stmichaeladelphi.org

By STEVE DOLLAR

Toei

‘Osamu Tezuka’s Buddha: The Great Departure,’ directed by Kozo Morishita, screens as part of the annual Japan Cuts series.

New York Asian Film Festival

Film Society of Lincoln Center

165 65th St., (212) 875-5601

Friday-July 14

Japan Cuts: The New York Festival of Contemporary Japanese Cinema

Japan Society

333 E. 47th St. (212) 832-1155

July 7-22

Celebrating its 10th anniversary, the New York Asian Film Festival has become something its gonzo founders never could have imagined: a cultural institution.

But don’t be fooled. Still crazy after all these years, the fest is, as ever, a delirious vortex of face-melting genre excess—an exhaustive, exhilarating rush of recent popular cinema from the East, giving its audience outlaw thrills even as it grants a hero’s welcome to the industry legends who were minting masterpieces when Quentin Tarantino was in knee pants.

There’s more of a retrospective tone to this year’s marathon, which seems appropriate for the decade mark. Hong Kong’s Tsui Hark, one of the architects of the Chinese new-wave that began in the 1980s, is a guest of honor, screening his latest (the visually stunning return-to-form “Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame”) and greeting fans at “greatest-hits” revivals of gravity-defying Wu Xia epics, including the game-changing “Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain” (1983) and the samurai masterpiece “The Blade” (1995). The mortal combat in South Korean director Ryoo Seung-Wan’s urban thrillers is contemporary and brutally earthbound. The filmmaker will be present for the premiere of his new film, “The Unjust,” a taut-sinewed police story that lays bare civic corruption and institutional apathy against the backdrop of serial killings and an imminent gang war. The fast-moving action will keep even alert viewers on their toes, even as bravura plot turns knock everything off balance. Mr. Ryoo also gets a sidebar, which features his estimable (and accurately titled) “City of Violence” and the new “Troubleshooter,” which he produced for director Kwok Hyeok-Jae. Look also for Na Hong-jin’s despairing “The Chaser” and the premiere of his new “The Yellow Sea,” about a cabbie undone by his gambling addiction who goes up against the mob.

The New York Asian Film Festival segues into Japan Cuts, the annual survey of new Japanese films hosted by Japan Society. Co-presentations include the ambitious anime, “Osamu Tezuka’s Buddha: The Great Departure” and the hyperactive “Milocrorze: A Love Story,” a hallucinogenic, live-action cartoon of the sort that fulfills a certain craving for pixelated outrageousness that is a national specialty. (See also, Takashi Miike’s “Ninja Kids!!!” the mutant pyrotechnics of “Yakuza Weapon” and the “Transformers”-on-laughing-gas ingenuity of “Karate-Robo Zaborgar,” which only shows at Lincoln Center).

The series also offers less easily characterized films. The 4½-hour “Heaven’s Story” marks a serious turn by director Takahisa Zeze (known as the “King of Pink” for his softcore sex comedies), who maps a sprawling revenge drama about a little girl who comes of age obsessed with the serial killings of her family. Sora Aoi, the AV idol (sex star) turned mainstream actress, stars in Masashi Yamamoto’s “Three Points,” an episodic drama that surveys the lower depths in three Japanese cities. Likewise, Kazuyoshi Kumakiri’s “Sketches of Kaitan City” brings a realist eye to the working-class struggles described in the fiction of the late Yasushi Sato.

But if all that sounds a little too sober-minded, there’s always a movie called “Toliet,” about a family whose bathroom is haunted by their recently departed matriarch. Only in Tokyo.

Everett Collection

Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell in ‘The Seven Year Itch’ (1955).

Marilyn!

BAMcinematek

30 Lafayette Ave., Brooklyn

(718) 636-4100

Friday-July 17

Even a half-century after Marilyn Monroe’s death, America has never gotten its fill of the blond bombshell. Icons come and go, but the actress seeped into the nation’s popular culture so deeply she became part of its DNA, at once mythic and essential. Norman Mailer was left gasping: “The sugar of sex came up from her like a resonance of sound in the clearest grain of a violin.” This 14-film retrospective explores that, and so many other facets of the Monroe persona—whether as the epitome of desire in Billy Wilder’s 1955 comedy “The Seven-Year Itch” or as a dramatic performer striving for credibility opposite Clark Gable, Eli Wallach and Montgomery Clift in John Huston’s melancholy Western “The Misfits,” written by ex-husband Arthur Miller. It was her last role before the 1962 suicide that launched a thousand conspiracy theories.

‘Septien’

IFC Center

323 Sixth Ave., (212) 924-7771

July 6-July 12

Though actor-writer-director Michael Tully cites “The Spirit of the Beehive” and 1980s made-for-TV movies as sources, his exceptionally curious third feature “Septien” shares an iconoclastic, go-your-own-way spirit with the maverick American filmmaking of the early 1970s. It’s a hermetic, actorly event—a humid exploration of William Faulkner’s epigram, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Mr. Tully plays the prodigal, hirsute and nearly mute football hero Cornelius Rawlings, who returns to the family farm and his misfit brothers: Amos (Onar Tukel), a recluse who exorcises demons in grotesque illustrations, and Ezra (Robert Longstreet), a religious nut and crossdresser who flutters about like an obsessive mother hen. Within moments, it’s obvious why Cornelius might leave. The deep dark secret is why would he ever come back? The long spiral into deep weirdness is illuminated by cinematographer Jeremy Saulnier (“Putty Hill”), whose Super 16mm camera lingers poetically on the derelict Southern terrain.

‘Small Town Murder Songs’

reRun Gastropub Theater

147 Front St., Brooklyn, (718) 766-9110

Friday-July 7

This frosty noir has a woodsy whiff of “Twin Peaks” about it: A police chief in a remote Ontario Mennonite community revisits his own dark places after the body of a young woman washes up. Human powder keg Peter Stormare (who fed Steve Buscemi to the wood chipper in “Fargo”) is Walter, the cop whose history of violence may be about to repeat itself. When a suspect (Stephen Eric McIntyre) is hauled in, his alibi is supplied by Rita (Jill Hennessy, at her hard-knock best), whose bed Walter once frequented. Director Ed Gass-Donnelly lights a slow-burning fuse of suspense, fed by ambiguous flashbacks that hint at Walter’s beastilness. Is he a jealous ex-lover with anger management issues—or something much worse? The question is largely existential, though the stark folk-gospel soundtrack, by the band Bruce Peninsula, encourages expectations of imminent Biblical reckoning.

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Anton Perich

Muhammad Ali appears in Anton Perich’s rediscovered documentary.

‘Muhammad Ali: The Long-Lost Movie’

Anthology Film Archives

32 Second Ave., (212) 505-5181

Friday

New York video artist Anton Perich lost track of this document after parts of it were aired on Manhattan Cable Public Access in 1973. A fortuitous rediscovery in his archives led to this: a two-hour distillation of a visit with the Greatest at his training camp in Deerlake, Pa., where Mr. Perich was invited to shoot an encounter among the heavyweight champ, writer Victor Bockris and publisher Andrew Wylie. Mr. Ali is, of course, magnetic, whether dancing in the ring to his own lithe, muscular choreography or sharing his bold, even defiant philosophies in the folksy, poetic cadences that were his trademark. “Fools are not entitled to know the mystery which the wise are supposed to possess …,” he declaims. “Fools are not supposed to understand what I got here.” Mr. Perich soaked it up, the grainy black-and-white video image lending it all an appropriate historical feel.

By AARON RUTKOFF

Bryan Derballa for The Wall Street Journal

Patrick Carrajat at his elevator museum, which is open during business hours. Visitors should call 917-748-2328 to confirm that he will be in.

To visit the only museum dedicated to the history of the American elevator industry, climb the stairs to the second floor of a squat building in Long Island City in Queens.

Patrick Carrajat is the lifelong obsessive behind the one-room Elevator Historical Society, which has its grand opening on Wednesday.

He’s also the main attraction, a font of elevator anecdotes and lore who has assembled a ragtag collection of metal plaques, manuals and primitive contraptions from the dawn of vertical travel.

“This is my own collection, since I was 11 years old,” he explained during a recent tour, standing before a display of crosshead plates that forms the centerpiece of his tiny museum.

The plates, which typically adorn a beam running across the top of an elevator cab’s exterior, identify the manufacturer. The oldest, from an Otis Brothers elevator, dates back to 1861—about a decade after the very first moving platform on hemp ropes was manufactured by Henry Waterman in Lower Manhattan.

Mr. Carrajat, 67 years old, accumulated the items during a long career in the elevator industry. As a supervisor at one local elevator-repair company and the founder, in 1973, of Century Elevator, another repair business, he says that his employees would find old crosshead plates while out on jobs. “They are mostly purloined,” he said. “I had a bunch of thieves working for me.”

He can rattle off a colorful tale about almost any company whose name is etched in metal in his collection. Take Standard Plunger, a manufacturer of hydraulic elevators with an inauspicious name. “Around the turn of the century, the company’s president predicted the death of the cable elevator,” Mr. Carrajat said. “Not very prescient of him!” Cable won in the end and is still used in nearly all elevators.

With Mr. Carrajat as a guide, the cluttered shelves of elevator paraphernalia reveal small marvels. Here is the Angell Lock, a terrifyingly small hand brake used to stop rope elevators circa 1890. There is an Otis push button from 1895, the very first call system for elevators.

“Before that,” he says, “it was just someone banging on the door if they wanted to use the elevator.”

The son of a unionized elevator mechanic, Mr. Carrajat became fascinated at a young age. “Like a butcher’s kid learns to cut meat, I learned to fix elevators,” he said.

His career nearly ended in tragedy. Mr. Carrajat says he had been scheduled to perform a routine inspection on elevator 20D in the north tower of the World Trade Center on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.

“Obviously, that elevator never got inspected,” he said. The first plane hit just before he was due to enter the building.

That near-miss prompted him to focus on his passion for elevators, first writing a book on the history of the American elevator industry and then founding the museum.

Mr. Carrajat is now a consultant and sometimes hired as an expert witness for lawsuits over elevator injuries.

The museum is situated in the front half of his office. But it’s only the start, he said.

The Elevator Historical Society is in the process of registering as a nonprofit and will begin raising money to move into a larger facility—ideally a two-story building with high ceilings, so that he can offer rides on an antique elevator. Mr. Carrajat hopes the four big elevator manufacturers and the unions representing elevator workers will donate money and help lift his tiny museum to the next level.

“It’s a form of payback,” he says. “Elevators have been very good to me.”

Write to Aaron Rutkoff at aaron.rutkoff@wsj.com

By GWENDOLYN BOUNDS

Fido, buckle up. More drivers are putting their dogs in seatbelts and other restraints as awareness increases that loose dogs in the car can be distracting and dangerous. Wendy Bounds explains.

Now Cocoa must buckle up like everyone else when Marie Hance drives.

“It sort of takes the spirit out of her. She likes to walk around and look at everything,” Ms. Hance, of Bradford, Pa., says. But Ms. Hance was convinced the pit bull-Labrador mix needed a restraint after a tractor-trailer sideswiped her minivan while Cocoa stood in the front seat, an incident that left both dog and owner shaken but uninjured.

The image of a happy dog hanging out of a car window is hard to top. And it’s tricky to convince people that their pets won’t mind being tethered or riding cooped up in a crate. (Convincing some pets to buckle up can be tricky, too.)

With more pets traveling in cars, some animal advocates and law enforcement agencies—as part of their campaign against distracted driving—are pushing seat-belt harnesses, car seats and other restraints for dogs. Most of the gear still gives dogs some freedom of movement and a view out the window.

About 89% of pets traveling in cars last year weren’t secured properly, says Christina Selter, founder of advocacy group Bark Buckle Up who collects national data from police and fire agencies. Still, it’s an improvement from 2008, when 98% were unsecured. Currently, there are no federal or state laws requiring pets be secured inside vehicles, Ms. Selter says.

In an accident, both people and pets are at risk when the animals aren’t restrained. “If you are going 50 miles per hour and hit the brake, the pet then becomes a projectile in the car,” says Sheriff Patrick Perez in St. Charles, Ill. “It’s a hazard to the animal and to the occupants of the vehicle.”

Nearly a fourth of dog owners now take pets with them in the car when traveling for at least two nights, according to the American Pet Products Association, compared with 16% a decade ago. The website petswelcome.com lists 16,000 pet-friendly hotels, up about 20% five years ago.

“If you’re paying $20 a day at a kennel and go away for two weeks, it adds up,” says site co-founder Chris Kingsley.

Sales of dog-travel products are rising. One brand, Kurgo, hit $5 million in revenue last year, and company co-founder Gordon Spater says sales of its $23 car harness, which straps around a dog’s body and attaches to a seat belt, have doubled annually since 2007.

At retailer Frontgate, a unit of HSN Inc., sales of pet restraints for home and auto have risen 37% year-over-year.

Booster seats that hook around headrests and keep small dogs tethered and off owners’ laps are one of the top sellers at Solvit Products. “At first I thought they were silly,” says Judy Clark Guida, owner of Banjo, a 17-pound cairn terrier who enjoyed riding shotgun on his hind legs. But after her Prius was totaled, Banjo got moved to a booster. “The car is cleaner now, too.”

Even auto makers are pushing pet safety. Toyota sells barriers, harnesses, and other travel products through its dealers. And Volvo reports growing sales for its $345 steel cargo barrier for wagons, which keeps pets secured in the luggage area well away from drivers. Company research shows that a 60-pound unbelted child in the back seat traveling 30 mph can suddenly turn into 2,700 pounds of force.

“A pet of the same size would become like a baby elephant” hurtling through the car, says Dan Johnston, spokesman for Volvo Cars North America.

There are other perils to unsecured pets, such as on accident scenes when a dog dashes into traffic or becomes aggressive toward emergency workers aiding passengers. Insurance providers Petplan and Veterinary Pet Insurance say most auto claims with pets inside cars are related to unrestrained animals leaping from a moving vehicle.

That’s what happened to Remi, a 14-month-old fox-terrier mix in Tampa. While riding in the back seat of an SUV this spring, she unexpectedly wriggled out an open window. The car was only moving 20 mph, but a startled Remi suffered bloody lacerations on her chest, snout and neck and then took off.

“I found her five to 10 minutes later on the golf course where we live, and she was clearly scared to death,” says owner Duane Daiker.

There are safety issues for other drivers on the road as well. A recent AAA and Kurgo survey shows more than half of drivers engage in distracting behavior with dogs while driving, such as petting, and one-fifth let dogs sit on their lap.

Some state legislators and law-enforcement officials are pushing for tighter regulations specific to pets traveling inside cars. Hawaii bars drivers from holding animals in their lap or letting them be close enough to interfere with the driver’s control. A number of places, including California, Virginia and Oregon, have introduced similar measures, though so far none have been signed into law.

Samson was barely 15-months-old when a driver plowed into his owner Marlene Eshoo’s Hyundai sedan while he napped in the passenger seat. The airbags deployed, leaving Ms. Eshoo with minor cuts and bruises. But Samson, a six-pound toy Yorkie, suffered internal injuries and died shortly after.

“He always rode in the front passenger seat,” says Ms. Eshoo, a 42-year-old kindergarten teacher who lives in Kensington, Conn. “When I went to my doctor the day after the accident, he said, ‘If you get a new dog, get a seatbelt.’ “

Now, Ms. Eshoo buckles up her new 31-pound miniature English bulldog, Delilah, on even short trips. At first Delilah wiggled out of the harness, but eventually acquiesced. Recently on a rainy day, Ms. Eshoo had to slam on the brakes, “and Delilah was fine.”

Write to Gwendolyn Bounds at wendy.bounds@wsj.com

Nicholas Hunt / Patrick McMullan

The Phoenix House summer party honoring Elie Tahari and Bruce and Julie Menin

BRIDGEHAMPTON, N.Y.—You’d think people would use their weekends out in the Hamptons to slow down, sleep in and stare at the wall, to grill some kebabs out under the stars with family; to veg out at the beach and read the latest Swedish mystery import now that there’s nothing left in the saga of Lisbeth Salander—Inspector Joona Linna (“The Hypnotist”) or Detective Harry Hole (“The Snowman”) anyone?

But instead, it’s the end of June, and the early-morning exercise classes and the East Hampton Starbucks are as jammed as the social calendar.

Weather-wise, Saturday wasn’t so nice, which made bopping around to parties a little more appealing than if it had been a perfect beach day. But it is quite amazing how much one can do in a day socially if one is to really put his mind to it. (And, let’s face it, this is something that many people—and not just in Manhattan and the Hamptons—really put their mind to.)

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Nicholas Hunt / Patrick McMullan

Bruce and Julie Menin

First off, you could go to a luncheon for the Reginald F. Lewis Foundation at the Reginald F. Lewis estate on Lily Pond Lane. Mr. Lewis was the first African-American to build a billion-dollar company, and this year’s event honored the investment manager and former NFL player Eugene A. Profit of Profit Investment Management.

The actor and singer Jamie Foxx was meant to come and introduce the honorees—a big selling point, one guesses, for the Hamptons—but in the middle of the night on Saturday, a publicist blasted over email that Mr. Foxx “regrettably will not make the event due to a family matter that requires his presence in L.A.” She added, “I have no further details.” Maybe he was hooked into a Swedish mystery?

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Adriel Reboh / Patrick McMullan

Eugene and Michelle Profit at the Reginald F. Lewis Foundation luncheon

After lunch, one could zip over to the backwoods of Sag Harbor to a place referred to as The Estate. The Emm Group, known for its restaurants and nightlife, was hosting a “backyard barbecue” with Lacoste to preview some food from two new restaurants: Lexington Brass (set to open this summer) and Catch (later this fall.) There were lots of attractive people wearing Lacoste shirts drinking cocktails out of Lacoste-green cups and playing badminton, and there was a particularly good mini-lobster roll.

photo by Rob Rich ?? 2011

Lacoste CEO Steve Birkhold and his wife Nicole

There was also a 10-minute “quick fire challenge” cook-off between Hung Huynh (the chef at Catch) and Franklin Becker (the chef at Lexington Brass) and their sous-chef, the actress Kirstie Alley and the Hamptons editor Samantha Yanks. (The judge was Steve Birkhold, the ceo of Lacoste, and his wife, Nicole.) It’s not clear what they were cooking, but at one point Ms. Alley, who was wearing buckets of jewelry, opened a can of hearts of palm, threw it on the grill and gave one of her best “Veronica’s Closet” sitcom double-takes.

“Kirstie is so calm and has such great hair,” said media executive Charlie Walk, who was doing a play-by-play on a bullhorn.

“Great hair is really important when you’re cooking,” said Ms. Alley.

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Carly Otness/BFAnyc.com

Nicole Ross and Courtney Sale Ross

After this: a little culture at Guild Hall in East Hampton, which was opening a large-scale photo exhibit by Clifford Ross and water-inspired sculptures by Bryan Hunt. There were many notable locals here, including the actor/director Bob Balaban, the singer Lou Reed (who snuck up behind Mr. Ross and gave him a hug), the artist Eric Fischl, the fashion designers Nicole Miller and Elie Tahari and the former New Line executives Michael Lynne and Bob Shaye.

“I love this show, in spite of the artist,” Mr. Shaye joked to Mr. Ross. “You have a great effing eye.” OK, maybe he didn’t quite use the word “effing.”

Some people went to a dinner at the Georgica Road house of Michael and Cheryl Minikes to continue celebrating Mr. Ross and Mr. Hunt. Ms. Miller and others went to the Barefoot Under the Stars party in Sagaponack. Mr. Tahari and others went to the oceanfront Meadow Lane house of Michael and Margie Loeb for a benefit for Phoenix House, which provides substance abuse and prevention treatment.

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Theaterlife

Mickey Straus and Cheryl Minikes

And yet others still went to the Ross School for its annual Starlight Ball where David and Sybil Yurman were honored. (Tommy Mottola was supposed to come with Billy Joel, but Mr. Mottola and his wife just had a baby. In turn, Mr. Joel wouldn’t attending either, because, said a planner, “he’s event shy.”)

The Ross School is one of those progressive institutions where a building is named the Center for Well Being and this year’s valedictorians are attending the Savannah College of Art and Design and Pitzer College in Los Angeles.

During cocktail hour, food was served from local restaurants as guests perused a silent auction that included items like a mosaic seahorse from a store called Pane in the Glass (starting bid: $30), an osteopathic exam, and the ability to be the director of the Ross School for a day (starting bid: $5,000.)

“The kids love that one,” said Courtney Sale Ross, the founder of the school. “They really push their parents to bid on it.”

Write to Marshall Heyman at marshall.heyman@wsj.com

By WILL FRIEDWALD

They watch over the city like benevolent patriarchs. Where Egypt has its Sphinxes, Harlem has its theaters. Considering that the modern drama originated in the medieval church, and that nearly every star who ever headlined the Apollo Theater got his start singing in church, it’s appropriate that many of the great theaters of uptown have been preserved as houses of worship. New Yorkers owe these religious organizations a debt of gratitude—without them, these beautiful structures would surely have been demolished to make room for parking lots or high-rises.

Michael R. Miller Collection/Theatre Historical Society of America

The Regent Theater, often described as ‘the first American movie palace,’ opened in 1913 on Seventh Avenue. Above, the theater in a photograph from 1931 .

The Regent has been described as “the first American movie palace.” Early on, “the flickers” were often regarded as tawdry, low-class entertainments for illiterate immigrants. Henry N. Marvin, founder of Biograph studios, had the idea to make movies respectable by constructing, in 1913, a luxurious house equipped with a live orchestra, ushers in smart uniforms, and playbills.

Initially it seemed that Marvin had over-reached; he’d built a theater, but nobody came. It wasn’t until he recruited a savvy Minnesotan named Samuel “Roxy” Rothafel to whip the place into shape that the Regent became a hit. It was the start of a 50-plus year run for one of the most enduring theaters in Harlem, and Rothafel established himself as one of New York’s foremost impresarios. He would be the force behind two of the major theaters in Midtown: the Roxy and Radio City Music Hall, where his name helped inspire the Rockettes.

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Bryan Derballa for The Wall Street Journal

Today it’s the First Corinthian Baptist Church.

The 1,854-seat Regent, meanwhile, was taken over by RKO in 1932 and became that theater chain’s most important uptown venue—long before Seventh Avenue became Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard. It closed as a movie house in 1963; some renovation work was done in 2004 (subsidized by the Upper Manhattan Historic Preservation Fund), but a full restoration is still needed.

Michael R. Miller Collection/Theatre Historical Society of America

The Mt. Morris Theatre, above in 1914, operated as a vaudeville house before the end of the 19th century.

The Mt. Morris is one of the oldest extant theaters in the city, and it boasts one of the most convoluted histories. Apparently, there was a theater on 130th Street and Third Avenue that opened in 1870 as the Harlem Music Hall and became the first “Mt. Morris Theater” in 1882. It nearly burned down in 1883, but was still doing business as late as 1885.

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Bryan Derballa for The Wall Street Journal

Today it’s the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Faith.

The second Mt. Morris, on Fifth Avenue, operated as a vaudeville house before the end of the 19th century, and seems to have started showing movies around 1913. It has to be one of the most multi-cultural venues in New York history: According to Harlem historian Jonathan Gill, it was owned by an “Irish Catholic fraternal organization,” then by a Yiddish actor named Max Wilner, and by 1940 it had become the Hispano, one of the city’s major Spanish cinemas.

It also seems that the police kept a close watch on the Mt. Morris: When a very young Milton Berle sang there (his first “professional” gig), he had to work from the audience to skirt child-labor laws. Later, the place was the subject of a crackdown by New York City License Commissioner Paul Moss, a crusading moralist who launched a vendetta against vaudeville and burlesque in the 1930s. In the mid-1910s, several employees were charged with storing stolen goods for a gang of crooks. It’s hard to imagine that any crime story on stage or screen could compete with the drama transpiring backstage.

Michael R. Miller Collection/Theatre Historical Society of America

The Loew’s 175th Street Theatre opened in 1930 and was the premier spot in Washington Heights for double features. Above, the theater in the 1930s.

Several other venues could be mentioned in this informal survey: Oscar Hammerstein’s Harlem Opera House, on 125th Street, was later re-christened the Victoria Theater and for most of its existence stood in the shadow of the Apollo a few doors down; the Lincoln Theater on 135th Street (now the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church) opened in 1915 and was the city’s first African-American theater, anticipating the Apollo as the premiere venue for black talent in the Jazz Age.

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Bryan Derballa for The Wall Street Journal

Rev. Frederick J. Eikerenkoetter II took it over in 1969.

The incredibly ornate Loew’s 175th Street Theatre opened in 1930. For four decades the gigantic 3,400-seat venue was the premier spot in Washington Heights for double features. Loew’s functioned as a cinema until 1969, when it was saved by the wrecking ball by the charismatic televangelist Reverend Ike (Rev. Frederick J. Eikerenkoetter II), who purchased the structure and converted it into his “Palace Cathedral.”

“The Reverend always took good care of it,” reports theater historian Warren G. Harris, “and never altered the decor, so it’s arguably the most authentic example of movie-palace grandeur in the Greater New York area.”

In 2007, the current owners, the Christ Community United Church, began leasing the space to concert producers. It’s the only venue on this list that’s still, at least occasionally, used as a theater.

Corrections and Amplifications

A caption in an earlier version of this article incorrectly identified The Loew’s 175th Street Theatre as the site of First Corinthian Baptist Church.

By LIZZIE SIMON

Kevin Yatarola

Gian Luigi Vittadini, Adrienne Vittadini, Terry Lundgren and Tina Lundgren

On Monday night, Daisy and Paul Soros were honored at the opening night of Midsummer Night Swing for their 18 years as lead sponsors of the festival.

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Kevin Yatarola

Reynold Levy, president of Lincoln Center, danced with his wife, Elizabeth.

“We think of them as the godmother and godfather,” said Lincoln Center President Reynold Levy. “[We] could not have asked for a better set of dance partners.”

For the occasion, a half- dozen giant wooden daisies, as well as hundreds of the real ones in vases, adorned a raised tented area to the right of the main stage.

Kevin Yatarola

Paul Soros, seated, with his wife, Daisy, center, and Christopher Williams and Janice Savin Williams

“Imagine if my name was Imogen,” Mrs. Soros said. “What would they do then? I’ve really made it easy on them.”

When asked why she’d lent her support to the festival for nearly two decades, she said, “It’s very simple. It’s more fun than you have ever imagined.”

She and her husband were both great dancers, she said. Mr. Soros was also a member of the 1948 Hungarian Olympic ski team. “The old European skiers had 5 p.m. tea dances,” he said.

Macy’s CEO Terry J. Lundgren was in the back of the tent with his wife, Tina. The company is a festival sponsor and had even featured live swing and salsa dancers in its windows that day to promote the opening. As a Lindy Hop dance class took place on the ballroom floor, Mr. Lundgren said he didn’t know how to Lindy Hop. “And this is a bit of a concern for me.” The event organizers had promised he’d get instructions, “but I may need remedial lessons. I’ll do my best not to embarrass myself, my family and my company.”

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Washington Post/Getty Images

Tony Ragano of the Potomac Wiffle Ball League takes a swing with a skinny yellow bat, the only type allowed under the 22 rules of backyard wiffle.

The Fourth of July weekend is almost here, when we gather together and celebrate the invention of the outdoor grill by Founding Fathers Ben Franklin and Ryan Seacrest. I’m not schmancy enough to dispense culinary advice—though you may want to flip over that steak, or sausage, or locavore unicorn, or whatever it is—but it’s important to have a Fourth of July game, too. And that game is not drunk-on-rum Scrabble. It’s Wiffle ball—the reason plastic and beer were invented. Here are the rules of Fourth of July Wiffle ball:

1. It’s not a real Wiffle ball game unless you can break a window. Or windows.

2. The perfect Wiffle ball field needs a wall, a fence, a tree, or a sunburned uncle lying prone in the outfield—just something—to smack the ball over for a home run.

3. Use a Wiffle ball, original brand. Don’t be the guy who saves two bucks with the discount “plastic outdoor baseball orb with “Reel-Kurve-Action”—then watches it shatter into 11 pieces on a routine fly out.

4. Buy a backup ball. Don’t buy more than two backups—part of Wiffle fun is the panic when you think you can’t find the last ball, meaning the game will be over and you’re really going to have to watch the slideshow of your sister’s vacation to Patagonia.

5. Skinny yellow bats only—no taping, weighting, or curving it under a heat lamp. The fat red bat your nephew just got for his 1st birthday? Put it back in the crib. Jeez.

6. Anyone can play in your Wiffle ball game. Mom can play. Dad can play. All the kids can play. Skittles the Labradoodle can play. Okay, Skittles give back the Wiffle ball. Skittles! Mom call Skittles.

7. Grandma can be second base and Grandpa can be third. Hold still, guys!

8. If you play Wiffle ball in a public setting, be warned: the public can join. See that shirtless guy with headphones roller skating to Andy Gibb? Meet your new first baseman.

9. You know that fast-pitch Wiffle craziness you can find on YouTube, with the fratty dudes in uniforms hurling it 84 miles an hour? That’s not Wiffle ball. That’s unchecked male aggression and most of those players wind up in prison or public office.

10. To that point: no high-speed pitching! Everyone should be able to hit. You are in the backyard with a Michelob in your hand, and you do not care about your earned-run average, Mr. Halladay!

11. Yes you can throw your super-awesome curve ball. But throw it fat and slow over the plate. Like a 2011 Astro.

12. If someone shows up to the game in eye black and a VARITEK or POSADA jersey—pat them on the head, point them to the driveway and call a cab and then the police.

13. Two outs an inning. You want to finish before the mosquitoes, yes?

14. There’s no such thing as a “walk” or a “balk” or a “Hit By Pitch” in Wiffle ball. Unless you hit Mom. Then she gets first base, and you need to make her a rum and coke.

15. Look at your team. Look at Mom, Dad, Grandpa, Grandma. Look at Sarah, your niece in art school. Look at Ralph, your second cousin who sells bugs on the Internet. Congratulations, you’re in better financial shape than the Los Angeles Dodgers.

16. Objects in play: that rosebush, that Datsun, that Richard Serra sculpture.

17. Decide what you’re going to do about baserunners. I ran this by Josh Rubin of Brooklyn, one of the great Wiffle artists of his era, and he’s firmly anti-baserunners. “I prefer marking hits and doing the simple math to calculate runs,” Rubin says. (Personally, I like runners if there are 5-6 players, because you can throw the ball at a runner to record an out, and it’s a great opportunity to settle old grievances with family and friends.)

18. Here’s how Josh plays without runners: “Anything on the ground is an out. A single: in the air past the pitcher. Double: lands in front of outfielders but has to be kind of a shot. Triple is over the heads of the outfielders.” A home run is over whatever your “fence” is. Runners are imaginary, like in Mariners games.

19. If there’s someone from New England in your game they will spend at least five minutes explaining how growing up in New England, there was no such thing as a “a crew cut” or a “buzz cut”—you just went to the barber and asked for a “Wiffle.” It’s not an interesting story, but it’s harmless.

20. Don’t get frustrated by flaky players. There is always someone who forgets what team they’re on, who forgets what their turn is in the batting order, who is inside the house making a turkey sandwich when it’s their time to hit. Don’t get mad. Just roll with it, and imagine you are managing Manny Ramirez.

21. If the ball gets hit into poison ivy, just decide which person in your Wiffle ball group is the least-liked, and send that person straight in.

22. The game is over when you hear a window smash. Now everybody run.

Patrick McMullan

Ric Ocasek, Jonathan Ocasek, Paulina Porizkova and Oliver Ocasek.

At the David H. Koch Theater Thursday, Shen Yun, a New York company of Chinese dancers and musicians, presented a “greatest hits” show from their years of international performance. With titles like “Drummers of the Tang Court” and “The Monkey King Outwits Pigsy,” each piece corresponded to specific ethnic cultures and folktales within the vast Chinese spectrum.

“It’s 5,000 years of Chinese history in two hours of performance,” said Carrie Hung from Chinese Arts Revival, the presenting organization. (The evening was arranged by the Peggy Siegal Company, which emblemizing the split between highs and lows permeating our culture, also screened the comedy “Horrible Bosses” at the same time downtown.)

Patrick McMullan

Michelle Ren

Salman Rushdie, Paulina Porizkova and Candace Bushnell were among those who attended the Shen Yun opening. Ms. Bushnell’s husband, the dancer Charles Askegard, expressed appreciation for the performers’ technique: “I cannot tumble,” he said. “I’m 6’4.”

In a nod to the East-West nature of the event, guests could choose between hamburgers and mozzarella sticks or Asian-fusion treats like black sesame mochi and sushi. The only shots being done were of tea.

“It’s going to relax you, lift you up, and help you with digestion,” said the tea bartender, Dayin Chen.

There were varying degrees of connection to China. Janelle Howard, a client liaison for Alpha Capital, hadn’t ever been (“Does Chinatown count?” she asked) and was particularly dazzled by the show’s elaborate costumes. “All the colors! It’s like a chakra-balancing experience. I’m going to tell my yoga teacher I don’t need her anymore.”

The architect and interior designer Peter Marino goes to China four times a year for projects. More than 50% of his work is there, he said. Dressed in his signature biker garb, he admitted that when he put himself together for the evening, “I wasn’t thinking about China. I’ve had these clothes on for four days.”

—Lizzie Simon