Beauty Is a Rare Thing

...is the title of one of Ornette Coleman's most lustrous compositions...but it is my happy duty to report that beauty was not to be found in short supply in NYC this week at all...

After winding up the Fast 'N' Bulbous European tour with intense shows in Vienna (we got multiple ovations at Porgy and Bess--one of my favorite places to play, thanks to artistic director Christoph Huber who had a blowup of one of Gerald Zbinden's photographic portraits of me taken in the black light lit inner sanctum of the H.R. Giger museum in Gruyere hanging in the long hall leading to the plush basement theatre/club, one of the nicest venues in Europe), the bucolic Tirolean town of Schwaz (the Saudades crew was out in full force there at the Eremitage, a little jewel of a club overlooking the canal at the base of some spectacular alpine slopes--special thanks to the great folks at Saudades--Anna Stowsand, Barbara Achatz, Karin Kreisel and Wolfgang--for making our tour such a success), and finally a 10 hour drive made pretty darn quick thanks to our amazing tour manager Christian Danzi took us to lovely Ljubljana Slovenia (where the promoter Bogdan Benigar treated the band to an amazing dinner, and my friends the film makers Peter Braatz and his wife Maja Weiss, who made the documentary "Gary Lucas and Golem", which aired a few years ago on Slovenian national television, filmed our concert)--I then flew back to New York for a couple days r&r (sleep is good--especially when you've been running on 3-4 hours max a night for many many weeks)...

and then revitalized/refreshed I went up to Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center on Monday with Caroline for the NYC premiere Zhang Yimou's fantastic new film "The Curse of the Golden Flower", starring the radiant reigning goddess of world cinema, Gong Li. I was there at the invitation of her manager, my old friend Christophe Tseng, and have to say I was blown away by both the film (a convoluted dynastic tragedy replete with palace intrigues galore, multiple poisonings, an incest subplot, the most sumptuous mise-en-scene (fantastic costumes, decor, art direction!) and sprinkled tellingly throughout perhaps the most thrilling, visceral action sequences I've yet seen in a film, sequences that apparently were not CGI generated--Zhang Yimou seems to have literally marshaled a cast of many, many thousands of extras for these tableaux, one of them, a night ambush in the woods with black-clad assassins swooping down out of the trees to overtake a royal convoy fleeing on horseback, is permanently, indelibly etched in my memory so primal it was...and what can I say, Gong Li's performance was flawless, subtle, nuanced--besides being one of the most beautiful, she is simply one of the best actors on screen today. From "Raise the Red Lantern" through "Shanghai Triad" to this production, she's never less than riveting, exhibiting profound depths of interior emotion through a mere flicker of her eyes/ tremor in her face. Her Wong Kar-Wai directed turn in the triptych "Eros" last year was one of the most erotically charged performances ever committed to film, all done without a trace of nudity or overt sexual display.

Afterwards we were invited to a private party for this elegant diva at an Italian restaurant nearby, and I sat at her table for a spell with her and her friends, talking to her about her various films and performances (my favorite is still her rowdy, supercharged portrayal of the Chow Hsuan-like nightclub diva in "Shanghai Triad", where she sings beautifully a version of one of the same 30's Chinese pop songs I interpreted on my album "The Edge of Heaven"). When we finally made to leave Gong Li graciously got up from the table and thanked us all personally one by one for coming to her party--myself, Cineaste editor Richard Porton, and Caroline- in the warmest, most sincere manner. What a great lady she is.

Thursday Gods and Monsters performed at the Milk Gallery on 15th street and 10th ave. for Czech BeneFashion 2006, a fashion show/benefit spotlighting the work of some sensational new Czech designers, and the glitterati were out in force, light bulbs a' popping...Kudos to the Czech Center's lovely Monika Koblerova and the Sunflower Children Foundation's beautiful president Helena Houdova for organizing such a glittering panoply of fashionistas, stunning Czech models, and beautiful people in the audience (many many audience members certainly as luminous/glamorous as the professionals strutting their stuff onstage). Surrounded by such a sea of pulchritude, my guys gave of their best with an explosive set after the runway presentation, and then partook of the copious drinks and hors d'ouerves a flowing...former Czech president Vaclav Havel showed up with UN Ambassador Martin Palous, and after warm greetings we melted into the night on a wave of good feelings as the charity event had raised over $50,000 for the benefit of disadvantaged children all around the world...

Yesterday was a full-on media saturation day as I took in a double header of a screening at Magno of Paul Verhoeven's new film "Black Book"--a harrowing, suspenseful account of the Dutch resistance movement in World War II, and must say I found newcomer (to me) Carice Van Houten's portrayal as the Jewish cabaret singer Rachel Steinn fleeing and fighting the Nazis overrunning Holland one of the best performances of the year. She is quite amazing really, moving from haggard survivor to gamine to tough-as-nails resistance fighter in the wink of an eye, with a porcelain white complexion and delicate doll-like features not unreminiscent of the singer Dagmar Krause. Her portrayal--and the film in general, which boasts some of the same qualities that made Jean-Pierre Melville's "Army of Shadows" so compelling-- brought tears to my eyes, and as I've mentioned previously, I do not cry very easily...

I stayed uptown and dined at Un, Deux, Trois with Caroline and Richard, and then went over the Music Box Theater on 45th Street where we met up with our friends Shaista and her boyfriend Gus and caught David Hare's new play "The Vertical Hour", which I rather enjoyed, despite the drubbing it received from Ben Brantley in the Times yesterday (I think Clive Barnes' review in the Post yesterday was much more on the money). Bill Nighy, playing a reclusive British doctor named Oliver Lucas, was of course fantastic--one of my favorite actors, scarecrow-thin and raffish with expressive body language (and it helped that he was given more or less all the best lines by Hare)-- and while the critics say he stole the show, I think beautiful Julianne Moore (a West Village neighbor, here playing a war zone correspondent turned Yale political science professor) pretty well held her own with a performance that exuded both a confident forcefulness and tender vulnerability. When we got outside the theater afterwards the chill of winter was a 'cumin in but that didn't prevent a large crowd of well-wishers and autograph seekers (including Gus!) from greeting ravenhaired Julianne Moore at the stage door...

Have to dash now! Beauty is in the eye of the beholder!

(One Man's Meat is Another Man's Poisson...)

xxLove

Gary