It’s been forty years since Director Robert Altman brilliant anti-war film “Mash” burst upon the culture. Starring Elliott Gould, Donald Sutherland, Tom Skerritt and Sally Kellerman as Army doctors and nurses toiling to save lives on the Korean front — the film was a stand-in for the still-raging Vietnam War. And while we never see any real battles, the blood-soaked operating rooms and the dark humor made us understand the true horror of war, while the freewheeling humor and farcical quality of the film kept us laughing. Last Saturday,before a packed house,  the Film Society of Lincoln Center at the Walter Reade Theatre  — as part of its 75th  anniversary celebration of the Twentieth Century Fox Studio — and the film’s 40th anniversary, unveiled its newly restored version.   And though much time has passed, it didn’t  seem that all that much had changed.  War is still hell and maybe the best way to show its absurdity is though farce and through laughter.
Afterward two of the film’s stars – Elliott Gould and Tom Skerritt – along with Kathryn Reed Altman, the director’s widow, spoke about what it was like to work with Robert Altman.  One word kept coming up – all through the conversation. “Magic.”    “Working with Bob (Altman) was magical” Gould said. “He had life. He was able to show the processes of life,” he said. “He was like a great conductor drawing these incredible performances out of us,” he said. “He allowed us — he allowed me to express our true natures.” There are no words to describe something that was just a feeling – a way of working,” Skerritt added, who also confirmed that the film really was about Vietnam. “We all knew it — it’s all that we thought about,” he said.

From Godard's "Breathless," 1960

“Cinema is Truth 24 Times a Second”

Jean-Luc Godard

Fifty years after former L’enfant Terrible  Jean-Luc Godard unleashed Breathless”– and changed the French film world forever,  a luminous new print is Alive and Well and Breathing downtown at the Film Forum.  In 1960, Godard, along with comrades like Francois Truffaut, Claude Chabrol and Agnes Varda set out to shake up what they saw as a moribund and stagnant  film establishment., creating  the French New Wave. They took the camera out of the studio and into the streets. The camera was everywhere, an all-seeing eye.
To make movies, Godard once said, “All you need is a girl and a gun,”   It also helps if you’re a cinematic genius.  Living in Paris awhile ago, I couldn’t speak French very well — but I knew enough to ask every sexy guy I met: “Est-ce tu aime Godard?” The answer would inevitably be “Oui, Bien Sur!”
The  truth that Godard sought still comes through.  Jean-Paul Belmondo’s  gangster as sad clown and Jean Seberg, with her pixie cut and limpid eyes and their bittersweet romance have never seemed more alive. Catch it now,  along with “Two in the Wave” which tells the story of Godard and Truffaut’s friendship. They’re only playing until June 10.. so run quickly, even if it makes you Breathless….

Yoko Ono

     Dressed all in black, except for the  red flower at the tip of her men’s fedora, Yoko Ono claimed the stage last night on the eve of her 77th birthday with a primal scream that seemed to contain all at once, grief, rage and intense, existential joy. Her journey that night at the Brooklyn Academy of Music began with a poignant series of home movies from her childhood in pre-war Japan and moved from there to  her provocative life as a performance artist in the early 1960’s — and then — to her epic romance with John Lennon.
      Her comrades that night included her son, Sean Lennon — as well as members of the We Are Plastic Ono Band, Justin  Bond,  The Scissor Sisters — as well as members of the original Plastic Ono Band.   That band was launched in 1969 with the hit single “Give Peace a Chance,” and that’s how Yoko ended the evening. W ith everyone singing about peace and love.
     “Love everyone,” she implored. ”Hug everyone, she smiled. “Give peace a chance.”
     

Gregg Breinberg

      Teacher Gregg Breinberg is  The Whiz Kid behind the Whiz Kids otherwise known as the PS22 Choir.  Made up of 4^th and 5^th graders from PS22 on Staten Island, they’ve  performed at Madison Square Garden, sung for movie stars and politicians and melted hearts  all over the world.
      But for their fearless leader –  what’s most important is helping students find the heart and soul of a song — and of themselves.
      In an interview with OpenEducation.Net, Breinberg told writer Thomas Hanson the key to their successful collaboration is having High Hopes, Great Expectations and Kindness. And it doesn’t hurt to be a Bit of A Clown yourself. ‘Kindness and patience are #1 with me,” Breinberg said in the interview. “I also think it’s important to be willing to try things, step outside your comfort zone, embarrass yourself, make mistakes — because you can never forget that’s basically what you’re asking from all of your students at some point or another.
     The kids have taught him as well, Breinberg said.
    As Joey, one of the kids in the choir told MSNBC:   ‘Mr. B, he’s a handful — he teaches us but we teach him — he’s not just a regular teacher — he is un-ordinary.’   Check out the  whole interview with the ‘Un-Ordinary’ Breinberg  and his Extraordinary work with the PS22 Choir here.     

“The civility of which money will purchase, is
Rarely extended to those who have none”

     Homeless waifs, overflowing poor houses, people living on the street – the London that Charles Dickens chronicled in his 19^th century novels doesn’t sound all that different from the New York City of 2009.  With  a record number of families in homeless shelters, unemployment at all time highs and a recession that doesn’t want to let go – there are a lot of people struggling.  And for those in need — it may get even harder.
       A Draconian law the city is intent on implementing would require those living in shelters to pay rent  — nearly half of any income they manage to scrounge up – all while  trying to find a permanent place to live – and work that pays a liveable wage – a daunting prospect in even the best of times.
      There are now nearly 40,000 people using New York’s homeless shelters — 13,000 of them are children, according to the Coalition for the Homeless  — and that number keeps growing.
        ” Asking the poorest and most desperate New Yorkers to pay money they cannot spare is cruel and petty, ” said Piper Hoffman, Director of Advocacy at the Partnership for the Homeless.  ” Every human being has a right to a roof over their heads.”
    There are two bills pending that would make it illegal for shelters to charge rent — but they seem to be currently stalled in the Rules Committee of the State Assembly (Bill A8353-D) and another in the State Senate (S5605-A).
     Linda Contes and her husband Manuel told  The Indypendent  they were asked to pay $1,475 last May to live in a homeless shelter even though Contes was unemployed and Manuel was working part-time. Although the policy was suspended 3 weeks later, the City’s Dept. of Homeless Services says it plans to implement the rule.
       Concerned citizens should write to their State representative asking them to co-sponsor this legislation — and if they are on the relevant committee, to work to send the bill to the floor for a full vote.     The Coalition for the Homeless also has a form letter to write to Governor Paterson — just go to the site and hit  the link that says Action.
      It’s Christmas –  But there’s still No Room at the Inn…..

     The members of the Senate Finance Committee are:

Chair: Sen. Carl Kruger
Sen. Eric Adams
Sen. Neil D. Breslin
Sen. John A. DeFrancisco
Sen. Ruben Diaz
Sen. Martin Malavé Dilan
Sen. Thomas K. Duane
Sen. Pedro Espada, Jr., Majority Leader
Sen. Hugh T. Farley
Sen. Kemp Hannon
Sen. Owen H. Johnson
Sen. Jeffrey D. Klein
Sen. Liz Krueger
Sen. William J. Larkin Jr.
Sen. Kenneth P. LaValle
Sen. Vincent L. Leibell
Sen. Carl L Marcellino
Sen. George D. Maziarz
Sen. Velmanette Montgomery
Sen. Michael F. Nozzolio
Sen. Suzi Oppenheimer
Sen. Frank Padavan
Sen. Kevin S. Parker
Sen. Bill Perkins
Sen. Stephen M. Saland
Sen. John L. Sampson
Sen. James L. Seward
Sen. William T. Stachowski
Sen. Toby Ann Stavisky
Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins
Sen. Antoine M Thompson
Sen. David J. Valesky
Sen. Dale M. Volker

The members of the Assembly Rules Committee are:
Sheldon Silver
Jeffrion L. Aubry
Daniel J. Burling
Ron Canestrari
Ann-Margaret Carrozza
Vivian E. Cook
Clifford W. Crouch
Herman D. Farrell, Jr.
David F. Gantt
Deborah J. Glick
Richard N. Gottfried
Stephen Hawley
Jim Hayes
Earlene Hooper
Rhoda Jacobs
Brian M. Kolb
Joseph R. Lentol
Vito J. Lopez
Joel M. Miller
Joseph D. Morelle
Catherine Nolan
Bob Oaks
Felix Ortiz
J. Gary Pretlow
Peter M. Rivera
Dede Scozzafava
Mike Spano
Robert K. Sweeney
Helene E. Weinstein

Liv Ullman

      A rumpled bed, brightly lit and placed stage right, seems to dominate the stage in Liv Ullman’s haunting production of  ‘Streetcar Named Desire,’ now playing at Brooklyn Academy of Music .  It’s the place  where  the climatic confrontation between Blanche Dubois and Stanley Kowalski takes place, and where at night — as Stella says — ‘things happen between a man and a woman that make everything else seem unimportant.’   Desire — for sex and Desire  for life — infuse this production that stars Cate Blanchett, in a heartrending performance as Blanche.
    “I think we need Tennessee Williams now more than ever,” Ullman said during a recent interview at the Harvey Theatre, where the play will run until Dec, 20. “In a twitter world – we need his poetry.”
      “The way I see it,” Ullman wrote in the accompanying program. “Tennessee Williams wished to pull us out of our own angry darkness, by allowing us to see, to recognize the hurt and vulnerability and the fear disguised as violence or rudeness or carelessness or what may look like madness.”
     At the end of the play, Blanche moves off to stage right, bathed in light.
    Ullman said she may not be doomed – but has embraced her own solitude, accepted the untenability of her situation… “Maybe now she will be alone., Ullman said.  “Sometimes being alone is what a person may need.”

Orson Welles, 1937

    In 1937, a mad  genius stood poised, ready to unleash his vision on the world. The Crazy Genius was Orson Welles — and his production of  Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Caesar’  at his newly created Mercury Theatre in New York City would bring him infamy and opportunity.  Filmmaker Richard Linklater brings the period — and the genius  to life in his new film ‘‘Me and Orson Welles.’
    Based on the coming -of -age novel by Robert Kaplow,  Linklater  shows us all the fun, craziness, treachery and heartbreak that came under the rubric: A Life in the Theatre  — especially if it involved the Boy Wonder who was Orson Welles in 1937.
      We get the backstage intrigue, the romances and Welles as a kind of sometimes benign, sometimes cruel dictator/director. He wanted results and adoration — didn’t hesitate to cut anyone who didn’t give him enough of either.  British actor Christian McCay, who stars as Welles, nails the director’s brilliance — as well as his ability to manipulate and seduce.
       Zac Efron is touchingly vulnerable as Richard Samuels,  the high school kid who stumbles on a rehearsal at the Mercury and gets a small part in the production.  At the end, after Samuels has tasted some success, some betrayal, and some joy, he tells his friend, Gretta, who has dreams of being a writer: “It feels like we have everything before us…..” The camera pulls back in a gesture of joy and acknowledgement.   That everything would eventually come to mean World War  II — and for Welles — more masterpieces, fame, financial ruin — and a haunting memory of a sled called Rosebud.  But in that moment, for those characters — the world was alive  — with possibility and with hope. 

William Blake

         Along with her husband and artistic collaborator Christo, she helped wrap the Pont Neuf  in Paris, the Reichstag in Berlin;  swathed the Biscayne Bay Islands near Miami in a luscious  Pink,  and in 2005, she filled  Central Park with 7,503 Saffron Colored Gates .  Those gates transformed a barren winter landscape into something amazing and alive and created a new relationship to a  familiar terrain. 
      French artist Jeanne-Claude – of the  vibrant red hair and even redder lips  – didn’t mind,  she once said, in an interview, that the monumental projects that she and Christo devoted themselves and that took years to complete and cost millions —  were just transient – ephemeral works.  What it was all about – she said – was creating joy.  Their works expressed “the quality of love and tenderness that we human beings have for what does not last.”
       Jeanne-Claude died this week, at the age of 74.

Series I - No. I, 1918

    Before she became known as Georgia O’Keefe, the iconic painter of blisteringly sensual flower paintings and stark landscapes, she was just a young woman coming to New York from Wisconsin with dreams of being an artist.  She wanted to free herself  from inhibition — .to express all the feelings and seemingly inexpressible thoughts that were roiling inside of her. She studied art at Columbia University’s Teacher’s College under Arthur Dow,  a specialist in Oriental art who taught that it was the artist’s personality that should come through a drawing, not just a realistic rendering of a subject.
    In 1915, she emerged onto the New York Art World’s stage with a group of abstract charcoal works, whose purpose, she said in interviews later, were to translate into art what she couldn’t say in words – that it was through imagery and shapes that her thoughts would coalesce.
       From there, she moved onto color, moving gradually from intense cobalt blues to hot pinks and lavenders – blossoming into the forms and flowers for which she later became known.
       The Whitney is showing all these works – some not seen  in New York since her first shows – along with some revelatory photographs taken of her by her lover and mentor, Edward Steichen. 
      Georgia O’Keefe: Abstraction is running till January 17.   Don’t Miss It!