The Hidden God The Hidden God Through February ...
Once upon a time, if Hollywood were in the mood to make an uplifting picture, they just grabbed Spencer Tracy or Bing Crosby, cast him as a kind, loving priest, then waited for the hordes to begin lining up in front of the theaters. These days, there'd only be snickers about what kind of loving the esteemed Father gave the altar boys after Mass. Still, watching any movie is a spiritual act. As with any sort of ritual endeavor, we enter the darkened chapel, supplicants hoping to be transported out of our corporeal selves and into a heightened state of awareness of our place in the world. MOMA's new film series, "The Hidden God," is an ambitious grouping of films meant to highlight the buried spiritual urges of film. Their choices range from the abundantly obvious-Bresson's Au Hasard Balthazar, Rossellini's Voyage to Italy-to the surprising-Unforgiven, Kiarostami's The Wind Will Carry Us.
The 52-film series includes well-known greats like Breaking the Waves, Magnolia or The Night of the Hunter as well as lesser-known gems. Among the latter is Eric Rohmer's The Green Ray (sometimes also called Summer), one of the filmmaker's miniaturist masterpieces. Following a young woman named Delphine (Marie Riviere) through a dispiriting French summer, in which the absence of vacation plans for August is considered a personal failing, Rohmer's film is a journey through loneliness and despondency, a portrait of the anguish of leisure redeemed by the triumphant ending, in which the titular solar effect makes a miraculous appearance. As always, Rohmer is a harsh optimist, his film a full-on trial by fire supplanted at the end by a hard-won uplift.
Among films of the last decade, Harold Ramis' mordantly funny Groundhog Day, showing on Fri., Dec. 26, has only grown in stature with every passing season of painfully unfunny dreck. Bill Murray gives the performance of his life as a jaded weatherman whose condemnation to repeat the same day eternally leads him through despair toward a new hope. Along with Rushmore (another Murray triumph), it is perhaps the best comedy of the 90s.
It may be a bit of a stretch to include Andrei Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev as an underappreciated work, but the great Russian filmmaker's reputation has suffered in recent years, with accusations of obscurantism and long-windedness. Andrei Rublev is unmatched, though, as a portrait of human suffering and the realization that humans control their own destinies, not God. As Stuart Klawans points out in his superb essay (included in the series' accompanying volume), rather than an optimistic Enlightenment celebration of the human spirit, Andrei Rublev is soaked through with blood, misery, violence, suffering and spiritual anguish. It is a film just as much about the trials and tribulations of Andrei Tarkovsky, filmmaker, during the Soviet regime, as those of Andrei Rublev, icon painter of the 15th century. The film's closing sequence, in which a young artisan casts a church bell, is one of the most profound dramatizations of doubt and triumph ever captured on film. Like so many of the films in this series, the young artist's trial is a symbol of God's absence from human affairs, and yet, their works, like the church bell, are dedicated to the glory of God. As Luis Bunuel, one of the wisest filmmakers on the topic, once remarked: "Thank God I'm an atheist."
MOMA Gramercy, 127 E. 23rd St. (betw. Park Ave. S. & Lexington Ave.), 212-777-4900, call for schedule, $6.
-Saul Austerlitz
The explanation found in the works of "Dtroit," a multimedia show featuring 10 artists with connections to the Detroit area, is that nothing inspires creativity quite like a city in decline. The artists' approaches vary, and not just in terms of medium. For Guyton, an award-winning sculptor who began making large-scale pieces out of discarded objects after he lost his job at the local Ford plant, art is a way to exercise control over the decay around him. It's also a chance to build community, despite the city's efforts to shut his projects down.
Doug Coombe, on the other hand, revels in the stillness of abandoned architecture. His photography is contemplative and haunting: Sunlight streams in through ceiling windows of the empty Michigan Central Railroad Station, coating the graffiti-covered columns and grimy floor in an ethereal sheen. Community is fleeting, Coombe acknowledges; solace can be found in the serenity of vacated space.
The exhibition's centerpiece is Hot Irons, director Andrew Dosonmu's film about the city's thriving beauty-salon underground. Scenes of male hairdressers fashioning elaborately stylized hairdos-one woman had a working model of the solar system woven into her locks-are interspersed with jump cuts of empty lots and crumbling houses. The message of the film, and the entire show, is clear: No amount of bleakness will stop people from making things.
The show's weakness is its treatment of the city's cultural jewel, pop music. Mark Rubin's interactive listening station divides genres too rigidly, preventing listeners from noticing the connections that really do exist between, say, Jeff Mills and the MC5.
"Dtroit" also features work by Susan Cook, Mark Dancey, Kenjji, Thom Klepach, Mark Powell and Thomas Rapai.
Gigantic Artspace, 59 Franklin St. (betw. B'way & Lafayette St.), 212-226-6762, Tues.-Sat., 11-7, free.
-Dustin Roasa
Wednesday
Volcanoes of the Deep Sea
What says "holiday joy" better than IMAX? Well, okay, about a bazillion things. So if you're just trying to escape all the nonsense, why not spend Christmas Eve hiding out at the Natural History museum, watching an IMAX documentary about underwater volcanoes? Find out what sorts of mysterious creatures (including Godzilla and King Ghidora) can survive in the superheated water, 12,000 feet down. Ed Harris narrates, for some reason; LeFrak Theater, American Museum of Natural History, 77th St. (betw. Columbus Ave. & Central Park W.), 212-769-5200, 10:30, 12:30, 2:30 & 4:30, $22, $17 st./s.c., $14 child.
Thursday
Christmas
Gentiles: So this is Christmas, and what have you done? If you're from out of town, you're on some priceline.com-abetted trip back out to the heartland. If you're local, you're on a subway holding a bunch of poorly wrapped crap that no one will like. Anyway, there's most likely a decorated tree involved, maybe a token mention of Jesus. Let's get this Yuletide bullshit underway. Your parents' house, or your apartment if you have kids.
Chinese and a Movie
Jews: Eating Chinese food and going to the movies on Christmas is an old, old gag that doesn't play anywhere outside of New York. The folks over at Makor have managed to put a delightful spin on it, though. All-you-can-eat Chinese food is served while three Woody Allen movies are shown-two of which, Annie Hall and Sleeper, are actually pretty funny. Get your General Tso on and pity your Christian friends who are being subjected to a sick faux Bing Crosby/Norman Rockwell scene. Showing: Love and Death at 2:30, Annie Hall at 4:30 and Sleeper at 6:30. 35 W. 67th St. (betw. Columbus Ave. & Central Park W.), 212-601-1000, $30, $40 day pass.
Friday
Cultoons: Oddball Cartoons
'Twas the day after Christmas when all through the house, little children were screaming like they'd been bit by a mouse. The stockings were torn down without any care, and the stench of regret was hanging in the air. The kids were jumping all over their beds 'cause of all of the candy buzzing their heads. And Ma with her flu and you with your hangover, could not take it anymore, at least not while sober. When all of a sudden, what should it be, but the thought of seeing twisted cartoons on a sorta-big screen. "That'll shut 'em up, but good!" Pioneer Theater, 155 E. 3rd St. (Ave. A), 212-254-3300, 10, $9.
They Might Be Giants and Corn Mo
Passe geek rock ensemble They Might be Giants and New York Press cover model Corn Mo infest Irving Plaza tonight. The music will be so quirky it'll be off the Richter scale. The crowd will be the nerdiest bunch of nerds who ever nerded. If you show up without tape on your glasses, you'll be like the fucking Fonz. 17 Irving Pl. (15th St.), 212-777-6800, 8, $30, $25 adv.
Modern Times
Along with the Great Dictator, Modern Times is held up as Chaplin's best work. When it came out, though, almost no one cared, even though it marks both the first time that his "little tramp" character spoke and the last time that he appeared in a movie. It's a genuinely strange movie-surreal and frightening more than funny-and it's not all that surprising that the HUAC decided he was a commie in response to it. Chaplin fled to Switzerland, and never made another movie in America. He would later suffer his final indignity when portrayed in a biopic by Robert Downey Jr. Film Forum, 209 W. Houston St. (betw. Varick St. & 6th Ave.), 212-727-8110, call for times, $10.
Saturday
Demon Seed
In this delightful romp from 1977, the great Fritz Weaver plays another one of those computer scientists who just doesn't think ahead. He designs a new supergenius artificial intelligence program, gives it Robert Vaughn's creepy voice and wires it up throughout his whole house to give it a test run. Then what does he do? He goes away, leaving his wife (Julie Christie) alone in an increasingly horny computerized house with Robert Vaughn's voice! What in the hell did he expect to happen? Part of Lincoln Center's "Not of This Earth: Sci-Fi Unbound" series; Walter Reade Theater, 165 W. 65th St. (B'way), 212-721-6500, Lincoln Center, $10, $7 st., $5 s.c., call for times.
Songwriters vs. Improvisers
At the K Records showcase in October, Phil Elvrum of the Microphones taught his backup band his new songs onstage-about 15 seconds before they played them. The good people at Tribes Gallery are similarly determined to turn the whole singer/songwriter shtick into something enjoyable and unpredictable. Each of the songwriters performing tonight will be randomly paired with live improvisers who will be hearing the songs for the first time ever, unless someone decides to cheat. Featuring Carter Tanton from Curtains, Roger Mason, Simon Thrasher, Matt Mottel, G. Lucas Crane, Orion Domsey, Daniel Carter and many more. 285 E. 3rd St. (betw. Aves. C & D.), 212-674-3778, 3, free.
Already overdosed on holiday cheer, I'm looking forward to a few post-holiday shows-specifically one presented by sound artist Francisco López, who will make a stop at Tonic on Saturday night as part of their New No York series. Depending on your taste, experiencing López's modernist esthetic live can be a transcendental experience. Or it could feel like you're trapped inside the most perverse SNL sketch ever performed.
A friend who caught a performance a few years back in San Francisco described the sound as so loud and intense, he almost vomited. He will, however, be going back for more at this show, so draw your own conclusions. Other works by über-minimalist López such as Untitled #104 are nearly inaudible, requiring intense concentration and headphones in a very quiet space. The experience so infuriated Pitchfork reviewer Spencer Owen that he gave the disc the site's lowest rating, 0.0, commenting that "no rating is one of the hardest ratings to give, but López deserves it in full."
The paradox (and this is where I expect you to get a little skeptical) is that even the reviewers who are overcome by López's brilliance admit his work often offers little in terms of "normal enjoyment," but if you can adjust to it, "you would then be equipped to endure any hardship or deprivation that life might throw at you. And that includes anything from a bout of insomnia, to long stretches of loneliness, starvation, life in prison, or being accidentally buried alive" (The Sound Projector, July 2001).
In interview after interview, López distills his core beliefs down to a desire to present sound in its purest form, a concept he terms "absolute music," which allows each listener to come into contact with the music influenced only by his or her own personal experiences. Anti-visuals, he often goes so far as to supply audience members with blindfolds and hides the electronics from view. His discography numbers some 140 recordings at this point released on labels around the globe that are packaged in spare jewel cases, absent of cover art or track titles. While many artists are using multimedia to intensify the musical experience, López reaches for an even more profound intensity, utilizing the purest mono-sensory event he can possibly create.
For as over-intellectual as it all might sound (and in truth may be), López doesn't consider himself driven by some esoteric, academic philosophy, but its very opposite-a desire to strip the music of every outside thought and influence possible. An almost maniacal sound purist, he professes disinterest in communicating anything through his compositions. Though he draws on a catalogue of industrial and natural environmental recordings, his use of them is independent of any specific references, cultural or otherwise.
Reading about his work (so contrary to how López would probably wish it to be approached), I find myself disarmed by his respect for the listener's role in his sonic creations. In an October 2000 interview he gave to the Montreal Mirror, he explained: "I'm seriously pursuing the creation of what I call a 'blank territory of confusing freedom' for myself and for the listener? In this quest, the role of the listener is as important as [if not more than] that of the composer. A piece of music is nothing without the attention and dedication it deserves [if it deserves it]. Music is listening to any sound with dedication. Any listener can be an absolute composer, and for this it is advisable not to go to music school."
Saturday night's show will feature a solo set by López, followed by a solo set by guitar experimentalist James Plotkin. The two will then offer a special collaborative performance to finish off the night.
Tonic, 107 Norfolk St. (betw. Delancey & Rivington Sts.), 212-358-7501, 8, $8.
A Muppet Family Christmas
Because watching felt characters drop in on Fozzie's mom for the holidays beats staying home and watching your mom get felt up by characters who drop in. We're talking about a veritable who's who of the 80s puppet scene: Sesame Street types, Fraggle Rock dudes, the Soviet-installed Afghani regime-they're all there. Come back tomorrow to see Linus put the nuts back in Peanuts with A Charlie Brown Christmas. Museum of Television & Radio, 25 W. 52nd St. (betw. 5th & 6th Aves.), 212-621-6600, 12:30 p.m., free w/adm.
Sunday
Multi-Ethnic Eating Tour
For gourmands who like to walk, this food-centric stroll will be perfect. It's obvious how this will go: Chinese food in Chinatown, Italian food in Little Italy, etc. One observation: Imagine how different an event with this title would be if the target demographic were composed of cannibals. Big Onion Walking Tours, meet at southeast corner Essex St. (Delancey St.), 212-439-1090, 1, $16, $14 st./s.c.
Monday
Unforgiven
You'd think a movie about cowboys that shares a title with a godawful Metallica song would be godawful, wouldn't you. Well, you'd be wrong, apparently. This movie, which stars Lex Luther and that guy from Gun Smoke, is probably the last Western that needed to be made. Except, of course, for a third Young Guns movie called Middle Aged and Beyond their Prime Guns. MOMA's Gramercy Theatre, 127 E. 23rd St. (betw. Lexington & Park Aves.), 212-777-4900, 1, $6.
Tuffness-DJs Xaviera Featherweight and Selectress Claudia
Channel 2. Commercial: A wife has just given her hubby a Lexus for Christmas. "Hey, dad, check out the gift you bought yourself."
Channel 4. Commercial: The good people of KFC have now proclaimed their greasy chicken doughnuts are good for you. I'll wash down my bucket of health with a garbage can of Coke, please. Didn't someone on television say soda was good for you?
Channel 7. Commercial: On tomorrow's Regis and Kelly. Poor Regis. First Kathy Lee. Now this one.
I turn the tv off and look through my wallet: $20. This is all the money I have. But boredom and a feeling that the walls are closing in send me for the door.
Selectress Claudia has told me about a new spot in Sillysburg where she's been working the decks. Bembe, located in the seedier south-side section, is a small and cozy lounge hidden on the corner of Berry. There's no sign on the outside. Only a blue light above the door.
Unlike most of the bars around here, Bembe serves up a delicious selection of beats. And there's no cover charge. Perfect for a man with only four Lincolns in his pocket. Also perfect is the lack of fashionable artsters who prefer their music drenched in irony. Instead, Xaviera is working it with some sweet Roberta Flack from the early 70s and finding a way to drop G-Unit for our inner thugness. I usually don't dance alone. But I've got nothing to lose here. The crowd is in it for fun. And no one's going to tell me not to at least bend my knees to Stevie. Wonder, that is.
A chastened optimist, I usually don't like to gush about how great a place is, but the owners of Bembe have created one of the most relaxed and open joints in the hood to drink, dance and open your ears to music from all corners. On most nights, a live congo drummer joins the DJ to bang along to the record selection. With a rotation of Latin, funk, reggae and house jocks, Bembe is the perfect setting for sexy grooves to transport your mind. I'm excited for Fridays, when a full house will be swinging to Afrotronic in the dimly lit basement.
Perhaps during this season of consumer stress, there is a feeling of optimism running through my bones. A hope that there's another music venue in New York City that features amazing music and isn't called APT. But, like I said, I'm a chastened optimist. How long can it last? People, make me believe. I want to believe.
Bembe, 81 S. 6th St. (betw. Bedford Ave. & Berry St.), 718-387-5389, 9, free.
?Dan Martino (soulstatik@hotmail.com)
Tuesday
Herbie Hancock Quartet
In 30 years, you won't remember the price of the drinks or that Blue Note was full of German tourists in octagonal rimless glasses. You'll just remember that you finally saw Herbie Hancock play and it was worth every dollar. Especially if he plays "Chameleon" or "Rockit." Which he probably won't. 131 W. 3rd St. (betw. MacDougal St. & 6th Ave.), 212-475-8592, 8 & 10:30, $45-$55.
The Fury
Brian De Palma's follow up to Carrie also happened to be about kids (Amy Irving and Andrew Stevens) with telekinetic powers. Except this time around, instead of a crazy religious-nut mother, they have Kirk Douglas. Now, he's being pursued by evil government agent John Cassavetes, who wants to give the kids cushy government jobs-doing evil! The movie may not have a whole lot going for it, but it does contain one of the best carnival scenes ever put on film, with the possible exception of Omen IV. Also part of Lincoln Center's "Not of This Earth: Sci-Fi Unbound" series. Walter Reade Theater, Lincoln Center, 165 W. 65th St. (B'way), 212-721-6500, 3 & 7:10, $10, $7 st., $5 s.c.
Hammond B3 Organ Grooves
The usual background beats at Smoke are just fine, but reclining to the sound of your own water bubbles and a cooing B3 takes the Bint al Sahn (honey cake). 2751 B'way (betw. 105th & 106th Sts.) 212-864-6662, 9, 11 & 12:30 a.m., free.
Contributors: Adam Bulger, James Griffith, Jim Knipfel, Jeff Koyen, Ilya Malinsky, Dan Migdal and Alexander Zaitchik