Sunday, August 21
Women’s Rights and Lefts
We know you’re tempted—every so often, we are too! We’re not talking about having a big burrito for lunch (well, in a sense we always are). We’re talking about going topless in public—an act that in many places is legal for men and forbidden for women. The advocacy group GoTopless is standing up for you, women seeking an unbinding in Bryant Park: today is National Go Topless Day, a day of shirtless solidarity during which women shall march wearing nothing and men will wear bikini tops in solidarity with the struggle for coverage equality. New York’s march takes off from Columbus Circle and will waggle brazenly through the city. (The relatively modest are welcome: red tape may be worn, if the marcher insists.)
March begins at Central Park’s Columbus Circle entrance, 12 p.m.; visit gotopless.org for information.
Monday, August 22
Virginia Avenue Wolf
Hollywood does plenty of things well—convincing us that apes not merely can talk but also can outsmart that clever James Franco, for instance—but those West Coasters haven’t done decent political satire in ages. (The last attempt we saw may have been Oliver Stone’s George W. Bush biopic, about which the less said the better!) Tonight, BAM screens an example of Hollywood doing it the right way with The Werewolf of Washington, a 1973 flick playing off Nixon-era paranoia by presuming that a White House aide, bitten by a Hungarian werewolf, might spread chaos in D.C. in a manner fairly analogous to the Watergate crisis. Well, of course! Director Milton Moses Ginsberg will be in attendance to introduce his film—feel free to ask him how we might bring back satire (and if a werewolf = Nixon, what does this mean for the Twilight series?).
BAM Rose Cinemas, 30 Lafayette Avenue (Brooklyn), visit bam.org for tickets and information.
Tuesday, August 23
Music From the Seoul
It’s been a few months since that expensive, chaotic Broadway show about that human arachnid opened, and we’re ready for another tale of heroics—the summer movie season is ending, and our appetite for pyrotechnics is hardly sated by the family-safe Spider-Man! Korean culture comes to the rescue with Hero, a splashy sensation that stunned in Seoul (it swept the South Korean equivalent of the Tonys!) and debuts in a limited run tonight at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center. The musical pays tribute to Korean patriotic icon An Chunggun—who led the fight for Korean independence and died in the process—but we’re willing to surmount that cultural barrier. After a long summer of debt ceiling-scraping, it’ll be nice to feel a sense of optimism about nation-building!
David H. Koch Theater, 20 Lincoln Center Plaza, 7:30 p.m.; call (212) 721-6500 or visit the box office for tickets.
Wednesday, August 24
Ten-Year Retrospective
Coping with the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11 will take more than just a single autumn day, and New Yorkers are beginning the process of commemoration. Today brings the opening of Al Braithwaite’s solo show “Twinned Towers” at Leila Heller Gallery—it’s both a (fittingly) decade-long retrospective and the London-based artist’s first New York show. Works on display incorporate pages from War and Peace with architectural details from the Twin Towers, as well as English- and Arabic-printed soda cans symbolizing the tenuous bonds between America and the Arab street … Meanwhile, the New York Press Club holds a news conference at the World Trade Center site, with a brief from developer Larry Silverstein on the reconstruction’s progress. The process of rebuilding—and balancing commemoration with development—has seen plenty of stops and starts over the past 10 years, so we’re ready to hear what Mr. Silverstein has to say.
Twinned Towers opens today, Leila Heller Gallery, 39 East 78th Street, 10am-6pm, with opening reception tomorrow, visit ltmhgallery.org for more information; Silverstein press conference, 7 World Trade Center, 10:30am, attendance limited to 40 accredited reporters, visit 911memorial.org for more information.
ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_
