The Hudson Yard Dash

Staking a large portion of their financial future on real estate, the MTA recently revealed five design proposals for the Hudson Yards, which many might remember as the proposed location of an aborted new Jets stadium. The midtown Manhattan site is bordered by 33rd Street to the North, 30th Street to the South, 10th Avenue to the East and the Hudson River to the West. The Hudson Yards is easily the largest development site in Manhattan, and connects to countless other large-scale projects: the Westward extension of the 7 train, the Hudson Boulevard green corridor (running from 33rd street to 42nd street between 10th and 11th Avenues), the renovation or replacement of the Javits Convention Center, the seductive but slow-moving High Line re-development (one third of which lies in the Hudson Yards development area), and the expansion and reconstruction of Penn Station and Madison Square Garden.

The five Hudson Yards development proposals are on public display until December 3 in a small storefront space at 43rd Street and Vanderbilt Avenue (next to Grand Central Station). With posters, videos, models, pamphlets and representatives from each of the development firms, the atmosphere is that of an awkward sales pitch. This discomfort is made worse by the poor quality of the products being hawked: with a few exceptions, the proposals feature uninspired cookie-cutter architecture, speaking to the financial motives behind this project. As a sales rep from Related Companies explained, given its current financial situation, the MTA can’t afford to miss on this project. Cue the conservative aesthetics and corporate concessions: it’s like Ground Zero all over again, except without the public outcry motivated by the site’s symbolic weight.

Three of the least inspired proposals have a clear advantage right out of the gate for attaching a major corporate tenant to their project. The proposal by Related and Goldman Sachs enlists the star power of Rupert Murdoch and his News Corp., and ends up looking like an open-air mall for Mr. Murdoch’s various holdings to pedal their wares from. On the other hand, the presence of three contrasting architecture firms (Arquitectonica, KPF, Robert A. M. Stern) gives the proposal an aesthetic variety absent from many projects of this scale, though not entirely successful.

The partnership of Durst/Vornado – with Condé Nast enlisted as their major tenant – comes with a proposal whose layout is practically identical to the Related/Goldman Sachs entry, minus the apparent architectural eclecticism. Also, this is the only design that does away with a portion of the High Line. Architects FXFowle and Pelli Clarke Pelli have submitted what looks like an unusually tall and well-heeled suburban office park. The predominant glass-tower aesthetic wouldn’t seem so irresponsible if this project didn’t also involve creating a livable neighborhood from scratch – the proposals include between 3,000 and 7,000 housing units, a tokenistic percentage of which will be made permanently affordable.

The proposal by Tishman Speyer comes with the financial backing of Morgan Stanley – who would take up office at the site. To be fair, architect Helmut Jahn and landscape architect Peter Walker have at least come up with something distinctive and retro in their blatantly Modernist arrangement of rectilinear glass towers and heavily-paved public spaces. Retro-charm aside though, this proposal is mostly interesting because it’s not terrible – that doesn’t mean it’s good.

Brookfield Properties’ proposal is lacking a confidence-building corporate tenant, but has made up for it with an all-star team of architecture firms (Skidmore Owings + Merrill, Field Operations, and Diller Scofidio + Renfro among them). Their plan is architecturally spectacular (at least at this early stage), and keeps more of the street grid than any other, countering the suburbanizing tendencies such large-scale developments tend towards. On the other hand, it commits a mistake common to all the proposals to one degree or another: the systematic separation of office (on the East side of the site) and residential buildings (on the West side of the site). How can a neighborhood be safe and vibrant (and financially successful) if half of it is deserted after 6pm?

The most promising proposal comes from Extell Development and architect Steven Holl. Rather than following the other proposals and building a platform over the MTA rail yards – which have to remain operational throughout construction remember – Mr. Holl proposes a suspension bridge extending over the yards to be covered with a valley-shaped park. The plan’s buildings – whose diverse and unusual shapes are the most genuinely original of any proposal – would all lie on the Northern and Southern edges of the site, with offices, retail and residential interspersed throughout. Landscape architect Laurie Olin keeps the park space pleasantly open, with few of the glitzy corporate tie-ins and unnecessary public space gimmicks of the other proposals.

Whatever finally gets built, thankfully, it will likely look nothing like any of these proposals. At worst it will be a complete failure, an ugly office park next to some high-end condos with unused open space in between. At best, with some architectural daring and variety, as much of the street grid as possible, and successful integration with surrounding areas and development projects, an urban and economically integrated neighborhood will grow out of this all.

A similar version of this article appears on the New York Press blog, and can be found here.

Hip Hop Historicism, Live!

The Hip Hop Live Tour – with Rakim, Ghostface Killah and Brother Ali, at the Nokia Theatre last Friday – is a lot like watching three excellent but radically different Westerns from different periods (say, 1956’s The Searchers, The Wild Bunch from 1969, and 2007’s re-make of 3:10 To Yuma ). Like these films and their common genre, the Hip Hop Live Tour featured three outstanding performers doing drastically different things in the same musical style. Like The Searchers with 50s Westerns, Rakim brought hip hop’s classic period to its apex, prepping it for the transition into 90s gangsta rap. Accordingly, his stage presence is organic and doesn’t rely on gimmicks or hype men. As he proclaims in his best boasts – both from classic records with DJ Eric B., and his outstanding late 90s albums – he commands the crowd with an incredible presence and voice. Watching him perform hits from Paid in Full and Follow the Leader to a captivated audience was like being caught in a time warp and thrown back to the late 80s.

Ghostface, on the other hand, took the stage representing the next era: 90s gangsta rap. Like The Wild Bunch in the Western genre, Ghostface comes from that period in hip hop when the violence that was previously downplayed became the focus of lyrical content. His first-hand tales of drug-trafficking and gang violence epitomize the rap style that has reigned for the last 17 years. He regaled the hometown crowd with hits from his prolific solo catalogue and select verses from Wu-Tang songs, while his gigantic posse jumped, ran and danced around the stage, chiming in with the occasional verse to give Ghostface a breather. As much as he brought intensity and energy to the stage, Ghost might also have been out of breath because of the pounds and pounds of bling weighing down on his neck, another 90s trope.

After the model of the hustler-turned-hip-hop-star, Brother Ali represents a return to a more old school style of rapping. Just as 3:10 to Yuma was a re-make of a classic Western with contemporary stylistics, Ali is a classic MC re-made for a generation that’s grown up on gangsta rap. Not surprisingly then, his Friday night set was similar to Rakim’s: just a man on the mic doing his thing with passion and verve.

Criticism leveled against this tour tends to get caught up in biases of taste, not realizing that whatever style of rap one prefers, these three MCs are among the best in their genre. Instead of pitting old school against gangsta and underground rap, Hip Hop Live showcases evolution. That said the choice of a live band as accompaniment, the Rhythm Roots All-Stars, was definitely a mistake. They couldn’t do justice to the complex beats from Ghostface and Ali’s top-notch production, and the ten band-members combined with 10 to 20 posse-members often made for an over-crowded stage. One or several DJs would have been more appropriate to the show’s hip hop historicism, and provided entertainment during the many set changes.

This concert review also appears on the NYPress.com blog, and can be read here.

Brother Ali speaks clearly through the static

On Friday night Times Square’s Nokia Theatre will host the Hip Hop Live Tour, featuring local rap legends Rakim and Ghostface Killah, joined by Minneapolis underground heavyweight Brother Ali. Reached somewhere between Chicago and Bloomington, Indiana (the tour’s Monday and Tuesday shows) Ali explained – through cell phone reception black-outs – that aside from demanding much less behind-the-scenes work on his part, this tour isn’t that different from smaller ones he’s been on. “It does mean that a lot of people at these shows have never heard of me, or if they have they’ve never listened to me. In that sense, I really try to bring that intensity and energy so they’ll leave with a good first impression,” Ali explained, “so it doesn’t change my performance that much.” One thing he might want to change, though, is his cell phone service provider – or maybe he can pick up a better phone after Friday night’s show, it’s at the Nokia Theatre after all.

Whatever he does after the show, you won’t find Ali at the afterparty. His focus onstage translates to a humble presence behind the scenes, something at odds with the typical images of the rap lifestyle. This apparently goes for his co-headliners as well. “Me, Rakim and Ghost, we’re all grown men,” Ali says, “we all have families. There might be guys in the crew who are into partying and doing crazy things, but we’re past that.” Sure, the family man alibi is convincing, so is the religion explanation: Ghostface, Rakim and Brother Ali all identify as Muslim.

For Ali’s part, he is very committed to his faith, at odds as it is with the hip hop lifestyle. “I believe in the Qur’an,” Ali explains, “I’m not saying I’m perfect, but it’s a tool I’m using to be the best version of myself that I can be.” And certainly his faith has seen him through some difficulties, many of which he addresses in his most recent album Undisputed Truth. Between his divorce, concern for his son’s welfare during tours, and a difficult relationship with his father, Ali gets personal. But this process came naturally. “I’ve always wanted to make deep and personal music,” he says, “For me, good music should have you feeling like you’re experiencing life through the person you’re listening to, and that’s what I’ve always tried to do.”

Certainly Ali – not to mention Ghostface and Rakim – has mastered this skill of making us see the world through his music. His lyrics, feelings and expression – unlike his cell phone reception – are incredibly clear. To see these three onstage together backed by a ten-piece band is sure to be one of the better multi-star, multi-generation hip hop tours yet.

Nokia Theatre, Times Square, 1515 B’way (at W. 44th St.), 212-930-1950; 8, $40.

This preview also appears on the NYPress.com's blog, and can be found here.

Scouring Chelsea for modern spaces

Two recent gallery-opening-hopping excursions through Chelsea revealed a landscape beyond the rivers of cheap wine and rolling hills of salty finger food. Three specific photography exhibitions formed a commentary on the ways man-made spaces can be more-or-less (generally less) hospitable to human beings.

At the Hasted Hunt Gallery, the artist Lynne Cohen greeted friends and admirers of her photographs with a warm smile, and the usual postcard-sized exhibition flyer had been replaced by complementary exhibition posters for all. Her small format pictures in black and white show modern interiors that would be very awkward to live in and even oppressive to look at, had they not been altered by human interaction. In her pictures, minimalist living rooms are made inhabitable with the addition of ugly recliners and TVs, cold and isolating offices show the comforting wear and tear of their usage, and gaudy decorations undermine the uncomfortable sparseness of hallways and lobbies. Cohen’s pictures (on display until December 22) suggest a great sense of humor: she revels in the tastelessness of these modifications, just as she acknowledges their necessity.

Thomas Misik takes a different approach to alienating modern interiors. Unfortunately, he hadn’t shown up to his reception at Galerie Poller when it started at six – there was wine, however, and the familiar postcard-sized flyers. His photographs (on display until January 12) are in color, and much larger than Cohen’s. Instead of trying to show how spaces can adapt to human activity, Misik photographs modern interiors as though no person had ever set foot in them, like show-pieces meant for looking, not living. In his photographs we marvel at the poetic colors and shapes of the spaces we can create, how tastefully we can arrange furniture in them, like ornaments on a regal Christmas tree. Eventually though, the uncanny absence of human activity becomes undeniable, and Misik’s message crystallizes: how do we reconcile our obvious creativity, inventiveness and aesthetic refinement to practicality, comfort and livability?

A week earlier, an exhibition opened at the Charles Cowles Gallery with similar concerns, explored through completely different means. The photographer Edward Burtynsky was on hand, though he was only accessible to those important people (i.e. not me) allowed into the reception taking place in the gallery’s rearmost room. Is this because his pictures of industrial landscapes have struck such a chord with today’s art trend-setters that he now needs celebrity-style security strategies? Unlikely, although somebody did make a (very good) movie just about him and his work. This exhibition, “Quarries” (continuing through December 1), features large-scale color photographs of excavation sites around the world. If we say that Cohen and Misik are concerned with the ways modern humans construct their interiors, Burtynsky’s photographs capture the devastating ways modern humans reconstruct their exteriors – that is, nature.

These artists’ photographs are well worth seeing in their Chelsea settings rather than online or in book form (come on, it’s free and fun): the investigations of modern places and spaces are all the more pertinent when witnessed in their galleries, the ultimate sparse and alienating modern spaces. How then, we should ask, to make these galleries more comfortable and congenial? Certainly not by hiding the artists in the back room behind a velvet rope; maybe some comfortable couches and chairs would help. Until then, cheap wine, finger food and poster- rather than postcard-sized exhibition flyers will have to do.

A version of this article can be found on the New York Press's blog here.

Young love ain’t always fun love

IFC brings back a beautiful early Bergman downer

The recently-deceased Swedish director Ingmar Bergman always made women’s films, though not in the sense that The Jane Austen Book Club is a women’s film. Bergman’s movies often focus on a woman plunging deeper into misery as her story progresses, confined as she is by the structures of a relentlessly misogynist society. In this respect Bergman’s Monika, re-released at IFC this week, is undoubtedly a women’s film, but also a youth film. Originally released in 1953, Monika is certainly not a prototypic American Pie-style youth film. However, a softer version of Bergman’s brutal coming-of-age love story can be found in the 1988 Tom Hanks vehicle Big. Both films place a premium on youth, showing in more or less sophisticated ways that passage into adulthood, with its demands and responsibilities, cannot be reversed.

Monika (Harriet Andersson) and Harry (Lars Ekborg), the central couple in this early Bergman gem, learn that the hard way. Kissing on a hilltop above Stockholm’s mid-century skyline, whose only prominent features are church spires and smokestacks, Monika and Harry are very literally seeing their future. For him, a soul-crushing series of labor-intensive factory jobs; for her, a pious domestic isolation, raising children and looking for something better. Inescapable as this outcome is, Bergman makes his protagonists’ transition into adulthood all the more painful by first granting them the ultimate teen fantasy.

Emboldened by their exciting romance, the couple leaves their families and jobs and takes Harry’s father’s boat to the seaside for the summer. A slowly crumbling Edenic fantasy ensues. Initially, Monika and Harry revel in their isolation, with a daily routine of seaside sex, sunbathing and skinny dipping. The couple’s urban anxieties catch up to them quickly though, and their strategies of denial become harder to maintain. They devolve into animalistic scavengers, most clearly in a scene where Monika crawls from a botched food heist on hands and knees with a roast tucked under her arm. As their summer comes to a cold close, sustenance and self-preservation are their only concerns: they have no food, insufficient shelter and Monika is pregnant.

In Monika’s final third, the couple leaves the stark beauty of their seaside escape, returning defeated to a cold and austere Stockholm. Harry takes a job, Monika takes a lover, and the redemption implied by childbirth in many films lasts for about half a scene. The little girl quickly extenuates their misery, fatigue and financial woes, also impeding any intimacy between Harry and Monika. By Monika’s closing scenes, Bergman’s original opposition between the bubbly young couple and the assortment of unhappy adults (bosses, co-workers, neighbors and parents) has collapsed into itself: Monika and Harry, now separated, epitomize the misery they wanted so badly to escape. This relentlessly tragic narrative, longtime Bergman collaborator Gunnar Fischer’s outstanding cinematography and the central pair’s impeccable acting, make Monika a fully-realized Bergman psychodrama, rather than an early model for his later work.

A similar version of this review appears in the November 14 New York Press and can be found here.

The Indie Insurgency

Strong cast and script raise low-budget terrorism thriller above its means

The indie thriller The Insurgents addresses political discontent and terrorism in post-9/11 New York more intelligently and honestly than its big-budget counterparts. Currently at the Cobble Hill Theatre, and available on bare-bones DVD November 20, it focuses on a foursome of would-be terrorists planning a downtown Manhattan attack.

The Insurgent’s ostensible protagonist is the group’s lone female member, ex-sex worker Hana (Juliette Marquis). The narrative is constructed around her participation in the attack, particularly as she becomes a bargaining chip the men deploy to keep each other in check. Their discontent with the current political climate does not, apparently, include discontent with its misogyny. James (Michael Mosley), the object of Hana’s faked affection, turns out to be a CIA agent posing as a pawn to Robert’s machinations. Hana’s slightly more genuine love interest is Iraq veteran Marcus (Henry Simmons), sent home when an accident leaves him castrated. Epitome of the emasculated brute type, Marcus articulates a frightening nothing-to-lose abandon that confuses the personal with the political: if he can’t assert his masculinity by fucking women, the logic goes, he might as well die attacking the system that destroyed his manhood (and some less-important things like Iraq). The plot’s mastermind is Robert (John Shea), a charismatic leftist author and ex-CIA agent whose charm and intelligence bring his three co-conspirators onboard. In the most disquieting moments of writer-director Scott Dacko’s film, Robert’s eloquent diatribes tap into viewers’ cynicism and discontent, nearly eliciting our support for his scheme.

As double-crossings and covert agendas emerge, however, The Insurgents starts to focus less on terrorism and more on acting. The talented cast-members strive to decipher each others’ performances, all the while trying to maintain their own multiple roles. Between its political drama investigation – how can individual citizens change a spiraling system – and its more classic thriller elements – how many lies can each character convincingly balance – the acting and writing in The Insurgents keeps it compelling and nerve-wracking to the last moment.

A similar version of this review appears on the New York Press blog and can be seen here.

The Changing Value of Casey Affleck

From wimpy sidekick to conflicted leading man

Casey Affleck’s progression towards movie star status has come full circle in recent months. Leading roles in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and Gone Baby Gone have brought him further into a limelight all his own, no longer stuck sharing the spotlight with his spotlight-hogging superstar brother Ben Affleck. The one is a made to measure Hollywood leading man, the other his shy, uncertain, less transparent sibling. The recent release of Gone Baby Gone, Ben’s directorial debut and arguably Casey’s starring-role debut, has, by some accounts, brought Casey closer to an even standing with his brother in the Hollywood pecking order.

But Casey’s evolution into a star, like any evolution, bares the traces of its origins – which all lead back to Ben. Our first encounters with him came from bit parts in his older brother’s stardom-sparking films (Chasing Amy, Good Will Hunting). His type-casting as the pathetic but endearing weakling shaped his early screen persona into something like the Squeaky Voiced Teen character on The Simpsons. The next few roles for Casey confirmed this, with roles in the American Pie and Ocean’s 11, 12, and 13 series making him the meek punching bag for the jokes and fraternal abuses of older, bigger and stronger cohorts. Even Casey’s turn as Fortinbras in Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet couldn’t free him from the weak underling mold. And then came Gus Van Sant’s Gerry, in which Casey plays the weaker member of a duo alongside Matt Damon. For Casey’s part, Gerry could be an existential meditation on his potential as an emerging leading man alongside the older, already established, and more traditional movie star (with Matt Damon standing-in for his Good Will Hunting co-writer Ben). His brother’s shadow over Casey is also explicitly presnet in the Ocean series: the guy who plays his macho brother (Scott Caan) is taller, broader, and handsomer; basically the closest Steven Soderbergh could get to casting Ben Affleck without blowing the rest of his budget on another A-list Hollywood star.

But just as this shell started to envelope Casey, he started chipping away at it from the inside out. In the flawed yet side-splitting ensemble comedy Drowning Mona, Casey wears his usual stripes, playing the too-nice-for-his-own-good Bobby Calzone. But in one scene, an editorialized retelling of a confrontation between Bobby and the deceased madwoman Mona Dearly (Bette Midler), we get a glimpse of the Casey Affleck that we’ve started seeing this fall. As Casey explosively threatens Mona, “I’ll rip out your ovaries!” we laugh at how absurd this is coming from the scrawny push-over, but there’s also a moment of shock at how aggressive and slimy Casey could be.

And if this other Casey Affleck was conceived in a momentary fling during Drowning Mona, his birth was The Assassination of Jesse James. Again, Casey is cast alongside a Ben stand-in, another epitome of movie superstardom, Brad Pitt. This time, however, Casey is undoubtedly the film’s focus. And if his character’s fame within the movie is contingent on the older character’s notoriety, Casey’s performance is most impressive because it’s so much better than Pitt’s. Billed as a meditation on contemporary celebrity culture, The Assassination of Jesse James could also be construed as Casey’s search for his own place within contemporary movie culture. After killing Pitt’s Jesse James, Casey’s Robert Ford comes into his own; as if to become a leading man on his own terms Casey had to kill off the ruling movie star archetype embodied by Pitt. In the film’s outstanding epilogue, Ford re-enacts his killing of James hundreds of times to sold-out theatres. This meta-ending allows Casey, and his character Ford, to come into the last stage of their parallel developments. After the shy, mumbling sidekick roles we’ve gotten used to, a confident, swaggering, tortured and reckless actor emerges.

This same conflicted Casey inhabits the role of Patrick Kenzie in Ben’s Gone Baby Gone. Assailed by desperation on all sides, Casey’s embattled private investigator is left with no choice but to leap into the fray of violence that defines his environment. In doing so, Casey brings a sensitivity and vulnerability to the familiar urban investigator type, his calling card as the first in a new mold of leading man.

This article can also be found on the New York Press website here.