David Matthews
At the start of the Revolutionary War, New York mayor David Matthews was the worst kind of evil: a Loyalist (Republicans didn’t exist yet, technically). To please their British bosses, Matthews and some cronies schemed to kidnap George Washington. Things didn’t work out though, one of Matthews’ co-conspirators was hung, and the mayor left the city with the Brits, proving the un-fuck-with-ability of the original George Dubyah.
Fernando Wood
Think Giuliani was bad? Mid-nineteenth century mayor Fernando Wood did worse with his Municipal Police. The force was so corrupt that the state created a replacement police agency. A long summer of police brawls and unchecked gang violence ensued, with a final battle between hundreds of coppers outside City Hall that the National Guard finally quelled. Out on bail, Wood remained in office until his Confederate allegiances and suggestion that the city secede really pissed folks off.
William “Boss” Tweed
It’s unclear what sum greedy public works commissioner Boss Tweed (1823-1878) embezzled from the city (estimates run from $20 to $300 million), but we know that he weighed a tell-tale 300 pounds. After deft reporters uncovered this greedy eater-greedy embezzler connection, Tweed was convicted. A surprisingly skilled swimmer, Tweed escaped to Cuba and then Spain, where he was apprehended. Returned to New York, he died in the Ludlow Street Jail.
James “Jimmy” Walker a.k.a. Beau James
Tabloid-devouring New Yorkers were sweet on adulterous mayor Jimmy Walker (1926-32) through several affairs with speakeasy chorus girls. People still dug Walker when he left his wife for popular showgirl Betty Compton. But when personal immorality carried over into politics things went sour: Walker was involved in a system of blackmail and bribery exploiting mainly working-class women though the Magistrate’s court. Exposed, Walker fled to Europe and married his mistress.
Donald R. Manes
Floored by ever-increasing parking fees? Could be the remnants of a system of bribes and kickbacks set up by Douglas R. Manes (Queens borough president 1971-1986). Young and popular, Manes gave business buddies strategic city jobs and created a phony company to slyly divert funds from the Parking Violations Bureau. As the law’s hammer came down, Manes committed suicide (by kitchen-knife-to-the-heart no less).
A version of this will appear in the January 30th issue of The L Magazine.
Bab'Aziz
Directed by Nacer Khemir
Parviz Shahinkhou, Maryam Hamid
Prohibitively foreign at first, this allegorical journey across Tunisian deserts is fundamentally universal. The title character – an aging blind dervish – and his precocious granddaughter, proceed along a circuitous route towards a mysterious dervish reunion. Their journey’s thematic weight crystallizes as the elder prepares for passage into the next world, and the younger nears adulthood. Elegant and sweeping cinematography throughout gives the desert a transformative presence, rather than depict it as threatening wilderness. (NR, 1:36)
Opens February 8 at Cinema Village
This capsule review appears in the January 30 issue of The L Magazine.
Parviz Shahinkhou, Maryam Hamid
Prohibitively foreign at first, this allegorical journey across Tunisian deserts is fundamentally universal. The title character – an aging blind dervish – and his precocious granddaughter, proceed along a circuitous route towards a mysterious dervish reunion. Their journey’s thematic weight crystallizes as the elder prepares for passage into the next world, and the younger nears adulthood. Elegant and sweeping cinematography throughout gives the desert a transformative presence, rather than depict it as threatening wilderness. (NR, 1:36)
Opens February 8 at Cinema Village
This capsule review appears in the January 30 issue of The L Magazine.
Korean Fusion
Film Forum serves up Hong Sang-soo’s latest delicacy
North American audiences are finally getting a taste of the work of twice Cannes Golden Palm-nominated Korean director Hong Sang-soo, whose latest film, Woman on the Beach, screens at Film Forum until January 22. Though specific to his country’s cultural situation, the film offers flavors of twenty- to thirty-something angst, and emotional and romantic insecurity, that we clearly have an appetite for (see this year’s Knocked Up, Two Days in Paris, Margot at the Wedding, The Savages, or, looking further back, Reality Bites and most Woody Allen).
North American audiences are finally getting a taste of the work of twice Cannes Golden Palm-nominated Korean director Hong Sang-soo, whose latest film, Woman on the Beach, screens at Film Forum until January 22. Though specific to his country’s cultural situation, the film offers flavors of twenty- to thirty-something angst, and emotional and romantic insecurity, that we clearly have an appetite for (see this year’s Knocked Up, Two Days in Paris, Margot at the Wedding, The Savages, or, looking further back, Reality Bites and most Woody Allen).
Woman on the Beach follows frustrated filmmaker Kim Joong-rae (Kim Seung-woo) to an off-season seaside resort with friend Won Chang-wook (Kim Tae-woo) and his sort-of girlfriend Kim Moon-sook (Ko Hyun-joung). The ensuing love triangle is unbearably awkward, and – after a night of love-making that is also fairly awkward – leaves Joong-rae obsessing over another woman, Choi Sun-hee (Song Sun-mi). Throughout, meal scenes recur as the least awkward moments in these characters’ days: all agree on the deliciousness of Korean cuisine, providing their clearest connection to a quickly-disappearing cultural tradition. That said, the director-in-the-movie (like the director of the film) has a strong hunger for other nations’ products – sushi for the former, European art cinema for the latter. By the end of Woman on the Beach we’re left with complex aftertastes of desperately realistic characters, and a movie that initially looks casual but is actually a delicate fusion of Korean and international ingredients.
With such delicious odes to modern relationships and the anxieties of early adulthood as Woman on the Beach, Hong Sang-soo is at the head table of the Korean film feast. Like other directors of this Korean new wave enjoying the banquet – Chan-wook Park (Oldboy, Lady Vengeance), Joon-ho Bong (The Host) and Ki-duk Kim (3-Iron) – Hong has an insatiable taste for cinematic fusion, combining styles and genres from disparate film traditions and simmering them in a distinctively Korean sauce. That unmistakable flavor, which all four directors share (all were born in the 1960s), is particular to a generation of Koreans growing up in a rapidly-Westernizing society.
In using this sometimes sweet, sometimes sour sauce, Hong makes subtler dishes than those coming from his compatriots’ kitchens. Woman on the Beach doesn’t trade in the wildly entertaining genre-blenders Joon-ho cooks up, nor does it resemble the strongly-stylized romance (Ki-Duk) and violence (Chan-wook) served by other chefs of Korean cinema. Hong’s dishes, like Woman on the Beach, incorporate ingredients from Ingmar Bergman, Eric Rohmer, Francois Truffaut and Robert Altman, the lot served on a bed of contemporary Korean characters and concerns. Don’t miss this opportunity for a taste of this budding Korean auteur’s new fusion cuisine.
A similar version of this review appears in the January 9 issue of the New York Press, and can be read here.
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