If you've never seen the inimitable performance artist John Kelly now's your chance: The Escape Artist (Performance Space 122 thru TONIGHT!!!)
or...
Also last chance today, the Amsterdam-based avant-garde theater collective Dood Paard stage Schnitzler's play La Ronde as Reigen ad lib at the Guggenheim. Should be amazing or....
Snippet of Viva bird-brain - but Sigmund Freud was so amazed by this 1897 play that he wrote to the playwright stating that the play had elucidated every 'theme' of Freud's and Schnitzler was an artist 'to boot'!

And the great improv music, video etc Tony Conrad gives a lecture at the SVA (Tues)
For couch potatoes, the Mubi website streams 4 favorite films from past Tribeca festivals for @$2.99.

Perhaps top of my best things I did to celebrate Easter list was listening to BBC Radio 4's program on Carl Sagan, the guy who popularized astronomy years ago. As a kid he went to the public library and with his first card found a book informing that our sun was a star only close-up. "Suddenly," he said, "the universe became much larger than Brooklyn". I know just how he must've felt ;) Sagan was also the mover/shaker behind SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence)

Does the new film of Marvel comic Thor gets us thinking about our place in the cosmos or does it just thump us on the head? Well many will be pleasantly surprised at just how eloquently this film plays. Scriptwise, it doesn't labour over the original comic's detail of having Thor taught a lesson by his godly dad Odin and cast into a disabled human medical student body (Donald Blake). Instead it thrusts him into the New Mexico desert into the hands of mortals Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) et al, cuts to back story of the Frost Giants, then back to the desert again and off we go. Director Kenneth Branagh tells the tale with all the clarity garnered from his experience directing Shakespeare over the millennia. Subtle it isn't but it's cast so well that every nuance of Dr. Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgard) is both wryly funny and plot anchoring as are many of the other performances. Anthony Hopkins as Odin is so fine an actor that he only needs one eye to convey a myriad of emotions. Thor isn't Iron Man cutting-edge Marvel cinema but it's oldy-worldy knightly quality really is quite endearing.

It's also a timely somewhat liberally politically incorrect film for younger audiences with it's message along the lines of: we shouldn't go seeking war but we must always be prepared should it go seeking us. The 3D element (at least at the screening I attended) did seem unintentionally too dark (a much publicized drawback of some 3D). At first you think it's artistic ombre but when the brighter scenes of the hospital or the daylight desert also seem dim you do begin to wonder. Maybe that won't be a problem in the IMAX version and it surely couldn't have been an oversight for someone as 'on the ball' as Branagh . But if Natalie Portman's Jane Foster character fosters a renewed interest in investigating the cosmos (albeit for they hope they a hunk like Thor might walk into the life of their data) then so much the better. Carl Sagan would not doubt have agreed and again rankled the stuffy scientific elite as he did with his many TV appearances.
Jerry Robinson (Ambassador of Comics) gives a talk Thurs at the SVA

Loads of other cool things to do (if you're not glued to the Royal Loo (English expression that I picked up on my visit - just the expression;) There's even an awards ceremony (not yet with Royal patronage)
Dana Rossi hosts a monthly merging of stories and songs at Poisson Rouge. Six artists--writers, comics, actors and musicians--tell the stories they associate with songs of their choosing.
Bitforms gallery has Recorded Delivery by Brit Tim Knowles (1st NYC show).
Eli Ping is at Susan Inglett Gallery
Special event with photographer Will Steacy with a Saturday talk at Michael Mazzeo
The Camera Club of New York shows photos of New Yorker Gerald Vezzuso - Mexico City's Distrito Federal.
Ooooh, and One Story magazine has a Debutante Ball benefit at The Invisible Dog (tickets start at $50, Fri 7-11pm)

Oh, and think I came to a rapprochement with Mr. Fish and his photos, by the way. Apologies to any artists who might have been a bit miffed at his antics. Should be some pics to see of last week's Marianne Boesky's uptown opening. Any day.


Don't think he can read (in spite of his good eye;) so let me tell you I heaved a sigh of relief at not having a temperamental fish to add to my problems. What is it with Viva and animals! I'm not the Mother Teresa of all things great and small you know. Cheese and sprinkhles!

Oh, I gotta go...I don't normally have visitors... ;)

Artwork in FISH JONES' photos copyright Sean Landers and Boesky Gallery

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I intimated to you that Viva advised Mr. Fish not to be so 'enthusiastic' with Flickr. He now sees that showing every photo he takes might lead to people mistakenly thinking that he's a "flash in the water". And as much as he would like to embrace the eclecticism of electric eels it's really not his style. So we await Mr. Fish's photo album.

If you've $80 to spare for a good cause then tomorrow 8pm-midnight is the Mabou Mines 40th Anniversary Gala Benefit at Paula Cooper Gallery in the space where they were born. The experimental Wooster Group are far better known these days in theater circles but Mabou Mines have consistently delivered ground-breaking performances.
Or there's An Evening with Laurence Gavron (as part of MoMA's Modern Mondays April 25, 7:00 p.m.) - Senegalese writer/filmmaker.

MoMA in tandem with the Austrian Film Museum has a 6-week Dziga Vertov retrospective - he's most famous for his Man With a Movie Camera (1929) but little of his other oevre ever gets shown.
And if you thought the Russians and the Americans had the space lead listen to the extraordinary tale of BBC Radio 3 Picard in Space-Out of This Stratosphere an opera by Goldfrapp's Will Gregory. The music may not always be as distinguished as its subject, but what a great idea.

And the last week of MoMA's comprehensive Charles Burnett: The Power to Endure (April 6-25)

In collaboration with the Museum of the Moving Image, the Fashion in Film Festival: Birds of Paradise is in full swing. The artist, photographer, and filmmaker Steven Arnold has an evening (Fri Ap 22) introduced by Stuart Comer from the Tate Modern, London with other rarely seen delights next weekend.
On Wed 20 Dirty Looks, a monthly platform for queer experimental film and video presents Michael Robinson / Jack Smith
This news story from liberal London's central West London Soho is rather disturbing
Gay rights protest at Soho pub that ejected two men kissing

Sean Landers' A Midnight Modern Conversation sounds just right for Marianne Boesky's uptown space from Ap 21 (coinciding with his show at Friedrich Petzel Gallery, Alone Around the World, May 7th). His point of departure was Hogath's 1732 painting hanging in The Yale Center for British Art.

And Tribeca Film Fest is upon us again from Thursday- Fire in Babylon is the hitherto untold story of West Indian cricketeers. I haven't the foggiest notion about cricket but it's not only a fascinating doco but also funny. Loads of free events as well as those ticketed in the Festival. The Tribeca Drive-In outdoor screening series opens Thurs 21 (doors open 6pm for dusk start) with 1980 classic Fame. But if that's just too passe, Haiti’s most celebrated big band Septentrional performs live jazz fusion Friday night! The free Pen to Paper panels at Barnes & Nobel, Union Square and SVA Theater afternoon panels. Tribeca (Online) Film Festival features five free areas: Festival Streaming Room (6 features 18 short films) , Live From..., Tribeca Q&A, Filmmaker Feed, and the Future of Film blog. Six films will be released nationwide via pay for video-on-demand with subsequent theater roll out.

Now, as you might have gathered, for some reason Viva has become somewhat of a bat (a very clean lovable one, though. Don't smirk). But as luck may have it, she just happened to meet a fish who likes to be out of water. So: drum roll please- drrrrdrrrrdrrrrrrrdrrrr...............................
Cosmic Viva wishes to introduce the cosmos to the one, the only FISH JONES - the only pixel popping, digital diving, aquatic acqua-tinting snapper in the known H2O. I wanted to credit him as Vodka Fin but he just wouldn't have it. No way.

An he insisted on his own Flickr site (well he is only a fish, give 'im time to get fancy finned with the web). So for your delectation the Fish Jones openings over the weekend. He is very particular so can't go to everything but will do his best not to do too much smooching and mooching, consummate pro that he is.

Picasso and Marie-Thérèse
Melissa Murray and
Steven Dobbin at Causey Contemporary
Sarah Frost's Arsenal (P.P.O.W.)

Given his, umm, fishosity Mr. FISH does need a carer to accompany him. But Judy does try to keep a low profile - as does Mr. Fish as modesty is a must in the bowl called FISH.
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Viva's been devouring some more darkened rooms again this week. Director Kelly Reichardt turns her precise, sure-footed eye to a wagon train of settlers in 1845 Oregon. On pixel paper the story doesn't sound like much. But the transcendental quality of Meek's Cutoff will stay with the viewer for sometime to come.

The 'fly on the wall' doco Armadillo shows with eye-opening detail the daily round of Danish troops in Afghanistan is also just released. But writer/director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun's A Screaming Man (Un homme qui crie) is the daily round of Adam, an aging Chad luxury hotel pool attendant, as civil war creeps ever more closely. Once a champion swimmer he loves his job and is alas demoted by the hotel's new owners to the security gate - his own son taking his place. What transpires is a sad, soul searching tale of one ordinary family - lives irrevocably torn apart by a war not of their making.

The title is a quote from writer Aimé Césaire, "A screaming man is not a dancing bear." Mahamat-Saleh Haroun: "If there's a lesson in this film it's how to turn from spectator into player to change the course of history." The director has acknowledged the influence of Japanese director Ozu as well as Hou Hsiao-Hsien. An equally fascinating and underrated Japanese director is Mikio Naruse whose 1960When a Woman Ascends the Stairs is re-released this week as part of Film Forum's 5 Japanese Divas season. Criterion issued last month Silent Naruse to complement their other Naruse DVDs and Eureka's box set is also fab. It was only in recent decades that this director was resurrected from obscurity.
Haven't seen The Princess of Montpensier yet but everything French director Bertrand Tavernier does illuminates one's life.
And IFC have The Imperialists Are Still Alive!

For sheer fun, the Ice Age animation team brightens our Easter with Rio (3D). It's age range is probably broader than Hop and there isn't a favela in site to ruffle our feathers. But what's not to like about these well drawn memorable characters! And we've all met a two-faced cocky cockatoo like Nigel (he gets a great come-uppance). Not great PR for the Australian Feather Board but hey, there are enough nice Australians out there to make up for the Nigels of this world. Jermaine Clement (Flight of the Conchords) - and ironically a New Zealander- does the voice-over and co-wrote the bird's lines. Bird-butt kickin' soundtrack playlist too.
Quentin Tarantino and his macaw neighbours

Now it's time for Viva to groom her own feathers, throw my sunglasses out the window to get rid of the marmoset that's been on my couch for a week and head off to see the photos of Emma Bee Bernstein (Janet Kurnatowski Gallery)

Forgot to mention that Dogtooth (from last year's New Directors/New Films) is out on Kino DVD.

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At the White Box - presented by Electronic Music Foundation - The Extended Piano Festival presents a series of concerts and installations highlighting the unique and rarely composed-for Disklavier. A robotic, MIDI controlled, grand piano, the Disklavier allows composers to create works with techniques and dynamics beyond human capabilities and to be presented without a performer. Tonight April 2nd (8 p.m) at White Box, Steve Horowitz celebrates the release of Stations of the Breath: Music for Disklavier (2010) - a disc highlighting the composer's activities on the Yamaha Disklavier, both in solo performance/composition and in duet settings. Live performers include Dave Eggar on cello, Elliott Sharp on guitar/bass clarinet, and Michael Evans on percussion. During the day Sat/Sun, Sharp and Horowitz have curated installed works for the Disklavier. Opening April 6 at the gallery is the first comprehensive US survey of Braco Dimitrijevic credited as the first Eastern European conceptual artist to gain international recognition.

Two Gates of Sleep (Video interview with HERE) has opened at ReRun Gastropub Theater (the 60 seater that opened last summer) and is curated by the critic and independent film distributor Aaron Hillis of Greencine website fame.

And you'd have to be pretty 'high-minded' not to enjoy Rubber (Cinema Village). Dispensing with the oft-troublesome lead actor, writer/director/editor/camera Quentin Dupieux casts a tyre with a mind if not a heart in the lead without ever resorting to a whiff of melting product placement. If your date for the night is severely challenged in conversational prowess, then not even the most macho quarterback, ney Rosie the Riveter, would leave you standing on the street-corner after this. A Freudian tyre movie - there is hope for the world after all;)

Katy Grannan's new photos and video are at Salon 94 in the Bowery

Speaking of dates, I was naughty enough once (with someone who I suspected of being 'dopey' - and I'm talkin' Disney character not drugs) to send someone in my second date place who looked sort of like me (but only if you'd stood on your head having downed several margaritas and had your eye-balls hanging out). Alas, the sod couldn't even tell the difference. Under table texting for once became a blessing.

So if you're lucky enough to nab a human who's even half-way observant (Michelangelo Frammartino's Le Quattro Volte filmed in Calabria (southern Italy) will see if your companion is watching the screen or their, umm, whatever. There's no dialogue in this film and nothing happens except the world turns and we see everything happen in this rural daily round. Its elemental nature reminded me of that Turkish film at the Tribeca Fest some years back Times and Winds only different.
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