Sixties Surreal is one of the current exhibits at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. The Whitney describes the exhibit as an “efflorescence of psychosexual, fantastical, and revolutionary tendencies.” (Say what?) The exhibit is way more interesting than that.
This is by no means a “best of.” It is more a “best of” what fit into my schedule and had tickets available. The short reviews below include two really outstanding films, The Secret Agent and Creede USA. The Montclair festival often screens the movies that will be popping up in theaters and on streaming services over the next few eeeks. So you might want to look for a couple of these.
A university researcher is pursued by a hit man hired by an unscrupulous corporate executive. That is the glue that holds together the plot, but there is oh so much more going on in this movie. There’s corrupt cops, corrupt government officials, bullying businessmen. There’s hired killers subcontracting to other hired killers. There’s a lovely refuge for the potential victims of all these predators run by a charming old woman. And last, but not least, there’s the mysterious story of the severed human leg discovered inside the body of a dead shark. Local media can’t get enough of that one and it finds its way into the dreams of young and old.
It’s Brazil in the 1970’s. Was the country really this dangerous and chaotic? It may well have been since it was in the throes of a military dictatorship. The movie takes place during Carnival time and the papers are keeping tabs on the fatality count. It hits 100.
The director of this movie, Kleber Mendonca Filho, won the best director award this year at Cannes. Easy to see why. One technique that he uses is to not spell everything out, leaving some questions unanswered. That may not always work but it does here. The loose ends of the story add a layer of mystery to the adventure. Wagner Moura, who played the lead role, was named best actor at Cannes.
This is by far the best fictional movie I saw at the festival. It’s nearly three hours, but it’s so engaging that the time flies by. It is Brazil’s entry in the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Film.
The Secret Agent is scheduled to be released in theaters Dec. 5.
Creede, Colo., was a mining boom town. They had silver. Now they have 257 people left. But Creede has one thing you wouldn’t expect to find in a remote outpost like this: a summer repertory theater company. And with the theater comes some people who don’t look like the descendants of the town’s rough and tumble miners. Some of them aren’t white. Some of them aren’t straight. Does it work? Well, the theater has been in business for 60 years since it was founded by some University of Kansas students in the 1960’s.
You will meet some people in this documentary who you wouldn’t expect to find in a place like Creede. Most notable is the loveable young teen (maybe 13?) Lexi, who is the first non-binary person to come out as such in Creede. There’s a interracial couple from Jersey City who headed west so she could take the theater director job. And at the theater we see a version of Cinderella with a heavy-set biracial woman in the lead role.
Creede is wrestling with issues that are contentious in many places. The school board is where we see these aired. There is a debate about arming staff at the school. And even more difficult is the issue of the health curriculum. Should there be sex education? How should it deal with gender identity? Can parents opt out?
What is most remarkable about this documentary is that at a time when there really aren’t very many uplifting things going on in this country, it offers hope. In this small town with few resources and not much education, people with very different views can not just co-exist, but respect and support each other. Oh, and by the way, there’s some really beautiful mountain scenery as well.
Creede USA is currently scheduled to be screened at several film festivals.
Two hours or so of a supposedly high society party in a mansion. And these are academics, so it’s surely not contemporary. But because of that, a lost manuscript is a key part of the plot, that is, amidst the drunkenness, infidelity, lewdness and other forms of misbehavior that characterizes this shindig. Hedda Gabler, the evil mistress hostess, is the ringleader for most of it.
I have neither read nor seen the Henrik Ibsen play that the movie is based on so I can’t offer any comparisons. But I would think it’s a safe bet that the interracial and Lesbian trysts were probably not part of Ibsen’s 19th century work. The movie does borrow liberally from other classic pieces of literature, most notably the Great Gatsby from which both the party scene and the time frame seem to have been derived. It brings to mind a number of other books and movies about women trapped in marriages they don’t really want.
This is a story of a group of equally unlikeable people each self-destructing in their own way. As a genre, I have to say that total despair is not my favorite. That is not to say the acting isn’t excellent, the cinematography well done and the script cleverly put together.
Hedda is available on Prime Video.
No one’s dreams are fulfilled here. Not the young Mexican illegal immigrant Fernando who dreams of making it as a dancer in America. And not Jennifer, the wealthy, older, American heiress with whom he has an affair and who finances his journey.
This is all very timely within the context of what is happening in America now. Though it is notable that the immigration agents who capture and deport Fernando are absolutely professional compared to Kristi Noem’s masked gestapo wannabes. As an immigrant saga, the film is divorced from reality, as this illegal seems to have access to unlimited resources, thanks to his lover.
Dreams are not fulfilled that are not pursued and no one in this tale can tow a straight line. The film is moving and emotional, but equally disturbing. It’s a plot dominated by bad choices and worse consequences.
Could not at this time find any availability.
When Trump filed a lawsuit against CBS/Paramount over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, a lawsuit that most legal experts felt had no chance of winning, Shari Redstone, then chairperson of Paramount, caved and forked over $16 million. When Trump started making noise about DEI programs, Brian Cornell, the CEO of Target, capitulated and killed all the DEI initiatives Target had launched after the death of George Floyd. Target’s sales and stock price have since tanked, they just announced layoffs and Cornell resigned. Jeff Bezos, despite having all the money in the world, didn’t have to be sued. He just dropped to his knees and started forking over money.
You know who didn’t capitulate? E. Jean Carroll. Carroll sued Trump for sexual abuse and defamation and won a $5 million judgement. When Trump, true to character, responded with vile, defamatory venom, she sued him again and this time got $83 million. At this point Trump hasn’t paid a cent. He has appealed over and over and lost every time. He will likely go to the Supreme Court.
A new documentary, Ask E. Jean, has recently been released. It appeared last week at the Montclair Film Festival. “Ask E. Jean” is the name of the advice column Carroll wrote for Elle Magazine. It also was a TV show she hosted.
The movie has some detail about Carroll’s career as a writer, including Esquire, Playboy and a biography of Hunter Thompson, the ‘gonzo’ journalist she has been compared to. There are also some fun biographical facts like her appearance on the TV game show “To Tell the Truth” and the fact that she was named Miss Cheerleader USA while at Indiana University.
At one point the camera catches a scene in which Trump is shown a picture of Carroll, himself and a couple others. Someone points to the picture of Carroll and asks Trump who it is. He says “That’s Marla.” (Marla Maples was his second wife.)
A substantial part of the movie is about Trump. She describes in detail how he raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman changing room. She also talks about how hard it was to go public with this, the foul taunts and threats that were directed at her and what it was like facing him in court. She said she never had sex again after this experience. She was 52 at the time.
Asked why she brought this to court 25 years after it happened. She said “Because he lied. I wasn’t going to let that go.”
At 81, Carroll is a lively, smart, funny woman. This came across both in the movie and in the auditorium where it was shown. The movie started without sound and it had to be stopped. While the audio crew worked on the problem, Carroll popped up out of the audience, grabbed a mike and engaged the audience in lively banter along with the director Ivy Meeropol.
Meeropol is the granddaughter of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. One of her previous films is ‘Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn.” It is Cohn who prosecuted her grandparents and he was a mentor to Trump.
The message of this movie is women need to stand up and fight for themselves. “Always press charges” is Carroll’s advice. Obviously she followed her own advice. If the film had a subtitle it might be something on the order of “a lot of men suck.”
The Asbury Park Carousel House was originally built in 1904. It was rebuilt in 1928 after it and the adjacent Casino were destroyed by fire. In 1932 a carousel was installed, a Carousel #87 built by the Philadelphia Toboggan Company. The first half of the 20th century was the heyday of Asbury Park. Along the Jersey Shore, it was second only to Atlantic City as a family vacation and entertainment complex.
I remember as a child in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s being taken to Asbury by my parents to go on the rides. That included the carousel and the nearby indoor amusement park which featured a Ferris wheel that went through the roof.
Hard times hit Asbury in the last couple decades of the 20th century amid deteriorating conditions and some racial tensions. The family amusement attractions were shut down and buildings were abandoned. In 1980, the carousel was sold to Family Kingdom Park in Myrtle Beach. It is still in operation albeit with fiber glass replicas of the original wooden horses.
Asbury Park has undergone a renaissance in this century. Much of the housing stock has been renovated, partly by the LGBTQ+ community that has developed there. It also has become famous for its music scene, courtesy of Bruce Springsteen and venues like the Stone Pony. Not everything has bounced back. The Paramount Theater, where in the late 60s I went to see a Herman’s Hermits concert, closed a few years ago when conditions were deemed unsafe. And the Casino that’s next to the Carousel House was closed down earlier this year due to structural problems. But the family entertainment destination of the last century is now a diverse and inclusive shore community with a beautiful beach, a vibrant boardwalk and a distinctly artsy vibe.
The Carousel House has undergone a couple of renovations while maintaining its beaux-arts style. For a while it was used for flea markets and then later became a skate facility. The most recent iteration of the Carousel House is as a home for Wooden Walls. The Wooden Walls Public Art Project is a 501(c)3 charity started in 2015. Through the work of this project murals grace abandoned buildings and empty walls on the boardwalk and throughout the city. On their Instagram page they describe Wooden Walls as a “ love letter to the place where art, music and history live.”
Here are some of the Wooden Walls murals in the Carousel House.
Manneken Pis
Manneken Peace
The Atomium — originally built for the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair
The Belgian painter Rene Magritte is one of my favorite artists. So it’s not surprising that on a recent visit to Brussels the Magritte Museum was my first stop. Magritte is primarily known as a surrealist and is considered one of the founding fathers of that movement in art. His paintings often portray everyday objects in a not-so-everyday context. In this museum you will find a few different styles that Magritte explored. He painted portraits (we all have to make a living right?), some impressionist-like pieces, and during the Nazi occupation of Brussels, adopted a more colorful style without his customary surreal elements. These images of Magritte’s works from the museum are presented in chronological order to show how he evolved as an artist. (ce ne sont pas des peintures de Magritte.)
One of the hopefully lasting legacies of last year’s Paris Olympics is that you can now swim in the Seine. Though I’ve heard it’s pretty cold. On a cool September night I opted for a boat. Not having to worry about keeping myself afloat, I got to take in some of the numerous bridges over the Seine, as well as a few Paris landmarks, as nightfall came over the river.
Niki de Saint Phalle, Jean Tinguely, Pontus Hulten at the Grand Palais
With the Centre Pompidou now closed for what is planned to be a five-year long renovation, the museum is embarking on a “Constellation” program, staging exhibits using their collection at other venues throughout France. One of those venues is the Grand Palais, the Parisian event and exhibition space that dates back to 1900. The Niki de Saint Phalle, Jean Tinguely, Pontus Hulten exhibit is one of two at the Grand Palais.
Saint Phalle and Tinguely, who were married, were modern art sculptors. Saint Phalle was French and Tinguely was from Switzerland. Tinguely created machine-like contraptions that would come alive, banging, clanging and moving in all directions like the above video of “Hell, a small beginning.” Saint Clare created big colorful sculptures, often with a feminist twist. Hulten was a Swedish art collector, curator and museum director. He actively promoted Saint Clare and Tinguely’s work. Hulten was the first director of the Musée National d’Art Moderne.
Tomorrow (Sept. 21) is the last day that the Centre Pompidou, Paris’ reknowed contemporary art museum, will be open before it closes for a renovation. A renovation that is expected to take five years. According to the museum web site, the renovation involves “technical and environmental components, such as the complete asbestos removal from the façade, treatment of corrosion on the main structure, renovation and energy optimization of the building, and improvements to accessibility.”
There is one last exhibition at the Centre Pompidou. “Nothing could have prepared us — Everything could have prepared us” was created by the 58-year old German artist Wolfgang Timmons. He was given free reign to design the exhibit in the center’s 2nd floor library. It includes video, music, various books and papers. The images here are of Timmons’ photography which is what he is best known for.
Celebrating 100 years of Mexican baseball (placards in Chapultepec Park)
Design for the ages at the Museo Sumaya
off the leash 