Fantastic Fest 2011 day seven & eight: RABIES, LIVID, A LONELY PLACE TO DIE, THE INNKEEPERS

Rabies (dirs. Aharon Keshales & Novat Paupshado, 2010, Israel)

Aharon Keshales and Novat Paupshado's awesomely vicious and funny film Rabies came with a lot of options as Israel's first horror feature. That there's a homicidal predator in the forest, the directors could've explored that as a traditional (albeit Israeli) slasher film and made a bloody decent one at that. Instead, they focus on the broader picture of Israeli acting talent, the quartet of friends road-tripping in the woods, the park ranger and his trusty hunting dog, the two cops patrolling the area, the brother and sister targeted by the maniac — IN ADDITION to a very dangerous killer on the loose. In doing so, Keshales and Paupshado concocted a very creative, articulated entry to the international genre scene. So the conventional beginning — young Tali (Liat Harlev) stuck in the killer's trap, her brother Ofer (Henry David) comes to her aid only to be attacked off-camera — quickly segues to separate story-lines of friends, a hunting expedition, laughter and bickering that spirals out of control as tensions rage, miscommunication reigns and violence ensues. That the forest is littered with landmines leftover from past nationwide conflicts is just one spark to this growing molotov. A case of good samaritan aid and misidentification leads to copious bloodshed, another instance of a corrupt cop Yuval (Danny Geva) forcing himself on the girls Adi (the lovely, ass-kicking Ania Bukstein) and Shir (Yael Grobglas) he's supposed to be protecting — you know, from the psycho in the woods! — goes far different than you might think. Rabies equaled one of my most memorable Fantastic Fest films and a favorite, and I look forward to these directors' future efforts within the horror genre.

Livid (dir. Julien Maury/Alexandre Bustillo, 2011, France)

Maybe you've heard this already, but Livid, the 2nd horror feature from powerhouse directors Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo, is NOT another Inside. But, if you've seen Inside and you're an adherent to the New French Extremity movement, you HAVE to see Livid. It's way different — I've been calling it a fairytale for twisted adults — but in its inherent beauty, its creative scares and nice bursts of practical FX horror, Livid is a worthy member of France's sicker horror scene. I hate to give anything away, but I'll say that prominent press image of a young ballerina w/ a bloodied-face seemingly floating in midair IS explained within Livid's unusual mythology. In brief, trainee in-house caregive Lucie (Chloe Coulloud), along with her opportunistic wharf-working BF William (Félix Moati) and bartender bud Ben (Jéremy Kapone), decide to rob the massive Brittany country estate of one of her new patients, comatose former dance teacher Jessel (Marie-Claude Pietragalla, sporting a huge breathing apparatus way creepier than the old woman's in Insidious, thanks to her talon-like fingernails), since she's suppose to have a big-ass treasure in there. Of course nothing goes as planned, and beginning with a cadaver of old Jessel's daughter Anna (Chloé Marcq, echoing Degas' dancers) we're propelled into a supernatural horror rollercoaster. And while Livid doesn't exceed Inside in brutal awesomeness, it's a fascinating, unsettling experience from the dynamic duo.

A Lonely Place to Die (dir. Julian Gilbey, 2011, UK)

The survival thriller A Lonely Place to Die stumbles in its third act, when director Julian Gilbey descends from the vertiginous Scottish Highlands into a neighboring township (the May Day festival in town is pretty cool, the rest not so much). But the first hour, set amid sheer rock faces soaring hundreds of feet in the air, scattered forest cover and burbling rivers, is awesome. I suffered from a bit of acrophobia in the first half, as the camera zoomed around mountaineers hiking and climbing the terrain — but I didn't mind too much, it was such a thrilling ride. The team, including climbing expert Alison (a fantastic Melissa George) overhear a girl's echoing voice in the forest and, upon discovering a breathing pipe in the ground, dig up a box containing young Serbian Anna (Holly Boyd). Anna was kidnapped from her wealthy father and held for obscene ransom in truly a lonely place to die, and as the team proceeds to take her to safety dudes wielding scope-outfitted rifles prowl after them. Couple that amid the Scottish Highlands, where a misstep equals a broken ankle or, worse, a deadly plunge, and Gilbey's created a creative game of cat and mouse. Which is a drag when the chase returns to level ground, as it becomes a much more normal film from its initial, awesome setting. A Lonely Place to Die was picked up by IFC Midnight w/ a limited theatrical release beginning Nov 4.

The Innkeepers (dir. Ti West, 2010, USA)

My final film of Fantastic Fest was suitably fantastic, so I started with awesomeness (Ahn Sang-hoon's Blind) and ended with awesomeness, to the tune of The ABCs of Death contributor Ti West and his new creative ghost story The Innkeepers. I unabashedly LOVED The House of the Devil, West's ode to '80s chillers and physically wrenching in its unexpected scares. The Innkeepers is as frightening as its predecessor but the strong, realistic instances of wisecracking and one-liners makes for a more well-rounded, touching story. In fact, it made me care more for young slacker lead Claire (Sara Paxton, an instant charmer despite showing no gratuitous skin like in Shark Night 3D), employee of the soon-to-close Yankee Pedlar Inn up in Connecticut. She's cute w/o being overtly sexualized, routinely puffing at an asthma inhaler (a clear plot element, or an ambiguous one?) whilst immersing herself in the inn's spooky folklore. See, according to coworker Luke (Pat Healy, aka John from Ghost World), a good-natured if scruffy older nerd, the building is haunted and he's got proof, on a Geocities-styled website he's kinda sorta making the effort to build. Plus there's sole resident Leanne (the ineffable Kelly McGillis — as in Callsign Charlie from Top Gun, hello?!), a former actress-turned-psychic, who informs starstruck Claire that there are indeed three ghosts inhabiting the inn. Claire dons headphones, cuing an audio recorder that picks up traces of piano playing — supposedly a ghostly woman who met her demise in the building. Then said ghostly woman's aged ex-husband arrives, demanding a specific room for the "nostalgia", and the supernatural element increases. Once West turns on the scares to full volume, we're so into these players' heads (particularly Claire's) that we just want everything to turn out all right in the end. But this is a horror movie, remember! Lucky Austinites: The Innkeepers screens as part of a Ti West retrospective on Oct 3 at the Village Alamo Drafthouse.

Fantastic Fest 2011 day five & six: BULLHEAD, BODY TEMPERATURE, MELANCHOLIA

Bullhead (dir. Michael R. Roskam, 2011, Belgium)

An incredible first feature by Michael Roskam, who expresses his love of classic '20s and '30s crime thrillers via injections of black humor and cultural conflict whilst elucidating a unique take on the genre. I.e. Belgium's underground bovine hormone mafia. The brawny physicality and beating heart of Bullhead rests in man-mountain lead Jacky (an almost unrecognizable, bulked-up Matthias Schoenaerts, star of Flemish blockbuster Loft and its upcoming American remake). He is as much a bull as the cattle he tends, severely addicted as he is to testosterone shots and paranoid ultra-masculinity. Because despite his swaggering physique as enforcer amid a whirlwind of gangsters and opportunists, Jacky's incredibly, uncomfortably awkward around women — in person and in subject. I'll not give away the big backstory (it's a tough one, particularly for dudes!), but it's the crux of Jacky's personal demons, and equals a very dangerous, drug-dependent man. Roskam won Fantastic Fest's "Next Wave" best director and picture awards for Bullhead, and Schoenaerts rightly received the best actor award. His transformation into a snuffling, head-butting, berzerking beast both potentially violent and simultaneously terribly frightened arouses our sympathy as much as it freaks us out. Let's hope Bullhead gains wider recognition for this accomplished work.

Body Temperature (dir. Takaomi Ogata, 2011, Japan)

I befriended young Tokyo-based director Takaomi Ogata during the festival. We're the same age and both dig Shiner Bock and similar films (Beatrice Dalle in Betty Blue! Katsuhito Ishii!). He warned me ahead of time that Body Temperature, his second feature film after Endless Blue, is a subtle and gentle film, with little dialogue and even less soundtrack, so please try not to fall asleep! Mind you, I kept rapt attention throughout this brief, bittersweet film, centered on lonely Rintaro (Chavetaro Ishizaki), his love-doll Ibuki (played for the first 3/4 of the film by AV idol Rin Sakuragi) and, eventually, his new hostess love interest Rinko (Sakuragi again). Rintaro's daily routine with Ibuki, helping her dress, taking her around in a wheelchair throughout town, bowling and photo-taking and celebrating her birthday — all this seems innocent enough, like she's a convalescent. Yet unless you've read absolutely ZERO on Body Temperature, you understand her to be "just" a latex sex doll, despite Sakuragi's skilled, immobile presence. And yeah, he goes "all the way" with her, too. So when meeting Rinko by chance outside a boutique and following her to the posh Roppongi hostess bar where she works — and against all odds they actually hit it off! — we feel a bit of relief for Rintaro. He abandons Ibuki and goes bowling with Rinko, meets her at a bar elsewhere (looks like Kabukicho's border to me, but I could be wrong), and eventually they wind up at his place making out. His comment on how warm her hands are (get the film title now?) is sad and sweet at the same time — like he's finally got a chance at "real" love, but Rinko's discovery of Ibuki (now shown as "just" a doll) is as anticipated as it is necessary.

Melancholia (dir. Lars von Trier, 2011, Denmark)

The denouement of Lars von Trier's incredible new film Melancholia, which rightfully earned a best actress award at Cannes for Kirsten Dunst's role, had me contacting friends in NYC and Tokyo with promises of visiting them as soon as possible. Because if the world were to end tomorrow, or in the manner of von Trier's stunning achievement — despite his awkward, Nazi-riddled speech at a Cannes press conference, I encourage you to see Melancholia nonetheless — then I'd want to see my most loved one last time. Post-apocalyptic films are one thing (something awful happens to the Earth, maybe it's never quite explained like in The Day, yet people persevere on), apocalyptic, like pure apocalyptic as in Melancholia, that's something else. The world does indeed end, and I needn't put spoiler bookends around that as we see the collision w/ the massive rogue planet Melancholia less than 10 minutes into the film, after long dream-like sequences with main characters Justine (Dunst), her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg, heartrendingly expressive here) and Claire's little son Leo (Cameron Spurr). So we KNOW what's going to happen at the end — i.e. the earth's destruction — but we don't yet know how von Trier's going to do that.

SPOILERS! (kinda, though I tried to keep it vague…)
The first half of Melancholia follows a lavish wedding reception b/w Justine and Michael (the towering Alexander Skarsgård) in a castle-like country estate adjacent to rolling fields of golf courses. Claire's husband John (a charming and caustic Kiefer Sutherland, whose astronomy connections have him very excited about Melancholia's impending "fly-by") hosts the thing, doling out extreme amounts of cash for a suitably end-of-days bash — except of course this isn't meant to be an end of days, the rogue telluric planet hidden behind the sun is approaching Earth only to pass by it, at least that's what experts are claiming. Lots of unexpected and warm humor here b/w Justine and Michael, beginning w/ trying to navigate their stretch limo through the bends and turns leading up to the castle. It becomes clear quickly that Justine's unhappy, once they're immersed in family and friends at the reception, as she grows sad, despondent, prickly and desperate amid her divorced parents' blatant arguments (her mother can't believe she got married) and even Michael's own attempts at affection. Claire meanwhile is always there, trying to comfort her sister. But when the party concludes, Michael leaves separately, unofficially nullifying the wedding. In part two, a now totally depressed Justine rejoins Claire and family at the estate, and the women ride horses and tend the garden in sublime moments of respite. We quickly understand that Claire has her own demons: she's deathly afraid of Melancholia, so much so that she distrusts John's prediction that it'll fly past them unscathed and has locked away a bottle of some unknown pills, assumedly so they can painlessly kill themselves. Justine is calm and cynical about the whole situation, growingly accepting of their eventual doom while accepting little Leo's affection in stride. And it's these final few minutes, with the thrum of the approaching Melancholia, the bass and then bass heat blasting from the speakers into our chests, the blue-white glare off the screen and sisters embrace: it's an image and experience I'll not forget anytime soon.

Fantastic Fest 2011 day four: SMUGGLER, TWO EYES STARING, YAKUZA WEAPON, KARATE-ROBO ZABORGAR

Smuggler (dir. Katsuhito Ishii, 2011, Japan)

Katsuhito Ishii's Smuggler — his return to bruised-up, coked-up crime thrillers like his early genre-bender Sharkskin Man and Peach-hip Girl — was one of my top five most-anticipated films of the festival. See, I'm an Ishii-devotee, having begun with Sharkskin Man… on a total blind whim and the knowledge that Tadanobu Asano — IMO Japan's Johnny Depp for adaptability — was the lead. That ensemble-cast film turned the Yakuza genre on its ear, inserting off-kilter humor and extended, chatty dialogue and gorgeous, sun-dappled shots of foresty Japan with the usual bursts of violence and dapper characters. Think Dick Tracy but Japanese and crazier. I then saw his sweet family drama Taste of Tea and the bonkers anthology Funky Forest (and Ishii's web-only semi-related segments that followed) before backtracking to Party 7, which revolved in the same crime-riddled world as Sharkskin Man… yet managed to be even more hyperbolized, even chattier, even more deviant and colorful. The chattiness probably turned some people off, particularly non-Japanese speakers (I found a lot of the dialogue hilarious), but Party 7's classic opening sequence, streamlined anime like Ishii's famous contribution to Kill Bill, remains legendary. Which is why I don't get why Ishii remains a cult director in the States. You'd think his cocktail of Yakuza punks, bizarro humor, fast pacing and colorful characters would be a sellable option…yet it seems there are those filmgoers who know him for his more sentimental (and psychedelic) output (Taste of Tea, Funky Forest) and those who know his earlier crime-comedies (Sharkskin Man…, Party 7). And don't get me started on Ishii's Yama no Anata, Sorasoi and Strawberry Seminar (the latter of which I've seen partially online) — more serious outputs within the realm of the most humanistic parts of Taste of Tea, the most atmospheric bits of Funky Forest (think the "Babbling Hot-spring Vixens" segments, but more burbling water and wind in the trees) — which to my knowledge have NEVER shown stateside. This is a great disservice to an incredible, creative contemporary auteur and just added to my excitement for Smuggler. As in: ANYTHING new from Ishii was already good in my books.
Thank goodness he didn't let me down. Ishii's signature humor is stitched into Smuggler's storyline throughout, but this is w/o doubt Ishii's darkest, most violent film. The brutality hinted in his past works (particularly the anime sequences in Kill Bill and the opener to Party 7) manifest in sharp and extended relief here. While Sharkskin Man… involved a lot of bloodshed and bullets, a good deal of that occurred in the cover of night or was mostly left to the imagination. Not in Smuggler, where yakuza heavy Kawashima (a wildly eyebrowed Masahiro Takashima) smacks crime-world envoy Yamaoka (Yasuko Matsuyuki, varying her outfits across the Gothic Lolita spectrum) in the face, and blood continually flows from her nose as she collects herself and makes a phone-call from him. Nor in the decimation doled out by hyper-villain Vertebrae's (Masanobu Ando, scarred up and sinewy, easily outdoing his crazed Kiriyama role in Battle Royale by like 1000%) nunchucks, as he takes down a room of Yakuza thugs and gangleader (all buddies of Kawashima, incidentally) in bullet-time ultraviolence. Nor, finally, in Kawashima's prolonged torture of Kinuta (Satoshi Tsumabuki, who I recognized as Akemi's BF in Michel Gondry's superior segment of Tokyo!), the out-of-work actor and titular smuggler (as in, smuggling dead bodies, mediated by Yamaoka's company) posing as Vertebrae in a dangerous game of deception.
It's pretty sadistic, but Ishii deftly injects humorous doses throughout, like a particularly funny and tense mad-dogging at the convenience store, run by Ishii regular Yoshiyuki Morishita (Kill Bill-ers will remember him as the graveyard-smiling salary-man who gets gutted by schoolgirl assassin Chiaki Kuriyama), where truckdriver Jo (Ishii regular Masatoshi Nagase, weathered and world-weary here, but still dangerous as a blade), a sort of hesitant mentor for young Kinuta in the world of smuggling, stands down Vertebrae and associate Naizou (uh, "Viscera"?) over who was first at the register. Plus cutie Hikari Mitsushima adds toughness to a mostly male cast, one-upping Yamaoka as mob-wife Chiharu, though she was the one who ordered the hit on her man, which Vertebrae gracefully "executed". Plus Ishii regular Tatsuya Gashuin (in EVERY Ishii film…I think, as twitchy hitmen in Sharkskin Man… and Party 7 and the eccentric old dude in Taste of Tea) is a welcome presence, w/ his love for fried-squid soba and his nuggets of wisdom for Kinuta. Smuggler opens on Oct 22 in Japan.

Two Eyes Staring (dir. Elbert van Strien, 2009, Belgium)

My main issue with this pretty scary ghost-possession (that hyphenation might be subjective) is its length. Elbert van Strien draws out the tale far too long, but the creepy elements and believability of young lead Lisa (Isabelle Stokkel) keep Two Eyes Staring tense and intriguing. I really dug Stokkel's performance, going from bleak and worried as her parents move her from Holland to grandmother's old house in Belgium, to wide-eyed and laughing in mini-adventures with her doting dad Paul (Barry Atsma). Seems Lisa has trouble making friends anyway, so coupled with a traumatizing move away from the world she knows, her overactive imagination hits the red as she befriends a strange young (*cough*, DEAD) girl Karen (Charlotte Arnoldy) living in the cellar of grandma's house. Meanwhile, Lisa's mother Christine (Hadewych Minis) remains distant and guarded from her daughter as she pursues a new fashion career in Belgium. Distant to the point that I really felt Christine was Lisa's step-mother, in the way she genuinely distrusts the little girl, particularly as Lisa's relationship w/ Karen strengthens and she begins uncovering secrets from Christine's past. Two Eyes Staring epitomizes slow-burn thriller, but I was so pleased with Stokkel's performance that I'd see it again. Plus, apparently Charlize Theron is optioning it for an English language remake.

Yakuza Weapon (dirs. Tak Sakaguchi and Yudai Yamaguchi, 2011, Japan)

I had the pleasure of previewing the two new and very strong Sushi Typhoon titles Yakuza Weapon and Karate-Robo Zaborgar (review below) in NYC, though Fantastic Fest was the first time I saw them on the big-screen. Now Yakuza Weapon, the combo directorial effort by Yudai Yamaguchi (participating in upcoming horror anthology The ABCs of Death, and director of Battlefield Baseball and Deadball fame, plus I loved his contribution to Meatball Machine) and Tak Sakaguchi (premiere Japanese schlock-action hero), should be on any action-lover's radar, as it's a very loose followup to Ryuhei Kitamura's underground classic Versus, like Rambo on shabo, that rocketed Sakaguchi onto the scene as consummate ass-kicker. And ass-kicking he does in Yakuza Weapon, bearing the strongest fight choreography of any Sushi Typhoon title to date. We're launched into it via the blitzkrieg opening sequence in the South American jungle, with Shozo (Sakaguchi) systematically dispatching each and every armed thug before heading back to Tokyo. There, he learns his familiar Yakuza world has been shattered by dad's right-hand man Kurawaki (the dapper and unhinged Shingo Tsurumi, one-upping his platinum-coiffed attack-dog persona from Katsuhito Ishii's Sharkskin Man and Peach-hip Girl), and Shozo's confrontation leads to a skyscraper's demolition, plus Shozo in a government medical facility with a cannon on his arm and a rocket launcher in his leg. Cue more ass kicking! The buzzed about 4+ minute one-take fight scene that follows here, where Shozo takes on waves of Kurawaki's henchmen with his fists, feet and eventually cannon and rockets over two levels of the facility is properly, singularly superb. If Oldboy set the tone for video-game-style one-take action via a side-scrolling brawl b/w a hammer-wielding Oh Dae-su and dozens of heavies, Yakuza Weapon throws that into three dimensions, as Yamaguchi maneuvers a hand-held gracefully around whole rooms and up staircases, following the violence. The coup de grace follows in the lithe form of Sumire (Cay Izumi, her athleticism as leader of pole-dance troupe Tokyo Dolores coming into full play here), sister of Shozo's former best bud and current rival Tetsuo. See, Sumire's been engineered w/ the same technology as Shozo, only by the bad guys, turning her into a naked fembot assassin whirling around her brother whilst firing crotch rockets and mouth lasers at Shozo!

Karate-Robo Zaborgar (dir. Noboru Iguchi, 2011, Japan)

The eminently huggable and deviant Noboru Iguchi (participating in horror anthology The ABCs of Death) won the Fantastic Features "best director" award at Fantastic Fest for Sushi Typhoon charmer Karate-Robo Zaborgar, his unique take on a pre-Transformers '70s TV show for kids. The lauding behind Zaborgar is well deserved, as it's not only the most accessible Sushi Typhoon title to date but also an all-around awesome, funny film, taming down Iguchi's ultraviolence and perversion and amping up his clever use of humor and cheeky action. Plus, a story about a secret police officer (Yasuhisa Furuhara in the teen role of Daimon) whose sidekick is a karate-fighting cyborg that transforms into a motorcycle just SOUNDS badass, right? Daimon and Zaborgar clash against Sigma, the evil organization responsible for Daimon's scientist father's death. In a curious turn of events, Daimon and Sigma lead fembot Miss Borg (uber-cutie Mami Yamasaki) fall for one another, causing Zaborgar to step in and detonate both her and its own robotic essence into a ball of fire. 25 years pass and an aching, diabetic Daimon (played now by the reliable Itsuji Itao, whom careful viewers will remember as the "head" engineer in Yoshihiro Nishimura's Tokyo Gore Police) finally reunites with Zaborgar, leaving the comforts of retirement to face Sigma once again. The evil organization unleashes their super-robot, a 400-ft destroyer powered by the spirit of Android Akiko (the cute half-human, half-fembot result of Daimon's affair w/ Miss Borg), which leads Zaborgar and Daimon many many stories above Tokyo, brawling with another cyborg and Daimon's disgruntled son across canvases of swelling metal bikini and smooth flesh that is Android Akiko, as she discharges waves of radioactive destruction by chattering on her mobile phone. I absolutely loved every minute of it!

Fantastic Fest 2011 day three: CALIBRE 9, BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW, THE DAY, ZOMBIE ASS

Calibre 9 (dir. Jean-Christian Tassy, 2011, France)

Jean-Christian Tassy seems to subscribe to the Luc Besson/Pierre Morel school of ultra high-octane French crime-thriller, in his directorial debut Calibre 9. And I gotta hand it to him for crafting a unique love story outta the arterial spray and near-future dystopian backdrop. Namely, that of government hound Yann (Laurent Collombert, lanky exuding discomfit) and Sarah (Nathalie Hauwelle), the latter of whom spends most of the film as a disembodied voice coming from Yann's 9mm handgun. Yep, that's the twist, boys and girls: Sarah's an ex-prostitute murdered by her pimp/dealer and resurrected into the piece by her Senegalese client. Said puissant handgun leaps into Yann's hands and steers him on course to take on the hyperbolized corrupt government, led by his boss and devil incarnate, The Mayor, who pisses on his secretary, just for starters. While I never got too deep of emotion coming from Yann, placed hesitantly into this role as assassin renegade, he's at least a total opposite from his violent, misogynistic colleagues. Plus there's some sweet humor in his exchanges with Sarah the 9, enough that we can imagine what it would've been like had they met somewhere else, Sarah still alive and Yann somehow rid of his government occupation.

Beyond the Black Rainbow (dir. Panos Cosmatos, 2011, USA)

I'd been aching to see Beyond the Black Rainbow since missing it at Tribeca Film Festival due to a personal scheduling error. Damn it! Thankfully for me, Panos Cosmatos' intense head trip of a throwback sci-fi thriller was more than worth the wait. I can't wait to see it again and own it on DVD, but seeing it in the theatre was truly the way to go. Bit of caution: Cosmatos' film is foggily linear, super slo-mo, high on psychedelic visuals and immersive Moog-driven soundtrack (courtesy Black Mountain's Jeremy Schmidt), and low on dialogue (besides cryptic exchanges) and clues. Let yourself fall deep into it, though, and you're in for a sensorially mesmerizing two-hour voyage.
We're in the year 1983, steeped in Reagan-era paranoia, in the "happy reality" lent by Arboria, a clandestine research complex with good vibes drugs and a secret garden. Dr. Barry Nyle (Michael Rogers) speaks in measured tones to the camera and to his lead subject, Elena (first-timer Eva Allan — ineffably incredible!). Nyle keeps Elena ensconced in a mirrored white room, apparently keeping her awesome psionic powers in check via a glowing pyramid structure in the center of the institute. Who is she to him, and who is her mother to him? What would happen if she escapes captivity — would Elena be in danger, or Nyle…and therefore the greater world? Cosmatos breaks up long-take shots with orange juice-box colored dissolves and white-noise static (the color palette on Beyond the Black Rainbow is singularly bold and eerie). Subjects are mostly show in cropped close-up, off-center from the action, or far in the distance (like Nyle's many views of Elena via CCTV). A sci-fi chiller that strongly follows in Tarkovsky's footsteps, straight out of Metal Hurlant's enthralling world. It's one huge breath of fresh air to the sci-fi genre, even horror in general, and I await more from this cinematic alchemist. With Black Rainbow, I was a junkie from the start.

The Day (dir. Doug Aarniokoski, 2011, USA)

Lots of awesome directorial debuts at the fest this year. The Day comes from Robert Rodriguez protege Doug Aarniokoski, and though I went into it w/ little expectations beyond 1) Shannyn Sossamon and 2) post-apocalyptic, consider me GREATLY impressed. After a brief and jarring opening sequence, half- home invasion and half- zombie-esque, we're thrown straight into "present day", a ruined landscape of forest and fields, bleakly desaturated in color, and a band of five heavily-armed young people. Rick (Dominic Monaghan) appears the apropos leader as he guides his team of Henson (Cory Hardrict, playing a sickly yet courageous big guy), Shannon (Sossamon, passionately evil), Adam (Shawn Ashmore, tough and untrusting) and Mary (Ashley Bell, which I think is my first time seeing her post- The Last Exorcism, and does she ever shine in The Day!) to an abandoned farmhouse for shelter. They're partially fleeing the elements (for Henson's recover and their own mutual comfort), plus they need to stock up on supplies. They're also being trailed by something…first one black-clad guy running wildly at Mary as she bathes by the riverbed (she dispatches him with vicious swiftness), then bands of them like ravenous bloodhounds, ostensibly attuned to the quintet's scent and pulse. Fleeting moments of bliss, like Shannon and Rick bathing together upstairs in a sun-glinting rainshower, all the guys wisecracking on their shared high-school memories, all this quickly segues into hulking shards of visceral violence. The antagonists, led by a mohawked Mike Ecklund and armed with spears and blades, aim to storm the farmhouse by any means necessary. The quintet bears down with firing weapons and a finite number of bullets — plus Mary's various accoutrements — and is that a defector in their midst, someone playing both sides? In the realm of post-apocalyptic films, I'd sooner compare this to Michael Haneke's harrowing Time of the Wolf, over any American production (definitely NOT The Road). And if this is truly one chapter of Aarniokoski's chaotic near-future world, I can't wait to see what follows next, or what precedes it that leaves people killing others for a shot at survival.

Zombie Ass (dir. Noboru Iguchi, 2011, Japan)

The world premiere of Zombie Ass, Noboru Iguchi's opus to perversion particulars and prodigious posteriors, was, for me, absolutely unmissable. In fact, I dug it so much I saw it twice, as anal alien parasites and scat-covered zombies aren't exactly a marketable option, stateside or otherwise. But from the title sequence, with cutie Cay Izumi dancing in her jean cutoffs in psychedelic soap bubbles, I was a helpless case, willingly drawn in to Iguchi's deliciously deviant world. The plot in brief involves a road-trip to the woods, with karate-equipped school-girl Megumi (Arisa Nakamura) still guilt-riddled over the death of her younger sister, and older friends Aya (cutie Mayu Sugano), her druggie BF Tak (Kentaro Kishi, totally lapping up the stereotypical tough guy role), snobby Maki (AV idol Asana Mamoru, signature Iguchi casting!) and nebbish Naoi (the mop-topped musician Danny). Maki's keen to find a trout infected with a tapeworm so she can maintain her skinniness and get more acting gigs. Seriously. One of her lines when Tak comes onto her, unbeknownst to Aya (seriously, why is she with that guy?!) is "I don't want drugs! I want tapeworms!" Her mission is a success, but it leaves Maki with horrific indigestion, farting away — as Iguchi's camera lovingly trains on her ass — whilst seeking bathroom relief in an adjacent farmhouse. You think it's weird yet? Just wait: Maki's suffering stems from said "tapeworm", actually an alien parasite growing within her that's been carefully bred by the farmhouse's crazy doctor (Kentaro Shimazu, restrained here if you can believe that) to help cure his sickly and ultraviolent daughter Sachi (Yuki, and never has a laughing girl wielding twin yanagi-ba knives been so sinister). Plus there are zombies, like the shit-covered one portrayed by renaissance man and Iguchi regular Demo Tanaka, emerging from an outhouse to slap at Maki's ass before leading a legion of trudging undead, each controlled by matured anal alien parasites to attack her friends. Iguchi tosses in classic Iguchi moments — particularly Aya and Megumi's sweetly curious shower scene, plus lots of bonkers one-liners like "cut the cheese, bitch!" and "I killed him with my butt!" — whilst throwing curveballs at the zombie genre. Like the pack of anal-affected advancing ass-first in a scuttling crab-walk towards our heroes. Like Megumi, armed with a parasite-nullifying enema and jet-powered flatulence, taking on the mutant dragon-esque alien queen and slasheriffic Sachi simultaneously in a midair battle. Yes, that really just happened. I truly hope this cheeky (pun intentional) gem from Iguchi's overactive imagination returns, sharing the love of derrieres and the walking dead with the greater world.

Fantastic Fest 2011 day two: MILOCRORZE: A LOVE STORY, INVASION OF ALIEN BIKINI, EXTRATERRESTRIAL, SLEEP TIGHT, REVENGE: A LOVE STORY

I really dug how the first and final film I saw today had "a love story" in their titles. They couldn't be more different.

Milocrorze: A Love Story (dir. Yoshimasa Ishibashi, 2011, Japan)

The supernova visual and grimy-ass, circa '94 Bristol drum'n'bass beat that welcome Milocrorze's title screen — the feature debut of CM/TV wunderkind Yoshimasa Ishibashi — is a delightful harbinger for the color explosions, elastic visuals and emotional rollercoasters contained within. And props must be due to lead Takayuki Yamada, shedding his insouciant eye-candy looks (from Gantz to Crows Zero to the spoiled nephew turned hero in 13 Assassins) for EVERY MALE LEAD in this film. He's Besson Kumagai, straight outta Swingin' London set in Shibuya, barking impassioned advice to lovelorn youth ("I give great advice to wimpy assholes!") before shouting "1,2,3,4!" and launching into one of many coordinated dance sequences with his boob-buoyant backup girls. He rolls in a zebra-striped car (still dancing w/ aforementioned honeys), talks on a wood-grain car-phone, and dispenses such tidbits as tweaking a woman's nipples on the first date (no hesitation, or she'll punch you!) and asking for condoms repeatedly at a grocery store to make the entire gravure idol-like female staff fall head over heels for you. Yamada's also Tamon, a noble samurai caught in some dystopian jidaigeki, searching for the love of his life Yuri (Anna Ishibashi, perennially surrounded by gorgeous blooms) amid Tusken Raider-like thugs and Taisho City madams. His quest from dive bars to irezumi dens leads to a geisha parlor re-imagined as a Kabukicho soapland and bears an unbelievably badass time-stretched swordplay sequence, as Tamon lays waste to every MFer in his way as he tirelessly searches for his girl. And finally Yamada's the adult version of Ovreneli Vreneligare, an orange-haired mop-top dressed in acid-green plaid and fuchsia trousers, who was just a precocious kid when he first encountered the lovely Milocrorze (absolutely NOT a real Japanese word, but when said in Japanese it sounds kind of like "miracles"). Ovreneli's been pining for the fickle Milocrorze ever since, and it's this underlying theme of heartbreak and genuine human emotion that carries Milocrorze beyond its glittery exterior and straight into our hearts.

Invasion of Alien Bikini (dir. Oh Young-doo, 2011, S.Korea)

Think about this for a bit: Yubari Fantastic Film Festival's Grand Prix award includes prize money totaling like USD 25,000. Oh Young-doo's second feature film Invasion of Alien Bikini — the title alone equalled a personal must-see — was made for about USD 5,000. And he won the Grand Prix, the first foreign director to do so at Yubari, AND he's a native Korean to boot. So a film titled Invasion of Alien Bikini is basically as awesome as you might think, despite its lack of budget. The everyman Young-gun (Hong Young-gun, co-writer of Alien Bikini and star of Oh's previous film The Neighbor Zombie) is properly brawny and awkward, donning a fake mustache whenever he's protecting neighbors from societal evils and lecturing at length on the health benefits of yam juice. His counterpart, the "bikini" in the title, is the gorgeous Harmonica (Ha Eun-jung, also in The Neighbor Zombie), who claims her name means "the peach tribe came out of the winter mud" and comes onto Young-gun after he saves her from a group of dodgy thugs in a brawl echoing Oldboy and Kick-Ass simultaneously. The pair play Jenga in Young-gun's tiny flat, and the brush of foreheads, the passing touch of hands grasping for the same Jenga block — paused for a bit for a Rolex commercial! — lead to the two making out, first tentatively, then aggressively, as Harmonica tries to jump his bones and begs for his sperm. Because it's not really Harmonica talking, it's the alien inside her, using her body as host to regenerate itself…and those thugs from the beginning are really like government scientists frantically pursuing the alien. Thing is: Young-gun's practically straightedge, i.e. no drugs, no alcohol and definitely NO SEX. There's gonna be a brawl as possessed Harmonica tries every means necessary to get what "she" needs. Oh keeps the pace percolating and camera angles creative and seductive, so the shoestring budget never shines through this pretty sexy, pretty dark gem of a film.

Extraterrestrial (dir. Nacho Vigalondo, 2011, Spain)

What exactly is the "extraterrestrial" in Fantastic Fest darling Nacho Vigalondo's new film Extraterrestrial? Is it the dozens of several mile-wide UFOs hovering over Spain, resulting in a citywide evacuation one quiet Sunday morning? Is it Julio (the excellent Julián Villagrán), the new visitor waking in a bed that's not his, after purportedly sleeping with a woman he doesn't really know? Is it Julia (the stunning Michelle Jenner), the obvious subject of attention for Julio, next-door neighbor/weirdo Angel (Carlos Areces), and — oops! — her live-in boyfriend Carlos (Raúl Cimas)…you know, the whole "women are from Venus" angle? Despite Julio's obvious attraction to Julia — at one quietly intimate point turning the DV camera he'd had trained on a nearby UFO to instead record Julia asleep — once friendly, trusting dude Carlos arrives, it becomes clear that Julia's warmed to Julio. Vigalondo deftly portrays the intricacies and difficulties of a love triangle, or Julio loving Julia, Julia loving Julio but still with Carlos, Carlos trusting Julio and loving Julia…and Angel discovering the two J's affair and trying to alert Carlos (at one point, Angel installs himself at an adjacent balcony with a ball-machine, launching tennis balls inscribed with "JULIA FOLLA CON JULIO" into their flat). The two J's tender, growing affection, despite the possible futility of it all, is really the key here, and that big spaceship outside is more a metaphor for that mysterious thing called "love".

Sleep Tight (dir. Jaume Balaguero, 2011, Spain)

To say I'd been anticipating Jaume Balaguero's latest feature film would be a grave understatement. Besides his writing and co-direction credits to the phenomenal REC and REC2, his solo directorial chillers The Nameless and Fragile burrowed deep under my skin with their respective atmospheric dread and creative scares. Sleep Tight is not horror, but it's damn terrifying and intense. When the film opens w/ Cesar (Luis Tosar, played the bruiser Malamadre in Cell 211) leaving a woman's bed in the early dawn hours, showering, dressing in uniform and taking his position at the apartment complex's front desk, we think: OK, so he's getting some. Then we see that woman again, sunny young resident Clara (Marta Etura, played Elena in Cell 211), jamming out to her iPod and greeting Cesar on her way out, we think: they're having a little role-play here to disguise their clandestine relationship. Next time we see them, though, Cesar's hiding under her bed, carefully drugging her w/ chloroform or something before getting in bed with her…and this situation just got WAY more twisted. He's been tainting her body creams and lotions with sodium hydroxide and even uses her damn toothbrush as if it were his own. Hell, we get the impression he's sleeping with her, too, unbeknownst to Clara, except she wakes up more lethargic by the day, her complexion reacting wildly to her creams. There's a girl in the building who knows of Cesar's sick relationship, and he alternately bribes and ultimately threatens her to shut up about it, as his feelings for Clara resort to rage when her U.S.-residing boyfriend returns to shack up with her. Yet you might just surprise yourself by feeling a bit of empathy for Cesar, who despite his obsessions simply really really likes her, but if only he could just tell her rather than going through all these covert maneuvers, pushing himself gradually, dangerously close to discovery.

Revenge: A Love Story (dir. Ching-Po Wong, 2011, Hong Kong)

Ching-Po Wong's Revenge: A Love Story — truly an apt title — is, in my opinion, right up there with Tom Six's The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence) in terms of onscreen brutality. Violent dispatches filmed from above bookend this whirlwind of decimating retribution, set off by a bunch of abusive cops. We're not allowed to breathe: Wong dives straight into the murder targets, young pregnant women, their unborn babies ripped from their wombs, hemorrhaging a slow death. The women's husbands are killed too, and they're all police officers. The cops locate the killer Kit (Juno Mak, co-writer of the film) and torture him into talking, at one point shoving a long needle into his ear. But Kit's got little to say except that the cops are trying to set him up AGAIN. Meanwhile, a young woman Wing (J-AV idol Sora Aoi, and full disclosure half my reason for attending the film) eviscerates her own womb, instilling an alibi for Kit's supposed killings. Cue the backstory: Kit the steamed dumpling seller, Wing the space-case cutie who runs away with him after he saves her from a torturous life in a squalid girls' home. Their moments of revery at a Christmas light-illuminated playground at night is fleeting, though. They crash with a neighbor, who just happens to be the madam of a prostitute ring, and when Kit leaves to open up his nearby dumpling stand, Wing receives a "guest", the chief of police. When Kit and Wing report the attempted rape to the neighborhood police, the full reveal ensues, as Kit is beaten and handcuffed to watch the officers take turns with Wing. Then the violence is pinned on him and he's sent away to prison for six months.
Damn! When he emerges, fingerprint-less (thanks to a gruesome sequence of him tearing each one off), he and a very pregnant Wing reunite, but revenge consumes him and that's what we're going to get and then some. There's an outrageous slo-mo chase sequence in a field, where a squad car does a midair flip just next to Kit as he sprints away, that must be seen to be believed, it's that awesome. But happiness on this earth isn't in store for the lovers, their blissful existence forever shattered by the very uniforms who are supposed to be protecting them. Wong's film was produced by Josie Ho and 852 Films, the same company behind Pang Ho-cheung's harrowing Dream Home. If that one was Hong Kong's best take on the slasher genre, then Revenge is its torpedo to true love.

Fantastic Fest 2011 day one: BLIND, HAUNTERS, THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE 2 (FULL SEQUENCE), PENUMBRA

Let's dive in.

Blind (dir. Ahn Sang-hoon, 2011, S.Korea)

This is only my second Fantastic Fest, but with that in mind I can plainly say Ahn Sang-hoo's Blind is one of my all-time favorites at the fest, and a far stronger opening than anything from last year (mind you, I wasn't in town for Let Me In). Even after seeing loads other films — 17 at the time of this posting — Blind continues to resonate as a complex, chilling, thoroughly Korean thriller.
It begins with two camera treatments, actions shots of a b-boy contest in some dingy club vs. a first-person point of view of somebody rushing to break the show up. That gaze belongs to Min Soo-ah (a wonderful Kim Ha-neul), a tough and headstrong cop, who busts in there and nabs the dancer Dong-hyun, her younger bro, practically mid-windmill. She's ragging on him, he's whining and struggling to get back in the club, so Min pulls rank and handcuffs Dong-hyun inside her squad car, pealing out onto the rain-soaked night streets. BAM - horrific collision on an overpass, sending a bloodied Min sprawling in the roadway, the camera returning to first-person to show her gradually blurring vision, her brother pleading for her as the police car teeters dangerously over the side. Min crawls towards it, passes out, the car slides off the ledge onto the freeway below. BAM.
Cut to three years later. Min's fired from the police force — not because she's blind, they claim, but because she abused her power (like handcuffing her little brother inside a car, way to play the blame game). She's perfectly mobile around home and Seoul with her trusted seeing-eye dog Wisey, a beautiful golden labrador and totally another three-dimensional character in Ahn's film. But immediately we see her struggles: drivers honk at her and call her a retard if she hesitates in crossing an intersection; she tries cooking for herself and cuts and scalds her hands. Min leaves Wisey at home one day and, taking her walking stick, visits the sanctuary-like orphanage House of Hope, where she and her bro spent their formative years. Ahn selectively amplifies sounds here, as Min recalls the house's layout, from the staircase to grandfather's clock to portable heater. She de-telescopes her walking stick whilst waiting at a taxi stand for a ride back to town (another night of dousing downpour) and, in frustration of waiting seemingly hours for a cab (everyone around her, ignorant of the fact she can't see, nabs each incoming taxi), sticks out her arm and successfully lands a ride. Only… is it a taxicab? A second branch of this story, delivered by Ahn in taunting, measured bites, is that young women from Min's neighborhood have been disappearing, drugged and kidnapped by a predator handy with sedatives and brutality. And he, Myeong-jin (Yang Yeong-jo, devolving from a suave, venomous cobra to a berzerking Jason/Michael Myers hybrid) just happened to be driving the very much NOT cab-like Peugeot that picked her up. In a turn of twisted events, Min manages to escape him (or rather, is thrown from his car), but when she returns to the police station to report the previous night's shadiness, she sets off a whole explosive domino effect of pulse-quickening cat and mouse.
SPOILERS!!!!!
One of the awesomest, nerve-wracking examples occurs in the subway, with Min and Wisey dashing through corridor after spotless corridor, aided by the video-mode feature on her iPhone (and guided, via audio jack, by nervy teen Gi-sub (Yoo Seung-ho, just sulky enough) — once an opportunistic jerk trying to cash in on Min's first encounter w/ the killer, now a target himself), with Myeong-jin in hot pursuit. Like: they're full-out running here, a blind woman with a seeing-eye dog and a perfectly healthy sadist with a penchant for scalpels. It also concludes w/ one of the film's most intense scenes, as Wisey courageously saves Min, growling and struggling with Myeong-jin, pulling him from a lift so Min can escape, never letting go even as he wildly stabs at her hide. It's incredibly intense, particularly if you're an animal lover, which is why I caution it. Yet, it's so well played: Wisey's dedication to her owner and Min's redoubled resolve to face the murder and take him down.
And Min's really the only one to do it. Despite the entire police force out looking for the guy (and Detective Ho, peppering his frantic comedy w/ set phrases like "this is bonkers!", at her side), it's Min utilizing her keen senses (the smell of lighter fluid, the sound of footsteps and raindrops) and her police-trained ass-kicking ability that puts her firmly on par w/ the killer.

Haunters (dir. Kim Min-suk, 2010)

Take one gifted young rake w/ psionic powers (he can make you break your neck, freeze in place or kill somebody) whose the epitome of evil (Gang Dong-won, a total 180 from the buttoned-up lead in Lee Myung-se's M). Pit him against a working-class bloke who bears incredible regenerative powers (he's hit by multiple cars throughout, plus other forms of projectile violence etc) AND is immune to mind control. That's Kyu-nam (TV star Koo So). What do you get? From the assistant director and screenwriter of The Good, The Bad, The Weird, you get Haunters, a bizarrely titled (Korean original title is closer to Psychics) an awesomely complex Korean superhero/sci-fi/action-comedy hybrid.
It bears mentioning that Kyu-nam's buddies Bubba and Al provide tech-savvy and comic relief that might go sorta unnoticed until you realize Bubba's from Ghana and Al from Turkey, yet these two dudes are basically fluent in Korean. But you'll probably notice that straight off (other characters continually bring the subject up, anyway). So mystery man's rub is sneaking into pawn shops, hypnotizing the staff to hand over all the money — done under stealth so the CCTVs don't pick up anything weird. And while Kyu-nam's out literally saving everyone, he has a run-in w/ mystery man that spirals into an all-out, nigh-apocalyptic showdown. Literally Kyu-nam vs. the world, or every resident of Seoul that comes in contact w/ mystery man. Director Kim doesn't give too much away, like origin stories for our main protagonist and antagonist, and that's a good thing. Better to dive straight into the action, knowing "this guy is good" and "this guy is bad, and he's gotta be stopped or else".

The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence) (dir. Tom Six, 2011, Netherlands)

To those who have seen Tom Six's notorious horror film The Human Centipede: did it not shock you enough? Did you like want to see the surgery and aftereffects in greater detail? Did you find yourself laughing at inopportune moments? Did you then dare Six to like REALLY bring it in his promised sequel, The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence)?
Guess what? He absolutely extremely did. And if you found part one too shocking or too graphic and offensive for your tastes, well this one is like a billion times more brutal. Like Six explained at the Q&A of HCII's world premiere, part one was psychological: setting the tone, calling it "medically accurate", putting the notion and effect in our heads. Part two, therefore, is the physical, the big reveal, all the gory details.
It's as grimy and damp as the first film was clinical and pristine, set mostly in an underground car-park in London (where new antagonist Martin works) and a mildew-struck empty warehouse (where Martin acts out his fantasies), shot (almost) entirely in b&w. Because this squat, sweaty asthmatic is majorly obsessed with The Human Centipede, keeping a detailed scrapbook of Dr. Heiter's surgical procedures and general fanboy memorabilia. HCII even begins with the end of part one, literally, screening on Martin's laptop in his tiny office at the car-park. His modus operandi on tracking down prey is antipodean to Heiter's: Martin prefers a crowbar, sucking down hits of Ventolin in between smackdowns. He uses duct tape to seal wounds, a staple-gun over stitches, a hammer to knock out teeth. And lemme say something here: the teeth extraction scenes are severe, but for me the most acutely harsh instance of teeth extraction on film is Andrey Iskanov's unflinching Philosophy of a Knife — and further indication that a film need not be in color to be absolutely gruesome. Oh that (almost) entirely b&w quip from earlier? If you'd heard the buzz about HCII being shot in b&w w/ like "select brown highlights", one guess where those come in, after Martin's roughly assembled his very own human centipede! Thing is: Six takes it there, layering violent scene upon violent scene until it's a blur of brutality and bodily fluids w/ practically no room to take a breath. Then it's over, and I'll not give away the ending, but should you decide to see this film (coming to NYC and over a dozen other U.S. cities OCT 7 and nationwide On Demand OCT 12) and last 'til the very end, you just may be surprised at how it all turns out.
(The Human Centipede 2 image caption credit: copyright 2011 Six Entertainment)

Penumbra (dirs. Adrián & Ramiro Garcia Bogliano, 2011)

The Boglianos, maestros of chiller Cold Sweat (screened at SXSW 2011) and participant in upcoming horror anthology The ABCs of Death, deliver a sensorially jarring thriller set in ramshackle Buenos Aires. A purposefully cacophonous soundtrack, wild camerawork and lots and lots of numbing, cantankerous dialogue — mostly delivered by stuck-up lawyer Marga (Spanish actress Cristina Bondo) either on one of her many cell phone conversations or to anyone else onscreen who makes the grievous error of listening to her — equals one discomfiting view. This is compounded by the impending solar eclipse outside and the many Argentinian locals questioning Marga's wellbeing — "are you feeling OK?" — as she sets up a meet-and-greet with a supposed realtor in a vacant apartment flat whilst talking smack about how dirty Buenos Aires is and how she cannot wait to return to Barcelona. More and more visitors apparently involved with the flat's lease arrive, talking amongst themselves in encoded bursts as they seem to be plotting something sinister against Marga, something that somehow relates to the solar eclipse. Penumbra is not an easy watch, and if you're not a fan of lots of rapid-fire dialogue, the cast will probably annoy the hell out of you. But the gradual crescendo to whatever's gonna go down in the final act, as Marga's sanity starts fracturing under the unknown intentions of these many strange visitors, locked my interest, and the payoff is intense and darkly satisfying. Also! IFC Midnight just acquired all rights to Penumbra, which hopefully means you lucky people will get to see it properly, in a dark theatre.

Stuff to do besides Fantastic Fest

As a courtesy to my non-Austin (and non-genre film fest) friends, stuff to do besides Fantastic Fest. Though, frankly, all I'll be doing is Fantastic Fest.

fee's LIST (through 9/20)

WEDNESDAY
NYC
* Richard Serra "Junction/Cycle" @ Gagosian / 555 W 24th St. Epic? Define epic. If that means two new massive weatherproof steel configurations by the living master of monolithic Cor-Ten sculpture w/in a Chelsea gallery space, then Serra's new exhibition is totally that.

* Gabriel Orozco "Corplegados and Particles" @ Marian Goodman Gallery / 24 W 57th St. Don't expect an easy journey w/ Orozco, who just completed his highly conceptual retrospective tour that began two years ago at MoMA. He introduces two new bodies of work in this exhibition, his life-sized folded-paper "Corplegados" drawings and "Particle" paintings, utilizing grids and photographic representations of Orozco's earlier photographs (and in the same vein as his "Samurai Tree" paintings).

* Pamela Rosenkranz + Nicholas Gambaroff "This is Not My Color/The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" @ Swiss Institute / 18 Wooster St. An overdue NY exhibition for the cross-media artists, plus the inaugural show at this gallery space. I'm intrigued by Gambaroff's abstract paintings and "anti-collages" (so appropriately dubbed by Art Fag City, to Gambaroff's inclusion at this year's Independent Art Fair), and reviled — in a good way! — by Rosenkranz's skintone liquids and smeared acrylic on stretched, emergency blanket foil (second skin, anyone?).

* Carrie Moyer "Canonical" @ Canada / 55 Chrystie St. Moyer pushes her painterly technique w/ masking and transparency, bolder lifework beyond her work drawings, and a freedom of color. As Wallace Whitney writes, Moyer's paintings "lightly walk a line between Saturday morning cartoons and the fourth floor of MoMA." There you go.

AUSTIN
* Centerpiece Theater: "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (dir. Steven Spielberg, 1977) screening @ Visual Arts Center / UT Art Building, 23rd St at Trinity, 7p. Spielberg's still-magical, culturally significant alien classic should pair nicely w/ Ezra Masch's celestial "Music of the Spheres" installation.

* "Piranha" (dir. Joe Dante, 1978) screening @ Texas Spirit Theatre at Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum / 1800 Congress Ave, 7:30p/$5. Sign me up, man. Props to the Texas State History Museum for screening this American B-movie classic. You're not gonna want to skinny dip in Deep Eddy anymore, kids.

* "The Girl Who Knew Too Much" (dir. Francis D. Lyon, 1969) screening @ Alamo Drafthouse Ritz / 320 E 6th St. Lyon may be best known for editing Academy Award-winning classic "Body and Soul", the '47 bruised-knuckle film noir whose fight scenes influenced "Raging Bull". But it's his final directorial effort that is celebrated tonight, a Cali-cool caper feat. Adam West vs. Communism….plus a bunch of beautiful women filling out the cast. Also: according to Wikipedia, it has yet to be released on DVD or VHS (let alone Blu).

* "My Sucky Teen Romance" (dir. Emily Hagins, 2011) screening @ Alamo Drafthouse Village / 2700 W Anderson Ln, 7p. Teenage humans vs. teen-vampires at a sci-fi convention. Please keep reading: the Austin-based director is like 18 and this is already her third feature-length film — that she keeps to genre (her 2006 debut "Pathogen" is all zombie epidemic) and fully utilizes today's very necessary social media outlets ("MSTR", which debuted at this year's SXSW, was partially funded by crowdsourcing) earns my respect. Plus, that this is a teen vampire romance/horror film by a teen director, at least we'll get an authentic voice.

* VHS Summer: "Bad Girl's Dormitory" (dir. Tim Kincaid, 1985) + "Scream For Help" (dir. Michael Winner, 1984) @ Beerland / 711 Red River, 9p. I say, if you're featuring two VHS-only coal lumps from the dregs of mid-'80s cinema, better have 'em in a bar. That way you can drink (lots) to combat the discordant horror of "Scream For Help" (written, incredibly, by Tom "Fright Night" Holland) and the jailbait pain of "Bad Girl's Dormitory". Don't say I didn't warn you.

THURSDAY
NYC
* Mickalene Thomas "More Than Everything" @ Lehmann Maupin / 201 Chrystie St. That I can use "rhinestone-encrusted" and "quietly contemplative" in the same breath might sound funny, but it's an apt dichotomy for Thomas' latest exhibition. She guides us through a history lesson of her inspirations and sources via a salon-style arrangement of work collages, photography and drawings.

* Ad Reinhardt "Works from 1935-1945" @ The Pace Gallery / 32 E 57th St. The gallery focuses on the iconic abstract artist's early works, including some 50 geometric paintings and works on paper that bear Cubism's influence through American eyes. Reinhardt's own reductionism — specifically his famed "black" paintings of the '60s — would follow this important period.

* Tabaimo @ James Cohan Gallery / 533 W 26th St. I've been a major Tabaimo fan since I caught her debut "Hanabi-ra" video animation installation in her gallery debut back in…2005? She represented Japan at the 54th Venice Biennale this summer and returns to James Cohan in her third solo outing, presenting "BLOW" and "danDAN" (both of which premiered at Tabaimo's 2009 solo exhibition at the Yokohama Museum of Art). "BLOW" is particularly immersive, projecting its watery world as a curved ramp that you can walk through. Highly recommended!

* Zhang Enli @ Hauser & Wirth / 32 E 69th St. The gallery marks Zhang's debut solo exhibition in the U.S. with some 20 extraordinarily "ordinary" paintings, channeling a bit of Giorgio Morandi's spare still-lifes (and even Eva Hesse's particularly organic shapes) and then extinguishing some of the realism by leaving his orthogonal grids visible beneath the paint.

* Meredyth Sparks "Striped Bare, Even and Again" @ Elizabeth Dee / 545 W 20th St. The Brooklyn-based artist follows her exhibition at VeneKlasen/Werner in Berlin with more augmented digital prints on canvas, lacing them with stitching and patterned fabric, plus several sculptural works that comment on figures and events from the early 20th century.

* Jenny Saville "Continuum" @ Gagosian / 980 Madison Ave. A recent array of Saville's intensely physical figurative paintings and lyrical work drawings — her first NY exhibition since 2003.

* Aaron Johnson "Freedom from Want" @ STUX Gallery / 530 W 25th St. Johnson returns to the gallery w/ ferocity, delivering gruesomely gorgeous paintings that blend big-box Americana w/ classic mythology and compresses generations of art history into all that. His laborious technique of layering shock-color acrylic paint on clear plastic, peeling away layers and mounting the result on polyester net, is in total, visceral effect. Wipe your eyes, claw your skin, and rejoice.

* Rosy Keyser "Promethean Dub" @ Peter Blum Chelsea / 526 W 29th St. Keyser pushes the limits of her canvases in this kinetic offering of process-driven abstractions (some dotted w/ fire markings), incl. a set stretched beyond the parameters of their backings. Plus the exhibition's title just rocks.

* Vincent Desiderio @ Marlborough Chelsea / 545 W 25th St. My first up-close encounter w/ Desiderio's grand-sized "new history" style paintings came in late 2008 and left me fumbling for vocabulary. His latest explores the emotional impact of paint and scale, echoing José Clement Orozco in one and an overall period-unspecific virtuosity and menace throughout.

* Pawel Wojtasik "Nine Gates" @ Priska C. Juschka Fine Art / 547 W 27th St 2nd Fl. Wojtasik's videos are, in a word, visceral. Check the squalling "PIGS" and "LANDFILL" (you can almost smell its humidity) for evidence. He presents an investigation into transcendence via sexual passion in this exhibition, via close-up images of the body's orifices in the titular high-def video and related duratrans prints in lightboxes. And while the gallery may well steam up, at least the subject matter should look pretty.

* Emi Anrakuji "A Decent Life" @ Miyako Yoshinaga Art Prospects / 547 W 27th St 2nd Fl. The Tokyo-based photographer uses herself as subject in her dreamlike b&w prints, adding in location shots that create a film noir kind of narrative.

* Paul Winstanley @ Mitchell-Innes & Nash / 534 W 26th St. Really dreamy photorealist paintings (as if seen through sleep-blurred eyes), taken mostly from Winstanley's own photographs, that at once distance the artist from his subjects as we are drawn closer to the canvases.

* "Social Media Show" @ The Pace Gallery / 510 W 25th St. Co-presented by SVA's Video and Related Media Dept! Includes David Byrne, whose "Tight Spot" is literally wedged in the adjacent space beneath the High Line! Also feat. Christopher Baker, Aram Bartholl ("Google Portrait Series", manifested by a QR-code), Jonathan Harris, Robert Heinecken, Miranda July & Harrell Fletcher ("Learning To Love You More"), Sep Kamvar, and Penelope Umbrico!

* Richard Aldrich "Once I Was" @ Bortolami Gallery / 520 W 20th St. Aldrich's mostly abstract, obliquely figurative paintings are…damningly challenging, but they keep you looking and earnestly unearthing just what he's accomplished. Like for instance his contribution to "Le Tableau", Joe Fyfe's curated surface abstraction exhibition at Cheim & Read in 2009, was "Untitled (Grey Corner Painting)", this ghostly white and faintly smeared taupe (blood?) painting accented by an early Brice Marden-styled gray wax triangle in one corner. Other works barely manifest faces, Paul Klee-like objects, and letters as he experiments.

* Melissa Meyer @ Lennon, Weinberg Inc / 514 W 25th St. I dig Meyer's style of lyrical abstraction, particularly when she allows wetly colorful bursts of color to either dominate the canvas or minimize their respective flows, permitting a bit of soft breathing room in all the visuals. Her "9th Avenue Quartet" miniseries looks particularly promising.

* Tris Vonna-Michell @ Metro Pictures / 519 W 24th St. The youngish, rakish Brit is a hell of a storyteller. He injects some of that layered installation-narrative into his debut at the gallery, via a new sound edit combining "hahn/huhn" (meandering since 2003) and "Leipzig Calendar Works" (since 2005, recalling the peaceful '89 demonstration of E. German citizens at Stasi district headquarters in Leipzig).

* Andy Warhol "Paintings from the 1970's" @ Skarstedt Gallery / 20 E 79th St. Compare/contrast w/ the multi-decade "Liz" series opening at Gagosian tomorrow. Actually, just compare/contrast the works in this show, as the '70's find Warhol at his most iconic and yet most blatantly abstract. Think Mao and his glammed up "Ladies and Gentlemen" series vs. his "Oxidations" and "Shadows".

* Lothar Hempel "Suedehead" @ Anton Kern Gallery / 532 W 20th St. Hempel constantly, if obliquely at times, references the show's title — those modish skinhead offshoots w/ their tailored suits and prickly demeanors — via photomontages and collages imbued with steel elements, Moroccan carpets, and cast concrete.

* Heliotropes @ Saint Vitus / 1120 Manhattan Ave, Greenpoint (G to Greenpoint, 7 to Vernon Blvd/Jackson Ave), 8p/$5. My favorite all-girl doom-pop quartet headlines a night of psych-drenched heaviness, which also coincides w/ Heliotropes' Amber's birthday. I wish my birthday were at Saint Vitus! w/ Dead Stars and Chumps

* Peter Bjorn and John w/ The Suzan @ Music Hall of Williamsburg / 66 N 6th St, Williamsburg (L to Bedford), 8p/SOLD OUT. Those darling Swedish indie rockers PB&J have been touring the hell outta new LP "Gimme Some" since April, and they've got a bunch more local dates (which have been systematically selling out) before heading to the West Coast. Monday's Brooklyn Bowl show kicked things off w/ Toronto's hazy lovelies Memoryhouse, but tonight's is of particular mention as Japanese tropic-pop girls The Suzan (whose debut "Golden Week for the Poco Poco Beat" was produced by Björn Yttling) share the stage. w/ Niki & the Dove

AUSTIN
* "Julia's Eyes" (dir. Guillem Morales, 2010) screening @ Alamo Drafthouse Village / 2700 W Anderson Ln, 10p. Spain will remind you that there needn't be gratuitous violence and bloodshed to make a film viscerally scary. Just check Guillermo del Toro-produced "Julia's Eyes", where the titular character, suffering from a debilitating eye condition shared by her recently deceased (murdered?) twin sister, navigates creepy investigators and creepier nurses to sort out just what the hell is going on.

TOKYO
* Yuck @ DUO Music Exchange / 2-14-8 Dogenzaka, Shibuya-ku (JR lines to Shibuya Station), 7p/5000 yen. London's cutest indie rockers, unearthing C86 memories one set at a time via jangle-pop ditties and hook-driven propensity, conquer Tokyo. We should all be so lucky.

FRIDAY
NYC
* "Fiber Futures: Japan's Textile Pioneers" @ Japan Society / 333 W 47th St (E/M to 53rd/Lexington, 6 to 51st St). Japanese fiber art. Stay with me here, as it looks pretty dope. Now, I'd love to see Rei Kawakubo's (of Comme des Garçons) signature boiled wool or Yohji Yamamoto's timeless gabardine…but that may be reaching a bit. What we do get, in a collaboration w/ Tama University Art Museum and International Textile Network Japan, is a dynamic exhibition of artists operating comfortably w/in traditional and highly technological means, like Akio Hamatani's space-age indigo and rayon, Kyoko Ibe's gossamer mulberry nets, Hitomi Nagai's disarmingly organic cotton weave and Machiko Agano's mirrored inkjet installation…which is probably the furthest from "textile".

* Andy Warhol "Liz" @ Gagosian / 522 W 21st St. Gagosian NY wheels out its blue-chip fall program in measured doses (two new Richard Serra sculptures on WED, a slew of Jenny Saville paintings THU), concluding w/ a familiar, thorough arc of Andy Warhol's oeuvre: Elizabeth Taylor. Expect an array of Warhol silkscreens and explosively colorful paintings featuring Liz throughout her career, from archival child-actress renditions to Cleopatra and silver-screen starlet.

* Agnes Martin "The '80s: Grey Paintings" @ The Pace Gallery / 534 W 25th St. Pace marks the centennial of the seminal southwest artist's birth with an important grouping of unusually tactile, nearly monochromatic grey paintings, a departure from her subtle color washes that represented the greater part of her career.

* Matthew Barney "DJED" @ Gladstone Gallery / 530 W 21st St. I'll never forget when Barney rolled into town for "The Occidental Guest" at Gladstone, back in spring of 2006. The line for entry to the reception — I heard Bjork was there but I still don't know if that was true — was prohibitively, impossibly long, and I missed out, but still did OK w/ some girls and Tia Pol nearby. What I'm trying to say here is: this new exhibition of large-scale sculpture (from Barney's ongoing "Ancient Evenings" project, in their first NY exhibition)could well be a major to-do. So if you simply must see a monumental cast iron sculpture and other conceptual representations of the 1967 Chrysler Crown Imperial, queue up early.

* David Byrne "Tight Spot" @ The Pace Gallery / 508 W 25th St. The gallery inaugurates its new plot underneath the just-expanded High Line, immediately adjacent to Pace's one-year-young 510 acquisition, w/ a temporary site-specific installation by David Byrne called "Tight Spot". I felt like I needed to recite all that for you (and me) to grasp the nature of this thing. The Talking Head is wedging a massive, inflatable elementary school-style globe between High Line pillars, filling its interior w/ humming speakers imbued w/ his voice. You might recall Byrne's major public artwork "Playing the Building" installed way down in Battery Park City in 2008.

* "Three" (dir. Tom Tykwer, 2010) @ Angelika NY / 18 W Houston St (BDFM to Broadway/Lafayette). The awesome, dialogueless trailer for Tykwer's latest is bracing, belying the offhanded comedy that apparently propagates this love triangle. What he's injected into this familiar premise — longtime married couple each secretly has affair w/ a ruggedly handsome dude, then wife becomes pregnant…by whom? — it's something I can't put into words but seems to cut through all the noise as the three people realize their situation.

* "Escape From L.A." (dir. John Carpenter, 1996) midnight screening @ IFC Center / 323 Sixth Ave (ACE/BDFM to W 4th St). This and its classic predecessor "Escape From New York" are truly the stuff of near-future cyberpunk legend. I mean, "Escape From New York" was set in dystopian 1997, fercrissake. Here, we get "Los Angeles Island" and an electromagnetic weapon in enemy hands, and it's up to a one-eyed Kurt "Snake Plissken" Russell, armed w/ a submachine gun, a holographic projector and infinite stores of badassery, to save the day. ALSO SAT

* "School of the Holy Beast" (dir. Norifumi Suzuki, 1974) midnight screening @ Sunshine Cinema / 143 E Houston St (F to 2nd Ave). Wow!…seemingly culled from left-field in terms of creative late-night programming comes this "nunsploitation" "classic" of young Yumi Takigawa navigating lesbian mothers superior and brutal, masochistic rituals in the Sacred Heart Convent! As perverse as it is beautiful — no, seriously, Suzuki shot this in gorgeous, glossy color. ALSO SAT

* ELKS (EP release) w/ Heliotropes @ Union Pool / 484 Union Ave, Williamsburg (L/G to Lorimer), 9p/$6. Brooklyn heavies drop the "Destined for the Sun" EP, and I do believe that's some Mastodon-sized riffs and sludge I'm detecting on "Two Moons of Mars". These guys have charisma to spare, as do LIST faves Heliotropes, four women harnessing doom-rock's melodic side (w/ lots of low-end propelling their deft arrangements). w/ Iron Tides

* Peter Bjorn and John w/ The Suzan @ Bowery Ballroom / 6 Delancey St (F/JMZ to Essex/Delancey), 8p/SOLD OUT. See THU for more effusive praise on Stockholm indie-rock trio PB&J and Japanese cuties The Suzan. w/ Niki & the Dove

AUSTIN
* "Straw Dogs" (dir. Rod Lurie, 2011) in wide release. I'm totally stoked for this. It's not accurate to say I "liked" Sam Peckinpah's original, w/ Dustin Hoffman's shattered lenses iconized in the film's poster. It's brutal and it's cathartic. From the 2011 trailer, starring James Marsden as the bespectacled lead, Kate Bosworth his antebellum wife and Alexander Skarsgård leading the "good ol' boys", I've full faith Lurie's remake is gonna really take it there.

* ACL Aftershow: Smith Westerns (Chicago) + Cults (NYC) @ The Parish / 214C E 6th St, 10p/SOLD OUT. OK so here's the deal: I totally missed the boat w/ ACL Fest. I was in NY or possibly Tokyo when tix went on sale, whatever, so guess what: I won't be attending! Lucky for us, there's a bunch of ACL official after-parties, but you gotta be on the ball for 'em as this most excellent lineup, Chicago's Brit-rock-tinged Smith Westerns and NYC dream-pop cuties Cults (Madeline Follin and her ineffable voice! plus those bearded, long-haired dudes!), is sold out too! Props if you made it in: it promises to be mayjah.

* ACL Aftershow: Twin Shadow (NYC) + Cut Copy (Australia) DJ Set @ Emo's / 603 Red River, 10p/$22. George Lewis Jr. is a busy dude, bringing his glammed out pop to ACL Fest before returning to the Big Apple to play alongside LIST faves The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. Plus: I've really come around to Cut Copy (well, mostly "In Ghost Colours", though "Need You Now" from their new LP are pretty slammin' electro-pop, too), so this DJ set by 'em should be more ass-shaking grooves you can handle.

TOKYO
* PINK! Pole Dance Show @ Warehouse 702 / B1 1-4-5 Nishi-azabu, Minato-ku (Toei Oedo Line to Nishi-azabu Station, Hibiya Line to Roppongi Station), 10p/3500 yen. If I were in town, this is exactly where I'd spend my Friday night. CyberJapan hosts an all-night pole-dance performance feat. like FIFTY artisans from across this beautiful nation. The showcase incl. dancers from 052 Queen Soldierz (Yumiko, Ayumi, Tokiko), PLD, Luxurica, Japan Pole Dance (incl. Tokyo Dolores' Aloe) and Miss Pole Dance Japan 2011 champion Yukari! Then there's like two a dance-off w/ CyberJapan's own pole-dancers and an "S&M: Black x White" performance by Pink Force (Reiko, Pippi, Hirosumi, IG). I mean…just check the promo. Damn.

SATURDAY
NYC
* Roy Lichtenstein "Entablatures" @ Paula Cooper Gallery / 534 W 21st St. I have little sense of classical architecture, nor Greco-Roman revivalist stuff and early 20th C. Beaux-Arts, but that's where the consummate Pop artist drew inspiration for his early '70s "Entablatures" series. They look sort of like crown moulding to me, railroad tracks, abstracted pipes and machine gears, all incredibly reductive and horizontal.

* Frankie Rose + Dirty Beaches (Montreal) @ Glasslands / 289 Kent Ave, Williamburg (L to Bedford, JM to Marcy), 9p/$12. If Frankie Rose's hypnotic cover to The Strokes' "Soma" (plus her titling upcoming sophomore LP "Interstellar") is any indication, she's eschewing some of that doo-wop and garage-rock noise for electro sheen. But just check the harmonies (anchored by Rose's ethereal vox) and thumping rhythm, and her innate ability to emotively transport us is totally present. Alex Zhang Hungtai adds just the right dose of smoky croon, filtered through Wong Kar-Wai's lens, as Dirty Beaches. w/ Lantern

* LTJ Bukem @ Brooklyn Bowl / 61 Wythe Ave, Williamsburg (L to Bedford), 10p/$12. Bukem in session at the Bowl! Dudes and dudettes: this OJ of atmospheric drum 'n bass conquers dance-floors with percolating beats, warm basslines and sensual jazz samples. He's been doing it for nearly 25 years! Despite the absence of MC Conrad, his charismatic partner-in-crime, I've no doubt Bukem's gonna work it out.

AUSTIN
* Tim Kerr, Jim Houser & friends "MOSTLY 2+" @ Domy Books / 913 E Cesar Chavez. HUGE Jim Houser fan thanks to much exposure to his intricate cross-media oeuvre at NY's Jonathan LeVine Gallery (plus Houser repped the gallery at VOLTA NY 2011). Stoked to see what he does with Tim Kerr, who bears 20+ years of music experience along w/ his angular illustrative technique. This show is "mostly" them, though they're joined by Merrilee Challiss (equally deft w/ gorgeous menagerie assemblages and text-heavy show posters), photographer Chrissy Piper, and Dan Higgs (the post-hardcore legend and psychedelic artist).

* Ditch the Fest Fest 2 @ Cheer Up Charlie's / 1104 E 6th St, Red 7 / 611 E 7th St, Scoot Inn / 1308 E 4th St. +more, 2p (5p for Scoot Inn)/$2 per venue or $5 for wristband. Full details: http://lucythepoolde.com/ditchthefestfest. A pretty dope antidote for us lot hankering for lots and lots of bands but missed the ACL Fest boat. A bunch of local bands spread out across five downtown venues. I'd spend most of my time at Cheer Up Charlie's, which features The Sour Notes AND Elaine Greer, plus Little Lo, Alien She, Obsolete Machines and Lost River/Old River over three stages, but Scoot's got Noise Revival Orchestra and Shakey Graves (late-ish), coinciding w/ Rayon Beach and Cheap Time at Red 7. I suggest moving in one direction (either beginning at CUC/Scoot and heading west, or vice versa), but you can't really go wrong here.

TOKYO
* "Metabolism, the City of the Future" @ Mori Art Museum / Roppongi Hills Mori Tower (53F), 6-10-1 Roppongi, Minato-ku (Hibiya/Oedo Lines to Roppongi Station). The Metabolist Movement emerged in the late '50s, via a group of young Japanese architects and designers like Kisho Kurokawa, Kiyonori Kikutake and Takashi Asada. Their modus: traditional fixed forms and function in postwar Japan were obsolete, and large-scale, flexible and expandable structures exemplifying organic growth was necessary. Think Kurokawa's Nakagin Capsule Tower in Shimbashi, Tokyo, like several stacks of prefab washing machines, and Kurokawa's focus on impermanence, interchangeability and adaptability. In earthquake-prone Japan, and particularly after the devastation of March 11, the themes of the avant-garde Metabolists is evermore vital. This comprehensive exhibition traces the Metabolism movement through the urban planning Osaka Expo '70 and includes the Metabolism Lounge, a site for current and future endeavors like Kenji Ekuan's disaster relief units for the Tohoku region and Shimizu Corporation's GREEN FLOAT Project.
+ MAM Project 015: Tsang Kin-wah. The debut of Tsang's latest installation "The Fifth Seal", an immersive environment of dynamic text and sound and part of his series on philosophy, politics and spirituality. Plus! Tsang leads a talk on his project and other works in the contemporary Hong Kong art scene at 2p. Register here.

* Mitsuhito Wada 「残像の庭」@ MA2 Gallery / 3-3-8 Ebisu, Shibuya-ku (Yamanote Line to Ebisu Station). Wada converts the gallery's already iconic architectural structure into a shimmering work of art, installing specially designed pink and yellow fluorescent tubes to ignite through MA2's windows at sunset. Blue lights add additional ethereality on weekends and national holidays. Sublime.

* "Rabbit Horror 3D" (dir. Takashi Shimizu, 2011) premiere roadshow, in wide release. Alice in Wonderland. Rabbit demon. Hikari Mitsushima. In 3D. Everything I've seen about this film thus far, tiny measured doses of surreally creepy film clips, have freaked me the hell out…which includes scenes of Mitsushima in her absolute most distressed. Also: English title going forward (this was picked up by WellGo, meaning U.S. audiences may very well see it, and soon!) is "Tormented". Makes sense, but I still love "Rabbit Horror".

* 「アジョシ」/"The Man From Nowhere" (dir. Lee Jeong-beom, 2010) @ Marunouchi Toei / 3-2-17 Ginza, Chuo-ku (Tokyo Metro Ginza/Marunouchi Lines to Ginza Station). I absolutely loved this exhaustively violent, crime-riddled revenge thriller when I caught it back at Fantastic Fest 2010. Loverboy Won Bin dons his believably tough-guy persona as hardboiled, black-suited Tae-Sik (called "Ajusshi" — aka "mysterious older tough-guy" — by cutie co-lead So-Mi, wrangled into drug-running for the mob after they murder her addict mom. Thing is: the mob have this black market organ trade (you though Park Chan-wook's "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance" was disgusting?), and they've got their eyes (no pun) on So-Mi. So Tae-Sik's got to unleash the ultraviolence on the baddies to get her back.

* "Eternal Rock City 2011" showcase @ Marz / B1F 2-45-1 Kabukicho, Shinjuku-ku (JR etc to Shinjuku Station, East Exit), 11a/SOLD OUT!. Count yourself lucky if you've got advance tix to this all-day, multi-venue indie rock blowout, centered in Kabukicho's Marz but also at live-houses Motion, Marble and LOFT. Pick your poison: groovy instrumental sextet about tees and ferocious math-rockers Zazen Boys play Marz, LIST-faves lines and '80s-imbued CHARLTON handle Loft's bar stage while クリープハイプ (uh, "Creep Hype"?) and Naked Blue Star play Marble. w/ loads others (the show goes 'til at least 10p).

* NINESPICES 4th Anniversary @ NINESPICES / B1 2-1-1 Kabukicho, Shinjuku-ku (JR etc to Shinjuku Station, East Exit), 3p/1500 yen. In case you're not holding tix to "Eternal Rock City 2011", yet you're in Kabukicho during the afternoon and want to ROCK OUT, head to day 1 of NINESPICES 4th Anniversary party instead. Feat. lots of trios, like angular rockers Spinoza, post-rockers Ientupao, and the rather upbeat 軍艦オクトパス (lit. "Battleship Octopus"!).

SUNDAY
NYC
* "de Kooning: A Retrospective" @ MoMA / 11 W 53rd St (E/M to 5th Ave, 6 to 51st St). The big daddy of fall museum exhibitions. Why? 1) It's the 1st major museum exhibition devoted to Willem de Kooning's entire career — you don't need a formal degree to recognize he's a prominent figure in the Abstract Expressionist and Action painting movements — 2), and this is huge, it's non-traveling. Meaning: you want to see "de Kooning: A Retrospective", you gotta get to MoMA, b/c this massive array from MoMA's own collection, plus private and public loans that will fill the entire 6th floor gallery, will ONLY be shown at MoMA. And despite under-representing de Kooning at a fabulous, critically acclaimed "Abstract Expressionist New York" exhibition (now traveling!), the museum pulls out the big guns for this one, incl the stunning early painting "Pink Angels", plus his classic "Women" from the early '50s, b&w configurations, gestural abstractions from his later career and a bunch more. Consider this unmissable.

AUSTIN
* "Storied Past: Four Centuries of French Drawings from the Blanton" @ Blanton Museum of Art / UT Austin campus, MLK at Congress. The museum culls 58 works exemplifying the expressive and technical range of French drawings from the 16th to 19th C, from sketches and figure studies to finished drawings. Feat. works by Charles-Joseph Natoire, François Boucher, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Théodore Rousseau, Charles-Antoine Coypel and others. That much of this exhibition comes from the museum's own Suida-Manning collection (i.e. that such art exists on the UT campus) is pretty dope.

* "Sex and Zen" (dir. Michael Mak, 1991) screening @ Alamo Drafthouse Ritz / 320 E 6th St, 10p. Before there was "3D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy", like 20 years before, there was Mak's blockbuster adaptation of a 17th century Chinese sex manual that succeeded enormously at the Hong Kong box office (despite its equivalent NC-17 rating) and spun off two sequels ("Sex and Zen II" featured a young Shu Qi!), not to mention Mak's 3D revamp. Despite the lack of J-AV idols in the original, if you're the least bit tantalized in…uh, how it all began, sate your craving tonight.

TOKYO
* Torture Garden Japan @ Nishi-azabu Eleven / 1-10-11 Nishi-azabu, Minato-ku (Tokyo Metro Chiyoda Line to Nogizaka Station, Hibiya Line to Roppongi Station), 10p/4500 yen (strict dress-code!). This is the real deal, lovers of latex and the whip (and those who love to watch). Japan's largest and most notorious fetish party hosts its autumn ball, w/ Madame Pain's Boudoir Circus (Chrisalys) and Roxy Velvet's burlesque stilts performance providing visual stimulation beyond the dungeon. Plus: ear-splitting, ass-shaking beats by the cutest vinyl-clad DJs, ME:CA, RINKO, SOTA.S and the mighty Brit David TG. Have fun tonight.

MONDAY
NYC
* "The Human Factor" (dir. Otto Preminger, 1979) screening @ BAM / 30 Lafayette Ave, Ft Greene (23/45 to Nevins St, AC to Lafayette), 6:50p. Film critic Dave Kehr leads a Q&A at this screening, adapted by Tom Stoppard from Graham Greene's titular novel about British espionage and that nation's relationship w/ apartheid S. Africa. Also: this was the goddess Iman's feature film debut.

* The Pains of Being Pure at Heart @ Bowery Ballroom / 6 Delancey St (F/JMZ to Essex/Delancey), 8p/$20. Brooklyn's cutest indie-poppers The Pains turn up the volume and kick off their U.S. tour, reuniting w/ charismatic kindred Twin Shadow. If you love smiling and pogoing to pitch-perfect indie-pop, you'll want to be front and center for this. w/ Wildlyfe

* Eternal Summers (VA) + Reading Rainbow (Philly) @ Glasslands / 289 Kent Ave, Williamsburg (L to Bedford, JM to Marcy), 8p/$10. Let's hear it for coed duos! I love 'em, like the jangle-pop harmonies conjured by Eternal Summers (award for very appropriate band name) and Reading Rainbow. w/ The Hairs

AUSTIN
* "Bandits vs. Samurai Squadron" (dir. Hideo Gosha, 1978) screening @ Alamo Drafthouse Ritz / 320 E 6th St, 7p. AKA "Kumokiri Nizaemon" in original Japanese, which doesn't translate directly (the "Kumokiri" resembles clouds and fog — badass, right? — but is pronounced differently) b/c it's the the lead character's name, in real life Tatsuya "Mr. Charisma" Nakadai. There's a lot of "Kumokiri" gang in the film, in fact, exemplifying their elusive nature as, uh, professional ninja thieves. So while they're the "Bandits" in the English title, the B-movie-sounding "Samurai Squadron" are actually the Tokugawa shogunate's elite police force. Oh it's going to be bonkers, this one, mixing chanbara w/ gumshoe crime drama.

TOKYO
* 「幻獣展」/"Fantastic Beast" @ Span Art Gallery / 2-2-18 1F Ginza, Chuo-ku. (Yurakucho Line to Ginza-Itchome Station). Creepy demons and quasi-humans, straight out of medieval W. Europe, re-imagined by Japanese artists incl Mina Takada, Toru Nogawa, Katsumi Asano, Ryo Tanaka, Kozue Kuroki and the terribly awesome Leo Sawaki. On through SEPT 24, and if you're a lover of the horned one you'll not want to miss this.

TUESDAY
NYC
* Raoul de Keyser "FREEDOM" @ David Zwirner Gallery / 525 W 19th St. I was struck by the Belgian artist's sparsely abstract, yet in some cases nearly impenetrable oeuvre throughout his 2009 "Terminus" show at the gallery. That his paintings and works on paper here are mostly small-scale, I don't expect their cryptic nature to be any less diluted, though their inherent spatial elusiveness may be just the thing to inspire much contemplation.

* Yutaka Sone "Island" @ David Zwirner Gallery / 533 W 19th St. Sone's obsessively detailed, surreally realist sculpture is truly marvelous. He exhibits marble sculptures (incl. the stunning, intricate, micro-carved "Little Manhattan") and synthetic trees made from rattan, maintaining an enchanting trompe-l'oeil vibe throughout.

* Bob Dylan "The Asia Series" @ Gagosian / 980 Madison Ave. Gagosian's doing their thing, unfurling one awesome show after the next (Jenny Saville uptown, Andy Warhol's "Liz" series on 21st St, big, bad RICHARD SERRA on 24th!!), and they're keeping that intensity w/ the bard's debut NY exhibition! Because: why not? The show includes over a dozen drawings and paintings Dylan created while touring Asia in 2009-10.

* Deerhoof (Cali) @ Music Hall of Williamsburg / 66 N 6th St, Williamsburg (L to Bedford), 8p/$17. The mighty San Fran art-rockers Deerhoof unleash another undoubtedly awesome set tonight, fueled by angular riffs and Greg Saunier's manic-machine drumming and tempered by Satomi Matsuzaki's elastic prose and dance moves. w/ White Suns

* Dirty Beaches (Montreal) + Frankie Rose @ Mercury Lounge / 217 E Houston (F to 2nd Ave), 6:45p/$12. Check my love for Frankie Rose and Alex Zhang "Dirty Beaches" Hungtai on my SAT Glasslands review. That's an ideal venue for 'em, though I like how Mercury Lounge swapped for this early show, as Alex's definitely in his gritty element here.

* tUnE-yArDs @ (le) poisson rouge / 158 Bleecker St (ACE/BDFM to W 4th St, 6 to Bleecker St), 8p/$20. Merrill Garbus, the fierce spirit and potent voice behind tUnE-yArDs, is a one-woman groove army. Check single "Bizness" from her sophomore LP, all hiccuping beats, punctuating bass and Garbus' leonine howl. Amazing. w/ Prussia

AUSTIN
* "Nailgun Massacre" (dirs. Bill Leslie & Terry Lofton, 1985) screening @ Alamo Drafthouse Ritz / 320 E 6th St, 9:45p. If you've never seen this messy B-horror film and spoilers just destroy your mood, DO NOT check its Wikipedia page. B/c in like five sentences it unloads the plot and identity of the motorcycle-helmeted vigilante, wielding the titular weapon to awesome effect. And personally, I love the nailgun as a murder device. Its kill-scene in "Final Destination 3" just OWNED.

TOKYO
* Miila and the Geeks + DJs Twee Grrrls Club @ ClubAsia / 1-8 Maruyama-cho, Shibuya-ku (JR etc to Shibuya Station, Hachiko Exit), 7p/2500 yen. This is Milla and the Geek's debut LP "New Age" release party! Think of Morphine, all trundling rhythm and squawking sax, but w/ a really really cute girl (Moe Wadaka, aka Miila) fronting. Yeah I'm stoked. Plus the ineffably adorable Twee Grrrls Club DJing and live sets from THE GIRL (aka Aiha Higurashi, ex-Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her!) and Empire Factory Propaganda (from PILLS EMPIRE).

* 軍艦オクトパス @ Motion / 5F 2-45-2 Kabukicho, Shinjuku-ku (JR etc to Shinjuku Station, East Exit), 6:30p/2300 yen. Another chance to catch local prog-rock trio "Gunkan Octopus", sharing the stage w/ Tokyo-via-Hiroshima melodic indie trio Dots Dash.

CURRENT SHOWS
* "The Anxiety of Photography" @ Arthouse / 700 Congress. Matthew Thompson, the associate curator at Aspen Art Museum (which originated this exhibition) noted the fluidity of the photographic medium — plus its probable ubiquity w/ gallery visitors (i.e. nearly all of us have taken a photo, thus we have even basic understanding of "what it is" and "how it's done") — as part of his own anxiety in culling this pretty cool show together. I had a moment of anxiety, or rancor, when noting the exhibition's catalogue cover (a reproduction of Roe Ethridge's "Thanksgiving 1984") looked like a damn fashion glossy advert! Had he turned up model Hilary Rhoda's makeup or super-saturated the backdrop, it could've been a Miles Aldridge. For all I knew, they were marketing Rhoda's gold heart-shaped necklace. Wrong! In fact, this was part of Ethridge's deft modus operandi: he intentionally perverts his commercial photography in newly realized art, so like that shot of Rhoda came from Ethridge's Lancome shoot. His trickster nature is further exemplified by pairing Rhoda w/ "Pumpkin Sticker", a hugely magnified rendition of his daughter's gourd sticker, as Ethridge is just as keen to nab from what's already out there as he is getting creative w/ his own editorial shoots. That got me looking closer. Matt Keegan wants us looking at everything, like the entire gallery space, a bit more carefully, so he placed a life-size cutout of his cat Neptune, "Domestic Cat", in an otherwise bare corner. Colby Bird (subject of a superbly conceptual show at Lora Reynolds Gallery) extends images of (kinda garish, Danielle Steele et al) book-jacket photos at us in an almost still-life video "Books". And as provoking as Liz Deschenes' "Black Panel 2" might be to some, its mirroring quality spotlights us, or those around us, w/in the print's frame. So we ask: "are WE that interesting to look at?" Upstairs, I particularly dug Matt Saunders' duo, one a painted photo-negative angel, the other a direct-contact print created over a painting. Plus: Anthony Pearson's process-driven "Untitled (Pour Arrangement)", which if memory serves contained the silver nitrate-patina'd bronze cast of an unequally plaster-filled box, set atop a gorgeous walnut pedestal, bookended by two solarized prints of a blending stick run through India ink that marked up photo paper. I think. And, a small but crucial point on Sara VanDerBeek's duo: she printed both images, the smallish and dazzling "Presence" and the huge, twilit "Streamers", in their same respective scales, dismissing the illusion of the subjects' presence (or perhaps increasing it, as we can more readily visualize those same-sized objects w/in the gallery space). A few missteps: I am totally over David Benjamin Sherry and his color carnival self-portraits. If physicality in photography is needed, I would have loved to see Zipora Fried or Michele Abedes instead. Also, Mariah Robertson's photogram experimentation would have been dope juxtaposed w/ Dirk Stewen's ink-painted photo paper collage. But still, the exhibit accomplishes what it promises, in really highlighting the malleability of photography and its intrinsic ties w/ trends in the broader contemporary art world.
+ Cao Fei "Shadow Life". Cao last showed this enchanting three-narrative video work at Lombard-Freid, her NY gallery in May. The almost "Blade Runner"-slick futuristic urbanism permeating her recent works — particularly "RMB City" and its relation to her "Second Life" foundation — is stripped away, though via her adaptation of traditional shadow puppetry she maintains her unmistakably contemporary take on China today.
+ Koki Tanaka "Buckets and Balls". I really enjoyed this, Tanaka's deadpan shots at success via varying arrangements of chairs, ladders, planks and a bounced or hurled ball towards a bucket. It bites that the LA-based artist's debut in Austin occurs in a lift, but the film itself is barely three minutes long, and totally fun, so advise you to take that lift up and down 'til you've had your fill.

* Mika Tajima "The Architect's Garden" @ Visual Arts Center / UT Art Building, 23rd St at Trinity. Tajima's the artist-in-residence this fall, and she adapts her modular chromatic chaos to fill and cover the VAC's Vaulted Gallery. She pairs a grid of candy-colored spray-painted acrylic frames, her "Furniture Art" (after Erik Satie's "Musique d'ameublement"), on one gallery wall, flat-boards "The Roundabout" covered in paint and tacked-on adverts, and wheeled scaffolds lined w/ geometric silkscreens and huge letters, "Detour (1-7)" and "Untitled (Go)". You can imagine the installation reconfiguring itself, by Tajima's instruction, throughout its three-month span.
+ "Queer State(s)". Noah Simblist (VAC Curatorial Fellow) and artist David Willburn curated this Texas-tied artists group exhibition, which is like half-video art and half-not. This necessarily requires more of our time than just a quick breeze-through, but the strong visual nature of most of the art keeps our attention. We're warned going upstairs of the "strong subject matter" — which I guess is accurate if "queer" is a tough subject for the viewer, but I didn't find too many shockers. Senalka McDonald's textile-imbued photography was startling, though. The (now) San Francisco-based visual/performance artist focuses on the monstrous side of domesticity, according to her bio, displaying that w/in a crocheted gimp-suit "Force". It's not just a little unnerving. Wura-Natasha Ogunji's agonizing performance "Will I still carry water when I am a dead woman?", documented in a 10-minute video of Ogunji dragging herself along the road through Lagos, Nigeria's Ejigbo neighborhood, with two kegs of water tied to her ankles, kept me rapt. She's commenting on women's contributions and struggles kept invisible in the public and political sphere, and the existence of redemption for those efforts. Otis Ike and particularly Paul "CHRISTEENE" Soileau dare to one-up Ryan Trecartin on the immersive video environment front — but CHRISTEENE takes the prize for out-raunching Peaches AND Hunx & His Punks w/ her "Fix My Dick" music video, replete w/ woolly-chested hipster backup dancers. Were she reenacting this live, it might put her in Paul McCarthy territory. Libby Black, another San Fran-based artist, contributes a quieter side of her oeuvre (maybe you've seen her life-size recreations of glitz, like a to-scale Benz and even a Louis Vuitton retail store, at Manolo Garcia Gallery), two restrained realistic paintings of gender-ambiguous figures. On a similarly restrained note, Thomas Feulmer, based in Dallas, framed the Walmart-safe plastic covers of two gay men's interest magazines, "Attitude"'s "The Sex issue" and "DNA", then adapted their blocks of coverup color into two sublime geometric abstracts.
+ Jamie Isenstein " ". I really dug this three-part solo exhibition from Isenstein, and I urge you to take the whole thing w/ tongue held firmly in cheek, or you might not get what she's doing. For one, the ubiquitous sign-in book is part of the show, called "Book of the Dead" in case you signed it w/o checking the cover first. Don't worry. Her "installation Shots (axe, harp, log)" is pretty funny, too: three projectors on pedestals throwing images of what "should be" on those pedestals (i.e. the axe, harp and log)…considering the typical gallery-goer (and even the gullible critic!) to believe whatever's up on the pedestal is meant to be "the artwork". The best, IMO, is her dig at abstract sculpture, her "Dancing Pop-up Fishing Sculpture", a big glob of mixed fabrics and colors w/ the laughably obtuse media listing as "fabric, newspaper, glue, paint, "Worm in a Can" gag dinner mints, human leg, fishnet tights, tap shoe, or velvet curtain, human arm or velvet curtain, "Wishing I Was Fishing" or "Gone Fishing" life preservers, and pedestal" — most of which, if it even exists, is necessarily hidden inside the misshapen form.

* Colby Bird "Dust Breeds Contempt" + Jim Torok "Walton" @ Lora Reynolds Gallery / 360 Nueces St. Bird's exhibition, his first solo at the gallery, encourages repeat visits. Stuff that I witnessed opening night, incl the look of certain sculptures, promises to change throughout the show's duration. He's highlighting the mutability of artwork, from its creation and display to its adaptation in the hands of a collector (or in storage, wherever it goes after its taken off the wall or out of the gallery). An obvious one, which we're not privy to usually, is accumulation of dust. Most of his sculptures, like the candy-colored "33", mounted on two misshapen wood pillars that count as part of the assemblage, include "dust" as a medium, and if that doesn't isn't evident yet, Bird anticipates it on the work's variously flat and angled surfaces as the exhibition continues through the month. Explicit instructions for the staff to not Swiffer that dust away. It's like Walter de Maria's "Trilogies" exhibition that just opened at Houston, TX's Menil Collection: his "Channel Series" had to be literally dusted off from storage for the exhibition. Not the case w/ Bird. He's got a single framed print on view, rotated throughout the show at irregular intervals by staff (I saw this happen at the opening, as it shifted from "Howdy" to "Keira" and strongly encourage watching it), which should become pretty gnarly looking w/ dust bunnies on its display table and grime on the print's glass come November (the show runs through Nov 26). Meanwhile, Torok's super small-scale portraits of upstate NY residents exist as fixed moments in time — yet their incredible photorealism (though still painterly finesse, belying their intimate scales) reminds us of the time Torok spent w/ his neighbors and his laborious effort in painting them. Their figures' respective histories, and Torok's delicate layers of paint and gloss, are as durational as a point in time as Bird's changing works will become.

* "Wild Beasts" @ Champion / 800 Brazos St. Who's afraid of color, of paintings? Of vibrantly colorful, physically rendered, representational paintings…of stuff like portraiture and interior scenes? NYTimes' Roberta Smith writes of the Painting and Sculpture reconfigurings at MoMA, injecting those hallowed halls w/ key contributions from women artists (an EXCELLENT move) and lots and lots of experimental and increasingly non-painterly combinations. She quotes from Douglas Crimp's '81 essay "The End of Painting" in remarking on the Conceptual, Process and Video Art filling the latter part of the (newer) 4th Fl, along w/ stylistic liberties on the (older) 5th Fl, like reducing the (iconic, primary-colored) Piet Mondrian holdings and upping the biomorphic sculptures. Meanwhile in Austin, the young NY-based painter Ryan Schneider culled a potent five-artist exhibition reveling in color and canvas, in realism refracted through a 21st century prism. Check Atlanta native Shara Hughes (who's spent a lot of time in NY, plus is featured in the Saatchi Collection), whose entire current output is based on interiors — for her, "total paintings", encapsulating all her ideas and giving each of us something juicy and personal to grasp hold of. These ain't 19th Century European, I can tell you that much, though like the Met exhibition "Rooms with a View", Hughes uses outside illumination to intriguing effect. The vaguely cosmic, multiplanar composition "If You Don't Know, I Can't Tell You" opens up to floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking an autumnal backyard and a smaller De Chirico-metaphysical doghouse casting long shadows. Daniel Heidkamp — who I've seen paired w/ Schneider before, at Priska Juschka Gallery's "Big Picture" show — pairs surroundings w/ posed portraiture (hell, his ongoing modus is "en plein air"), teasing out unusual and unexpected color combinations by painting these from life. The dry, washed out Texas sun affects his "Carte Blanche" series of portraits painted in situ at Champion, particularly when compared w/ his NY portraits. Schneider throws jeweled patterns over some of his newer compositions, maintaining Skittles-hued palettes he's been championing since I've been familiar w/ his work. The new canvas "Not to Sleep, Just Rest" is one of his most exciting I've seen, cropping a nude (except for socks) female form into a wall-to-wall menagerie of floral mosaic tiles and chevron drapes; even the tabby cat's stripes play into it. While Joshua Abelow's ostensibly reductive works (think graphic symbols, numerals and shapes painted on burlap) might seem at odds w/ their wildly vivacious kindred, the geometries in Hughes' spacier interiors and particularly in Schneider's patterned compositions are totally in play here, along w/ some very intriguing, if limited, color combos. Finally Ezra Johnson reveals two painterly stop-frame animations, like 2009's "The Time of Tall Statues" (shown at Asya Geisberg Gallery this summer). His technique reminded me of vintage painted-cel animations, circa Windsor McKay's "Little Nemo in Slumberland", and if that sounds untrendy and potentially brilliant, it very much is.

* "Candy Cornbread" @ Grayduck Gallery / 608 W Monroe Dr. The rub here, in this group exhibition of six local artists, is the collaboration with East Austin screenprinting lab Red Bluff Studios, co-run by two of the participating guys, Jaime Cervantes and Satch Grimley. They executed a bunch of snappy, visually pleasing screenprints with the advising of the show's more "traditional" artists — painters Jeffrey Swanson and Mike Parsons, for example — displaying them in concert w/ their respective mediums. I tried to focus solely on "traditional" my first rotation, eschewing prints in an effort to see what the artists are "really like". Grimley was probably the most contrasted and delightfully surprising: he uses logos and litter from around his East Austin neighborhood in these collaged, resin-y reliefs. His screenprints came off like sloganeering (Ronald MacDonald in violet leaping in front of massive MMs and AHs), whereas his abstract collage works felt way more textural and complex. Swanson seemed to have a lot of fun, displaying whimsically animalike figurative paintings on wood panels, mixing color washes and hard ink lines and placing them around the wood's natural grain to vivid effect.

CLOSING SOON
TOKYO
* Yoshihiro Kikuchi "Observations of Institutional Spectrum" @ Aisho Miura Arts / B1F 2-17-3 Shibuya, Shibuya-ku (JR lines etc to Shibuya Station). Pure color intensity and variation, like a Photoshop file enlarged beyond the limits of the universe, producing bands of pixellated hues that somehow work well together.

* Ai Shinohara "My Progress" @ Gallery Momo / 2F 6-2-6 Roppongi, Minato-ku (Hibiya/Toei Oedo Lines to Roppongi Station). I love this gallery and I really dig young Kagoshima-born Shinohara. This exhibition feat. about 20 of her early watercolors and ink compositions — think Frank Frazetta filtered through a manga veil — plus some newer works. Recommended! (ENDS SAT)

NYC
* Craig McDean "SUMO" @ Half Gallery / 208 Forsyth St. I had no idea Craig McDean, the edgy and very British fashion photographer, spent a year in Japan back in '93, where he documented the traditional world of sumo. Emma Reeves curates this week-long exhibition of prints from that series, which are collected in a new limited-edition manuscript by Mörel Books that she edited. Fluidic b&w images of large males colliding isn't typical McDean, so seeing this 20-year-old series sheds new light on the photographer beyond the fashion glossies. (ENDS SUN)

NYC
*"Contemporary Art from the Collection" @ MoMA / 11 W 53rd St (E/M to 5th Ave, 6 to 51st St). The museum restages part of their cache in the 2nd Floor gallery space every other year or so, but this turnaround resonates quite well w/ me. I dug the lot, overall, but to spare you a massive treatise on the exhibition I'll pick 10 works at random and hype them up:
1. Gordon Matta-Clark "Bingo" (1973) - classic building cut from the Anarchitecturalist, three human-sized rectangles from the facade of a to-be-demolished house in Niagara Falls, NY. Walking around this large structure, both totally IDable as a former residence and yet disconcertingly alien, amplifies the effect of contemporaries like Richard Hughes.
2. Lawrence Weiner "Gloss white lacquer, sprayed for 2 minutes at 40lb pressure directly on the floor" (1968/2010) - the effect of nearly walking into this shiny circular blot on the floor (or watching others do same) is hilarious - it has a way more unexpected effect than its hot-pink kindred, like a deliquescing cotton candy, from Weiner's retrospective at the Whitney.
3. Rivane Neuenschwander "A Volta de Zé Carioca" (2004) - the comic book-style blank speech balloons in planes of solid color, one of the pieces not included in her mid-career retrospective at New Museum
4. Cady Noland "Tanya as Bandit" (1989) - a fab cut-aluminum blowup of that iconic gun-wielding Patricia Hearst publicity photo from the Symbionese Liberation Army
5. Cildo Meireles "Thread" (1990-5) - another Brazilian conceptualist (see: Neuenschwander) I need to get to know better. This gigantic block of hay, cut through w/ gold thread and accompanied, rather cheekily, by a single 18K gold needle tucked somewhere in all that, can be smelled from other galleries
6. Guerilla Girls posters from 1985-1990 - good on MoMA for including them. The sharp, effective graphic design and typography emphasize their eviscerating takes on the museum establishment and the male-artist-dominated gallery scene
7. Gedi Sibony "The Middle of the World" (2008) - incredible how a spread-out vertical blinds on the gallery floor could so easily resemble the skull of some prehistoric baleen whale
8. George Maciunas "One Year" (1973-4) - a case of brightly colored empty boxes and packets of stuff the Fluxus founder consumed that year, like a whopping 36 cartons of cultured buttermilk (for instance)
9. Huma Bhabha "Reconstruction series" (2007) - I don't think I've EVER seen Bhabha's photogravures, I'm more familiar w/ her intense assemblage-like sculpture, and those hulking yet humanistic figures appear in the shimmering b&w landscape images like wire-frame monsters.
10. Robert Morris' iconic Leo Koenig advert from 1974, the "Labyrinths - Voice - Blind Time" ad where he's shirtless and shackled, a huge chain draped across his body in exaggerated bondage mode, which I've NEVER seen the "real" thing before, accompanied quite nicely w/ the famous Lynda Benglis nude ArtForum ad from the same year.

TOKYO
* Miki Kubota "人の山" @ hpgrp Tokyo / B1F 5-1-15 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku (Chiyoda/Hanzomon/Ginza Lines to Omotesando Station). My translation: "Mountain People": Kubota creates wildly interesting sculpture using furniture as her base, sanding, polishing and cutting it to mimic greatly magnified dermis or crumpled paper. (ENDS MON)