Hasta La Ideas

(Photos: UnBeige)

For the past couple of nights, New York’s Guggenheim Museum has been hosting the same charity gala—an elegant affair for the apparent benefit of the “International Fund for the Arts.” The formally attired guests mingle and sip champagne for hours on end, while a more casually dressed group scurries around purposefully. They’ll be back tonight for round three. It’s not a new work by Carsten Holler but the filming of pivotal scenes in Mr. Popper’s Penguins, an upscale adaptation of the 1938 book by Richard and Florence Atwater. Directed by Mark Waters (Mean Girls), the film stars Jim Carrey as Thomas Popper, a jaded real estate dealmaker who suddenly finds himself in possession of a parcel of penguins…on Park Avenue.

We adore the dramatic stylings of the rubber-faced Carrey, but it was the prospect of penguins that beckoned us to the (closed) set this week. Faux snow blanketed the Guggenheim’s 88th Street side entrance, and in the rotunda, the pseudogala was in full swing, but there wasn’t a flightless bird in sight. “They’re adding the penguins with CGI,” said our on-set spy. “The museum didn’t want to risk it.” One unit of the production crew consists of “a bunch of guys with MacBooks.” Armed with SLRs and a lot of patience, they capture digital images of each scene from multiple angles to ensure that the addition of virtual penguins is seamless, with the shadows aligned perfectly.

Much of the filming, however, includes the real thing. The production ponied up around $25,000 each for a trained team of gentoo penguins, a crew member told us. Between scenes, they retire to a spacious frozen home at Steiner Studios in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. And Carrey reportedly has “amazing chemistry” with his avian costars.

Meanwhile, the film’s Guggenheim gala scenes sound like reason enough to see Mr. Popper’s Penguins, which Twentieth Century Fox is slated to release in August 2011. A scheming Popper attends the benefit to ingratiate himself to one Selma Van Gundy (Angela Lansbury), a Brooke Astor type who owns the Manhattan property he covets. We hear that the pair pauses to contemplate Ad Reinhardt‘s “Black Painting” of 1960–66 (or at least a facsimile of it) on an upper level of the museum before penguin pandemonium ensues when the six birds use Frank Lloyd Wright‘s famed ramp as a waterslide. The chaos continues as, according to production call sheets obtained by UnBeige, “Popper is chased by penguins as he leaves the Guggenheim and crosses Fifth Avenue.”

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Our pals and the good people at Core77 have put together a fun contest, sponsored by Herman Miller and the Eames Office: the Powers of Ten: A Video Response Design Competition. In it, they’re asking for responses to Charles and Ray Eames‘ iconic short film from 1977 of the same name (even though, assuming you’re worth your weight in design lore, you should have already seen it at least a dozen times before, we’ve posted the original below, just in case). While the Eames’ had nearly 10 minutes to zoom in and out of the universe, for your submission, you’ll only have two, so either make it quick or head off in a different direction. The judging panel includes the MoMA‘s Paola Antonelli, filmmaker Gary Hustwit, and the current head of Eames, and their namesake’d grandson, Eames Demetrios. You have until January 10th (which you already know happens to be this writer’s birthday), so get to thinking and making (and buying an expensive birthday present).

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“What I really want to do is change the lives of a group of people using the material they use everyday.” From the mouth of a another world-famous artist, this statement could come off as conceited, calculating, and delusional, but when uttered by Vik Muniz, it’s a matter-of-fact description of his next project: journeying to the world’s largest garbage dump, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, to collaborate with the catadores that pick the recyclable materials from the mounds of trash. Waste Land, which opens today at New York’s Angelika Film Center, follows Muniz from his Brooklyn home base to his native Brazil and the Jardim Gramacho landfill. Immersing himself in the community of catadores, he finds a way to make work about work and learns the difference between garbage and junk.

Director Lucy Walker (Devil’s Playground, Blindsight) wanted to make a movie in a garbage dump since an eye-opening visit to New York’s Fresh Kills landfill during her grad student days at NYU, she explained (dressed in a trash bag frock of her own design) at the film’s premiere this week at the Paley Center for Media. Jardim Gramacho was one of few landfills where drug traffic was under control and the workers were being organized into a co-operative by a charismatic young leader. “We were all very nervous—there were so many things to be afraid of, from dengue fever to kidnapping—but we all wanted to go,” she said. Muniz, Walker, and co-producers Angus Aynsley and Peter Martin arrived in Rio (with kidnap insurance) in August 2007. Filming stretched over almost three years.

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Actor-turned-artist James Franco is back to being artsy again, but this time it isn’t for an oddball interview, a soap opera, or an exhibition at the Clocktower Gallery. Instead, he’s channeling his inner Bruce Nauman by appearing in artist/filmmaker Alison Chernick‘s James Franco as Bruce Nauman, wherein the actor recreates Nauman’s 1967 piece, “Art Make-Up.” Per usual with all things “L’Art de James,” we’ll let you make our minds up for us on what it all means and if it’s art or not, or whatever (frankly, after the past six months, our brains are a little tired of thinking about Franco’s work). Here’s the remake:

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Rikard Spirit (Max Ryan), the architect who seduces Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall) in Sex and the City 2

Perhaps you’ve heard about a little film bounding into theaters nationwide today. It’s about a quartet of improbably diverse gal pals who live in New York and never wear the same outfit twice. Earlier this week, we donned some vintage Thierry Mugler and our most vertiginous heels for a preview screening of Sex and the City 2 (or, if you’re in Finland, Sinkkuelämää 2) and discovered a few tenuous links to the world of design. We’ll leave you to make up your own mind on the madcap costumes dreamed up by Patricia Field and her team, whose appetite for outsized, glitter-encrusted accessories and ’80s jewel tones knows no bounds, but we think SATC2 is worth seeing for the Tim Gunn cameo alone. In delivering his lone line, Gunn demonstrates the best comic timing in the film. We smell a supporting actor nomination.

But here’s the real SATC2 talking point to pull out at the Memorial Day barbecue: when the girls find themselves in Abu Dhabi on a press junket, Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall), who the sequel finds fending off menopause with the help of Suzanne Somers and fistfuls of synthetic hormones, is seduced by none other than a raffish architect! A dashing, grizzled-a-la-Richard-Branson figure roars up out of nowhere in the back of a jeep, dazzles the women, and then disappears over the dunes (which writer/director Michael Patrick King told us are the very same dunes that appeared in Lawrence of Arabia). He’s revealed to be one Rikard Spirit (Max Ryan), “a Danish architect” staying at the same hotel as the ladies. The film, which we found maddeningly short on exterior shots, doesn’t say any more about Spirit’s work, but a crude pun, sexual hijinks, and a plot-pivoting scuffle with the Abu Dhabi authorities all come courtesy of the architect, a design-minded deus ex machina.

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