Film: Gomorrah. When Mafiosos Rule.

Gomorrah (2008) by Matteo Garrone is an immensely powerful, raw and compelling film that seeks to challenge the classic and conventional mobster/gangster movie that has so dominated Hollywood and our respective perceptions. May the viewer beware, this is not a reinvention of Al Pacino’s Tony Montana from Scarface, nor is it an attempt to recycle Marlon Brando’s Vito Corleone from the Godfather series (don’t be fooled by Martin Scorsese’s name attached the film’s credits!). Gomorrah removes us farther from Hollywood’s hills than many are comfortable with and hurls us into the callous and ruthless streets at the lower tip of the Italian geographical boot: Naples. The characters are generally unattractive in appearance; the Neapolitan dialect is horrendous to the ears and the Italian landscape vistas and 'amore' are foregone leaving us with concrete barricades reminiscent more of NYC “projects” than of the Italian villas that we are accustomed to imagining.

The film weaves together five distinct stories to show how the Neapolitan mafia, the Camorra saturates through all levels of the population. We follow Marco and Ciro, two gangly, hormonal, and idealistic teenagers who recite lines from Scarface and seek to disrupt the Camorra’s activities—but, just for laughs. We watch as Toto, an innocent 13-year old gains entry into the Camorra, not fully realizing the sacrifices he must eventually make. The stories of Salvatore Cantalupo, a couture tailor whose factory is controlled by the Camorra to Toni Servillo, a businessman who is in the industry of ‘cleaning’ or really dumping toxic waste in neighboring lands all point to how the Camorra poison the fabric we wear and the soil we grow crops in. It is Gianfelice, who ties everyone together: he is the meek and compliant ‘money runner’ who we follow as he delivers the mob families their weekly payments. In each of the distinct stories, there are elements of resistence to the Camorra’s influence—all “want out” at some point, but the Camorra is not in the business of letting associates go, at least not alive.

It is a film of brutality, corruption, fearlessness, all encapsulating violence and its permeation and preponderance in society: “from high fashion to the very dirt” as the NYtimes critic Mahnola Dargis comments. In the words of New Yorker's Anthony Lane, it was indeed (yet another) Academy Award travesty that Gomorrah was not nominated!

Art: Artist's Choice + Vik Muniz = Rebus @ MoMa

Frozen Foods, Irving Penn
From Artist's Choice + Vik Muniz = Rebus,
Special Exhibition Gallery 3rd floor

Perfectly composed edibles, splashed with naturally vibrant colors, captured neatly, intriguingly within a carefully delineated framework. A modern-day Jan van Eyck Stillleben one might assume. Indeed, Irving Penn's Frozen Foods (above) is just one work of 82 artworks within the exhibit: Rebus, in which one artist is chosen to assume the role of curator. In this exhibit Vik Muniz, a Brazilian artist dons the curatorial hat. Muniz seeks to explore the unlikely subject matter used in a variety of mediums: photography, canvas, sculpture, installation and video all from MoMa’s permanent collection. Rebus is defined by Muniz as “a puzzle in which unrelated visual and linguistic elements create a larger deductive meaning.” So, what does it mean when Frozen Foods is placed next to a sculpture of a plastic burger? Visual and tactile references to edible, but really, non-edible pieces of art. Throughout the exhibit my mind was searching endlessly for deeper meaning and possible connections between the clusters of work wittily and cleverly composed. But, with no thematic purpose defined in the exhibit, Muniz relinquishes meaning to the audience: make it what you want it to be, what you want it to mean! As Muniz says, “Rebus is a cognitive, visual ride that I hope will affect how visitors experience art here and in the rest of the Museum.”

Ballet: 21st Century Movements @ Lincoln Center

You can have Wheeldon's Mercurial Manoevers performed to Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. (ugh!) and Melissa Barak's Simply Symphony. But Jorma Elo's fantastic Slice to Sharp, set to Vivaldi, is a tour de force of exhilarating energy and free-flowing movement. There is no story line so much as immense vivacity performed with a simple sharp diagonal shadow stretching across the stage. Well done!

Culture: Marie Belle, Edible Art

MarieBelle, SoHo484 Broome St, between Wooster St and West Broadway
Open Everyday from 11am to 7pm
Walking South of Houston in sleet and snow is misreable. But luckily you are only a hop, skip and a jump from the charming little Parisien chocolaterie, MarieBelle, where mouth-watering smells of spicy hot-chocolate fill the air and a bounty of little luscious chocolate morsels are splayed in tiny (or enormous) boxes. From Champagne-flavored to Kona-Bean and Coconut, the choice is yours for $2.50/piece (!!). It seems as though Maribel Lieberman-- founder and designer-- has taken the movie Chocolat to heart with this successful venture; even in a down-turning economy, we must still have fine chocolate in 27 different flavors each one hand painted!

Film: Medicine for Melancholy

Medicine for Melancholy is a delightful treat after a long day of wandering the streets of NYC. This unassuming romance, written and directed by Berry Jenkins, is set in the always summery San Francisco, which is a refreshing sojourn from the (sometimes) gritty and tenacious Manhattan. Wyatt Cenac who plays Micah, breathes freshness and unpredictability into the movie and into the sheltered and elegant life of Joanne (Tracey Heggins) with his gentle, whimsical and witty nature. The two officially meet at breakfast after a their unofficial meeting: a one-night stand. Beneath the sheen of San Francisco, Jenkins delves into the more pressing themes: race, gentrification of San Francisco, identity and relationships.

Art: Nick Veasey @ MFA Collection

What if you could see the internal workings of a microphone or a flower? How about a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes or even a United Airlines Boeing 777? Using primarily X-ray and other scientific imaging equipment, Nick Veasey, a British photographer and filmmaker, captures the ordinary, the mundane objects of our everyday lives revealing their surprisingly fascinating interiors.

Veasey’s laborious creations are pseudo-scientific in technique and practice yet unconventional and thought-provoking pieces of art. Veasey has X-rayed over 4,000 objects ranging from cornet trumpets and other musical instruments, to New York buses and orchids. The Diasec-mounted works of art are sleek and incredibly design conscious-- Veasey can make even a farm-tractor look riveting. Conceptually, his works are equally captivating: in a world where so much emphasis is placed on outward beauty and aesthetics, it is refreshing to see an artist look beyond the surface of things-- to show the inner beauty of our most banal objects (of course, Jimmy Choo is never banal!).

Art: Elegant Armor: The Art of Jewelry @ MAD

Thursdays from 5-9 are pay-what-you-want at the *new* MAD- Museum of Arts & Design, which a-la-MoMA usually charges an outrageous $20/person (unless you've kept an old student ID, which if you are lucky, might get you a $12 entry). For any New Yorker or New York lover, this building is a must. 2 Columbus Circle, the Museum's address, was the site of a highly publicized and long-winded debate including the voices of Tom Wolfe, Chuck Close and Frank Stella who were advocating for "the Lollipop Building's" original modernist design by Edward Stone. Those supporting the new design and redevelopment initiative included our own fave Mayor Bloomberg and the always outspoken architecture critic, Ada Louise Huxtable, of the Wall Street Journal. Thankfully, renovation prevailed. Now, a cleaner, sleeker building rises up from the southern point of Columbus Circle giving the grand 'crystal palace' of Time Warner Center a partner in crime at the South Western tip of Central Park. Although the building needs to work on its humidity level (it felt like a greenhouse inside) and the museum needs to cultivate better front desk manners, it was a surprisingly pleasant experience!

My intentions were to see MAD's new exhibit on jewelry titled 'Elegant Armor: The Art of Jewelry,' but I was a little disappointed with the meager selection. Yes, it had a few wonderfully snazzy pieces (particularly David Webb, Silk Cord Ring, 1967 and Gijs Bakker Armband (Bracelet), 1967) in the exhibit that totaled 200 pieces, but far too many 'arts and crafts' jewelry. I suppose my tastes are more traditional and classical than what I had thought! For curatorial aims the selection satisfied its purpose: the exhibit covered a variety of periods from the 1940's to present day each divided into thematic clusters of "Sculptural Forms," "Narrative Jewelry," "Painted and Textured Surfaces," and the "Radical Edge." Fortunately, jewelry is small so appreciating 200 pieces will take no time at all leaving plenty of time to see the rest....which turned out to be the best part.

'Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary' through April 19th, is a fabulous exhibit that draws on our creative and reflective capacities for everyday ordinary objects. This exhibition is a compilation of works by about 50 well established and emerging artists all centered around the theme of creating thought provoking 'objects of art' and installation pieces from quotidien life.

Highlights included: 'Trinity' by Andy Diaz and Laurel Roth, which is a chandelier made of syringes and pills; an insightful commentary upon our over-medicated and drug-ridden society. What was once crystal up on high, is replaced by drugs and medication that make us high (play on 'crystal meth' perhaps?). 'A Mixture of Frailties' by Susie MacMurry is a gorgeous coutour-esque gown made from rubber (medical?) gloves. Here we are again required to re-imagine materials and ideas-- wearing plastic is not associated with Haute Couture, but MacMurry's critique on fashion implies that if it's made to look good, someone might even wear plastic gloves. Or...is it a feminist statement of women reclaiming their domestic sphere of kitchen work and dishwashing plastic gloves in the form of fashionable dress? All in all, an interesting exhibition.

Art: Marlene Dumas: Measuring Your Own Grave @ MOMA

The new Marlene Dumas retrospective at MOMA (her first mid-career retrospective State-side!) is an exhibit that should not be missed. Measuring Your Own Grave beautifully articulates Dumas' fearlessness in depicting the exquisit shock of an infant after birth, the tension of a pre-pubescent child, the hanging, flabby chin-flesh of a grandmother and the even the dead. The exhibit is woven together along loose thematic lines from topics on race relations and family psychology to terror. With a nod towards Expressionism's broad brush-strokes and abstraction, all within a framework of stark realism, we peer into a world of the anonymous, raw, violent yet beautiful faces and figures each one a commentary on society, history, politics and pyschology. Each canvas is a representation of individuals-- or really, they are of bodies and souls as they move through, and encounter events and incidents of art, life and politics. We don't ask who the figures are, but are more concerned with what they represent in our society. Marlene Dumas was born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1953 but since the age of 23, she has been living and working in Amsterdam.