Off-Broadway: Carey Mulligan Does Bergman, Kushner's 'Illusion,' Bottom-Feeding 'Shaggs'

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Friday, 10 June 2011 05:00

Written by Kevin Filipski

Through a Glass Darkly
Written by Jenny Worton, based on Ingmar Bergman’s script
Directed by David Leveaux
Starring Carey Mulligan, Chris Sarandon, Jason Butler Harner, Ben Rosenfield

The Illusion
Written by Tony Kushner, based on Pierre Corneille’s play
Directed by Michael Mayer
Starring Peter Bartlett,, David Margulies, Amanda Quaid, Lois Smith

The Shaggs
Book by Joy Gregory, lyrics by Joy Gregory and Gunnar Madsen, music by Gunnar Madsen
Directed by John Langs
Starring Peter Friedman, Annie Golden, Emily Walton, Jamey Hood, Sarah Sokolovic

The current Broadway season ends with the Tony Awards Sunday night, but off-Broadway is still going. As with the Great White Way, however, it’s also hit or miss in smaller theaters.

1961’s Through a Glass Darkly is one of Ingmar Bergman’s most personal films: in it, Karen, a young woman vacationing on a remote island with her husband, father and younger brother, is afflicted with a form of schizophrenia that allows the director to  plumb the depths of his favorite themes, the absence of God in the modern world and the most complex male-female relationships. Aided by stunning black and white photography by Sven Nykvist and indelible performances by Harriet Andersson (Karin), Max von Sydow (husband), Gunnar Bjornstrand (father) and Lars Passagard (brother), Bergman’s remarkable chamber drama is among his most uncompromising character studies.

Jenny Worton’s stage adaptation of Bergman’s script gets the outline right, but not much more: what makes the film so memorable is immeasurably wedded to Bergman’s own visual and verbal symbolism that what plays out onstage, while sometimes affecting, pales in comparison, especially by merely alluding to the finale’s powerful spider/God metaphor, so no one who hasn’t seen the film will understand the point.

David Levaux directs without ostentation, as if he realizes that he cannot compete with one of our greatest theater and film directors. But that understatement also makes for a 90-minute one-act play that slogs along, content to be a mirror image of the film. Chris Sarandon (father) Jason Butler Harner (husband) and Ben Rosenfield (son) acquit themselves well, and Carey Mulligan’s wonderfully expressive Karin only reminds us of the greatness of Harriet Andersson and the film’s other actors when Ingmar shoots them in his famously unyielding close-ups: the play is merely an approximation of true genius.

Genius is what Pierre Corneille, the 17th century French playwright, had, and mega-award-winning playwright Tony Kushner (Angels in America) did him the ultimate honor by adapting his tragicomic fantasy L’Illusion Comique in 1988, with the result, The Illusion, now onstage as part of the Signature Theatre’s all-Kushner season.

As it follows a French aristocrat who, while searching for his son, is shown scenes from the boy’s life by a magician, The Illusion plays around with well-worn notions of reality vs. artifice, which leads to a final buoyant speech that was definitely ahead of its time in Corneille’s day but comes off pretty ho-hum today. Kushner’s dialogue is curiously flat for the most part, and the blame must be equally assigned to Michael Mayer’s draggy staging, the strangely uninvolved cast and the adaptor’s own detachment.

There are scattered moments of delightful visual sleights-of-hand that display the wonders of a darkened theater, but this 2-½ hour Illusion is too much of a not-so-good thing.

The Shaggs, an abysmal female pop trio, became the Ed Wood of ‘60s musical lore. Of course, as with Wood’s unwatchable movies, the Shaggs’ unlistenable songs are occasionally resurrected as lost and misunderstood art. The musical The Shaggs doesn’t fall into that trap, but by straddling the thin line between mockery and sympathy, it ends up being not much of anything.

The musical shows off the girls’ bottom-of-the-barrel ineptitude so insistently that it’s difficult to tell where their badness ends and the show’s begins: for starters, director John Langs and book writer Joy Gregory make the amateur-night vibe so ham-fistedly obvious that their nudges in our sides start to break our ribs.

That the cast plays it all at an overdone level is initially amusing, then quickly wearying. Emily Walton, Jamey Hood and Sarah Sokolovic try their best to get across the pathos of being untalented, but are defeated by their director; Peter Friedman plays the father who believes in his daughters’ imminent stardom to the point of madness with an uncommon intensity that throws the whole show out of whack.

Joy Gregory and Gunnar Madsen’s music and lyrics aren’t much more accomplished than the Shaggs’ originals, so we’re left with the bad aftertaste as a dreary soundtrack at the service of what could have made a fascinating psychology study. But then we’d need an artist like Ingmar Bergman to bring that to life.

Through a Glass Darkly
New York Theatre Workshop
79 East 4th Street
New York City
http://nytw.org
Opened June 6, 2011; closes July 3, 2011

The Illusion
Signature Theatre
555 West 42nd Street
New York City
http://signaturetheatre.org
Opened June 5, 2011; closes July 17, 2011

The Shaggs
Playwrights Horizons
416 West 42nd Street
New York City
http://playwrightshorizons.org
Opened June 6, 2011; closes July 3, 2011

For more by Kevin Filipski, go to The Flip Side blog at http://flipsidereviews.blogspot.com

June '11 Digital Week I

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Monday, 06 June 2011 15:00

Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu rays of the Week
A Clockwork Orange (Warners)
Stanley Kubrick’s classic remains as unnerving as it was in 1971. Welded to Malcolm McDowell’s spectacularly physical performance as the ultimate anti-hero, Kubrick’s sardonically funny and visually dazzling adaptation of Anthony Burgess’ cautionary novel is the ultimate feel-guilty-for-feeling-good movie. This 40th anniversary release sadly doesn’t upgrade the solid but unexciting transfer of the original Blu-ray, but does add two new retrospective featurettes and the feature-length career overview Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures to the previously-included full-length documentary about McDowell, O Lucky Malcolm, other featurettes and the actor’s chatty commentary.

The Big Bang (Anchor Bay) and Burning Palms (Image)
The seedier sides of Los Angeles are featured in these bizarre dramas. In The Big Bang, private eye Antonio Banderas investigates a missing woman and $30 million in diamonds, only to come up against Snoop Dogg and super-sexy Autumn Reeser as a whip-smart tattooed waitress. Burning Palms offers five vignettes of dysfunctional relationships, including one in which a young woman feels guilty after sex with her boyfriend. Enjoyably crazed moments are scattered throughout both movies, yet neither coheres satisfactorily. Each receives a top-notch hi-def transfer, and Big Bang extras comprise a commentary, extended scenes and a making-of featurette (no Burning Palms extras).

Gettysburg (Warners) and Gods and Generals (Warners)
To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, Warners lovingly packages on Blu-ray Ronald F. Maxwell’s sprawling films about pivotal moments during the War between the States: 1993’s Gettysburg, recounting the bloodiest battle ever fought on American soil; and 2002’s Gods and Generals, which shows how strategies (or lack of) led to that pivotal 1863 battle. These already long films have been lengthened even more, both clocking in at over 4-½ hours. History fans (like me) will love it: Gods even features an added subplot about actor John Wilkes Booth. Maxwell’s stodgy direction is helped by exemplary casts (Jeff Daniels, Tom Berenger and Martin Sheen in Gettysburg, Daniels, Stephen Lang and Robert Duvall in Gods). Extras include commentaries by Maxwell and several historians, featurettes and documentaries.

Gnomeo & Juliet (Disney)
If your and your kids’ tastes run to stale garden gnome and Shakespeare jokes, then Gnomeo & Juliet is for you. The colorful animation is all that kept me from nodding off, as neither dialogue nor songs (mostly Elton John retreads) were enough to hold my interest. This movie seemed to be created in a brief meeting: “Let’s do a take-off on Shakespeare!” “And let’ add Elton John music!” “OK, cool!” The clever animation really pops off the screen on Blu-ray; extras include two alternate endings, deleted scenes, Ozzy Osbourne interview, music featurette and a “Crocodile Rock” video.

The Great Dictator (Criterion)
Charlie Chaplin’s brilliantly hilarious Hitler satire was daring back in 1940, and today, even if the edges have worn off, there’s so much comic inventiveness throughout that even Chaplin’s usual sentimentality doesn’t drag the film down but nicely balance things between bold audacity and sticky-sweetness. Criterion’s Blu-ray transfer is absolutely superb: rarely have I seen a 70-year-old film looking so pristine. The usual bountiful Criterion extras include an audio commentary; The Tramp and the Dictator, a 2001 documentary that parallels Chaplin and Hitler; two visual essays; color production footage; and silent-film sequences.

I Am Number Four (Disney)
Director D.J. Caruso’s standard-issue sci-fi fantasy tells a teen-friendly story of an alien who finds danger and love when his cover is blown. Decent action sequences butt heads with by-the-numbers teen romance it’s aimed at the audience that made Twilight such a smash, it’s unsurprising that there’s nothing novel about the whole enterprise. Still, an attractive young cast gamely does its job, and there’s enough to keep one’s interest from flagging. The movie looks terrific on Blu-ray, while extras include deleted scenes, the usual blooper reel and a making-of featurette.

Papillon (Warners)
Franklin J. Schaffner’s 1973 epic stars Steve McQueen as Henri “Papillon” Charriere, whose attempts to escape from the notorious French colony of Devil's Island are recounted. Dustin Hoffman co-stars as his prison sidekick, and with two then-big stars front and center, this is a weird hybrid of Hollywood adventure and French art film. The movie is occasionally rousingly good fun, yet rarely reaches the gripping heights its amazing true story is capable of. Now that it’s finally on Blu-ray, the movie definitively hasn’t looked this good (lots of filmic grain, for starters) since it was first released. The lone extra is a featurette, The Extraordinary Rebel.

Platoon (MGM) and Rocky (MGM)
These classics won Best Picture Oscars ten years apart: Rocky, Sylvester Stallone’s one-two writing-acting knockout punch, in 1976; and Platoon, Oliver Stone’s personal recreation of his Vietnam experiences, in 1986. The gritty griminess of Rocky (recreated on the excellent Blu-ray) is as much director John G. Avildsen’s achievement as Stallone’s, while the you-are-there immediacy of Platoon (also given a satisfying Blu-ray transfer) is Stone’s lasting achievement. Shockingly, Rocky has no extras, except for a nice-looking digibook; Platoon includes the original DVD extras, including Stone’s commentary, deleted and extended scenes, featurettes and documentaries.

The Roommate (Sony)
I doubt anyone was clamoring for a remake of Single White Female, the creepy 1992 thriller starring Jennifer Jason Leigh and Bridget Fonda (whatever happened to her?). But here is The Roommate, gliding along to its foregone conclusion slickly and unsurprisingly, with several attractive performers in the leads (including Minka Kelly, whose bigger claim to fame is being Derek Jeter's current girlfriend) and a solid hi-def transfer. The Roommate does its job for its intended audience: those under 25 who’ve never seen Single White Female on TV, video or DVD. Extras include an audio commentary, deleted/alternate scenes, and on-set featurettes.

Solaris (Criterion)
Inscrutable to those wanting more visceral sci-fi adventures, Russian master Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 masterpiece is more about inner than outer space: the last word in psychological character study, this uncompromising glimpse at the minds of astronauts being controlled by a distant world they are exploring contains the usual Tarkovsky recipe of slow, steady and subtle effects, and if you don’t fall into a very deliberate frame of mind, you’ll never catch up. Evocative and genuinely beautiful visuals are rendered clearly on Criterion’s Blu-ray, with several B&W sequences color-coded correctly. Extras include Tarkovsky scholars‘ commentary, deleted/alternate scenes, video interviews with actress Natalaya Bondarchuk and the film’s cinematographer, art director and composer; and an excerpt from a documentary on Stanislaw Lem, whose novel inspired the film.

DVDs of the Week
Nenette, Every Little Thing, In the Land of the Deaf, Louvre City (Kino)
Nicholas Philibert, arguably the world’s finest documentary filmmaker, is represented by four of his characteristic films. 1990’s Louvre City displays the inner workings of the world’s most important art museum, 1992’s In the Land of the Deaf chronicles the lives of those cut off from the hearing world, and 1997’s Every Little Thing shows psychiatric inmates putting on a play. Philibert’s latest, Nenette, is an enchanting study of the Paris Zoo’s oldest resident: a female orangutan. Philibert’s films fill viewers with enchantment and wonderment while learning more about our world. Two bonus films are included on the Nenette disc: an 11-minute short, Night Falls on the Menagerie, and a 1996 feature about the stuffed animals in Paris’ natural history museum, Animals and More Animals.

CD of the Week
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (Decca)
Rob Ashford’s revival of the classic musical unabashedly wears its datedness on its sleeve. Listening to the new Broadway cast recording reinforces that impression, as Frank Loesser’s memorable score has its share of time-capsule tunes like “Happy to Keep His Dinner Warm.” Still, standards like “Rosemary” and “I Believe in You” are there, and the energetic cast features Rose Hemingway’s sweet ingenue Rosemary and Tammy Blanchard’s hilarious bimbo Hedy La Rue. Star Daniel Radcliffe has a decent singing voice as our hero J. Pierrepont Finch, but not seeing his hard work onstage hampers him a bit. Still, this is an enjoyable listen.

Cinefantastique Spotlight Podcast: X-Men: First Class

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Monday, 06 June 2011 12:52

Written by Daniel Persons

It isn't particularly well known, but mutants were with Washington when he crossed the Delaware, with Einstein when he developed the theory of relativity, and with Sarah Palin while she was waiting for Russia to raise its head above Alaska. Most specifically, they were directly engaged in the Cuban Missile Crisis -- the world-changing historical event that is the backdrop for the first meeting of the psychic Professor X a.k.a. Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and the magnetically-charged Erik Lehnsherr, otherwise known as Magneto (Michael Fassbender). Come join special guest Orenthal V. Hawkins as he sits in with Steve Biodrowski, Lawrence French, and Dan Persons to discuss X-Men: First Class, the latest installment of the Marvel film franchise that uses comic book action to address some potent social issues. Does this chapter live up to the standard established by Bryan Singer? Is the first team-up of mutants -- which includes Beast (Nicholas Hoult), Banshee (Caleb Landry Jones), and Darwin (Edi Gathegi) -- as impressive as the more famous ensemble of the previous films? And is Moria MacTaggert's (Rose Byrne) choice of lingerie government-issued, or does Victoria's Secret sell bullet-proof brassieres? Listen to the show and find out!

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