NYC Theater Roundup: MLK and Woody on Broadway, WASPs Off-Broadway

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Saturday, 29 October 2011 15:00

Written by Kevin Filipski

The Mountaintop
Written by Katori Hall; directed by Kenny Leon
Starring Angela Bassett, Samuel L. Jackson

Relatively Speaking
Written by Ethan Coen, Elaine May, Woody Allen; directed by John Turturro
Starring Caroline Aaron, Lisa Emery, Ari Graynor, Steve Guttenberg, Danny Hoch, Julie Kavner, Richard Libertini, Mark Linn-Baker, Marlo Thomas

Children
Written by A.R. Gurney; directed by Scott Alan Evans
Starring Darrie Lawrence, Margaret Nichols, Richard Thieriot, Lynn Wright

Award-winning playwright Katori Hall has set herself up to be knocked down off the mountain with her speculative drama about Martin Luther King. Set in the Memphis hotel room that King stayed in the night before he was killed, The Mountaintop pits King against Camae, a maid who is more (or less) than whom she initially seems. The plot would work better a lot shorter, especially since a Twilight Zone episode would wrap things up in 30 minutes.

Unfortunately, Hall pads her play with imagined conversations between King and Camae, often filled with unneeded profanity. Camae apologizes profusely several times to King after letting loose with expletives, and the show’s biggest laughs come when King throws down his own F-bombs. Hall tries humanizing King by showing him behind closed doors, as it were, off the pedestal he’s occupied since his assassination. When the play opens, King enters the hotel room coughing, shivering, desperately needing a cigarette; he goes into the bathroom where we hear him urinating. At least he doesn’t belch or pass gas, which would be too obvious, apparently.

The play’s shallow crux--an unpersuasive revealing of Camae’s true identity--makes the first hour, in retrospect, nothing more than a pointless buildup, and the last part is simply Hall climbing to the top of her soapbox to show what King’s death has wrought. Some dialogue has bite, humor and even occasional insight, but Hall is too enamored of her conceit to plumb the depths of her flimsy characters.

Director Kenny Leon stages The Mountaintop as realistically as possible on David Gallo’s spectacularly shabby hotel-room set, which yields to a visually impressive visualization of the play’s title (which is taken from a King speech heard at the beginning). Gallo’s apt projections accompany Camae’s monologue about the last 40-odd years of universal struggle following MLK’s death.

Samuel L. Jackson and Angela Bassett are too old for their parts, but Jackson’s King is nicely understated and Bassett’s Camae is amusingly over the top; Bassett (who looks smashing, by the way) has been criticized for hamming, but she’s so infectious that she makes sitting through The Mountaintop less of a chore than it would have been if a lesser actress was onstage.
            *                                            *                                        *
The three one-acts making up Relatively Speaking are seen in ascending order of hilarity. Ethan Coen’s short curtain-raiser, Talking Cure, is a one-note riff on the offbeat characters he and his brother have made their onscreen specialty; Elaine May’s George Is Dead is an amusingly slight character study about a narcissistic rich widow; and Woody Allen’s old-fashioned farce Honeymoon Motel has jokes galore, with hit or miss laughs.

Director John Turturro seems at sea in the rudderless Coen comedy, which moves in fits and starts. If not for Danny Hoch’s delightfully deranged line readings, Talking Cure would be 15 minutes of wasted talking. That Turturro better grasps May’s comic rhythms in George Is Dead is shown in Marlo Thomas’s tour de force of shrill intensity as the clueless Doreen, a role May herself might have played earlier in her career. As Doreen’s straight woman, Lisa Emery gives a sympathetic portrayal that grounds May’s sometimes strident comedy with a dose of much-needed reality.

All bets are off in Allen’s Honeymoon Motel, which is stuffed to the gills with one-liners and zingers that have collected in Allen’s fertile comic brain for the past four decades. There’s a goodly amount of groaners, to be sure, but there are also enough good lines sprinkled about that the pace rarely flags until Woody winds things down to an abrupt finale. You can hear Woody’s own voice when someone says “There’s a lot to be said for inertia in marriage--especially now with Netflix” or “Did you see the look on the rabbi’s face? Like someone gave back the Left Bank.”

As in May’s play, Turturro adeptly lets his 10 cast members find their own comic rhythms and meshes them together: adroit comic performers like Julie Kavner, Richard Libertini, Mark Linn-Baker and Ari Graynor don’t overwhelm lesser lights like Steve Guttenberg. The three plays‘ formidable visual design comprises Santo Loquasto’s ravishing sets, Kenneth Posner’s deft lighting and Donna Zakowska’s agreeable costumes. Relatively Speaking works best as Woody Allen’s return to the uncontrolled outrageousness of Bananas.
            *            *            *
Children, A.R. Gurney’s 1974 comic study of New England WASPs, is tougher than other plays like The Cocktail Hour and The Dining Room, whose genteel satire is replaced with more acid.

At a summer house on an island off the Massachusetts coast on July 4th weekend in 1970, an affluent family is in crisis. Just-divorced Barbara, who has brought her children, is quietly carrying on with the family’s former lawn keeper; her hotheaded, competitive brother Randy, a school teacher, is is visiting with his easygoing wife Jane and their kids; and their widowed mother (called “Mother“), who announces that she’s marrying longtime family friend “Uncle” Bill, who remains unseen, along with other characters: Barbara and Randy’s younger, free-spirited brother Pokey and wife Miriam, who arrive with their soda-drinking, foul-mouthed kids; and Barbara, Randy and Pokey’s father, who died five years earlier. Gurney generally handles these glaring absences well, except in Mother’s final monologue, when she speaks to Pokey, who’s standing behind a screen door: his silence during her conversation is implausible.

Throughout the course of one day, this family’s varied skeletons come tumbling out of the closet, and Gurney lays bare the generations-long repression of these WASPs. As always, Gurney’s dialogue sparkles as both repartee and riposte: Jane’s coming-out party --where she met Sandy--is called a “WASP bar mitzvah,” while Barbara makes an astute observation about her family: “That‘s why we have to be near the ocean. We have to go through these ritual cleansings.”

Despite his affection for them, Gurney mercilessly dissects these children. The final image of Mother alone on a terrace with a view of the sea (nicely rendered by set designer Brett J. Banakis and Bradley King’s lighting) shows a resignation, even a loneliness, usually missing from Gurney’s work.

Scott Alan Evans ably guides a superb cast: Richard Thieriot (Randy), Lynn Wright (Jane) and Darrie Lawrence (Mother) solidly grasp their roles, but Margaret Nichols, whose Barbara is a beautifully-realized lost soul, is so good that one wonders why such a valuable actress isn’t onstage more often.

The Mountaintop
Previews began September 22, 2011; opened October 13
Jacobs Theatre, 242 West 45th Street, New York, NY
http://themountaintopplay.com

Relatively Speaking
Previews began September 20, 2011; opened on October 20
Brooks Atkinson Theatre, 256 West 47th Street, New York, NY
http://relativelyspeakingbroadway.com

Children
Previews began October 18, 2011; opened October 27; performances thru November 20
Becket Theatre, Theatre Row, 410 West 42nd Street, New York, NY
http://tactnyc.org

October '11 Digital Week IV

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Monday, 24 October 2011 01:00

Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-rays of the Week
Bad Teacher (Sony)
I’ve never been a fan of Cameron Diaz, so I had little hope for Bad Teacher: but she’s perfect as a sexy, foul-mouthed teacher in this raunchy, mean-spirited, occasionally funny comedy. It’s tough getting laughs while showing off your trim bod as you wash cars, but Diaz manages to do both.

Jason Segal is a decent foil as the gym teacher with the hots for her, but once again Justin Timberlake is lifeless as a substitute teacher Diaz likes. The movie’s insipid, sure, but it’s also defiantly un-P.C., so that counts for a little. The Blu-ray transfer is solid; extras include deleted scenes, gag reel, outtakes and on-set interviews.

The Clowns (Raro Video)
This 1970 paean to the circus that Federico Fellini always loved, made for Italian TV, might not be as visually or comically memorable as his obvious classics, but if “Felliniesque” wasn’t yet in use, it would have been coined for this surreal, shaggy dog of a film.

Fellini is our guide for a loving look at circus clowns that opens with a beautiful nocturnal dream sequence of a young Fellini basking in the glow of the tent going up as the circus comes to town. This modest but immensely pleasing partial autobiography has an excellent hi-def transfer bursting with color; extras include Fellini’s 1953 short, The Matrimonial Agency, and Adriano Apra’s dry, academic essay, Fellini’s Circus.  

The Guns of Navarone (Columbia/Sony)
One of the big super-spectaculars of its time, this overlong, muddled adventure is set in Greece during World War II. With Gregory Peck, Richard Harris, Anthony Quinn and David Niven in top form, J. Lee Thompson’s creaky epic (from Alistair McLean’s novel) works thanks to stunning location shooting--which looks remarkable in a restoration immortalized on Blu-ray--and Dmitri Tiomkin’s heavingly bombastic score.

Extras are commentaries by Thompson and film historian Stephen J. Rubin, three documentaries, eight featurettes and an interactive feature, The Resistance Dossier of Navarone.

Kuroneko (Criterion)
Best known for his terrifying ghost story Onibaba, director Kaneto Shindo turned to another scary tale with 1968’s Kuroneko (Black Cat), an eerie fable of murder, sex and redemption. Shindo ramps up the atmospherics with exquisite B&W cinematography and Hikaru Hayashi‘s haunting score.

This Criterion Collection release gives Shindo’s classic its due with a breathtaking Blu-ray transfer and extras comprising a Shindo interview and appreciation by film critic Tadao Sato.

Monte Carlo (Fox)
This vehicle, Selena Gomez’s attempt to escape her Disney shackles, is a pleasant teen rom-com that finds her in Paris on a vacation that includes her being mistaken for a prissy heiress and whisked off to Monte Carlo for laughs and love.

It’s forgettably watchable, with European locales (Paris, Monte Carlo, Budapest) giving it added luster, especially on the decent-looking Blu-ray. Extras include fluffy on-set footage and deleted scenes.

Page One: Inside the New York Times (Magnolia)
This fascinating look behind the scenes of the Gray Lady chronicles the last bastion of traditional American journalism through reporter David Carr, whose own story (ex-drug addict, felon) is as interesting as his own take-no-prisoners attitude.

In our unbrave new world of bloggers and internet arrogance, there’s room for newspapers, director Andrew Rossi says…or is there? At 90 minutes, the movie’s a little too breezy, but 20 minutes of deleted scenes are included, as are interviews and a Q&A following its premiere.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (Disney)
In the fourth installment of the Pirates franchise, even Johnny Depp looks bored trotting out Jack Sparrow again. The fetching, able Keira Knightley has been replaced by a not-fetching, unable Penelope Cruz, good British actors Gregory Rush, Richard Griffiths and Ian McShane ham entertainingly, but director Rob Marshall (who also ruined Chicago and Nine) has no clue how to shoot action, even ruining a foolproof mermaid scene.

The movie has a great Blu-ray transfer; extras comprise gag reel, short film and commentary.

Salo: or the 120 Days of Sodom (Criterion)
Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1975 adaptation of de Sade’s magnum opus about debauchery and torture updates it to fascist Italy, where innocent young men and women are forced to perform grotesque acts of self-debasement before being horribly murdered by their jaded captors.

Obviously, Salo is an acquired taste, and even if much looks undoubtedly fake (eating shit, cutting out tongues, gouging out eyes), it’s disgusting enough to avert one’s eyes anyway. Despite Pasolini’s passionate anti-fascism, Salo’s shock value obliterates artistic or psychological concerns. The Criterion Collection provides a typically first-rate release, with a fine hi-def transfer and extras that contextualize a movie screaming for it.

V: The Complete 2nd Season (Warners)
This cancelled sci-fi series, with supposedly benign visitors from outer space actually having malevolent intentions, wraps up its second--and final--season with 10 episodes on two discs. (There’s a letter-writing campaign by fans to get the show on another network.)

Dazzling visuals--which look terrific on Blu-ray--outpace the rather routine contretemps between humans and aliens; at least the lead alien is easy-on-the-eyes Morena Baccarin, who could sucker any red-blooded human male into thinking she’s on his side. Extras include a blooper reel, deleted scenes and making-of featurettes.

DVDs of the Week
Ancient Marvels (PBS)
This boxed set of episodes from PBS’ intelligent science series NOVA brings together explorations of great, awe-inspiring architectural achievements of lost civilizations: Stonehenge, the Sphinx, Machu Picchu, the Parthenon, Easter Island, China’s Rainbow Bridges.

Each hour-long episode dissects how and why each masterpiece was built, with modern-day archeologists and scientists attempting to replicate these monuments showing how amazing these achievements are, hundreds and thousands of years later.

The Music Lovers and The White Bus (MGM)The latest MGM Limited Edition Collection releases are, unfortunately, two top British directors’ least interesting films. Ken Russell’s The Music Lovers, a bizarre, vulgarized 1970 biopic of Russian composer Piotr Tchaikovsky (played with youthful energy by Richard Chamberlain), has frenzied visuals and blasting music but little nuance.

Lindsay Anderson’s The White Bus is a short, surreal 1967 melodrama that alternates between B&W and color like his superior next film, If…. While the films’ transfers are not top-notch by any means, they are adequate enough.

The Rise and Fall of Margaret Thatcher (BBC)
The Iron Lady, England’s first female prime minister, gets the biopic treatment in this trio of BBC productions showing Margaret Thatcher’s political triumphs and failures.

The Long Walk to Finchley dramatizes how Thatcher (a superb Andrea Riseborough) wins her first election despite sexism; The Falklands Play has Thatcher (a stern Patricia Hodge) dealing with England’s 1982 war with Argentina; and Margaret shows Thatcher (a splendid if too youthful Lindsay Duncan) during her waning years of power. Together, these films provide an absorbing portrait of a formidable and controversial woman.

The Shock Doctrine (Kimstim/Zeitgeist)
Naomi Klein’s provocative book The Shock Doctrine details Milton Friedman’s free-market capitalism as an inevitable by-product of natural and man-made disasters like war, terrorist attacks and hurricanes.

Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross’ pungent documentary, an illuminating overview of Klein’s “disaster capitalism” thesis, includes the author discussing her ideas. However, Klein gives too much credence to Friedman and his acolytes’ “success,” which seems coincidental and anecdotal.

CDs of the Week
Anna Netrebko: Live at the Metropolitan Opera (Deutsche Grammophon)
In the decade since her smashing 2002 Metropolitan Opera debut in Prokofiev’s masterpiece War and Peace, Russian soprano Anna Netrebko has become the biggest star in the classical music world.

This compilation of excerpts from her starring roles on the Met stage includes a disappointingly short scene from War and Peace (one of the most underrated operas of the 20th century), along with more obvious examples of her magnetic personality and gorgeous voice: Don Giovanni, La Boheme, The Tales of Hoffman, Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette and the bel canto works now dominating her repertoire-- Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor and Don Pasquale and Bellini’s I Puritani.

Mojca Erdmann: Mozart’s Garden (Deutsche Grammophon)German soprano Mojca Erdmann’s CD debut comprises a well-chosen group of arias by Mozart and contemporaries: his supposed nemesis Antonio Salieri (infamous from the play and movie Amadeus), Giovanni Paisiello, Ignaz Holzbauer and J.C. Bach.

Erdmann’s lustrous tone and creamy voice hit all the right notes in the Mozart arias from Zaide, Idomeneo, Figaro and The Magic Flute. Giving estimable musical support are conductor Andrea Marcon and La Cetra Barockorchester Basel. Here’s looking to more from this luscious-sounding (and -looking) young artist.

October '11 Digital Week III

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Sunday, 16 October 2011 20:00

Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-rays of the Week
Beautiful Boy (Anchor Bay)
Michael Sheen and Maria Bello give emotionally overwhelming portrayals of a couple about to separate who must deal with a shattered existence after their only son has committed a heinous campus shooting.

Director/co-writer Shawn Ku’s low-key approach, which attempts to avoid clichés, ends up as a meandering and unaffecting clinical study of the depths of solitude and sorrow. The Blu-ray image is perfect; the extras comprise Ku’s commentary and deleted scenes.
 
Boccaccio ‘70 and Casanova ‘70 (Kino Lorber)
The Holy Grail of 1960s omnibus films, Boccaccio ‘70 united directors Mario Monicelli (whose segment was deleted for American release), Vittorio de Sica, Luchino Visconti and Federico Fellini for a 3-½ hour stew of sexual hypocrisy: Fellini’s segment, The Temptation of Dr. Antonio, is a masterly hoot.

Casanova ‘70, Monicelli’s delightful sex comedy stars Marcello Mastroianni as a playboy who discovers he’s impotent unless a life and death situation stares him in the face. Both films have received excellent hi-def transfers with a film-like graininess; too bad there are no extras.

Bonekickers and Going Postal (Acorn Media)
These witty British television series are clever amalgams of comedy, history, mystery and adventure. Bonekickers, set in Bath, follows intrepid archeologists, while Going Postal features a con man trying to run a run-down post office. Those summaries don’t do justice to the whimsy and wit included in both series in equal measure, with a group of stellar actors balancing such lunacies effortlessly.

Both series’ visuals are improved greatly by the hi-def upgrade, especially the beauties of Bath in Bonekickers, whose extras include behind-the-scenes segments; Postal extras include commentary, introduction, interviews, deleted scenes and blooper reel.

The Four Feathers (Criterion)
Zoltan Korda’s sumptuous and entertaining 1939 color adventure is the best adaptation of the classic novel about British troops in Africa. Although the intimate dramatic scenes are creaky, the rousing action sequences in Khartoum make this film Zolta’s brother Alexander Korda's most flamboyant production.

The Criterion Collection’s stellar Blu-ray gives this seven-decade-old film its best-looking image ever; extras include an audio commentary, an interview with Korda’s son and a vintage behind-the-scenes featurette.

Master Harold and the Boys (Image)
Athol Fugard’s heartfelt play about the relationship between a white teenager, Hally, and two middle-aged black servants opened eyes that Apartheid’s horrors were vastly more complicated than what’s usually remembered (if at all).

Lonny Price’s earnestly stiff adaptation decently renders the atmosphere of a specific time and place, while Freddie Highmore (Hally), Ving Rhames and Patrick Mofokeng are affecting in the three lead roles. The film looks good on Blu-ray; there are no extras.

Masterpiece: Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, Wuthering Heights (PBS)
Direct from Britain, this trio of classic literary adaptations--two by Jane Austen, one by Emily Bronte--which aired on PBS’ Masterpiece series are distinguished by the compelling portrayals by several of the best young British actresses in the lead roles. Mansfield Park features Billie Piper and Hayley Atwell; Northanger Abbey stars Felicity Jones and Carey Mulligan, an actress incapable of a false note; and Wuthering Heights has Charlotte Riley.

An added diversion is gorgeous period locations like Newby Hall in North Yorkshire, which looks splendidly enticing on Blu-ray; the lone extra is Wuthering Heights behind the scenes footage.

Mr. Nice (MPI)
Rhys Ifans’ delicious turn as Britain’s most unlikely marijuana smuggler is the center of Bernard Rose’s inventively stylish biopic, another of those “too unbelievable to be made up” true stories.

With hallucinatory sex, drugs and rock’n’roll sequences and a topnotch supporting cast led by the always great Chloe Sevigny and an irresistibly slimy David Thewlis, this is one extremely entertaining portrait of a wild and crazy era. The Blu-ray image is first-rate; a making-of featurette is the lone extra.

Terri (Fox)
Finally: a rare film about teenager misfits that doesn’t condescend or pretend that everyone is a world-class wit. Director Azazel Jacobs and writer Patrick DeWitt introduce overweight loner Terri (Jacob Wysocki) on his own terms, allowing him to interact with a cute girl with her own problems (Olivia Crocicchia) and his unconventional vice-principal (John C. Reilly).

Not everything works, but the believable teenage milieu allows us to care about these people which, in this era of smartass foolishness, is a real achievement. The Blu-ray transfer is solid; the extras comprise a behind the scenes featurette and deleted scenes.

The Tree of Life (Fox)
Terrence Malick’s visually stunning personal essay is ostensibly the story of a 1950s Texas family as a microcosm of life lived either as a state of grace or of nature. The 19-minute “creation of the universe” sequence is audacious enough; scenes featuring a sullen Sean Penn tie things together in what could be considered a truly religious film, regardless of one's own belief.

Sublime editing, extraordinary photography, excellent use of much classical music and gripping performances by Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain, make this philosophical film another thought-provoking work of art by America’s greatest living director. The movie looks amazing in hi-def; the lone extra is the 30-minute Exploring The Tree of Life, with interviews with cast, crew, and admiring directors David Fincher and Christopher Nolan.

DVDs of the Week
The Harvest (Cinema Libre)
This arresting documentary profiles a trio of child migrant workers in the United States, of all places, who work back-breaking hours seven days a week to help keep farms going. Kudos to director U. Roberto Romano for the intimate scale and executive producer Eva Longoria, who obviously took the subject to heart and shepherded it to completion.

Seeing these youngsters working ungodly hours for little pay is something we all could learn from, but the people who need to see it will not. Extras include additional scenes and Longoria and others speaking in Washington D.C.

The Trip (IFC)
Michael Winterbottom’s winning road movie stars two of our most capable comic actors, Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, playing thinly veiled versions of themselves while trekking around England sampling the cuisine…and, not coincidentally, annoying the hell out of each other.

That’s pretty much the entire movie. But superb comedians ad-libbing their way through reading menus, ordering food, dissecting the other one’s flaws and doing spot-on impressions of celebrities like Michael Caine is all Winterbottom needs, and he wisely shoots and edits to keep everything percolating for 105 minutes. Extras on-set featurettes and deleted scenes.

The War of 1812 (PBS)
This documentary about America’s first war since gaining its independence is a lucid, impressive account that makes good use of talking heads (including several Canadian scholars), historic maps and other illustrations.

Still, this Joe Mantegna-narrated program suffers from “reenactment-itis,” which, instead of letting history come alive on its own, amps up the drama with awkward-looking performers enacting Dolly Madison and other big names of that era. This style never works, for me at least; luckily, the rest of The War of 1812 is informative and insightful.