Scene Magazine » the eight-day week

To Do Wednesday: Wilson!

Daniel D'Addario — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 08:00:02 -0400

Rita Wilson (Getty Images)

Tom Hanks’s son Chester, who goes by “Chet Haze” and is attempting a career as a rapper (truly!) isn’t the only musically gifted Hanks. Wife-of-Forrest Gump Rita Wilson has put aside her occasional acting career in favor of the life of the pop chanteuse, and is performing tonight at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center. Don’t fret, Katy Perry and Rihanna, as Ms. Wilson’s not gunning for you: she’s singing pop music from the 1960s and ’70s. No AutoTune required! Over/under on the proportion of attendees tonight secretly hoping just to catch a glimpse of the Big guy: 45 percent.

Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center, 76 Main Street (Westhampton), 8:30pm, tickets and information can be found at whbpac.org.

To Do Tuesday: Middle East on Upper West

Daniel D'Addario — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 08:00:10 -0400

If your level of understanding of Arab politics is so meager that Vogue has commissioned pieces on geopolitics from you, it may be time to bone up a bit on what’s happening on the other side of the world. We’re dropping in on the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s New Arab Cinema festival, featuring films from Palestine, Egypt and Jordan, among other nations. Today brings a screening of Every Day Is a Holiday, about three women’s journey through the Lebanese mountains in order to meet with their imprisoned husbands. (In terms of cheeriness, it’s not exactly Hope Springs!)

Walter Reade Theater, 165 West 65th Street, Every Day is a Holiday screens today at 4:15pm, tickets and information can be found at filmlinc.com.

To Do Monday: Tennis, Everyone?

Daniel D'Addario — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 08:00:28 -0400

Sorry, ladies (and fans of a certain power-oriented variety of tennis), an injured Rafael Nadal is sitting this year out and not dropping by Queens. But the rest of the tennis firmament is descending on Arthur Ashe Stadium as the U.S. Open begins today. Can Roger Federer take advantage of Mr. Nadal’s absence to claim his first New York title since 2008? (It’s true, he hasn’t won the Open since the Bush Presidency!) How will Novak Djokovic hog the spotlight, and how charmed will we be, against our wills? Can Serena Williams keep up her momentum? Is the trip to Queens somehow more irritating even than the Hamptons Jitney? All these questions will be answered in the next fortnight!

Arthur Ashe Stadium, Flushing Meadow Corona Park (Queens), tickets and information can be found at usopen.org.

To Do Sunday: Bright Lights, Small Town

Daniel D'Addario — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 10:00:43 -0400

Beaumarchais

Having journeyed all the way out to Amagansett, we’re looking to stay closer to home base today—we spend enough time sitting in traffic in the city in the cold seasons! Conveniently for those in East Hampton who are feeling both spendy and charitable, the Bright Lights Foundation is hosting a silent auction to benefit its international health-services efforts. It’s to sate our hunger for both philanthropy and proteins after our vegan venture last night—it’s at the restaurant Beaumarchais, and we’ve been promised piles of seafood. (Sorry, Alec!)

Beaumarchais, 44 Three Mile Harbor Road (East Hampton), 12pm, tickets and information can be found at www.brightlightsinternational.blogspot.com.

To Do Saturday: Veggie Lovers

Daniel D'Addario — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 09:00:37 -0400

Alec Baldwin (Getty Images)

We kid noted memoirist Alec Baldwin because we love him—not least because he’s such a philanthropist! The soon-to-be-unemployed 30 Rock star is raising money for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a group that promotes veganism and an end to animal testing. We can agree with the latter, though, boy, will we miss the usual crab-cake-and-carpaccio hors d’oeuvres tonight! (Summer’s coming to an end, and we’re ready to indulge in food once more.) But then again, if Mr. Baldwin has been able to slim down thanks to veganism, perhaps there’s something to it. Bring us all your white-bean-and-kale mini-faux-quiches, Amagansett!

Private residence in Amagansett, event begins at 5pm with brief program at 5:45pm, tickets and information can be found at support.pcrm.org/Hamptons2012.

To Do Friday: Memoirs of a Gala

Daniel D'Addario — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 08:00:39 -0400

We’ve been Out East for a couple of weeks (we’re “working remotely”—checking emails at 1 p.m. and segueing into cocktail hour!), and wouldn’t you know it, all of our trashy beach reads are depleted. We’re especially craving a new memoir by someone like Paris Hilton (Confessions of an Heiress was way too long ago!), and “Celebrity Autobiography,” a reading at Guild Hall, will likely scratch that itch, as the likes of Alec Baldwin, Christie Brinkley and Tovah Feldshuh read from the literary works of Vanna White, Sylvester Stallone and the Jonas Brothers. Don’t make too much fun, Alec—we haven’t forgotten that book you put out about the Kim Basinger years!

Guild Hall, 158 Main Street (East Hampton), 7pm and 9pm, tickets and information can be found at guildhall.org.

To Do Wednesday: Charles in Charge

Daniel D'Addario — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 08:00:38 -0400

Broadway right now has all manner of past legends reincarnated for our amusement: there’s Judy Garland, emoting her heart out in End of the Rainbow! There are those darn Jersey Boys, still kicking! There’s Ricky Martin, showing how Evita lived “la vida loca”! Add to these nostalgia acts Charlie Chaplin, whose story is to be brought to the stage in the musical Chaplin. Rob McClure is to play the Little Tramp as part of a cast of 24, alongside characters like Oona O’Neill and “Young Charlie”—the littlest tramp of all. If there’s not a Modern Times musical number with giant gears dominating the stage, truly Andrew Lloyd Webber has taught us nothing about stagecraft.

Ethel Barrymore Theatre, 243 West 47th Street, preview performance tonight at 8pm, tickets can be purchased by calling (212) 239-6200.

To Do Wednesday: Super Cause

Daniel D'Addario — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 13:55:51 -0400

Matthew Reeve (Getty Images)

Late summer brings one of the year’s most poignant evenings, a celebration of the work done by Christopher and Dana Reeve. Though the cause—finding a cure for spinal-cord injuries and paralysis—is serious, there’s still room for celebration, with music by society DJ Harley Viera-Newton and guests including super-stylist Mary Alice Stephenson and married actors Odette and Dave Annable (she was in Cloverfield, he’s on a new soap about a haunted Park Avenue co-op). Matthew Reeve, the son of the late Superman star and activist, is to play host and continue his father’s legacy.
No. 8, 8 West 16th Street, 7pm, tickets and information can be found at christopherreeve.org/summer.

To Do Wednesday: Playing the Fields

Daniel D'Addario — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 09:00:53 -0400

The slow season continues with a torpid Wednesday—we really ought to have just taken the week off! Instead, we’ll take the day off and enjoy the luxurious air-conditioning and chemically buttered popcorn—but nothing at the multiplex is appealing. We’re originalists when it comes to both Batman and Total Recall—give us nippled rubber suits, Arnold Schwarzenegger and camp, or give us repertory cinema instead! Off to BAM we go, where they’re playing a double feature of W.C. Fields classics, Million Dollar Legs and The Bank Dick. Those who prefer something a bit less homespun and a bit more summer-movie can see the French action picture Point Blank at MoMA, part of the Gaumont Thrillers exhibition.

BAM Rose Cinemas, 30 Lafayette Avenue (Brooklyn), W.C. Fields double feature shows at 6:30pm and 9:15pm, tickets and information can be found at bam.org; MoMA, Point Blank screens at 4:30pm.

To Do Tuesday: Queen of Dean

Daniel D'Addario — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 09:00:21 -0400

We’re rusty on our college-level Italian: Does filial piety fall under the category of “amore”? Dean Martin’s daughter Deana (who really ought to start a “similarly named daughters of” supergroup with Natalie Cole and Bobbi Kristina Brown) performs a tribute to her father at Feinstein’s at Loews Regency. It’s to feature a number of the Rat Pack king’s top hits, including “Everybody Loves Somebody,” as well as a montage of home videos. (This is your chance to see if Dean Martin still talked that way when he was, like, unwrapping Christmas presents!) Fans of the Rat Pack, drop in before Ms. Martin blows up. We’re told a film adaptation of her life is in the offing—and she’s going to be played by onetime teen favorite Jennifer Love Hewitt. Memories are made of this!

Feinstein’s at Loews Regency, 540 Park Avenue, “Deana Sings Dino” runs from August 14-18 at 8pm, tickets and information can be obtained by calling (212) 339-4095.