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almie’s Safari: sienna miller By ALmie rOse vAzzAnO Who is Sienna Miller? Three years ago, your guess was as good as mine. Her first appearance in America was in the short-lived Fox drama, “Keen Eddie.” For those of us who let that program slip by, “Layer Cake” in 2003 was our introduction to Sienna Miller, potential movie star. But it was the Alfie remake that took Sienna Miller to new levels; at least two: Jude Law’s paramour, both on and off screen. Each week raised the question: are they together, or not together? To which at least seven people awaited the answer with baited breath. I cannot think of another actress who has shot to fame based solely on who she dated and what she wore – two topics that US Weekly savored like a fine vintage wine. Ms. Miller is practically on every other page of the glossy magazine, praised for her daring use of vests or selection of boot. We can blame her for the paradoxical “boho chic” that swept our coasts, a look that Ms. Miller now loathes. Now the twenty-four year old stars as 60s casualty Edie Sedgwick in the upcoming film Factory Girl. But just as exciting as this new role is the opportunity to create a sensational new look: Thoroughly Modern Miller. Painting the town red in bold patterns and an even bolder bob, Sienna seems to say, “I look smashing and I know how to turn black tights into an entire outfit.” But who are you, Sienna Miller, sudden star of the screen and America’s heart? And how are you a British celebrity considering you were born in New York City? (Let us notice that her last name is about as American as it gets). Sienna Miller is as British as Madonna, yet I love and embrace her just the same. And not because she is thin, beautiful, successful, thin, beautiful, and successful, but because for an actress of her stature and thin, beautiful success, she has a rollicking good sense of humor; on her body she commented: “I’ve lost weight and my boobs have gone, they’re just clinging on for dear life.” Ms. Miller, I salute you. Theater review: “Lenny Bruce...in His Own Words” By nOrA cOsteLLO In the new one-man show produced and directed by Joan Worth and Alan Sacks, Jason Fisher stars as the tortured revolutionary-cumcomedian, Lenny Bruce. Via Bruce’s routines, the 70-minute performance follows a loosely woven chronology of his career. Within the first five minutes of the play, Fisher as Bruce peers into the audience and asks, “Are there any niggers here tonight?” Then, after a beat, “Oh, there are two niggers. And between those niggers I see a kike.” Bruce, a self-proclaimed “Semitic,” continues in this vein using every racial slur there is, eventually incorporating them all Jason fisher stars as Lenny Bruce. into a singsong riff of gibberish. The next 40 minutes of the performance touch on the Pope, church, Hitler, and race to give the audience a sense of Bruce’s acts. Soon thereafter, though still in the form of stand-up comedy, the performance arcs and Fisher morphs into a criminalized Bruce, becoming more unglued after each bust, his routine turning more political with a deeper critique of the country. As he is arrested repeatedly for obscenity, Bruce poses to us the question of “the meaning of obscenity”. The last fifteen minutes are touching without being sappy as Bruce explores the “obscenity” of humanity, and much of what Bruce touches on is shockingly relevant today. Lenny Bruce envisioned himself as a jazz musician and used his voice as an instrument. Fisher captures this brilliantly, his nasal tone riffing to a rhythm set by his pacing back and forth, rubbing his thumb against his index finger. His voice staccatos and stutters, conveying the immediacy embedded in jazz music. Fisher’s shifts between characters are smooth and seamless, and within each persona we still see and hear Bruce underneath. Though the dated material is still resonant today, Bruce pushed the envelope of social critique more than any other comedian to date. By implementing obscenities, he made a heart-wrenching commentary on the obscenity of the nation. In a tiny theatre covered with kitsch and knickknacks (the audience sat in car seats, complete with seatbelt buckles) on a small black stage, (empty aside from a table, a stool, an ashtray and pack of Marlboro reds), Fisher owns his audience. playbill.com Lenny Bruce: in His Own Words opened January 30 and is playing at the Zipper Theatre (336 W. 37 Street) through February 25. edie sedgwick Honored at Gallery exhibit By stePHAnie nOLAscO Gallagher’s Art and Fashion Gallery honored the late 1960s pop art muse Edie Sedgwick by not only celebrating the 30th anniversary of Ciao! Manhattan, an underground film encircling Sedgwick’s chaotic lifestyle and the “silver sixties,” but also through a photo display depicting the many stages of Sedgwick’s life. While the bookstore/fashion show room proved to be a hot spot for Sienna Miller and ex fiancé Jude Law, the Gallagher despondently illustrated Sedgwick’s impact on American fashion and poorly accentuated an exhibit of honor to Warhol’s superstar. Ciao! Manhattan was playing on a diminutive television screen that could have been entertaining if one of the associates didn’t blast the film’s soundtrack just inches from my ears. The sudden explosion of sound infuriated me, but both associates failed to notice and continued their aimless dance to Fantasyland. Photos of Sedgwick, the highlight of the exhibit, were randomly slapped together throughout the gallery with no given time frame or description. Only handwritten note naming the photographer was placed above each photo. However, the photos superbly conveyed Sedgwick’s tragic splendor, particularly those displaying her natural mousy brown hair and blushing cheeks. In those photos, she wasn’t seen masking her frail face the return of XBXrX By Peter HOLsLin The return of XBXRX, with the release of “Sixth in Sixes” last September, was probably a micro-blip on most peoples’ radars, but it made some of us remember the good old days—five years ago or less—when spazz was king. And XBXRX, at the time, sure as hell was something to remember. Since their inception in 1998 in the unlikely place of Mobile, Alabama, the group tore through single after single of spasmodic ditties, leaving ringing ears and broken bones in their wake. Some shows ended shortly after they began, only with half the audience onstage and one of the band members severely injured. In San Diego in 2003, the singer, whose identity has always been shrouded in mystery, screamed into a microphone covered by a bright-red foam ball, hung from the venue’s rafters and instigated group-hugs throughout the set. The audience could hardly control themselves, and the band could hardly play past fifteen minutes before the guitarist broke his nose. The singer’s identity has always been shrouded in mystery. That was all part of the fun. And today, the group’s energy level is no different. But that’s not to say that XBXRX are trying to copy the Bad Luck 13 Extravaganza—the band infamous for attacking their audiences with saw blades and baseball bats wrapped in barbed wire. In an e-mail interview last September, answering collectively, XBXRX said they always prefer positive chaos over violent chaos. “We are crossing our fingers for more positive mayhem and less injuries,” they said. “We’re open to group hugs, always.” The band has never entirely been “on the radar.” “Gop Ist Minee,” was released in 2000, and is now out of print, and the group released a few 7”s throughout the 2000s—one a collaboration with organist Mr. Quintron and his female counterpart Miss Pussycat. The band also only played a handful fourpawsmedia.com 6 with cosmetics, batting plastic eyelashes, or twisting her boyish, bleach-blonde tresses: instead, she was simply Edie. In addition, the exhibit presented Sedgwick during her drug-infused stage, showing her transformation from an American girl to a tragic figure. only handwritten note naming the photographer was placed above each photo. Although Edie Sedgwick is making a comeback in today’s media with the sudden interest of “Edie: American Girl” and the motion picture Factory Girl, Gallagher’s disorganization was an eyesore. The space seemed more like a hangout for art students than a gallery. A fashion shoot was held in one corner while associates swayed in another. The photographs offered little information and the blasting tunes only provided a headache. While the gallery did supply eye candy for Sedgwick fans, the Gallagher was chaotic and tragic, just like Edie herself. Gallagher’s Art and Fashion Gallery is at 111 4th Avenue (at East 12th Street). of shows throughout 2003-2004. But one might suppose they had been waiting the whole time to strike with their newest release, “Sixth in Sixes.” “Sixth in Sixes” is quite the return to sporadic form, but the album took more work than “We’re open to group hugs always”: the rock band XBXrX. their previous releases. The band worked five days a week to write the material, then rehearsed to the point where they could play the songs live in a studio with as few takes as possible. “It was a really good progression for us to buckle down and apply this much real discipline to the band. I think we’re a better band for it,” they said. The lyrical subject matter is a bit different than the past and a far cry from the positive mood they convey onstage, though you wouldn’t notice it in the singer’s incomprehensible yelps. “The music deals with the spiraling decline of human civilization, whether it’s hypocrisy, abuse of power, destruction of the environment, you name it,” the group said. The band is ready for the future—even though they’re still not ready to say their names. “We are more interested in our collective identity than the recognition of individuals,” they said. found Photography By mAGALi PiJPers April ’84. Bernard would go to great lengths to push this particular holiday out of his memory for years to come. Estelle and the boat boy had skipped off of the boat laughing. Bernard felt slighted. She hadn’t paid him any attention for the entire boat ride. And now, giggling with the boat boy, it was all the more patronizing when she turned around, raised the camera, and said, “smile, honey.” The found photography feature is a new Inprint installation, showcasing photographs discovered randomly, of people we’ve never met. Our writers create fictional situations surrounding each photograph, as form of artistic interpretation. All rights are reserved. (As if the guy on the boat will try to sue us.)
dance review: todd Williams’ “supra conscious” By Justin LAne BriGGs Eugene Lang College dance instructor Todd Williams’ new show, “Supra Conscious,” was a surprisingly entertaining and charmingly self-conscious work, despite the unfortunate title. Attempting to address psychological abstractions ranging from word association to numerology, the piece was at its best when reveling in Williams’ twisted sense of humor and muscular improvisational dance. The first piece, Williams’ 2004 creation, “108,” featured two geometric patterns among six dancers, divided into two groups of three. The external group followed a circular, improvised path around the edge of the stage, while the internal group moved in tight unison, forming an equilateral triangle across the floor. Towards the finale, the roles reversed as patterns subtly traded places. The duality of movement styles suggested the chaos of human experience contrasted against the discipline of spirituality. Williams and dancer Mei-Hua Wang were the performers to watch: they swept across the stage with a confidence that left the others drifting in their wake. The music, an original composition by John Toenjes, was disappointingly typical of modern dance. Using digital bells, chimes and gongs, Toenjes imitated the sound of a gamelan, gently incorporating an ambient synthesizer atop the percussion. Toenjes was reinstating ground pioneered in 1992 by David Holmes, The Orb, Aphex Twin and Brian Eno; fourteen years later, this approach to electronic music can only sound experimental to John Tesh. “Exquisite Corpse,” the second act, was a film review: the Pink Panther imdb.com By KeitH neWeLL The Pink Panther is a rotten movie. No, not the original 1963 film, starring Peter Sellers as the bumbling Inspector Jacques Clouseau, but rather the 2006 version, featuring comedy legend Steve Martin and pop singer Beyonce Knowles. A failed attempt at a screwball comedy and a shameless desecration of a classic film series, the film flops around like a fish out of water before dying 93 minutes later. The movie follows Clouseau (Steve Martin) as Chief Inspector Dreyfus (Kevin Kline) assigns him to investigate the murder of a soccer coach, hoping that Clouseau will botch the job, allowing Dreyfus to take over and catch the killer. Clouseau solves the crime after a series of silly stunts and wacky blunders. The director, Shawn Levy (Cheaper by the Dozen), completely rejects the subdued comic insanity of the orignal films, instead aiming for a 21st century Hollywood blockbuster. The result is a sloppy, incongruous mess of cheap gags, unfunny dialogue, and inappropriately flashy cinematography. Martin, who co-wrote the script, is an awful Clouseau. As if to reinvent the character entirely, Martin gestures wildly as if he were onstage in the 70s again, with his arrow-through-the-head prop and “happy feet.” It’s embarrassing to watch. But the most outrageously awful performance belongs to Kline. He might have bored me to sleep with his mediocre acting, except that I was perversely fixated on his accent during the entire film. Vacillating unpredictably between French and British dialects, Kline seems unsure what movie he is acting in. The decision to cast Beyonce is befuddling. She looks as plastic as Pam Anderson, and her performance is vacuous. Beyonce summed up her role pretty well in an interview with the London Free Press: “I basically had to just show up, wear fabulous clothes, and not laugh.” She wasn’t the only one not laughing. hilarious duet featuring Williams with ballet and drag star Glen Rumsey. Employing campy humor (including gaudy ruffles and gauzy leotards) and narrative responses to the lyrics of the Dresden Dolls’ “Gravity,” the dancers bounced playfully from preening and posing in improvisation to careful meditation on the role of unconscious accidents in the creation of artwork. The first piece, Williams’ 2004 creation, “108,” featured two geometric patterns among six dancers, divided into two groups of three. The full-company finale, “Value Intensity,” Williams’ exploration of word association and the subconscious mind, contained Williams’ most astute choreography yet, and his most arresting solo movement. However, many of the dancers in the company seemed uncertain onstage (a poor companion to Mr. Williams’ joy at moving before a crowd). Several crucial sequences were marred by awkward dancers, uncomfortable in their own bodies, who refused to commit to the movement. WilliamsWorks, of which Mr. Williams is founder and choreographer, performed “Supra Conscious” at the Alvin Ailey Studios, as part of the 92 St. Y’s Harkness Dance Festival. WilliamsWorks has been performing around New York City since 2004. Williams has been a renowned ballet and modern dancer since 1990. film review: London imdb.com By Justin LAne BriGGs First time writer-director Hunter Richards’ London is perhaps the worst piece of masturbatory ignorance ever committed to celluloid. Don’t be fooled by the title; the film has absolutely nothing to do with the elegant British city. Our story apparently takes place in New York, but Richards doesn’t seem to notice. London, in this case, is a girl ( Jessica Biel). The film centers around her rich, whiny ex-boyfriend Syd (Chris Evans), and his inability to cope with losing her to a man with a 10.5-inch penis. Seriously. The story opens with Syd on his way to crash London’s going-away party, dragging along his drug-dealer, a 40-year-old British banker named Bateman ( Jason Statham). Once they arrive, the two men hide in the massive bathroom upstairs and ingest suicidal amounts of liquor and cocaine. The imbeciles rant and wallow in their own depravity. Intended as a meditation on the tortures of masculinity, this is instead a two-hour long excuse for the worst kind of misogynist ignorance. We’re actually expected to sympathize with this overgrown man-child. Richards offers us a steaming pile of flashbacks, featuring Syd and London “in love,” trying to illicit emotions we never come close to feeling. These clips play like a highlights reel of the worst middle school relationship in history – complete with out-of-control jealousy and insane screaming fits. Add lots of impossibly moronic “intellectual” conversations (“Wait, I forgot, did you say you believe in God, or you don’t?”), and apparently Richards believes he has shown us the nature of true love. Judging by his first film, it is hard to believe Richards is any more intelligent than the cretins he scripted, or has had a single meaningful relationship in his life. At one point, London tells Syd, “I’m tired of your pseudo-intellectual bullshit….you keep going and going and going until someone just wants to smash your face in.” It was the only line in the film the audience could relate to. amazon.com amazon.com destrOyer destroyer’s rubies rcA records 4.32 out of 5 stars By Peter HOLsLin Though he likes to credit each band member, songwriter/guitarist Dan Bejar is the brain behind Destroyer’s music. Ultimately, it’s the pianos, surfy guitars and scrappy-but-languid lyricizing that give a me-ness to it all. But Destroyer would not destroy so effectively if they didn’t make you think of a different 1990s indie-pop band for every track. Destroyer’s first song makes you wonder whether they’re trying to be the Fuzztones or Galaxie 500. Then, they transform their sound into a jaunty Belle and Sebastian imitation for the track “Your Blood.” And from then on, it’s as though Ben Folds and Enya co-produced the album—heavy on the reverb and vocal harmonies, but rife with more hard-edged elements, like piano, distorted guitar and saxophone. It all works towards a rocked-out feeling… but with emphasis on the “out.” cAt POWer The greatest matador records 4 out of 5 stars By sOPHie OKuLicK As it stands, The Greatest of Cat Power is, all around, a well-put together album. Chan Marshall starts the record with one of her best-written songs, the title track, “The Greatest, ” which sets the bar high for the entire album. Throughout the record, Marshall continually delivers and exceeds expectations: while most of her songs are beautiful, they are also cold and melancholy. Marshall effectively receives her Southern inheritance, embracing the soul and folk blues sounds. The song “After it All” is a collaboration of piano, guitar and Marshall’s soft voice. Together, they make a free flowing melody.. Although this style of music suits Marshall well, it’s not so much a reinvention as it is a realization of a destiny. Marshall’s got the brutally honest voice and the vibe to make it work. The broken-hearted and melancholy of the world will find a faithful new shoulder to cry on after discovering an album like this. amazon.com amazon.com myLO destroy rock & roll Breastfed 4.5 out of 5 stars By Justin LAne BriGGs Every once in a while, an electronic album comes along that transcends the limited range of the genre and refuses to leave the nation’s Discman for years. Mylo has done this with Destroy Rock & Roll, out now on his own label, Breastfed. Mylo (a.k.a. Myles MacInnes), hailing from the tiny Scottish Isle of Skye, brings us on a journey through the catchiest sounds electronic music has offered in recent years. After opening with a trio of down tempo, West Coast-inspired tracks, Mylo wastes no time in getting to his deliciously disco club smash, “Drop the Pressure.” Despite the popularity of the album’s singles (“Drop the Pressure,” “Musclecars,” and the title track), the album is surprisingly short on fillers. Each track stands on its own, especially the Prefuse-inspired house beat, “Rikki.” Expect to see this album on many “Best of 2006” lists. J diLLA donuts stones throw records 3 out of 5 stars By ALeX Winter In the words of rapper Jadakiss, “You know dead rappers get better promotion.” Almost ironically, that same rapper’s voice makes an appearance in the form of a vocal sample on J Dilla’s (aka Jay Dee) latest effort, Donuts. The instrumental album, released by indie hip-hop imprint, Stones Throw Records on Dilla’s thirty-second birthday, fell just three days prior to his death. J Dilla had suffered from an incurable blood disease as well as lupus. Due to his failing health, much of Donuts was recorded in a makeshift studio set up in the hospital. Donuts provides a much-needed change from the current, club-based hip-hop that dominates radio. The album has a relaxed vibe, provided by the sampled pianos, guitars, and horns. The lack of lyrics accentuates Dilla’s smooth style of production and allows the listener to better appreciate the album’s nuances.
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