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Reviews
August '16 Digital Week V
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 30 August 2016 02:47
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail
Poliuto
(Opus Arte)
Two recent productions from Glyndebourne—England’s premier summer opera festival—are 200-year-old works that are used to comment on today’s fraught political climate. In Mozart’s Serail, set in a Turkish harem, director David McVicar presents a positive Muslim role model (Franck Saurel gives a gutsy non-singing portrayal), and there are wonderful vocal performances by Sally Matthews and Tobias Kehrer.
Director Mariame Clement places Gaetano Donizetti’s Poliuto in a war-fractured state reminiscent of the 1990s Balkans, which is fine; but it’s the musical side, led by singers Michael Fabiano and Ana Maria Martinez, which makes it work. Both discs have first-rate hi-def video and audio; extras are featurettes and interviews.
(Magnet)
Based on a novel by J. G. Ballard—best known for his books Empire of the Sun and Crash—High-Rise reeks of literal and figurative crumminess as it chronicles a dystopian world in microcosm: an apartment building whose failing infrastructure mirrors the class warfare that breaks out.
Despite the presence of Tom Hiddleston and Sienna Miller, director Ben Wheatley cripples his already obvious metaphor for a crumbling civilization with copious amounts of blood, sex, and a crudity that undermines the material, despite its high gloss. The hi-def transfer is immaculate; extras are a commentary and several featurettes.
Kiss Rocks Vegas
(Eagle Rock)
For its 2014 Las Vegas residency, the current incarnation of Kiss—sans original members Ace Frehley and Peter Criss, which automatically drops the group several rungs on the rock’n’roll ladder—plows through a 90-minute set of mostly old material, trying to prop up saggy new songs that are outshined by classics “Black Diamond” and “Love Gun.”
Guitarist Tommy Thayer, accomplished as he is, certainly is no Ace. The hi-def visuals and audio are excellent, but there are far too many shots of adoring audience members. Extras comprise a 30-minute acoustic set, sans makeup—including gritty takes on “Christine Sixteen” and “Hard Luck Woman”—and an audio CD of the main live set.
Me Before You
(Warner Bros)
From Jojo Moyes’ novel, this soapy tale follows a paraplegic young man who wants to end his life despite the earnest and eventually loving attempts by his perky caretaker to show him it’s worth living even in his wheelchair-bound state.
Despite Herculean efforts by Emilia Clarke and Sam Claflin as the pair (they are so well-matched that, with their chemistry, they deserve a real romantic comedy of their own), the movie comes off as a sentimental tragedy that makes its well-worn and single-minded way toward a foregone conclusion. The Blu-ray transfer is excellent; extras comprise deleted and extended scenes, outtakes and a making-of featurette.
Tatiana
Admeto
(C Major)
Hamburg Ballet auteur John Neumeier’s full-length Tatiana—the eponymous heroine comes from Alexander Pushkin’s prose-poem Eugene Onegin—is an absorbing three-acter that’s shown in its 2014 premiere with ballerina extraordinaire Helene Bouchet’s mesmerizing lead performance and composer Lera Auerbach’s appropriately dramatic and romantic music.
I’m no particular fan of Handel (or baroque opera in general), but this 2009 Gottingen, Germany, performance of Admeto is a novel and engrossing three hours thanks to the stately music and director Doris Dorrie’s delightful Japan-set production, whose samurai aspects work handily. The hi-def discs have good video and audio; extras are interviews and featurettes.
Boris Godunov
(Dynamic)
Modest Mussorgsky’s classic opus about the infamous 17th century Russian tsar, one of a handful of historical operas that works both dramatically and musically, is given a strong 2014 production in Sofia, Bulgaria, by director/designer Plamen Kartaloff, whose conceit is to stage it in front of Sofia’s great Russian cathedral: it’s not historically accurate but it provides atmosphere and dramatic coherence.
Bulgarian bass Martin Tsonev is a most forceful and tragic Boris, while conductor Konstantin Chudovski leads an intelligent, even inspired reading of Mussorgsky’s splendid and colorful score.
Deep Purple—Live at the NEC
(Eagle Rock)
In 2008, hard-rock legends Deep Purple got together for a concert to pay tribute to its original keyboardist Jon Lord—who appears more than halfway through with the ominous chords of “Perfect Strangers”—and this hard-charging performance showcases a band at the top of its game with or without Lord, who died in 2012. (Don Airey also plays keys during the show.)
Steve Morse is a blistering guitarist and Ian Gillan still shreds on vocals, and the whole band blasts through the climactic “Smoke on the Water,” “Hush” and “Highway Star” like it’s the early ‘70s all over again. Extras comprise interviews.
Criminal Minds—Complete 11th Season
Elementary—Complete 4th Season
(CBS)
Crime-solving procedurals have become big business again on network television, especially on CBS, where one of its signature series has beenNCIS and all its permutations: the seventh NCIS—Los Angeles season provides welcome diversion thanks to a top cast including LL Cool J, Chris O’Donnell and Daniela Ruah. Criminal Minds completed its 11th entertaining season with stars Joe Mantegna, Aisha Tyler and Thomas Gibson—the latter of whom has, if you haven’t heard, been let go due to an on-set altercation.
Then there’s the almost too cleverly updated Elementary, whose fourth season succeeds through the chemistry between Lucy Liu’s Watson and Jonny Lee Miller’s Holmes. Extras include featurettes, deleted/extended scenes, and a gag reel (on Elementary) and commentaries (on Minds).
August '16 Digital Week IV
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 23 August 2016 13:05
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Ash vs. Evil Dead—Complete 1stSeason
(Starz)
The original Evil Dead movies, which sprayed sophomoric humor and gore all over the screen, became cult items, and this jokey half-hour comedy-horror TV series is simply more of the same: which I guess is the definition of reboot.
There’s a certain amusement in seeing the hero Ash fornicating with a gorgeous but devilish stranger in a bar bathroom, but after awhile, the infantile jokes, torn limbs and exploding heads make strange bedfellows throughout these 10 episodes. There’s a good hi-def transfer; extras are audio commentaries on all episodes and featurettes.
Microwave Massacre
(Arrow)
1971’s Butterfly is more sober than the usual entries in the bloody Italian giallo genre, instead concentrates on the intricacies of police work and the courtroom than the actual bloodletting. Still, director Duccio Tessari knows how to put the screws to his victims, which will satisfy giallo fans.
1983’s Microwave Massacre—a movie as idiotic as its title—is a thoroughly inept horror flick about a man who starts eating people after killing his annoying wife. Badly acted, written (by Craig Muckler) and directed (by Wayne Berwick), it’s never repellent, just stupidly risible. Both films have nicely grainy transfers; extras are commentaries, featurettes and interviews.
The Duel
(Lionsgate)
For its first hour, Kieran Darcy-Smith’s western is a slow-moving, even enervating drama that doesn’t balance the usual aspects of the genre with an offbeat plot about a magnetic preacher who runs a violent town—and gets the new sheriff’s young wife to fall under his spell.
It’s only in the last 45 minutes or so—when the sheriff extracts his revenge—that things get occasionally exciting. Liam Hemsworth and Alice Braga are a believable sheriff and wife, but Woody Harrelson is too much Woody Harrelson to make an interesting antagonist. The hi-def transfer is fine; lone extra is a director/production designer commentary.
(PBS Masterpiece Mystery)
Detectives Endeavour Morse and Fred Thursday return to solve crimes in the area around Oxford University in the highly charged year of 1967 in this mystery series’ highly entertaining third season, comprising four involving 90-minute episodes.
The final episode, appropriately titled Coda, is a quite shocking finale; throughout the entire series, Shaun Evans (Endeavour) and Roger Allam (Thursday) give masterly lead performances. The hi-def transfer is excellent; extras comprise a making-of featurette and interviews with Evans and Allam.
The Huntsman—Winter’s War
(Universal)
This unnecessary sequel/prequel to Snow White and the Huntsman misfires badly despite a high-pedigree cast led by Charlize Theron, Emily Blunt and Jessica Chastain, who shows herself as a capable action heroine (maybe a reboot of Alien is in her future?).
Chris Hemsworth is a handsome but remote hero, while director Cedric Nicolas-Troyan hits the same visual and emotional buttons so frequently so that his film wears out its welcome well before the halfway point. The film does look ravishing on Blu; extras include director Cedric Nicolas-Troyan’s commentary, deleted scenes with commentary, extended cut of the film, a gag reel and several featurettes.
Saved!
(Olive Films)
Cowriter-director Brian Dannelly’s predictable but funny 2004 satire of ultra-religious teenagers dealing with the usual adolescent problems (namely, sex and sexual identity) relies on an ensemble of superb young performers—Mandy Moore, Heather Mazzarato, Jena Malone, Patrick Fugit, even Macaulay Culkin—as well as veterans like Mary Louise Parker and Martin Donovan.
Olive’s hi-def transfer is better than what was available previously; extras include two commentaries (one with Malone and Moore, the other with Dannelly, cowriter Michael urban and producer Sandy Stern) and two featurettes.
DVDs of the Week
Dark Horse
(Sony Pictures Classics)
This heartwarming story of a group of ordinary Welshmen and women who buy a bedraggled foal and watch him become a spectacularly successful racehorse is recounted in this unabashedly sentimental documentary by director Louise Osmond, who uses music, copious horse racing footage and informal interviews to create a pleasing equine portrait.
When the horse has a nearly fatal setback, I doubt that no one is rooting against him and all those who believed in him to make the ultimate—and nearly impossible—comeback on the racetrack.
(Magnolia)
With unprecedented access, director Andrew Rossi goes behind the scenes at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art to show off both its mounting the large-scale (and extraordinarily popular) 2015 China fashion exhibition and that spring’s Met Gala preparations, overseen by ubiquitous Vogue magazine editor Anna Wintour.
The fly-on-the-wall footage candidly chronicles the nail-biting prep that goes on until the very last moment, including intimate scenes of the sunglasses-wearing Wintour. Extras comprise a Rossi interview and three deleted scenes.
Weiner
(IFC Films)
When Congressman Anthony Weiner’s political career was interrupted by his self-inflicted 2011 sexting scandal, it was a cautionary tale about hubris, arrogance and ego; so the fact that directors Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg got to follow Weiner and his wife (and Hillary Clinton aide) Huma Abedin during his abortive 2013 NYC mayoral run is nothing short of amazing.
This is a warts-and-all film about politics that no one would have allowed themselves to be shown in such a way: it’s strange that Huma okayed it, but her husband’s head is so big that it’s unsurprising he allowed this hilariously embarrassing portrait to result. Too bad there are no extras: Weiner’s commentary would have been priceless.
August '16 Digital Week III
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 17 August 2016 16:10
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
(Warner Archive)
Tennessee Williams’ once-daring Pulitzer Prize-winning play about desperate Maggie the Cat and her uninterested husband Brick was made into a moderately faithful film in 1958 by Richard Brooks, who directs Elizabeth Taylor’s luminous Maggie and Paul Newman’s believable Brick; best, however, is Burl Ives as a gloriously over-the-top Big Daddy: Ives is a scene-stealer of the first order.
Warner Archive’s hi-def transfer is first-rate; extras are a commentary by Williams biographer Donald Spoto and 10-minute featurette narrated by Ashley Judd, a luscious Maggie on Broadway in 2003.
Raiders!
(Drafthouse/MVD)
The story of a group of teenagers who made a shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark over seven summers starting in 1981 is recounted in this engaging documentary by directors Tim Skousen and Jeremy Coon, who also follow the now-adult filmmakers for one last hurrah: to finish the final shot of their film, a difficult action sequence that was a highlight of Spielberg’s original.
Interviews with those involved—along with admiring fans like Eli Roth and John Rhys Davies—and glimpses of the amateur movie itself (and on-set glimpses at the final shoot) make this a must for movie buffs of all stripes, showing that movies make adults into kids again. The film looks good on Blu; extras include commentaries, deleted scenes, outtakes from the Raiders remake and Q&A from 2003 remake premiere.
Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon
The Pride and the Passion
(Olive Films)
Otto Preminger and Stanley Kramer, two of Hollywood’s most famous directors, made more negligible than good films. Preminger’s Junie Moon (1969) is a weirdly engrossing study of a misfit trio—acid burn victim (Liza Minnelli), shy epileptic (Ken Howard) and wheelchair-bound homosexual (Robert Moore)—trying to find friendship and love when they set up house together.
The principals are quite good, and if Preminger can’t quite make us empathize with them, there’s enough of a real-life spark to make this a fairly successful comic drama. Conversely, Passion might be the superficial Stanley Kramer’s worst film, a bloated and empty 1957 epic set during the Napoleonic wars with a pell-mell ensemble of miscast stars: Cary Grant, Sophia Loren and Frank Sinatra, whose Spanish accent must be heard to be disbelieved. Olive’s fine hi-def transfers are appropriately grainy.
(Warner Bros)
With actress Nina Dobrev—the most compelling reason to watch this diverting series about young and attractive bloodsuckers in small-town America—gone, Diaries had to basically reboot itself for another season.
The resulting 22 episodes are a decent attempt to do so, with more in the way of starring roles for actresses Kat Graham and Candice King while still showing off actors Paul Wesley and Ian Somerhalder. The series looks excellent on Blu; extras comprise deleted scenes, gag reel, Georgia PSA, directors’ interview and 2-15 Comic-Con Panel.
DVDs of the Week
The Affair—Complete 2nd Season
(Showtime)
I was quickly turned off by the first season of The Affair which, despite estimable acting by the two central couples—played by Dominic West, Maura Tierney, Joshua Jackson and Ruth Wilson—was fatally damaged by co-creator-writer (and erstwhile playwright) Sarah Treem’s tendency to overload her characters’ dialogue and relationships with triteness and heavy-handedness.
The second season doesn’t follow suit, and is all the better for it: the characters are far more interesting now than they were then. Extras comprise featurettes and bonus disc with two episodes of Showtime’s series Billions.
(Sundance Selects)
Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski continues his unimpressive filmmaking—after the equally forgettable Four Nights with Anna and Essential Killing—with this pretentious and dull narrative of 11 minutes in the lives of several characters, culminating with one of the most ludicrous finishes I’ve seen in any movie.
At least—for some—there’s the loveliness of actress Paulina Chapko, but for most others, there will be a big “huh?” followed by a shrug…except, that is, for those who continue pretending that Skolimowski (who made the far superiorMoonlighting in 1982) remains a major artist.
Exhibition Onscreen: Goya—Visions of Flesh and Blood
Renoir—Revered and Reviled
(Seventh Art)
Based on London’s National Gallery exhibit of Francisco Goya’s portraits, Goya—Visions is an intermittently intriguing overview of the Spanish master’s life and art; the talking heads and several masterpieces in close-up are far more fascinating than the flat-footed documentary re-creations of him at work.
Far richer is Renoir—Revered, which concentrates on French impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s last two decades of work, based on Philadelphia’s Barnes Foundation’s huge Renoir collection. Interviews with experts (notably the Barnes’ Martha Lucy) are illuminating, as are glimpses of several of his most expressive later paintings.
(IFC)
Diane Kruger gives a gutsy, no-holds-barred performance as an abused French housewife who—after thinking she’s killed her no-good drunk hubby while on vacation near Death Valley—goes off to Vegas, inadvertently beginning a new relationship with a reluctant American loner.
Co-writer-director Fabienne Berthaud can’t get a handle on her tone or her characters’ relationships, but with Kruger at the top of her game, it doesn’t matter. This flawed film showcases a flawless performance, along with exceptional support by Gilles Lellouche, Q’Orianka Kilcher and Norman Reedus.
Theater Review—“Troilus and Cressida” in Central Park
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Friday, 12 August 2016 23:22
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Troilus and Cressida
Written by William Shakespeare; directed by Daniel Sullivan
Performances through August 14, 2016
 |
| Andrew Burnap, John Glover and Ismenia Mendes in Troilus and Cressida (photo: Joan Marcus) |
One of the most complex plays in the entire canon, Troilus and Cressida is problematic to stage for many reasons: the language is among Shakespeare’s most dense and knotty; the plotlines swing violently to and fro among romance and farce, tragedy and wartime action; and there’s not one character who is in the least sympathetic. (It’s not surprising that it was probably never performed during Shakespeare’s lifetime, and rarely done since.)
What keeps Troilus relevant is its relentless sarcasm, which gives it a startlingly modern approach. Set during the Trojan War, the Greeks continue to lay siege to the city of Troy in retaliation for Trojan Prince Paris stealing Greek king Menelaus’ beautiful wife Helen. In Troy, King Priam’s son Troilus and young Cressida fall in love—thanks in part to the wily involvement of the degenerate old Pandarus—but she is soon sent to the Greeks as part of a hostage exchange.
Shakespeare constantly reexamines his characters, which comprise heroes, cowards and everybody in between: prominently sandwiched among warriors Hector, Ajax and Achilles (the latter, sick of fighting, prefers to stay in his tent with close friend Patroclus) is the snide and condescending Thersites, whose caustic zingers are a running commentary on the lunacies of love and war we are witnessing.
Daniel Sullivan directs this summer’s Central Park Troilus as a modern-dress, military-fatigues production, which director Mark Wing-Davey did with his ill-advised Delacorte Theater staging in 1995, the last time it was performed in New York. Parallels between the seven-year siege of Troy and our own endless wars are obvious and don’t spelling out, but Sullivan doesn’t trust audiences to make their own connections, so he clutters the stage with needless gadgetry and heavy-handed “ideas.”
So the play opens with Pandarus—played by John Glover with gleeful disgust, supplemented by a pronounced limp that physicalizes his “diseases” mentioned at play’s end—speaking the opening soliloquy into a microphone while carrying around a tape recorder. Later, there are cell phones and video cameras, a slide show presented by Ulysses (a curiously distant Corey Stoll), Hector retching after killing an adversary in battle, and most ridiculously, machine guns for the climactic battle scene, which loses any sense of the poetic weight that Shakespeare provides by forcing men to lay down those guns and pull out knives to finish one another off. So why use such supposedly lethal weaponry in the first place?
Admittedly, the play is notoriously difficult to stage, especially on a unit set like the Delacorte’s: the play’s 24 scenes lurch from besieged Troy to a Greek encampment to a battlefield. But David Zinn’s industrial-looking set is too rigid to cope with copious scene changes and his costumes are standard-issue fatigues and gym outfits, with a glaring exception: Ulysses wears impeccably tailored suits. Robert Wierzel’s artful lighting and Mark Menard’s bludgeoning sound design are closer to the mark.
It’s ironic that the play is titled Troilus and Cressida, since the couple is barely onstage together. At least Sullivan has two fine young actors in the eponymous roles: Andrew Burnap makes an ingratiating Troilus, and Ismenia Mendes—a wonderful Hero in a 2014 Delacorte Much Ado About Nothing—belies her youth and relative Shakespearean inexperience to give a piercingly truthful portrayal of one of the Bard’s most complicated young women.
Too bad the rest of the cast is all over the map: John Douglas Thompson has little of his usual zest as Agamemnon, Louis Cancelmi’s Achilles is far too shrill (although that’s partly excused by the fact that Cancelmi replaced an injured David Harbour shortly before opening), and Alex Breaux’s brainless Ajax and Tom Pecinka’s ostentatious Patroclus are even more frivolous than Central Park audiences usually get.
At least there’s Bill Heck’s dignified Hector and Max Casella’s acidly funny Thersites; but Sullivan’s directorial hodgepodge makes a mess of Shakespeare’s psychologically acute study of love and death.
Troilus and Cressida
Delacorte Theater, Central Park, New York, NY
shakespeareinthepark.org
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