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Film and the Arts
Film Review: "Hannah Arendt" at Film Forum
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Thursday, 30 May 2013 19:18
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Hannah Arendt
Directed by Margarethe von Trotta; written by von Trotta & Pamela Katz
Zeitgeist Films
Opens May 29, 2013
Margarethe von Trotta and Barbara Sukowa make a formidable team dramatizing formidable women’s lives. The German director and actress have made biopics about Communist agitator Rosa Luxemburg (Rosa Luxemburg, 1986), 11th century abbess and polymath Hildegard of Bingen (Vision, 2009) and now, Hannah Arendt, about the Jewish-German theorist-philosopher whose description of Nazi Adolf Eichmann as a mere bureaucratic functionary epitomizing the “banality of evil” at his 1961 trial—which she wrote about for The New Yorker—outraged many (incorrectly) as defending the indefensible.
May '13 Digital Week IV
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Monday, 27 May 2013 03:49
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
America’s National Parks: An Eagle’s View
America’s National Parks: An Eagle’s View (Mill Creek)
This “greatest hits” program of gorgeously shot segments from several America’s National Parks specials runs from coast to coast: beginning at Maine’s Acadia and ending where it all began, our first national park, Yellowstone.
In between, there are glorious looks at the natural glories of the Great Smoky Mountains, Everglades, Badlands, Glacier, Yosemite and Death Valley. This satisfying Blu-ray transfer makes this a valuable souvenir for those who have (or haven’t yet) visited any of these parks.
Band of Outsiders
(Criterion)
Fifty years on, Jean-Luc Godard’s 1964 gangster spoof comes off as a lazy exercise in self-aggrandizing, with literary and movie “quotes” showing off his erudition. There’s also Anna Karina—Godard’s first muse—whose charm is somehow lost on me; in compensation, there’s great freedom of movement and splendid cinematography by the great Raoul Coutard (whose first film, the shattering Vietnam drama Hoa Binh, would make a terrific Criterion Collection addition).
The Blu-ray image looks immaculate; extras include a vintage interviews with Godard and ones from 2002 with Karina and Coutard, along with an Agnes Varda short featuring then-lovers Godard and Karina.
The Bletchley Circle
(PBS)
A group of women who worked together during WWII in top-secret code-breaking jobs reunite years later to solve a series of murders baffling the police in this tautly enjoyable thriller.
The quartet of actresses—Anna Maxwell Martin, Rachael Stirling, Sophie Rundle, Julie Graham—is an accomplished team that butts heads with the old boys’ networks in their lives, both at home and at the police station. Such a well-made, straightforward crime drama is fun to watch. On Blu-ray, it looks superb; extras include cast and crew interviews.
The Sinful Nuns of St. Valentine
(Redemption/Kino)
A pair of cheesy early 70s horror films get the hi-def treatment. Cold Eyes of Fear, directed by Enzo G. Castellari (the original Inglorious Bastards), opens startlingly with a sexual assault—or does it? Then it turns into a solid thriller about a home invasion and kidnaping.
Sergio Grieco’s Sinful Nuns, which is obviously indebted to Ken Russell’s outlandish The Devils, has nudity and lesbianism aplenty, likely to keep many viewers watching. The Blu-ray transfers are good and grainy enough.
The Days of the Commune
(Slought Foundation)
The Occupy Wall Street movement was ridiculed by right-wingers as being run by fear-mongering elitists who targeted defenseless bankers. But this fascinating documentary about a multi-locale staging of Brecht’s play The Days of the Commune—in 1871 Paris, the working class rose up against the government—shows that OWS was also daring and fluid political theater.
On Manhattan locales from Zuccotti Park (where the Occupy movement began) to Lincoln Center and Central Park, several mainly amateur performers act out Brecht’s clarion call of words and music. It’s a pretty wooden drama, but as living history, it’s memorable. And it looks good on Blu-ray.
(e one)
Told in a fleet 80 minutes, this tale of an orphaned 19-year-old being tracked down by a roving band of murderers who murdered her family is excitingly done.
Set in 1363 after the Black Death, the movie gains much from being gorgeously shot on stupendous Scandinavian landscapes, and for cleverly pacing its action. The Blu-ray transfer is excellent; extras include bloopers, deleted scenes and a visual effects overview.
The Last Stand
(Lionsgate)
Why did Arnold Schwarzenegger pick this rote shoot ‘em up for his big screen return (following 2003’s Terminator 3)? Probably because of Korean director Kim Jee-Woon, whose explosive set pieces are indeed impressive.
But they’re silly too—the big car chase that pits Midwestern sheriff Arnie and the bad guy who escaped the inept feds in a corn field is ridiculous. Still, the explosions and bad one-liners might be enough for undiscriminating fans. The Blu-ray looks fine; extras are featurettes and interviews.
(RLJ Entertainment)
Watching Steven Dorff again as a brooding loner, I feel like I’ve seen this movie a dozen times before. Here, he plays a just-released con who gets mixed up with another deadly crime and ends up with a beautiful young woman whom he improbably meets on a local bus.
Dorff shows off his pecs and tats again, Michelle Monaghan acts up a storm as his new paramour, and Willem Dafoe is as creepy a villain as usual—but the movie is bland and ordinary. The Blu-ray transfer is very good.
DVDs of the Week
Blood of the Vine—Seasons 1 & 2
(MHZ Networks)
Only the French could dream up such a TV detective program: a wine expert becomes a sleuth after the police call him in to help solve a series of vine-related murders.
Although the plotting is pedestrian, the novelty of a wine expert figuring out how vineyards and vintages figure in killings is delicious, and of course Pierre Arditi—veteran of many Alain Resnais films—is perfect as our hero. The two volumes comprise eight 90-minute stories which are dramatically padded but feature the glories of French wine country.
(Warner Archive)
Howard Hawks’s campily entertaining 1955 sandals-and-swords epic about an Egyptian ruler who has slaves build a pyramid for him, which will also serve as his tomb, works despite its essential cheesiness.
Although shot in Panavision with vibrant color shades, the most amazing-looking visuals are Joan Collins (queen) and Luisa Boni (slave). The lone extra is a Peter Bogdanovich commentary.
Laure/Vanessa/Felicity: Naughty! Naughty! Naughty!
(Severin)
This boxed set comprises a trio of late ‘70s soft-core “classics” which all deal with a familiar plot of innocence debauched.
Despite exotic locations—Laure takes place in tropical Manila, Vanessa and Felicity in Hong Kong—the movies are interchangeable; still, the naked charms of their leading ladies are certainly worthy of comment. Extras include a commentary on Felicity, behind-the-scenes interviews on Vanessa and Laure.
(Eagle Vision)
Queen’s 1982 funk-disco hybrid album Hot Space was below par—especially after the worldwide smash album The Game—but the live show was, as always, incendiary (I saw them in Toronto that summer for the third and final time with Freddie Mercury).
This two-disc set shows off Queen at its hard-rocking best, 90 minutes of pure rock’n’roll. Combining Hot Space tunes with older favorites and classic singles, this is another major Queen concert event. The bonus disc includes additional performances and interviews.
Women in Love
(BBC Home Entertainment)
D.H. Lawrence’s novels Women in Love and The Rainbow—both turned into movies by Ken Russell in 1969 and 1989, respectively—have been morphed into a two-part, three-hour BBC film that revels in the explicitness that shocked Lawrence’s readers when the books came out nearly a century ago.
Although fusing the books adds unnecessary strain to the plotting and characters, it’s been so elegantly directed by Miranda Bowen and so skillfully acted by Rosamund Pike, Rachel Stirling, Saskia Reeves, Rory Kinnear and Ben Daniels, it approximates the emotional depth of Lawrence’s classic works.
Duke Ellington—Black, Brown and Beige
(Naxos)
The Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra—which just played a triumphant Carnegie Hall concert—has, under music director JoAnn Falletta, become a big-league ensemble that can even swing, as this enjoyable disc of big-band works by Duke Ellington shows.
From the free-wheeling opener, Harlem, to a snazzy arrangement of Take the A Train, the orchestra, Falletta and guest soloists Sal Andolina (sax), Amy Licata (violin) and Tony DiLorenzo (trumpet)—also blast through the Black, Brown and Beige and The River suites and Ellington’s unfinished ballet Three Black Kings.
NYC Theater Roundup: “The Master Builder,” “The Weir,” “Colin Quinn: Unconstitutional”
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Saturday, 25 May 2013 22:41
- Written by Kevin Filipski
The Master Builder
Written by Henrik Ibsen; adapted by David Edgar; directed by Andrei Belgrader
Performances through June 9, 2013
The Weir
Written by Conor McPherson; directed by Ciaran O’Reilly
Performances through July 7, 2013
Colin Quinn: Unconstitutional
Written and performed by Colin Quinn; directed by Rebecca A. Trent
Performances through June 3, 2013
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| Turturro and Schmidt in The Master Builder (photo: Stephanie Berger) |
Henrik Ibsen’s plays have had it tough in New York recently: last season’s Enemy of the People with Richard Thomas and the Pearl Theatre’s Rosmersholm were both so-so stagings. But The Master Builder, one of the Norwegian master’s towering final works, seems to get it worst. This warts and all autobiographical portrait of a great architect who’s fatally misunderstood and fatally flawed, is difficult going for even the best theater companies. Tony Randall’s floundering National Actors Theatre 1992 production came to grief, as did the Irish Rep’s 2008 version, even with an actor of the stature of James Naughton in the title role.
Now at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Romanian director Andrei Belgrader’s The Master Builder, from playwright David Edgar’s crudely overexplicit adaptation, features John Turturro as the brilliant Halvard Solness, whose yearning for artistic perfection has destroyed his own life and those around him. Unfortunately, this production fails on nearly every level, as if no one associated with it has grasped—or, indeed, was even aware of—Ibsen’s profundity.
Turturro, always (for better or worse) contemporary in aspect, is all wrong for Halvard: he has no gravitas or tragic nobility. His real-life spouse Katherine Borowitz plays Halvard’s wife Aline as a Stepford zombie, while Wrenn Schmidt turns Hilde, whose animated and irresistible presence perks up Halvard and his art, into a squeaky-voiced Kristin Chenoweth sound-alike who’s very resistible. The others can do nothing in their supporting parts.
Belgrader makes little sense of the complexities of Ibsen’s strained relationships, missing the humor and, ultimately, tragedy at the expense of blatant symbolism. Santo Loquasto’s ludicrously slanted jungle gym set dominates the stage throughout; Belgrader’s final image of Halvard approaching his destiny by climbing a leaning tower raises a question (not “begs the question,” as adapter Edgar mistakenly has it): did Ibsen set his play in Pisa? That might explain Turturro’s presence, but not much else.
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| Keating, Butler and Gormley in The Weir (photo: Carol Rosegg) |
Conor McPherson’s The Weir—despite winning the Olivier Award for Best Play in 1997—isn’t much of a play. Ninety minutes of eerie yarns told by visitors to an Irish countryside bar: if their gift of gab is enough, then you may enjoy it. If you want more, you may find The Weir wanting.
The supernatural stories these people tell involve ghosts and fairies, but despite Ciaran O’Reilly’s fluid staging on Charlie Corcoran’s wonderfully lived-in bar set, none of it coheres or builds to any dramatic climax. Their tales are told, they leave the bar and the play ends. It is, however, amusing to listen to these Irish men and lady, played exemplarily by Dan Butler, Billy Carter, Sean Gormley, John Keating and Tessa Klein.
McPherson’s habit of presenting the supernatural in his plays came to a head the lone time he told a real story, Shining City, where he desperately dragged in a frightful spirit to give the audience a final scream. While The Weir (which refers to a barrier across a nearby river, seen in a photo on the bar wall) doesn’t revert to such a stratagem, its weirdness is all too transparent.
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| Colin Quinn: Unconstitutional (photo: Mike Lavoie) |
A few years ago, comedian Colin Quinn performed Long Story Short on Broadway, a quick trip through world history. The fast-talking Brooklyn comic, off Broadway this time, now presents Colin Quinn—Unconstitutional, in which he discusses American political history from the Founding Fathers to today. As always with Quinn, there are as more misses than hits, but his approach does yield occasional comic insights.
Although Quinn trods a lot of ground in his 70-minute routine—likening US history to a drunken binge in a local tavern, from which citizens are only shaking off the inevitable hangover—it’s on the periphery that he finds his cleverest material. Such asides include his rebuke to Bruce Springsteen as “champion of the working man” while playing concerts that drag on so long that many audience members might get in trouble with their real bosses for getting to work late the next day. There’s also his unique take on hunting, saying it shouldn’t be called a sport because one side has no idea what’s going on.
Quinn takes mild shots at presidents past and present, while describing himself as “pro-choice, pro-gun, pro-gay marriage and pro-death penalty”—in other words, he’s “anti-overcrowding.” While his jokes are rarely trenchant, at least he tackles politics from left of center, which in a sane country would be the center.
The Master Builder
Brooklyn Academy of Music, Harvey Theatre, Brooklyn, NY
The Weir
Irish Repertory Theatre, 132 West 22nd Street, New York, NY
Colin Quinn: Unconstitutional
Barrow Street Theatre, 27 Barrow Street, New York, NY
Art Reviews: Met Museum, Frick Collection, Whitney Museum
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Monday, 20 May 2013 00:35
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Impressionism, Fashion and Modernity
Through May 27, 2013
Velázquez’s Portrait of Duke Francesco I d'Este—A Masterpiece from the Galleria Estense, Modena
Through July 14, 2013
The Frick Collection
Piero della Francesca in America
Through May 19, 2013
The Impressionist Line from Degas to Toulouse-Lautrec: Drawings and Prints from the Clark
Through June 16, 2013
Whitney Museum of American Art
American Legends: From Calder to O’Keeffe
Ongoing
The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s big blockbusters are the Costume Institute’s fashion
shows—Punk: Chaos to Couture is the latest—so it’s no surprise that curators conjured a hybrid exhibit of fashion and art. Impressionism, Fashion and Modernity is a canny exploration of how artists from Manet, Renoir and Monet to Cezanne, Corot and Cassatt were influenced by then-contemporary styles. By combining dozens of canvases, familiar and obscure, with complementary clothing from dresses and suits to hats and footwear, the exhibition visualizes how the seminal years from 1860-1890 evolved for the Impressionists. This new angle from which to explore these artists is also a chance to look at stunning fashions.
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| Monet's Women in the Garden |
Another Met exhibit, Velázquez’s Portrait of Duke Francesco I d'Este—A Masterpiece from the Galleria Estense, Modena, shows off the Spanish master’s exquisite jewel of a portrait, now on loan from an Italian museum heavily damaged in an earthquake last year. It’s not only a must-see painting, but a must-learn lesson in the fragility of out artistic treasures when Mother Nature decides to intervene.
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| Renoir's Pinning the Hat |
The Frick Collection’s current exhibits include Piero della Francesca in America, which brings together seven paintings from the renowned Renaissance artist, including six panels from his Sant’Agostino alterpiece: four of them already make the Frick their home; the others hail from Washington’s National Gallery of Art and Lisbon’s Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga. These radiant panels, reunited for the first time since 1555, show the painstaking detail of Piero’s artistry. A seventh Piero work, a refined Virgin and Child from the Clark Institute in the Berkshires, rounds out the exhibit.
Another Frick show, The Impressionist Line from Degas to Toulouse-Lautrec: Drawings and Prints from the Clark, which comprises 58 drawings, watercolors and prints from that venerable museum, is a veritable riot of colorful, balanced figures and locales. Highlights are Millet’s finely etched The Sower; Manet’s delightful At the Café; several splendid Degas animals; and Renoir’s voluptuous Pinning the Hat.
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| Hopper's Early Sunday Morning |
Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY
http://metmuseum.org
The Frick Collection
1 East 70th Street
New York, NY
http://frick.org
Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Avenue, New York, NY
http://whitney.org
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