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Reviews
December '14 Digital Week IV
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 23 December 2014 22:09
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
The Good Lie (Warners)
This earnest, touching drama follows the true story of Sudanese young men who escaped their country's horrific civil war and traveled across the Atlantic to start afresh with the help of volunteers who eased their navigation of the bewildering but welcoming place called America.
Director Philippe Falardeau wisely keeps the focus on the new arrivals, even if that entails some melodrama and sentimentality, further maximized by the likes of Reese Witherspoon (featured on the cover to try and sell the movie) and Corey Stoll in supporting roles. The Blu-ray image looks first-rate; extras comprise deleted scenes and making-of featurette.
Tosca
(Decca)
Vincenzo Bellini's final opera, I Puritani, dramatizing the 17th century English Civil War, is given a sturdy 2009 production in Bologna, Italy; its stars, tenor Juan Diego Florez and soprano Nino Machaidze, have superb stage chemistry to go with their ability to easily navigate the composer's treacherously difficult vocal writing.
Giacomo Puccini's perennial audience favorite, Tosca, is brought to vivid life in this 2011 Zurich, Switzerland staging; its formidable central trio of Americans Emily Magee and Thomas Hampson and German Jonas Kaufmann provide the gripping center of Puccini's tragic tale of love and death. Both operas have impeccable sound and video on Blu-ray.
The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears
(Strand)
This followup to Amer, Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani's unsettling homage to the Italian slasher genre called giallo, ups the ante in its dissection of a man's mental, physical and psychosexual anguish when he discovers his wife has disappeared.
The directors fetishize everything, both in the film and in their visual style, comprising closeups, fragmented shots, split screens, dazzling lighting and editing; for awhile, it's intriguing, even hypnotic, but the technique soon becomes a dead end, and the repetition becomes numbing. The vividness of the filmmaking is given its hi-def due on Blu-ray.
The Man with Two Brains
(Warner Archive)
By the time of their 1983 romp, writer-actor Steve Martin and writer-director Carl Reiner had polished their silly but probingly sarcastic humor; if this mad-doctor spoof carries more comedic weight than the hit-or-miss The Jerk or Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, it's because Martin himself is more agile, more willing to go for broke on camera without losing the thread of his character and story, something he'd perfect in the following year's tour de force All of Me.
Kathleen Turner shows admirable pluck as the femme fatale from hell, willing to go along with Martin on his inspired flights of sheer lunacy, and if it all bogs down at the end, the first hour or so flies by effortlessly.
Running on Empty
(Warner Archive)
A fascinating subject—ex-radicals, on the lam from the FBI, try and build a family and new lives—is fatally compromised by Naomi Foner's superficial, soap-opera script (which somehow earned a 1988 Oscar nomination and won a Golden Globe), which substitutes sentimentality and contrivance for three-dimensionality and taut drama.
Sidney Lumet's direction is solid, and his cast, especially River Phoenix as the restless teenage son, Martha Plimpton as his restless girlfriend and Christine Lahti as his mother, does what it can, but the messy script moots any chance at intelligent and insightful character study.
1000 Times Good Night
(Film Movement)
The always stunning Juliette Binoche adds another indelibly etched portrait to her growing collection of flawed but beautifully human women in this tough, no-nonsense account of a war photographer who returns home to her beloved husband and daughters but still feels the pull of the battlefield.
Director Erik Poppe shrewdly centers the action on Binoche both at home and in the midst of unbearable carnage, and the final shot of her when again in the midst of inhumanity is shattering. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau makes a sympathetic husband, but it's Binoche's fierce, utterly compelling performance that commands our attention throughout. Extras are on-set footage and interviews.
Holiday CD of the Week
Renee Fleming—Christmas in New York
(Decca)
Wherein America's foremost operatic diva gets jazzy for the holidays, with swinging versions of Christmas songs from "Winter Wonderland" to "In the Bleak Midwinter," showing off a voice still in its prime, and giving us a listen to her first musical love, which she may do more of once she stops singing Strauss and Mozart.
With help from such illustrious collaborators as Wynton Marsalis, Chris Botti, Rufus Wainwright and Kelli O'Hara (with whom she duets on a dreamy "Silver Bells"), Fleming celebrates the season in her usual elegant style. Too bad that this disc wasn't paired with a DVD of her PBS special, which also includes Fleming's performances of Christmas carols with her talented sister and daughters.
Music Reviews: Sir Paul's Latest Re-issues; Jimmy Page's History Book
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Monday, 22 December 2014 23:03
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Wings—Venus and Mars
Wings—Wings at the Speed of Sound
(Hear Music/Concord)
The Paul McCartney Archive Collection has been taking its sweet time covering Paul's amazing post-Beatles career—two releases per year seems to be the norm—and the latest are Wings' mid-70s number-one albums, Venus and Mars and Wings at the Speed of Sound.
1975's Venus and Mars, which followed closely on the heels of Paul's critical and commercial post-Beatles breakthrough, Band on the Run(still flying high on the charts when this came out), consolidated Wings' commercial success, even though it sounded like a slight comedown after the exhilarating songs on Band.
But the usual variety of musical styles is on display throughout Venus and Mars, from the opening "Venus and Mars/Rockshow"—which would be the concert opener during 1976's Wings Over America tour and at Paul's 2010 shows—to the closing cover of the British TV soap opera Crossroads theme song. In between are the bright-sounding "Magneto and Titanium Man," which showed Paul's interest in Marvel superheroes long before they became movie staples; "You Gave Me the Answer," another of Paul's delightful music-hall pastiches; "Call Me Back Again," housing one of Paul's most agile vocal performances; the smash "Listen to What the Man Said," showing off Paul's genius for arresting arrangements; and "Letting Go," a downbeat number that's actually one of Paul's most personal songs for wife Linda.
Released the following year, Speed of Sound gave the band new songs to play on tour (Paul was playing his first American concerts since the Beatles last performed in 1966) and provided a democratic way of presenting the group as more than simply Paul's backing band by having each member—even Linda, on the facile "Cook of the House"—take a crack at a lead vocal. Guitarist Denny Laine's rocker "Time to Hide" has the strongest musical legs, although Jimmy McCullough's somber "Wino Junko" attained tragic relevance following the 26-year-old guitarist's 1979 death from a heroin overdose.
Speed of Sound's Paul quotient consists of two huge singles—"Silly Love Songs," with its irresistibly melodic bass line, and the guilty-pleasure sing-along "Let Em In"—and fun if inessential romps through various genres like the funky "She's My Baby," bouncy "San Ferry Anne" and romantic "Warm and Beautiful." Best of all is the surging rocker, "Beware My Love," which became a live highlight on the 1976 tour. (Too bad Paul's never seen fit to resurrect it for any of his recent concerts.)
Along with an impressive remastering job of both albums, these re-issues come with an extra disc of added material, comprising B-sides, demos, alternate cuts, etc. Disc 2 of Venus includes the chugging hit single "Junior's Farm," the great, unheralded stomper "Soily"—never officially released, although Paul felt highly enough of it to make it the group's final encore through the '76 tour—and an early version of "Rock Show," which has a few interesting changes.
Sound's second disc contains piano demos of "Let 'Em In" and "Silly Love Songs" (both of which are intricately structured even at this early stage), Paul singing "Must Do Something About It" (which drummer Joe English sings on the record) and an alternate version of "Beware My Love" with Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham, which gives it extra oomph.
Next up in the Archive Collection are one of Paul's best albums, 1982's Tug of War, and one of his less compelling efforts, the 1983 follow-up Pipes of Peace. I'm still waiting for 1979's underrated Back to the Egg, but I don't think even Paul likes it very much, so I'm not holding my breath.
Jimmy Page
(Genesis)
Not content with simply knocking out superb new re-issues of Led Zeppelin's studio albums—Led Zeppelin I, II, III, Zoso (IV) and Houses of the Holy are available, with Physical Graffiti, Presence, In Through the Out Door and Coda presumably on the way next year—Jimmy Page has also put together a massive photographic autobiography, simply entitled Jimmy Page.
This gorgous cover-table tome (512 pages and 6-plus pounds' worth) is essential for any Page fan, from his teenage days to the Yardbirds, Zep, The Firm, his '90s reunion with Robert Plant, and beyond: this elegant volume is crammed with hundreds of photos of Page and his cohorts onstage, offstage, backstage and in the studio, complemented by captions and an occasional explanation, along with lists upon lists of what I assume is every concert tour Page has been on.
Unlike Plant, Page desperately wants to embark on one last megatour as you know whom; since that most likely won't happen, he's contented himself with bolstering his legacy as Led Zep's founder and premier musical architect. This book, along with those reissues, goes a long way toward cementing his legendary status as one of rock's greatest instrumentalists and composers.
Off-Broadway Review—"The Invisible Hand"
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 17 December 2014 23:47
- Written by Kevin Filipski
The Invisible Hand
Written by Ayad Akhtar; directed by Ken Rus Schmoll
Performances through January 4, 2015
.JPG) |
| Ally and Kirk in The Invisible Hand (photo: Joan Marcus) |
With his Pulitzer Prize-winning play Disgraced doing boffo biz on Broadway (and a likely front-runner for the Tony Award), let's see if playwright Ayad Akhtar is not just a one-trick pony. Happily, The Invisible Hand—which shrewdly shows how money is the root of all evil, whether capitalism or terrorism—proves he isn't: it's another smart, provocative, hard-hitting and all too relevant drama.
After Nick Bright, a broker working in Citibank's Pakistan office, is mistakenly kidnaped—the target was his boss—the group who did the deed decide to try and extort money from the bank for his ransom. But the $10 million they are asking is, in Nick's own words, far too much for someone of his relatively minor stature; but his captors remain steadfast, assuming the dirty American bank will cough up the money.
After weeks in captivity, Nick makes a deal with the men: he will use $3 million from his own offshore acount to invest in the market until he raises $10 million. The group's head, the respected elder Imam Saleem, agrees to allow his protege, the hot-headed Bashir—a London-born Arab who is in Pakistan to wage jihad like, he says, the many leftists who turned into freedom fighters against Franco in the Spanish Civil War to assuage their guilt over living comfortably in the West—to become Nick's financial "assistant."
Although their investments begin well, a brilliantly written and staged scene shows how Nick quickly realizes that working financial angles for his captors has a plethora of moral quagmires: especially after their immediate windfall comes after a prominent Pakistani and his wife (both of whom he knew socially) are killed in a terrorist attack at a wedding. Parallelly, Bashir becomes giddy, almost scarily so, when he sees the ease with which they've made $700,000 in 10 minutes.
Akhtar's writing skillfully treads the blurred lines separating freedom fighters from terrorists and surviving at all costs from doing what's morally right: he adroitly positions his characters and their explosive behavior in the front lines of the so-called war on terror. If Disgraced found tough insight into that war through two couples in a well-appointed Manhattan apartment, then The Invisible Hand is its flip side: a dispatch from that endless war, with lives on the line for nothing more than cold hard cash.
Since the play began life as a one-acter, there's a noticeable difference in the writing: act one has a simple but forceful elegance that underlines its brutal truths about both sides; after intermission, there are blunter statements of physical and mental brutality. Some may find the sheer viciousness of the play's final moments too obvious, but it works perfectly as the only possible ending for a story that's been leading to ever more dangerously fraught situations for everyone involved.
Ken Rus Schmoll directs with alternate muscle and finesse on Riccardo Hernandez's starkly imposing set (with bonus points for Tyler Micoleau's exquisitely evocative lighting), while the actors—Justin Kirk (Nick), Usman Ally (Bashir), Dariush Kashani (Imam) and Jameal Ali (Dar, a gun-toting minion)—give firmly commanding performances in roles that could easily have become caricature.
All of that, combined with Akhtar's assured script, makes The Invisible Hand another winner by New York's playwright of the moment.
The Invisible Hand
New York Theatre Workshop, 79 East 4th Street, New York, NY
nytw.org
December '14 Digital Week III
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 16 December 2014 23:00
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
At the Devil's Door
(IFC Midnight)
An unapologetic ripoff of other (and some better) fright flicks, writer-director Nicholas McCarthy's lackluster horror film sets up its premise so lazily that whatever happens—from the death of main characters to a dragged-out, unsuspenseful finale—will probably be met with indifference by most viewers.
A game cast (led by Glee's Naya Rivera and a sorely underused Catalina Sandina Moreno) has little to do, while bumps in the night and other would-be scares do little more than add to a frighteningly dull 93 minutes. The movie looks good on Blu-ray; extras comprise a making-of featurette and deleted scenes with McCarthy's commentary.
(Decca)
Georges Bizet's classic opera, a sure-fire crowd-pleaser with some of the most famous music ever written, gets an uneven 2009 Zurich staging, but at least conductor Franz Welser-Most leads the Zurich Opera Orchestra and Chorus in a blisteringly dramatic reading.
It's unfortunate that Matthias Hartmann's production decides to scuttle time and place, while the cast—Vesselina Kasarova as Carmen, Jonas Kaufmann as Don Jose and Isabel Rey as Micaela—is polished but infrequently inspired. On Blu-ray, the visuals and audio are equally impressive.
Inspector Lewis—Complete 7th Season
(PBS)
At first, Inspector Hathaway soldiers on without his partner, Detective Inspector Lewis, and has problems dealing with his new partner, Lizzie Maddox—until D.I. Lewis returns from retirement, helping both himself and Hathaway as they become an unbeatable pair once again.
The three 90-minute Oxford-set mysteries that make up the seventh season are filled with the series' usual fine acting (Kevin Whately, Laurence Fox, Angela Griffin, Claire Holman) and intelligent writing. The Blu-ray image is quite good.
(Millennium)
In this unsettling adaptation of a lesser-known Poe story, director Brad Anderson romps through the all-too-familiar halls of a shadowy insane asylum, with his cast chewing the scenery in high style: Ben Kingsley as the head of the asylum, Michael Caine and Kate Beckinsale as inmates (with Kate an impossibly glamorous one).
The daft twist ending, though drawn out too much, still perfectly closes the gleefully ludicrous tale, which retains the blackly humorous Poe flavor. The hi-def image looks excellent; lone extra is a making-of featurette.
This Is Where I Leave You
(Warners)
This comic drama about a dysfunctional family sitting shiva after the father dies has its share of funny lines, but director Shawn Levy's penchant for triteness and sentimentality prevents his film from being anything more than an intermittently entertaining mess.
Good performances by Jason Bateman, Tina Fey, Jane Fonda, Debra Monk and Connie Britton help smooth over the unnevenness, but at 103 minutes, this overdone soap opera is stretched too thin. It all looks attractive on hi-def; extras include featurettes, outtakes and deleted scenes.
Altina
(First Run)
Altina Schinasi was a renaissance woman: painter, sculptor, bon vivant and sexually liberated, she was ahead of her time—so far, in fact, that even today some people might be shocked at her long, eventful and unapologetic life, which is recounted in her grandson Peter Sanders's admiring and loving documentary.
What shines through from archival interviews with her and new interviews with friends, lovers, husbands, family and admirers, is her love—even lust—for a life well-lived: that she also helped Holocaust refugees and made an Oscar-nominated film about the Nazis are merely more reasons to have her story told. Extras are 18 minutes of additional interviews.
Bob Marley—Uprising Live!
Justin Hayward—Spirits...Live
(Eagle Rock)
Before his death in 1981, Bob Marley went on a world tour, and his Germany concert—filmed for posterity—contains the hallmarks of a great Marley show: opening act Threes, featuring wife Rita, sings back up for Marley and the Wailers, with highlights being "Jamming," "No River No Cry" and an encore of "Lively Up Yourself." Uprising Live! is a terrific souvenir of an indelible talent at his best.
Longtime Moody Blues frontman Justin Hayward toured with stripped-down versions of his classic-art rock band's songs—his acoustic guitar and three sidemen (and woman)—and his Spirits...Live concert will satisfy Moody Blues fans with renditions of "Tuesday Afternoon" (the show's opener), "Nights in White Satin" and "Question" that are interesting alternate takes of the group's overblown arrangements. Lone Hayward extra is a backstage featurette.
The Little Bedroom
(Cinema Libre)
French Affairs, a by-the-numbers Gallic roundelay, follows two pairs of lovers with more amusement than bemusement, but director Pierre-Loup Rajot doesn't do anything particularly unique or telling, while his mostly obscure cast can't make the comedy or drama very interesting.
The Little Bedroom, a minor gem by co-writers/directors Stephanie Chuat and Veronique Reymond, stars the always persuasive Michael Bouquet (who was last seen as the aging painter in Renoir), who provides the gravitas needed to prevent this old-age drama from becoming syrupy.
Levitated Mass
(First Run)
When I saw Michael Heizer's gargantuan rock outside the L.A. County Museum of Art last year, I thought it was a gimmick, something that would automatically draw visitors. (It does.) Doug Pray's fascinating documentary makes clear that getting the rock there, an enormous logistical and even political challenge, is a story far more interesting than Heizer's "art" itself.
Bringing the huge (340-ton) rock from its original spot miles away to Los Angeles was the responsibility of dozens of people, an oversized road vehicle and signing off by nearly two dozen town officials en route. But for what? To paraphrase what someone says, "It's a rock. It's nature. Not art." Extras comprise three short featurettes.
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