“Others stood by outside the phone booth laughing and as passers-by watched and witnessed, nobody in the entourage intervened,” the lawsuit says.Because Ms. Bellino did not have money for transportation home, according to the suit, she was taken to the Warwick Hotel with Mr. Tyler and his entourage. The lawsuit says Mr. Tyler pinned her against a wall in a public area and again assaulted her. Shortly after, a doorman at the hotel helped her get into a cab and flee.“He never even asked me what my name was,” Ms. Bellino said of Mr. Tyler in a news conference on Thursday.A representative for Aerosmith did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Ms. Bellino’s lawsuit was filed under a New York City law that in March opened a two-year window for people to accuse someone of gender-motivated violence that would otherwise be beyond the statute of limitations.In a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles in December, Julia Misley accused Mr. Tyler of using his status and power to “groom, manipulate, exploit” and “sexually assault” her over the course of three years, starting in 1973, shortly after her 16th birthday. Ms. Misley said in her lawsuit that she had met Mr. Tyler at an Aerosmith concert in Portland, Ore., and that the musician had persuaded her mother to let him become her legal guardian.Mr. Tyler, who is now 75, wrote about sexual encounters with a teenager in his 2011 autobiography, “Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?,” saying that he gained custody of a person who nearly became his “teen bride.” More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Television

      Mourning Matthew Perry at the ‘Friends’ Museum in New York

      by

      The day after the actor’s death, fans paid tribute at a storefront re-creation of the sitcom’s famous sets.Every night, Marnie Stein, an elementary school principal from Montreal, falls asleep to the lullaby of “Friends” streaming on her TV.At school, the decorations in the teachers’ lounge reference Central Perk, the Manhattan coffee shop where the show’s main characters held court. “All we do is quote ‘Friends,’” Stein said of her and her colleagues.So on Sunday afternoon, while on a trip to New York City with her daughter and best friend, Stein took a pilgrimage to a storefront at East 23rd Street and Lexington Avenue, where sets from the long-running sitcom have been recreated for fans in a two-floor tourist magnet that is part museum, part photo opportunity.After the news on Saturday night that Matthew Perry, one of the show’s lead actors, had died suddenly at his home in Los Angeles, the trip to the “Friends” Experience turned into a moment to pay tribute to the 54-year-old star, who had been open about his long battle with drug and alcohol addiction. No official cause of death has been released yet.“He was in pain and he had so many demons and he suffered for so long,” Stein said as “Friends” clips flashed on a screen behind her. “As I’m trying to come to terms with it, I hope he’s at peace.”Stein, 49, watched “Friends” from its early days, when it premiered on NBC in the mid-1990s and quickly became a pop culture touchstone, with its portrait of a close-knit group of 20-somethings navigating friendship and relationships. The show has maintained its cultural cachet into the streaming era, producing a legion of Gen Z fans who are just as eager to take a photograph alongside a recreation of the “Friends” fountain as their parents’ generation is. (Stein’s 22-year-old daughter, Maggie, is a fan, too.)A sardonic jokester with a mysterious job and a sometimes painful awkwardness when flirting, Perry’s character, Chandler Bing, was a central pillar of the show during its 10-season run, and his relationship with Courteney Cox’s character, Monica Geller, is one of the most beloved romantic arcs in TV history.A re-creation of the “Friends” Central Perk coffeehouse.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesOutfits worn by the cast of “Friends.”Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesIn his recent memoir, in which he chronicled his road toward sobriety, Perry described the show as a “safe place” and a “touchstone of calm” for him. “It had given me a reason to get out of bed every morning,” he wrote.He also described the character as deeply personal to him. Chandler’s trademark way of talking — “Could she be more out of my league?” and “Could I be more sorry?” — came from a speech pattern he and his brothers took on in grade school.“From the day we first heard him embody the role of Chandler Bing, there was no one else for us,” the show’s creators, Marta Kauffman and David Crane, and an executive producer, Kevin Bright, said in a statement on Sunday.There was a sense of shock among fans, who had seen the cast together as recently as 2021 when they got together for a much anticipated reunion special. To those who have watched and rewatched the 10 seasons, often streaming them in the background of daily life, the actors have become reliable companions.“You know when you get that kind of sinking feeling?” said Olivia Freer, 28, a tourist from England who had bought tickets to the museum with her friends after learning the news. “I feel heartbroken. You don’t know them so you don’t think it’ll affect you, but it does.”The broad and enduring loyalty to the show has fueled enough demand for “Friends” pop-up shrines not just in New York, where the show is set, but in Miami and Salt Lake City, as well as around the world in Melbourne, Dublin and Amsterdam. Like many so-called immersive experiences, the event revolves around getting photos in the show’s trademark settings, including the orange couch at Central Perk and the blue cabinetry of Monica’s kitchen.Fans can recline in a La-Z-Boy chair like the ones Chandler and his pal Joey were known to sit in, and pose as though trying to finagle a sofa up a staircase, as Chandler did with Rachel and Ross in Season 5. Glass cases display props and costumes from the series, including Chandler and Monica’s wedding invitation and vows, as well as the outfit Chandler wore in a Thanksgiving episode in Season 8 in which Brad Pitt guest starred.So what is it about this show that turns props into precious memorabilia and faraway actors into what start to feel like cherished companions?For Amy Taylor, who was traveling with Stein, it’s the sense of comfort and ease that episodes of “Friends” give her — it was a balm for her during the pandemic in particular, she said. And it’s the common language it provides her and her loved ones. (In a reference to a running joke in the series, Taylor has a chick tattooed on her leg, and her cousin has a duck tattoo.)“I just hope he knew,” Taylor said of Perry, “that his character brought so much comfort to people.” More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      At NY Dog and Cat Film Festivals, Love, Licks and Looniness

      by

      Collections of short films, both documentary and fiction, make their annual visit to Manhattan, followed by tours around the country and Canada.The cinematic events debuting at the Village East by Angelika this weekend won’t feature any of the acclaimed actors from the recently concluded New York Film Festival. Some of the major figures in these movies have been known to jump on their directors, fall asleep on the job, drool on camera and chew the scenery (in every sense).But that’s no surprise: They’re among the four-legged performers in the sixth annual NY Cat Film Festival and the eighth annual NY Dog Film Festival. Each offers short documentary and fictional works illustrating how people affect the lives of animals, and how animals affect the lives of people — usually in positive ways.“I try to keep them to films that are lighter and that simply uplift you,” Tracie Hotchner, the founder of both festivals, said in a video interview. And even though some of the featured dogs and cats are in difficult circumstances, the movies, she added, are “more of a celebration of the groups that rescue them.”These grass-roots film programs also benefit their subjects: Of the $18 all-inclusive ticket price for each festival, 10 percent goes to a pet-adoption nonprofit. (The Manhattan screenings will help support Muddy Paws Rescue and Meow Parlour Cats.) And fans who can’t see the programs this weekend may be able to catch them in the coming months when they tour to independent cinemas nationwide and in Canada.“BARC if You Need Help” examines a program that recruits juvenile offenders to train animals.Tula Asselanis/The Latham Foundation“These are not, you know, Hollywood-style movies,” said Hotchner, an author, radio host and podcaster based in Vermont. They’re “like the poetry of films.”Some are clearly light verse. The 102-minute feline festival, at noon on Saturday, includes “The Cat Duet,” by Lorelei De Armas and Julian Wood, 12-year-olds from Detroit who filmed themselves singing “Duetto buffo di due gatti,” a comic song often attributed to Rossini. (The only lyric is “Meow.”) The 110-minute dog festival, at noon on Sunday, features Nepal Arslan’s “47 Seconds,” his haiku-like response to discovering decades-old footage of a couple with a dog eerily resembling his own.“Silent Paws,” by the global initiative Mutual Rescue, even incorporates a real poem: a work of the same title by Gabriel Spera, which scrolls by during an elegy to lost feline companions.Neither festival, however, has a shortage of serious documentaries. Michelle Williams’s “Bear the Courthouse Canine” explores the pivotal role that a gentle Labrador retriever plays for the Contra Costa County, Calif., district attorney. Trained to lie under the witness stand during trials, Bear comforts traumatized victims who are testifying, especially children.The dogs in “BARC if You Need Help” work on the other side of the criminal justice system. Produced by the Latham Foundation for the Promotion of Humane Education, this film examines Building Adolescent Responsibility and Compassion, a program in Michigan that recruits juvenile offenders to train animals — frequently pit bulls that have troubled histories, too.“It’s like a mirror for them,” Tula Asselanis, the documentary’s director, said of the teenage participants. And the film suggests that “redemption is a powerful possibility, just through using the human-animal bond.”But what struck Hotchner most about the festivals’ submissions this year was how much they tried to capture the inner lives of animals.With cats, “it’s like, you know, ‘E.T.,’” she said. “So this alien comes into your life, and they’re so beautiful and so lovely. But what makes them tick?”The filmmakers’ speculations are often comic, as in “Insomnia,” by Kim Best, who provides subtitles detailing a cat’s ruminations on this most unlikely of feline problems: “Embarrassingly, I considered sleeping with a dog.”A scene from “Ranger: Canine Alpinist,” about dogs aiding climbers on Mount Hood.Joe DanielOther films that venture inside the minds of their subjects include Ned Thanhouser’s docudrama “Ranger: Canine Alpinist,” which relies on voice-over to relate the perspective of a dog who assisted human climbers on Mount Hood in Oregon almost a century ago. In the fictional “Set Adrift,” the British director Jennifer Sheridan uses only her furry actor’s expressiveness to convey a dog’s grief. Peta Hitchens’s Australian documentary “Filming Dogs” investigates a psychological question: Do pets like her own really enjoy performing for movies and television?Intriguingly, Juhi Sharma’s comedy “Purrrfect Intervention” features no animals — until the credits. Kisha Peart, who produced and wrote it, stars as a New Yorker so cat-obsessed that her friends arrange treatment for her.“Obviously, I’m a cat lady,” Peart said, adding that she turned her own pet’s camera shyness into a visual joke. Her character, she said, is “this crazy cat lady, but where are her cats?”Live animals won’t attend the screenings, either, but they will be at parties on the eve of each festival. These celebrations, which require separate tickets, will feature mingling with the filmmakers and authors of books about pets. One of Hotchner’s contacts even arranged for a visiting celebrity at the pooch festivities: Bastian the Talking Terrier, whose YouTube channel has almost two million subscribers.“I don’t know any famous dogs,” said Hotchner, who owns two Weimaraners. “But he said yes.”NY Cat Film FestivalSaturday at the Village East by Angelika, Manhattan; catfilmfestival.com.NY Dog Film FestivalSunday at the Village East by Angelika, Manhattan; dogfilmfestival.com. More

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in Theater

      Roberta Pereira to Lead New York Performing Arts Library

      by

      Roberta Pereira, the director of the Playwrights Realm, will lead the library, which is home to more than eight million items relating to music, theater and dance.Roberta Pereira has had a career-long goal to make the performing arts accessible for all.So when she saw a posting for an executive director position at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, one of the country’s leading repositories relating to music, theater and dance, she had an immediate thought: dream job.“I believe the arts are stronger when more people can participate,” said Pereira, 43, who will become the first Latino person to lead the institution, which is home to more than eight million items. “And the library’s mission is free access and knowledge for all.”Pereira, currently the executive director of the Playwrights Realm, an Off Broadway theater company devoted to early-career playwrights, will start the position in January. She succeeds Jennifer Schantz, who left the library in 2022 after two years. (Linda Murray, the curator of the Performing Arts Library’s Jerome Robbins Dance Division and the associate director of its collections and research services, filled in as interim director.)Brent Reidy, the New York Public Library’s director for the research libraries who led the search for Schantz’s replacement, said that the library had received dozens of applications, but that Pereira stood “head and shoulders” above the other candidates.She had a track record, he said, of innovation. During her eight years at the Playwrights Realm, the organization became a leader in the field of offering caretaker support to audiences and theater workers, which included matinees with free child care and stipends for employees with caretaking responsibilities of both children and adult dependents. She has produced nine Off Broadway premieres, including Sarah DeLappe’s play “The Wolves,” which was a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for drama.In 2017, Pereira co-founded the Artists’ Anti-Racist Coalition, a grass-roots group working to make the theater industry more diverse.“It’s clear that she has dedicated her career in the performing arts to engaging the public, increasing access and focusing on how to make more people part of the theater community,” Reidy said.The performing arts library, located in Lincoln Center, is one of the New York Public Library’s four research divisions, with a collection that includes not only books, but also manuscripts, photographs, scores, sheet music, stage designs, costume designs, video and film.Among its collections are its expansive archive of recorded sound, which includes symphonic recordings, radio plays, political speeches, and its Theater on Film and Tape Archive, which includes more than 8,000 recordings of Broadway, Off Broadway and regional theater productions, such as a filmed performance by the original Broadway cast of “The Phantom of the Opera.” (The archive, which has led to similar efforts at other institutions, received a special Tony Award in 2001.)Pereira, who was born in Brazil, was a classmate of Lin-Manuel Miranda at Wesleyan University, a liberal arts college in Connecticut, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in theater. She later earned a master’s degree in theater management from the Yale School of Drama. She previously worked as a commercial theater producer, including on the Broadway premiere of “Grace,” which starred Paul Rudd, Michael Shannon and Ed Asner, in 2012, and the Olivier Award-winning revival of Stephen Sondheim’s “Merrily We Roll Along” in the West End in 2013.She said she had made frequent use of the library’s holdings over the years. And now, she said, her goal is to tell others about the “undiscovered jewel” on the Upper West Side.“I want to show people that this incredible archive is open to all, not just researchers,” she said. More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Theater

      Tagging Along With The New York Times’s Chief Theater Critic

      by

      At a recent performance of “Gutenberg! The Musical!” on Broadway, Jesse Green gave us an inside look at his review process.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.At 7:40 on a humid Friday night in early October, Jesse Green, wearing a plaid suit coat and carrying a green laptop bag, arrived at the James Earl Jones Theater in Manhattan. The show he was there to see, “Gutenberg! The Musical!,” was starting in 20 minutes, but he was in no rush to enter the theater. As the chief theater critic for The New York Times, he knows Broadway performances usually begin about eight minutes late.“Good evening,” Green said as he approached a press representative for the show. He retrieved a white envelope with two tickets tucked inside, one for Green and the other for his husband, Andrew Mirer.It was the second press performance of “Gutenberg!,” a two-man comedy about aspiring musical theater writers who decide to write a show about Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press, without knowing much about him. The show reunites Andrew Rannells and Josh Gad, who co-starred as hapless missionaries in “The Book of Mormon” in 2011.“Gutenberg!” was one of more than 100 shows that Green, who reviews almost every new Broadway production and many Off Broadway shows and regional productions, would see this year. He had attended a performance of “Merrily We Roll Along,” the starry new revival of the 1981 Stephen Sondheim musical, the previous night.Green, who has been a theater critic for The Times since 2017, was, proudly, a theater geek in high school. After graduating from Yale with a double major in English and theater, he moved to New York City and began working as a gofer, or errand runner, for Broadway shows, working his way up to musical coordinator positions. At one point, he apprenticed for Hal Prince, who produced or directed many of the most enduring musicals in theater history, including “West Side Story,” “Sweeney Todd” and “The Phantom of the Opera.”His time with Prince not only honed his taste, but also taught him how important it is for a show to forge a connection with an audience.“I approach theater criticism as a form of reporting,” said Green, who has reviewed nearly 1,000 shows over his decade-long career as a critic. His reporting reflects his feelings — his connection with the show being staged in front of him.“That’s the fun of reviewing,” he told me.Critics generally attend one of a few press performances, which occur before a show’s official opening night. Green sees the first one he can so that he has ample time to write his review, which usually comes out on opening night. “Gutenberg!” was opening the following Thursday, Oct. 12.At 8 p.m., he walked through a metal detector and handed his ticket to an usher. A bell chimed.“Let’s go, guys, step right in,” a man yelled. “The show is about to start.”An usher led Green and Mirer to aisle seats in Row F of the orchestra section. (“Press seats are almost always in the middle of the orchestra,” Green said. “But when I buy them myself, I like to sit in the front row of the mezzanine.”)He pulled out a five-by-eight-inch red spiral notepad, slipped on a pair of dark blue glasses, and wrote the show’s name and the date at the top of the page. It would be the most legible thing he would write all evening.“The first thing I do after a show is transcribe my notes,” Green told me. “They’re unreadable half the time, but they’re still helpful to jog my memory.”When the show began, Mirer leaned over, signaling to his watch — 8:04. Though shows post their run time on their websites, it is not always precise; Green ensures readers have accurate information.During the first act, which featured Gad and Rannells dancing in a kickline and performing a farcical song about biscuits, Green jotted down notes often. His expression remained inscrutable, except for an occasional smile or a chuckle.“I’m looking for a number of things,” he told me later. “Lines that help me understand what the play wants to do and how it seems to be succeeding or failing.” He considers moments and design choices that will help readers understand what it feels like to experience the show. Occasionally, he admits, he finds himself writing “Help” or “Will this ever end?”The first act of “Gutenberg!” provoked a continual stream of laughter from the audience and selective applause from Green — he tries not to show too much emotion during a performance. When the house lights came on for intermission, a woman seated nearby turned to her seatmate. “That’s like nothing I’ve ever seen,” she said.Green stood up. “I don’t want anyone else’s influence,” he said. To avoid inadvertent eavesdropping, he goes for a walk during intermission, even if it’s just up the aisle.Act 2 began at 9:15, which Green dutifully recorded in his notebook. He took fewer notes during the second act, which, he said afterward, is not always the case. He explained it this way: “As a rule, the better the show, the fewer notes I take, because I get too caught up.”When Gad and Rannells took their bows at 10:08, most of the audience stood and applauded. But Green perched on the tipped-up edge of his seat, craning his neck to watch. Times critics do not typically stand at the end of shows, a practice Green said was not a formal policy but an unwritten code among critics.“We know we are being watched, and we don’t want to disclose too much,” he told me. And, he added, “I still believe that standing ovations are for truly extraordinary events.”As Green closed his notebook (he had filled four pages) and headed for the exit, he and his husband discussed the weather — rain was on the way — as well as their weekend plan to drive to a house they owned in the woods upstate, where Green would write. Not a word passed between them about the show. Even his husband is prohibited from sharing thoughts about a performance, at least until Green’s review runs.Green planned to read the script for the show on his phone on the train to their home in Brooklyn. He never reads the script for a new show before seeing it — he wants to experience it “as the playwright intended” — but he does afterward, to dig deeper into the meaning of the work, check whether any moments were improvised and confirm quotes.While he writes his review, he emails questions to the show’s press agents, asking how it has changed over its development, or, in the case of “Gutenberg!,” how many trucker hats the actors wore during the performance (99). He also checks facts that he is including in his review.What is clear after spending time with Green is that he feels being a critic is part of his identity, not just his job. Even when he is not reviewing a show, he is soaking in culture: He is an admirer and voracious reader of Walt Whitman and Jane Austen, for example, and a puzzle enthusiast.Green, it should be said, wants a show to succeed. He’s a theater geek, after all. Even if he does not enjoy a performance, he understands it may still have merit or add to a cultural conversation. But he will not hesitate to pan a show if he feels it deserves it. “If I have any value, it’s in having some consistency of taste and knowledge from many, many years of seeing plays and writing about them,” he said. “People who get used to reading my stuff may say, ‘Oh, I never agree with him,’ which is actually good. That way, when I dislike something, they know they’ll like it — and vice versa.”When he’s reviewing, Green is thinking through big-picture questions: What does this play want? How well does it achieve that? Is it worth achieving? And, of course, he’s doing it on deadline.“Even after a thousand reviews, staring down a deadline fills me with fear,” he said. “After all, you start with nothing but what’s in your head and a few nearly illegible scribbles in your notebook.”But writing, he said, should be a pleasure, not a curse. “It must grow from fear to enjoyment,” he said. “It remains an amazement to me that it so often does.” More

    • 150 Shares109 Views

      in Movies

      When Did the Plot Become the Only Way to Judge a Movie?

      by

      At the New York Film Festival, auteurs conjure up moods and sensory experiences that show why the story isn’t always the thing.It’s time to take a stand against the tyranny of “story.” In Hollywood these days, “story” and “storyteller” are privileged terms, seemingly interchangeable with “films” and anyone who makes them — a distressing development considering the medium’s wild range of possibilities.The “story” framing used to feel fresh, anchored, however tenuously, to the effort to bridge racial and gender diversity gaps in the industry. It’s not just one kind of story, this line of thinking goes, but all colors and stripes of good stories that matter.As I sunk into my first week of screenings at this year’s New York Film Festival, which runs through Oct. 15, this sentiment didn’t feel wrong, per se. Just insufficient. To think of, say, a full-body sensory experience like Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest” as merely a story about a Nazi family; or Raven Jackson’s “All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt,” which consists of lush memory fragments, as merely a story about a Black woman’s coming-of-age, would feel dismissive of the filmmakers’ full intentions.I can’t imagine a single director in this year’s beautifully eclectic lineup who would call themselves a “storyteller” with a straight face — outside of a pitch meeting with investors. One film even satirizes the connection between moviemaking and corporate brand marketing. I’m looking at you, Radu Jude (“Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World”).That’s because movies aren’t just stories. Narrative can play a part, but the medium also encompasses feelings, moods, distortions of time and logic. The movies are exercises in freedom.From right, Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel in “The Taste of Things,” by Tran Anh Hung.IFC Films“The Taste of Things,” by the French Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung, is, at face value, a conventional Belle Époque-era romance about a gastronome (Benoît Magimel) and a cook (Juliette Binoche) who together create sumptuous multicourse meals. Over half of the film is entrenched in the raw physicality of their work, the textures of the foods they wash, boil, chop and sear into magnificent forms. The film doesn’t rely much on dialogue because the couple’s passion is transmitted through a decadent display of food porn. In one scene, a voluptuous poached pear gives way to a shot of Binoche’s disrobed derrière. It conveys an ineffable quality: that of loving and being loved through the act of cooking.When I think about what makes a good story — a tale that traces out a plot and a path from A to B — the answers don’t always square with the parts of movies I love best. I’m not super hot on Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein biopic, “Maestro,” but the scenes in which Lenny conducts are magnificent and powerful, like being thrown into the middle of a sonic storm. The rest — the tortured-genius bad-wife-guy intrigue — sometimes felt like homework. I often found myself thinking, “Let’s get back to the music.”That’s because the best things in life are gratuitous, like sex — kinky sex, weird sex, sex whose finer details you’d think twice before sharing. Joanna Arnow’s deadpan dramedy “The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed” relishes all of the above. The 30-something Brooklynite played by Arnow herself (in a perpetual Garfield the cat scowl) goes on dull dates and powers through a numbing office job. The focus is her sex life, specifically the submissive role she plays in a B.D.S.M. relationship with a divorced lawyer (Scott Cohen). These scenes are cringey and absurd, but there’s something compelling about choosing the conditions of your own humiliation — and having some fun with it.The images in Steve McQueen’s “Occupied City” are of Amsterdam during the pandemic lockdown, but the narration is about the Nazi occupation in the 1940s.A24Steve McQueen’s postmodern ghost story, “Occupied City,” which clocks in at a whopping four and a half hours, forces us to rejigger and expand our understanding of how movies communicate meaning. The film takes an almost pointillist approach to the telling of history. Based on a book by McQueen’s wife, Bianca Stigter (a Dutch filmmaker and historian whose research into the Holocaust also yielded one of last year’s most astounding nonfiction movies, “Three Minutes: A Lengthening”), “Occupied City” consists of hundreds of mostly static shots of Amsterdam during the pandemic lockdown. With each shot, an impassive narrator (Melanie Hyams) details the corresponding crimes that took place in each location in the early 1940s, when the Nazis invaded the country.The conceit is willfully repetitive, and its simple, matter-of-fact approach departs from the manipulations of empathy-generating narratives that tend to dominate the subject matter. Often, my mind wandered throughout the film’s countless enumerations, which triggered pangs of guilt and also putting things in perspective: It’s distressingly easy to forget, to lose focus, in the face of horrors whose size and scope are impossible for the human brain to fully process.Every year I try to take in a few films from the Revivals section, which features restorations of vintage titles, many of them previously inaccessible. “Un rêve plus long que la nuit” (A Dream Longer Than the Night), by the French American artist Niki de Saint Phalle, stood out. Years ago I had visited a de Saint Phalle exhibition where one of the most striking pieces was a door-sized vaginal opening nestled between a behemoth pair of legs. Silly, beautiful, and terrifying all at once, the film is a pagan fever-dream that envisions a feminist revolution through the eyes of a young girl, and its best qualities are in the details: the sheer diversity of papîer-mache penises is astounding.Also playing in Revivals is a program of shorts by Man Ray, the artist best known for his photographs, but whose films — dizzying experiments with light and movement — turn familiar objects into alien entities. For Man Ray, conventional photography was about capturing reality, meaning his work would manifest images only possible in fantasies and dreams. Now, in the vertiginous age of the internet, with increasingly sophisticated film technologies at artists’ disposal, it’s worth considering films with similar ambitions: those that make legible the unreal. In “The Human Surge 3,” the director Eduardo Williams uses a 360-degree camera to capture the roamings of a multicultural group of friends, each from a different part of the world: Peru, Taiwan and Sri Lanka. Using uncanny, stretched-out images that resemble those on Google Earth, Williams’s remarkable vision of digital interconnectivity collapses borders and language barriers in wondrous, psychedelic fashion.“Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell,” from Thien An Pham, tracks a man’s journey through rural Vietnam.Kino LorberFor more brain-breaking adventures, I recommend scouring the shorts and midlength programs. Preceding Deborah Stratman’s “Last Things,” an eerie, science-fictional take on evolution (from the perspective of rocks!), is a gem: “Laberint Sequences,” by the visual artist Blake Williams, the only 3-D film in the lineup. This 20-minute short is thrillingly destabilizing, and its considered yet adventurous employment of 3-D makes Hollywood’s innovations look juvenile by comparison. Also of note for their beautifully baffling subversions of the cinematic status quo: Ross Meckfessel’s modernist horror jaunt “Spark From a Falling Star,” Onyeka Igwe and Huw Lemmey’s “Ungentle,” in which a disembodied narrator (Ben Whishaw) ruefully remembers his past — part gay awakening, part spy thriller — over banal shots of contemporary England.A descendant of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s ethereal excursions, Thien An Pham’s transportive feature “Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell” tracks a man’s journey through rural Vietnam after the sudden death of his sister. You could say the film is about faith, the anxiety of fatherhood, or the existential unease of mortality itself, but plot is beside the point.What matters is the riveting sensuality, the way the images ensorcel you, vesting quivering landscapes with an almost divine power. It’s the kind of film that makes our culture’s devotion to movies click: It’s not about watching stories, but inhabiting worlds they have not told us of.For more information on the New York Film Festival, go to filmlinc.org. More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      The Onscreen Apartments That Made Them Want to Live in New York

      by

      Twelve designers, architects and others reflect on the movie and TV homes, from SoHo lofts to houses on the park, that inspired them to move to the city, and informed their aesthetics.Moving to New York is almost always a decision informed partly by fantasy. It’s impossible to escape the fictional versions of the city that proliferate in books, art, music — and, perhaps most vividly, in movies and television shows, with their typically romantic (and typically misleading) depictions of rent-stabilized studios and affordable brownstones. To coincide with T’s New York-themed home-design issue, we asked a handful of designers, architects and other creative people about the film and TV interiors that shaped their vision of the city they now call home.John Cassavetes and Mia Farrow in the 1968 film “Rosemary’s Baby.”Paramount Pictures/Getty ImagesToshiko Mori, architect: “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968)Moved to New York in the late 1960sI came to New York from Japan with my family to attend high school. One of my first assignments at the summer school I attended that year was to write an essay comparing the 1967 novel “Rosemary’s Baby” by Ira Levin with the film adaptation by Roman Polanski. The building in the movie is called the Bramford, but the exteriors, famously, were those of the Dakota on the Upper West Side. What struck me about the movie’s apartments was their aspect of interiority — the way they seemed to harbor secrets. I also remember their small, framed views of high-rise New York City buildings. Even though the film is, of course, a horror story and the building turns out to be cursed, “Rosemary’s Baby” only made me more excited about living in New York. Coming from Japan, I was used to stories about ghosts and evil spirits. So in an absurd way, it made the city feel more familiar.Jean Arthur in the 1937 film “Easy Living.”© Paramount Pictures/PhotofestJohn Derian, 60, designer and retailer: “Easy Living” (1937)Moved to New York in 1992I was a child who on Saturdays watched every old movie on TV: the 12 o’clock, the two o’clock, the four o’clock and, if I could get away with it, the six o’clock. One of my favorites was the screwball comedy “Easy Living,” starring Jean Arthur. The movie takes you all over New York through multiple dwellings, from a mansion on Fifth Avenue to a little room in a boardinghouse where Arthur’s character lives for seven dollars a week, culminating in an over-the-top Hollywood Regency-style suite at the fictional Hotel Louis with sky-high ceilings, a grand piano and an ornate plunge tub. “Wow,” I thought. “All this in one city? Sign me up!” I still love the smoke and mirrors of a good set, and I’m basically doing the same thing today in my shops, creating a little fantasy.Michael Keaton and Kim Basinger in the 1989 film “Batman.”© Warner Bros./PhotofestStephen Alesch, 57, designer: “Batman” (1989)Moved to New York in 1994Growing up in Milwaukee and later in the Los Angeles area, I loved Batman comics. When Tim Burton’s “Batman” came out, I ate it up. The Gotham of the film was Manhattan exaggerated, and the neo-neo gothic sets blew me away. I loved the shadowy wet streets, the balconies up high in the mist, the buttresses and water towers. One interior that particularly struck me was Vicky Vale’s (Kim Basinger’s) penthouse, with its shiny tile walls and sweeping steel arch covered in rivets. During my first stay in New York in 1991, I couch surfed with friends and walked the streets for hours, taking in the Chrysler Building, Tudor City, the fire escapes of the Lower East Side. I couldn’t help seeing the city through a noirish lens. Within a few years I moved to New York for good, and I still push for rivets on projects and try to add a vaulted buttress wherever I see an opportunity.Tracy Camilla Johns in the 1986 film “She’s Gotta Have It.”© Island PicturesLoren Daye, 48, interior designer: “She’s Gotta Have It” (1986)Moved to New York in 1996I was 21 and living in Chicago when I first saw “She’s Gotta Have It.” Much of the film takes place in Fort Greene, but the protagonist, Nola Darling (played by Tracy Camilla Johns), lives in a semi-empty loft in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge, among scrap pieces of wood, buckets of paint and her collages. The loft is painted almost completely white and has incredible arched windows and geometric light fixtures suspended from the ceiling, the whole space anchored by her bed at the very center. The bed has a latticed headboard where she lights dozens of candles every evening — it’s like a shrine to her sexuality. That room was my dream, representing freedom, honesty and self-realization. A year after I saw the movie, I arrived in New York. In 2003 I finally found a place in Fort Greene and I’m still here.Geraldine Page in the 1978 film “Interiors.”© United Artists/PhotofestBilly Cotton, 42, interior designer: “Interiors” (1978)Moved to New York in 2000When I moved to New York to study Russian history at Hunter College I had no inkling I would become a designer. But I do remember watching Woody Allen’s “Interiors” — I think my parents had the VHS cassette — when I was a kid in Burlington, Vt. The matriarch of the story is Eve, an interior designer played by Geraldine Page, and the film’s rambling, sparsely furnished apartments formed my idea of an extremely glamorous New York. Now, looking back at the movie’s spare, monochromatic interiors, I feel like they’re oddly prescient of the current trend for entirely beige, cream and white spaces. But they’re also sort of timeless. This city throws so much visual energy at you on a daily basis, and I love the idea of having just a couple good things you can take with you from place to place.Catherine Deneuve in the 1983 film “The Hunger.”© MGM/UA/PhotofestTal Schori, 43, architect: “The Hunger” (1983)Moved to New York in 2003I grew up in the New York suburbs in the 1990s and the city always held a somewhat intimidating allure for me. This was epitomized in the noirish vampire movie “The Hunger,” which I first saw as a teenager. David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve play the undead lovers John and Miriam Blaylock, who live in a luxurious prewar townhouse near Central Park. Dramatically lit through sheer curtains, the house, with its high ceilings, elegant French doors, paneled walls, ornate moldings and opulent stone cladding, exuded a certain languid luxury and dark transgressiveness. I was seduced. By 2003, I had arrived in New York, renting a modest one-bedroom in a 1960s brick co-op in Ditmas Park.“Hey Arnold!” (1996-2004).© Nickelodeon/PhotofestJared Blake, 33, furniture designer and retailer: “Hey Arnold!” (1996-2004)Moved to New York in 2005To me, Arnold’s room in the Nickelodeon series “Hey Arnold!” is legendary. The show is set in a fictional city called Hillwood, but there’s no doubt in my mind it’s modeled on New York. Arnold had a Murphy bed, a skylight, track lighting, a giant water dispenser and a funky red rug kind of like the one in “The Shining” (1980), but more mod. I was born in New Jersey and moved to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., when I was 7, but I visited New York four times a year to see my dad, who lived in Harlem. I think I knew early on that the city was where I was meant to end up. It’s been 16 years since I arrived, and I’m realizing now that I may have subconsciously created my version of Arnold’s room in my apartment in Ridgewood, Queens. I have a Murphy bed and track lighting, and the whole vibe, like Arnold’s, is very eclectic. I’m just missing the skylight.Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger in the 1986 film “9½ Weeks.”© MGM/PhotofestFarrah Sit, 41, furniture designer: “9½ Weeks” (1986)Moved to New York in 2005I grew up in Kingston, N.Y., just two hours away, and when I was a kid, the sensory overload of New York City — the noise, the stink, the heat — was intense for me. So the interiors in “9 ½ Weeks” were a revelation: an expression of austere minimalism and an aspiring art school kid’s dream. Elizabeth’s art gallery loft was a light-filled box that seemed to float above the chaos of the city. John’s monochromatic, museumlike penthouse, with its furniture by Marcel Breuer and Richard Meier, was luxurious and restrained. These spaces played with light, shadow and texture, expressing an aesthetic that resonates with me to this day. After 18 years living in New York, I still respond to the intensity of the city by creating a feeling of serenity in my work.Meryl Streep and Jeff Daniels in the 2002 film “The Hours.”Meryl Streep and Jeff Daniels in the 2002 film “The Hours.”Fabiana Faria, 37, retailer: “The Hours” (2002)Moved to New York in 2007Meryl Streep character’s in “The Hours,” Clarissa Vaughan, lives in a rustic, rambling, flower-filled home in downtown New York where she often hosts parties. I first saw the movie when I was 14 and living with my parents in Caracas, Venezuela. I wanted to believe that one day I would have a home in New York like that where I would host gatherings of interesting people and be able to walk everywhere, dropping by the butcher or the florist, who both knew me. There are several scenes in Clarissa’s wonderful open kitchen, which has a big stove, hanging pots and wood floors. When I moved to the city I had no illusions of living in such luxury — I shared a two-bedroom with three other roommates on Roosevelt Island — but I held on to that vision of a warm, lived-in, well-loved New York apartment.Parker Posey in the 1995 film “Party Girl.”© First Look Pictures/PhotofestLuam Melake, 36, furniture designer: “Party Girl” (1995)Moved to New York in 2011When I first saw “Party Girl,” I was 22 and living in San Francisco. Posey’s character, an aspiring librarian who prioritizes fashion and parties, struck me as a shinier reflection of my life as a clothing-obsessed pseudo-librarian — I worked at a bookstore — who earned a living basically just to dress up and hang out. Posey’s character lives in a dingy loft in Chinatown that mainly houses her wardrobe and record collection. It’s a flexible space that she transforms for each party. When I was 24, I moved to New York with just my books and clothes and lived in a series of odd spaces around Chinatown. I was always out — and absolutely thrilled to be here. I’m still a fashion-forward librarian now, at Parsons, and I make flexible furniture designed for better social interactions. I spend less time at parties and more time imagining them.Jeffrey Wright in the 1996 film “Basquiat.”© Miramax/PhotofestMinjae Kim, 34, artist and designer: “Basquiat” (1996)Moved to New York in 2015I was in high school in Korea when I first saw the artist Julian Schnabel’s “Basquiat,” a movie about navigating the New York art scene that feels more and more authentic to me as time goes by. I was struck by Basquiat’s East Village apartment, covered wall to wall with his own work, and by the loft apartment of the fictional artist Albert Milo (played by Gary Oldman), where art handlers carried around paintings big enough to be theater backdrops. I was captivated by the romance of living among one’s own work, in a space oriented around the creation of art. The film was inevitably a reference for me when I moved from Seoul to Spanish Harlem and even again last year, when I moved to Bed-Stuy, into my first apartment by myself.An apartment set for “Friends” (1994-2004).©NBC/PhotofestEny Lee Parker, 34, furniture designer: “Friends” (1994-2004)Moved to New York in 2018I grew up in Brazil and, like many middle-school-aged millennials around the world, I religiously watched “Friends” to learn English. The décor of the apartments — the purple walls in Monica’s apartment, the La-Z-Boy chairs in Joey and Chandler’s — didn’t exactly provoke design envy. But I loved how the spaces were a safe, warm environment for these six friends to be themselves. I moved to Williamsburg after grad school, and funnily enough, it was much like “Friends.” Me, my then-husband, my best friend and her then-boyfriend shared a unicorn of an apartment: a rent-controlled three-bedroom, three-bathroom with a private rooftop. We hung out, ate our meals together and threw a few parties. I still love the idea of having friends over, ordering Chinese food and sitting around the coffee table while we eat from takeout containers. More