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Off-Broadway Review—"Lives of the Saints"
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Friday, 27 February 2015 20:50
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Lives of the Saints
Written by David Ives; directed by John Rando
Performances through March 27, 2015
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| Rooth, Ellrod and Hutchinson in Life Signs, from David Ives' Lives of the Saints (photo: James Leynse) |
In Lives of the Saints, David Ives again shows off his mastery of the deceptively difficult short-play form. As in his earlier All in the Timing, what Ives does in his brief one-acts other playwrights can't do in 90 minutes or two-plus hours of stage time: the ability, in just a few fleet scenes, to create a world inhabited by realism and absurdism, and characters we laugh with, or at, or both. That Ives often pulls all of this off simultaneously is nothing short of astounding.
Lives of the Saints comprises six short plays, each funny and intelligent on its own, but with the cumulative effect of hilariously supple writing making the whole more substantial than the sum of its parts. The opener, The Goodness of Your Heart, which pits neighbors against each other over the "gift" of a widescreen televsion, takes perfect aim at the current annoyance of those self-entitled dopes who think that the world is theirs alone. Soap Opera is a farcical dismantling of that longtime afternoon TV scourge, has a Maytag repairman in love with his washing machine. A doctor's office is the setting for Enigma Variations, as "Mrs. Dopplegangler" (two of them) complains to Dr. Bill (two of them) that her life is filled with deja vu.
The second act comprises more delectable one-acts. The excruciatingly funny Life Signs, in which a just-dead Park Avenue matriarch begins to prattle on in front of her grieving son and Southern Belle wife, confessing her own (and her daughter in law's) hidden sexual indiscretions, is followed by It's All Good, an ingeniously conceived short about a successful New York writer returning to his old Chicago neighbrohood, where he meets himself as he would have been if he hadn't left. The final sketch, Lives of the Saints, sympathetically shows two chatty middle-aged Polish ladies preparing a funeral breakfast in their local church basement.
Ives' masterly writing zeroes in on everyday lives, thanks to the playwright's innate sense of comic irony and absurdism, which also includes a goodly amount of belly laughs. The alternating digs of disagreeing friends in Goodness, the laundry list of washing machine puns in Soap Opera, the loony confessions of a cadaver in Life Signs: Ives can mine humor and humanity in any situation. And even when brilliant ideas falter—the doubling down of the antics of Enigma, the non-ending to It's All Good, the introduction of actors providing kitchen sound effects for the ladies in Saints—there's always something else to take their place.
On Beowulf Boritt's crafty stage designs, director John Rando has a shrewdly loose leash on his talented cast: of this superlative quintet, Rick Holmes, Kelly Hutchinson and Liv Rooth are first-rate, while Arnie Burton and Carson Ellrod go even further, with a winning repertoire of voices, accents and facial expressions and inflections that change in the blink of an eye.
Lives of the Saints
The Duke on 42nd St, 229 West 42nd Street, New York, NY
primarystages.com
The Duke on 42nd St, 229 West 42nd Street, New York, NY
primarystages.com
February '15 Digital Week IV
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 24 February 2015 21:03
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Birdman
(Fox)
One of the most annoying of recent Oscar-winning Best Pictures comprises Emmanuel Lubezki's relentlessly mobile Oscar-winning photography, scenery-chewing performers delivering moronic dialogue dreamed up by four Oscar-winning writers and Alejandro G. Inarritu's too-clever but Oscar-winning directing, which add up to a headache-inducing cartoon about acting, show biz and (mostly) whatnot. As Michael Keaton, Emma Stone, Ed Norton, Naomi Watts, Andrea Riseborough and others ham mercilessly, Amy Ryan scores by her relative restraint, while the caricatured critic (played with notable embarrassment by poor Lindsay Duncan) is only part of the movie's ludicrous treatment of Broadway theater.
So much is nonsensical—like a final sequence featuring a hospital window a few floors up which a patient can open and climb out of—that this should be called Birdbrain. It does look alluring on Blu-ray; extras include an Inarritu and Keaton interview and a 30-minute making-of featurette.
In the Land of the Head Hunters
(Milestone)
These two releases continue Milestone's remarkable streak of restoring forgotten classics. Independent-film trailblazer Shirley Clarke's 1961 feature The Connection finds intense drama in a group of addicts and jazz musicians who populate a dilapidated New York apartment and who talk and riff for an arrogant documentary filmmaker while waiting for their drug connection to arrive.
An even more vital restoration, In the Land of Head Hunters, is famed photographer Edward S. Curtis' 1914 foray into feature filmmaking, and its immersion in the world of Native Americans before white settlers arrived is far more than a mere historic document. The spectacular restorations of both films look great in hi-def; Connection extras include interviews and featurettes, and Land extras include a 1973 version of the film, audio commentary, and film reconstruction and making-of featurettes.
Far from the Madding Crowd
(Warner Archive)
In this beautifully shot 1967 adaptation of Thomas Hardy's epic novel, director John Schelesinger goes the David Lean route by following the plot faithfully (courtesy Frederic Raphael's literate script) and having attractive performers in the leads, as Julie Christie's Bathsheba plays with the men in her life, played by Alan Bates, Peter Finch and Terence Stamp.
But Schlesinger errs in substituting gigantism for subtlety. Freddie Francis' exquisitely wrought camerawork and Richard Rodney Bennett's varied musical score are also undeniable assets. The Blu-ray transfer is excellent; lone extra is a vintage 10-minute on-set featurette.
Fellini Satyricon
(Criterion)
Federico Fellini's free-wheeling, flagrantly unfaithful 1969 adaptation of Petronius' memoir of Rome is the epitome of the adjective "Felliniesque": the freaks and grotesques that populate this world are less ancient Roman denizens and more Fellini's own fantastical creations. Of course, this stunning-looking film has extraordinary photography, sets and costumes, but the superimposition of Fellini onto the material makes it most memorable.
The Criterion Blu-ray transfer is immaculate; extras include a commentary, behind-the-scenes diary, hour-long on-set documentary Ciao Federico!, archival Fellini interviews, new interview with cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno and new featurettes about the adaptation and famous on-set photographs.
Horrible Bosses 2
(Warners)
The first Horrible Bosses was mostly mediocre, a fitful comedy with few laughs; but the sequel emphasizes the first word of its title to stultifying effect, especially when allowing Charlie Day and Jason Sudekis—neither remotely funny here—to dominate the asinine proceedings.
If you want to hear Jennifer Aniston curse like a sailor, this might be your best chance, but even that isn't enough to save a movie that (aside from Kevin Spacey's hilarious cameo) is dead on arrival, whether in the 105-minute original or even deadlier 115-minute extended cut. The Blu-ray looks fine; extras comprise several featurettes.
(C Major)
Richard Strauss's magnificent 1911 opera is many things: a lament for the middle-aged Marschallin, who loses her young lover Octavian; a romance of young love between Octavian and sweet Sophie; and a farce about foolish middle-aged von Ochs, Sophie's erstwhile suitor. The music is gloriously melodic, as always with Strauss, and the characters are expertly etched by his best librettist, Hugo von Hofmannsthall.
Last summer's Salzburg Festival staging (by Harry Kupfer) keeps liberties to a minimum and has the characters front and center, with superlative musical portrayals by Krassimira Stoyanova (Marschallin), Sophie Koch (Octavian) and a meltingly lovely Mojca Erdmann (Sophie); Franz Welser-Most conducts a sympathetic account of Strauss' music. The Blu-ray video and audio are first-rate.
Stray Dogs
(Cinema Guild)
Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-Liang's slow-moving films are not everyone's cup of tea, although many reviewers swear by his impossibly long, static takes that delve into people's interior lives: still, those shots can go too far, making us wonder whether shots of seven or eight minutes can convey just as much in half that time.
This drama about a single father in Taipei struggling to raise his children is his latest contemplative examination, highlighted by several astoundingly long takes, especially the final two shots, which run twelve and seven minutes repectively; aside from making us marvel at his actors' ability to do little for so long, they don't really add anything of substance. The hi-def transfer is stunning; extras are Tsai's 55-minute film Journey to the West (also in HD) and his 70-minute master class at Paris's Cinematheque Francaise.
Above Suspicion—Complete Collection
(Acorn)
The offbeat (not entirely sexual nor entirely platonic) chemistrty of Kelly Reilly and Ciarin Hinds as a newish detective and her hard-bitten boss is delicious to watch in this well-scripted, superbly-acted series of taut mysteries that, unfortunately, ran its course after four television films, all included in this boxed set.
Here's hoping that someday there's a follow-up feature film—or another series—with these two fascinating characters....and performers. Extras comprise behind the scenes featurettes and interviews.
Altar
(Cinedigm)
What begins as a familiar but stylish haunted house movie set in misty Yorkshire soon becomes a lumbering "dad goes crazy" flick that recalls and—as discordant music swells on the soundtrack—downright steals from The Shining.
Matthew Modine (who was in Kubrick's Shining follow-up, Full Metal Jacket) plays the father with an obviously crazed glint in his eye while, sadly, Olivia Williams—a resourceful actress whose roles rarely suit her talents—is little more than a screamer here, like Shelley Duvall in (of course) The Shining. Writer-director Nick Willing's cheat of an ambiguous ending shows his desperation.
August Wilson—The Ground on Which I Stand
Shakespeare Uncovered—Series 2
(PBS)
The revealing American Masters episode, August Wilson—The Ground on Which I Stand, chronicles the career (which ended far too early upon his death in 2005 at age 60) of the trailblazing playwright, whose singular 10-play cycle encompassed the black experience in America.
In the second series of the entertaining, informative Shakespeare Uncovered, six actors each analyze one of the Bard's classic plays: Joseph Fiennes (Romeo and Juliet), David Harewood (Othello), Hugh Bonneville (A Midsummer Night's Dream) and Morgan Freeman (The Taming of the Shrew) provide enjoyable hours, but best are Kim Cattrall's look at Antony and Cleopatra and Christopher Plummer's illuminating overview of the most despairing of Shakespeare's masterpieces, King Lear. Wilson extras include additional segments.
Star 80
(Warner Archive)
Bob Fosse's unlikeable 1983 masterpiece, which tells the depressing, sordid story of Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten and her discoverer, slimy Paul Snider, is Fosse's own cautionary morality tale of the seamiest side of show business, as the director artfully rubs our noses in watching how Snider got Stratten her big break, only to rage against her when she finally outgrows his low-class ways, finally killing her, then himself, in 1980, when she was 20 and on the cusp of stardom.
That Eric Roberts pretty much repeated his performance as Snider for much of his career doesn't make it any less poweful, while Mariel Hemingway makes a sweetly naive Dorothy. It's too bad that Warner Archive released Star 80 without any restoration, compromising Sven Nykvist's dark, moody cinematography; this classic deserves a Blu-ray with contextualizing extras, which we probably won't get any time soon.
February '15 Digital Week III
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 17 February 2015 21:56
- Written by Kevin Filipski
A Day in the Country
(Criterion)
A masterpiece in miniature, Jean Renoir's buoyant 40-minute short might be his profoundest statement mainly because he refrains from making one: this graciously comic look at a city clan's eventful visit to the country is an absolute delight to watch.
Renoir's lively visuals are reminiscent of his father's lustrous paintings, while his generosity and sympathy lie with his characters, foibles and all. This unfinished classic (finally released 10 years after it was shot in 1936) has been given the first-rate Criterion treatment, from the wonderful restoration to voluminous extras comprising a 90-minute compilation of outtakes, Un tournage a la campagne; interviews; a video essay; Renoir's introduction; and screen tests.
(PBS)
In this gorgeous-looking five-part study, Dr. M. Sanjayan's travels are turned into a new kind of nature documentary, which shows how humans and animals are inhabiting our magnificent planet, both apart and together.
The episodes, which feature one aspect of our mutually beneficial relationship—Home, Plains, Forests, Oceans, Water—also examine ways we can preserve our precious natural resources for ourselves and the future. The Blu-ray visuals are, naturally, eye-popping; lone extra is bonus Sanhayan interview.
Fear Clinic
(Anchor Bay)
If not for Robert Englund—best known as Freddy from the Nightmare on Elm Street series—this thriller about people dealing with a horrific past event through hallucinations that are becoming murderously real would be even more routine than it is.
Englund is solid as the doctor whose risky treatments might be the cause of some grisly deaths, but flimsy motivation and scare tactics won't appeal to any but the least finicky horror fans. The movie looks good in hi-def; lone extra is an on-set featurette.
(Lionsgate)
Director Tommy Lee Jones, who stars in this western as an outlaw who helps a spinster take a trio of women driven mad by the harsh frontier existence to a safe house, has made a sturdy, solid picture that's a bit too slow and studied for its own good; surprisingly, Jones gives a curiously uncontrolled performance that mars the straightforward filmmaking on display.
The film, though, belongs to Hilary Swank, who as the spinster gives a thoughtful, intelligent performance, even if the occasionally harrowing drama (based on a 1988 novel by Glendon Swarthout) severely shortchanges her, throwing the story out of whack in its final half-hour. The western vistas look spectacular on Blu-ray; extras include three substantial on-set featurettes.
Laggies
(Lionsgate)
This mild comic study about Megan, a 20ish slacker who befriends high school student Annika and her father, with whom she becomes romantically involved, limps along without committing for 100 minutes, essentially aping its idle protagonist.
With a too-familiar script by Andrea Seigel and uneven direction by Lynn Shelton, it's still worth a look, thanks to committed acting by Keira Knightley, Chloe Grace Moretz and Sam Rockwell. The movie looks fine on Blu-ray; extras are Shelton's commentary, deleted scenes and featurettes.
(Magnolia)
Steve James' documentary about Roger Ebert's final years is an affecting portrait of the famous movie lover who faced mortality with bravery and humor, especially after horribly disfiguring cancer treatments that only prolonged the inevitable (he died in 2013).
There's no denying the importance of the phenomenally popular movie review show starring Ebert and fellow Chicago reviewer Gene Siskel—who died of a brain tumor in 1999—but James shows how Ebert kept his love of cinema in proper perspective, as only one aspect of his gregarious love for life. The Blu-ray has a first-rate transfer; extras are deleted scenes, James interview and featurettes.
Mariinsky II Gala
(Arthaus Musik)
When the Mariinsky Theatre opened its ultra-modern concert hall, Mariinsky II, on May 2, 2013, the cream of the crop of its stable of singers, musicians and dancers, alongside international stars, converged on St. Petersburg for the ultimate gala concert, led by the indefatigable conductor Valery Gergiev.
Among dozens of highlights, there are Russian superstar soprano Anna Netrebko, the immortal Placido Domingo and luminous ballerina Diana Vishneva. The two-hour performance features Russian composers Tchaikvsky, Prokofiev and Stravinsky, and works by Wagner, Mozart and Verdi. The Blu-ray's image and sound are extraordinary.
(Kino Lorber)
French director Jacques Rivette's fanatical cult marches on despite a painfully mediocre cinematic output: his 1981 Paris-set film pairs a middle-aged ex-con and a paranoid 20ish loner, who together battle a menagerie of men named Max for a red-herring filled "mystery" that wears out its slender welcome long before its two-plus-hour running time expires.
Amid the eternal beauties of Paris locations—which, to Rivette's credit, bypass the usual tourist traps (except for the Arc de Triumphe) for less photographed areas—actress Bulle Ogier and daughter Pascale (who tragically died in 1984, one day short of her 26th birthday) traipse around with little rhyme or reason. There's enough willful obscurity and symbolism to delight Rivette fans; for the rest of us, it's heavy going. The Blu-ray looks splendid; extras are two video essays.
Syncopation
(Cohen Media)
In this 1942 dramatization of jazz's evolution, trumpeter Jackie Cooper falls in love with piano player Bonita Granville, but their romance rightly takes a back seat to the glorious musical performances from the likes of Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa.
Director William Dichterle provides enough breathing space for the musicmaking to make viewers overlook the bumpily melodramatic plotting and pacing. The restored film looks tremendous on Blu; extras comprise nine jazz shorts featuring such luminaries as Louis Armstrong, Bille Holliday, Duke Ellington and Bessie Smith.
(Millennium)
When she was Derek Jeter's girlfriend, Minka Kelly was just another pretty face, but her strong portrayal of a young woman caught in a cycle of drugs, violence and sexual exploitation catches all the nuances of what could have been a paper-thin character.
Too bad the rest of the film (despite solid acting by Noah Wyle, Jeremy Irvine and Adelaide Clemens) isn't up to her forceful portrayal, instead getting bogged down by back-country in-fighting and Civil War memories that make this downbeat melodrama meander for two hours. There's an excellent hi-def transfer.
Off-Broadway Review—"Between Riverside and Crazy"
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Friday, 13 February 2015 17:54
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Between Riverside and Crazy
Written by Stephen Adly Guirgis; directed by Austin Pendleton
Performances through March 22, 2015
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| Stephen McKinley Henderson and Rosal Colon in Between Riverside and Crazy(photo: Carol Rosegg) |
This superlative actor, who has too often been relegated to secondary roles or as part of ensembles in August Wilson plays—where he's stolen countless scenes—finally gets a role he can sink his teeth into. As Pops, the widowed NYPD retiree living in an enormous rent-controlled Upper West Side apartment, Henderson dominates the proceedings with his gravelly voice, formidable frame and an affecting twinkle in his eye that invites the audience to share in the grand old larcenous time he's having.
Between Riverside and Crazy
Second StageTheatre, 305 West 43rd Street, New York, NY
2st.com
Pops—first seen at his kitchen table with Oswaldo, his son Junior's friend, soon followed by Junior's bimbo girlfriend Lulu, and finally Junior himself—is mad at the world, and himself, for how his life has gone. He was shot a few years ago by a rookie white officer, forcing his retirement, and his ensuing squabble with the city is not going his way; meanwhile, his landlord is hoping to get him out of his incredibly cheap apartment and his former partner, Audrey, and her fiancee Dave are trying to talk him into finally settling with the city. Through all this, he might as well be hosting a halfway house for his ex-con son Junior and Junior's shady friends.
As usual with Guirgis plays, this is a world not often seen onstage: the multi-ethnic diversity of his characters, most of whom are living on the margins of society, bursts into vivid life thanks to his unerring ear for their authentically slangy talk.
However, although his grasp of the language of these marginal people is convincing, he often goes too far just for laughs: early on, for example, Pops has to ask who Ben Affleck is, while later, he nonchalantly tosses off a Justin Bieber reference. Would Pops really know about one and not the other?
Guirgis is also on shaky ground when putting his characters through their paces. When the supposedly sterile Pops is seduced by a Brazilian church lady hoping to get money out of him, he ends up having a miraculous orgasm; later, when he finally agrees to the city's settlement, he wants Audrey and Dave to throw in something personal as their part of the bargain: her $30,000 engagement ring.
And everyone's relatively happy ending—even Oswaldo, who earlier cold-cocked Pops when he wouldn't give him his credit card—underlines Guirgis's desperate strategems in getting from A to B, with the contradictory behavior on display less like the messy but real complexity of life and more the improbable contrivances of the playwright.
Still, Crazy is never less than entertaining in Austin Pendleton's generous and well-paced production, which allows the terrific cast the ample breathing room that Guirgis's breathless torrents of dialogue rarely do. Walt Spangler's outstanding apartment set, which provides a comfortably lived-in backdrop to the fuzzy goings-on, also doubles as a frame through which to watch the acting genius of Stephen McKinley Henderson.
Between Riverside and Crazy
Second StageTheatre, 305 West 43rd Street, New York, NY
2st.com
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