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June '14 Digital Week II

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Wednesday, 11 June 2014 14:04; Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-rays of the Week

Alan Partridge

(Magnolia)

There’s a slight whiff of desperation in this big screen version of the radio and TV character co-created and enacted by Steve Coogan, a daffy and narcissistic DJ who finds himself face to face with a disgruntled fellow DJ (Colm Meaney, wasted) who takes hostages at the station after his firing.

Coogan is always a delight, but this sitcom stretched to 90 minutes has padding galore, along with a rather distasteful reliance on cheap laughs about a most serious situation. The Blu-ray image is excellent; extras comprise several on-set featurettes.

Call the Midwife—Complete 3^rdSeason

(BBC)

In the third season of creator/writer Heidi Thomas’s compelling series—set in a poor section of East London in the 1950s—the midwives have to find a new location when Nonnatus House is slated to be demolished, while a polio outbreak threatens the well-being of mothers and newborns alike.

Although I am still in shock seeing the once-sexy and lovely Jenny Agutter (American Werewolf in London) as a middle-aged nun, she remains a terrific actress, as are Jessica Raine and Miranda Hart as the other leads. The hi-def transfer looks great; extras include cast and crew interviews.

L’Eclisse

(Criterion Collection)

Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1962 expressionist masterpiece—like his earlier L’Avventura, this helped rewrite the rules of narrative filmmaking—returns in this glorious hi-def transfer from Criterion, which accentuates the brilliance of Antonioni’s B&W compositions, shot luminously by Gianni di Venanzo.

The stolid presence of Monica Vitti, Alain Delon and Francisco Rabal underlines Antonioni’s moody take on modern alienation; extras include Richard Pena’s informative commentary, 22-minute featurette Elements of Landscape and an essential documentary about the director, 2001’s Michelangelo Antonioni: The Eye That Changed Cinema.

The Motel Life

(Cinedigm)

This low-key drama about brothers dealing with one’s involvement in a hit-and-run accident should be much more emotionally involving, making it a definite disappointment from co-directors Alan and Gabriel Polsky and writers Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster.

Despite Mike Smith’s animated illustrations and fine actors like Emile Hirsch, Dakota Fanning and Steven Dorff, the downbeat film never approaches profundity or illumination. The Blu-ray image looks fine; the lone extra is a featurette.

Son of God

(Fox)

Re-edited from footage shot for the TV mini-series The Bible, this latest cinematic life of Christ has authentic-looking locations, a great-looking Jesus in Diogo Morgado and a calculated balance of violence and piety that avoids The Passion of the Christ’s excessive gore.

This slow-moving epic, although it occasionally rouses itself to competence, never frees itself of Biblical film clichés. The Blu-ray image looks first-rate; extras include interviews and behind the scenes featurettes, including one in Spanish.

Visitors

(Cinedigm)

The fourth collaboration between director Godferey Reggio and composer Philip Glass (which now includes director Joe Kane), this mesmerizing collage of imagery set to repetitive minimalist music comprises 79 shots in black and white of the world, people and a beguiling gorilla from the Bronx Zoo.

It doesn’t mean anything—at least to me—but there are some who consider it deep and meaningful, so your mileage may vary. The hi-def transfer looks splendid; extras include interviews with Reggio, Glass, Kane and Steven Soderbergh, the film’s “presenter.”

The Who—Quadrophenia: Live in London

(UMe)

Last summer, Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey reunited for a hard-hitting run-through of the band’s classic 1973 rock opera: highlights are a visceral “5:15” (featuring a John Entwistle bass solo on film) and a powerful “Love Reign O’er Me,” where Daltrey proves he can still belt it out, even if he can’t reach those elusive high notes any more.

Townshend is in fine form, as is bassist Pino Palladino: too bad his thumping bass-playing is rarely shown. The Blu-ray image looks superb, and the surround sound is hard-hitting; extras are another six songs, including blistering versions of “Who Are You” and “You Better You Bet.”

DVDs of the Week

The Bridge—Series 1

(MHZ Networks)

In yet another first-rate European police series that puts American counterparts to shame (which usually just ape the original idea anyway), a corpse is discovered in the middle of a bridge that links Denmark and Sweden, and both departments must work together to solve a crime that becomes increasingly sinister as more is uncovered.

With a stellar cast headed by Sofia Helin and Kim Bodnia as the detectives, and with intricate scripts by creator Hans Rosenfeldt, The Bridge grabs you by the throat immediately and doesn’t let go for 10 one-hour episodes. The lone extra is a 15-minute making-of.

Graceland—Complete 1^st Season

(Fox)

A raw FBI agent’s dream job—to be assigned to a beach house and work with other undercover agents, including his idol—is not what it seems, particularly when he must investigate his hero in this watchable drama which has flair if not much creativity.

The attractive young cast led by Aaron Tveit (rookie) and Daniel Sunjata (legend) helps matters immeasurably; the three-disc set includes all 12 episodes and extras comprising deleted scenes, a gag reel and a featurette.

Harry Dean Stanton—Partly Fiction

(Adopt)

With his unmistakably craggy face and gravelly voice, Harry Dean Stanton has breathed fresh life into over 170 movies, including six by David Lynch and the classic Paris Texas, directed by Wim Wenders and written by Sam Shepard.

All three men appear in Sophie Huber’s endearing documentary about Stanton, which at 80 minutes seems far too short—especially since there are many film clips—but there’s also too much emphasis on Stanton’s singing and music-making: I prefer his acting by a country mile.

Pretty Little Liars—Complete 4^th Season

(Warners)

Aria, Emily, Hanna and Spencer—if you know those four names, then you’ve already watched the fourth season of this still-diverting series about the quartet of young ladies whose sleuthing—and propensity for telling the biggest of whoppers—is given another opportunity when they find themselves drawn into yet another murder mystery.

The five-disc set includes all 24 episodes of this nail-biter of a season; bonus features include three on-set featurettes with interviews, a recap episode and unaired scenes.

Sarah Silverman—We Are Miracles

(Warner Archive)

For her first HBO comedy special, comedienne Sarah Silverman does it her way, of course: in front of an audience of 39 people, Sarah hilariously riffs on everything from sex and religion to government and pornography, giving them her unique and provocative spin.

Even though her ability to shock has been somewhat muted by the fact that we all know something shocking’s coming, she still manages to provide 60 minutes of laugh-out-loud, thought-provoking material.

NYC Theater Roundup—Ayckbourn’s ‘Arrivals & Departures’ & Wohl’s ‘American Hero’

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Monday, 09 June 2014 22:59; Written by Kevin Filipski

Arrivals & Departures

Written & directed by Alan Ayckbourn

Previews began May 29, 2014; closes June 29

American Hero

Written by Bess Wohl; directed by Leigh Silverman

Previews began May 12, 2014; closes June 15

Champion and Boag in Arrivals & Departures (photo: Andrew Higgens)

Our most dazzling theatrical prestidigitator is back: British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, celebrating his 75^th birthday with his 78^th play (!!!), returns to Brits Off Broadway with three new productions. First up is Arrivals & Departures, another tightly structured comedy that morphs almost imperceptibly into tragedy thanks to one of Ayckbourn’s most brilliant sleights-of-hand.

What begins as a farcical run-through of the SSDO (Strategic Simulated Distractions Operations) unit’s attempt to capture an elusive terrorist in a London train terminal soon becomes something else entirely; as always with Ayckbourn, it happens gradually.

The plot focuses on soldier Ez, a rather humorless young woman, who must guard a civilian witness being brought down from Yorkshire, a blabbering middle-aged ticket warden named Barry. At first their relationship comprises his annoying blather and her endless ways to avoid him. But Ayckbourn’s deft use of flashbacks and repetition deepens these characters psychologically and dramatically (and comedically, of course).

Ayckbourn’s first act flashbacks of events in Ez’s life occur as the terminal scenes are enacted, then in the second act, mirror images of those same terminal scenes are reenacted, interspersed with flashbacks of Barry’s past. Having the same dialogue repeated in the second act cunningly fleshes out Ez and Barry, since hearing it again allows the audience to comprehend it with more information at its disposal.

Arrivals & Departures might not be one of Ayckbourn’s very greatest plays, but it’s enormously entertaining and thought-provoking, especially as it’s been so breezily directed by its author and persuasively enacted by his entire cast of 13, playing 32 (!!!) roles. Even small roles of undercover agents practicing the terrorist snatch and grab are finely etched, and Bill Champion’s Quentin, ringmaster over the botched SSDO proceedings, is officiously hilarious.

Masterly is the only way to describe the performances of Elizabeth Boag and Kim Wall, who bring hilarity, gravity and humanity to the stage. Boag’s Ez goes through minute but discernible changes over the course of the play; the subtle gestures, movements and vocal inflections mark Boag as an actress to reckon with. Barry could easily have been turned into a caricature, but Wall’s tics, mannerisms and stutter-stops while talking—which is most of the time—transform this ordinary bloke into an extraordinary creation.

And with that, the Ayckbourn mini-festival is off to a magnificent start.

O'Connell and Graynor in American Hero (photo: Joan Marcus)

A trio of fast food workers—single mom, downsized corporate exec and young woman—tries to keep a failing sandwich shop franchise work against all odds in Bess Wohl’s American Hero, a timely but trite comic fable for the new economy.

Soon after owner Bob hires them and opens the place, supplies cease arriving and Bob stops dropping in, so the trio eventually has to resort to wits and all-American ingenuity to keep the store going. But despite a few funny and pointed moments, Wohl’s play never makes the comedic failure of the shop compelling or plausible: it just happens. That might be true to life, but here it doesn’t make for a satisfying drama or comedy.

Leigh Silverman’s clever staging showcases a fine acting quartet, with Daoud Heidami as an amusing Bob, irate customers and even a fantasy sandwich; while Erin Wilhelm and Jerry O’Connell are believable as, respectively, the nerdy and needy Sheri and the desperately slumming Ted. Then there’s Ari Graynor, an underrated but formidable comedienne whose Jamie is sexy and shrewd. But American Hero never overcomes its own built-in limitations.

Arrivals & Departures

59 E 59 Theaters, 59 East 59^th Street, New York, NY

britsoffbroadway.com

American Hero

Second Stage Uptown, 76^th Street & Broadway, New York, NY

2st.com

June '14 Digital Week I

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Tuesday, 03 June 2014 14:43; Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-rays of the Week

Alexander—Ultimate Cut
(Warners)

Oliver Stone takes another pass at his 2004 Alexander the Great biopic: this, supposedly last version runs nearly 3-1/2 hours and is certainly wildly ambitious, with many striking sequences, superlative set design and fantastic photography: but Colin Farrell’s so-so leading man is outclassed by Rosario Dawson, Jared Leto, Angelina Jolie and Anthony Hopkins.

It’s not entirely Farrell’s fault, for Stone—who is engagingly forthcoming during his new commentary—failed to capture Alexander’s greatness and complexity even with a longer cut: another hour or more might have helped. The hi-def transfer is sumptuous; one new extra is a half-hour featurette, the rest—featurettes and Stone’s own son’s documentary on the making of the film—are from earlier editions.

Death Spa
(MPI)

This 1989 flick might be the ultimate in cheesy horror movies, as several unsuspecting idiots meet their lethal ends in various icky ways at the title spa.

Although it sometimes humorously winks at its own silliness, the overall effect is that of a low-budget piece of schlock that’s not really as smart as it thinks: even the plentiful nudity—an obvious selling point in certain quarters—doesn’t really help either. The Blu-ray image is adequate; extras include a commentary and making-of featurette.

Parts Per Billion
(Millennium)

In yet another familiar apocalyptic drama attempting to marry intimate character studies with its end of the world scenario, a few couples negotiate emotional and practical minefields that are literally killing off most of the planet.

Director-writer Brian Horiuchi’s utter seriousness stifles any emotional involvement we might feel for such fine actors as Frank Langella, Gena Rowlands and Rosario Dawson, none of whom can do much with the hands they’ve been dealt. The Blu-ray image looks superior.

Robocop
(Fox)

This reboot of a franchise that went downhill after Paul Verhoeven’s enjoyable 1987 original cleverly updates to a stateless, terrorist-laden world at first, then reverts to a routine crime drama/action flick that relies too much on technology and not nearly enough on the humanity at the story’s core.

Director Jose Padilha amusingly uses Focus’s forgotten hit “Hocus Pocus” during one violent sequence, but the movie’s tongue isn’t in its cheek enough: solid performances by an unrecognizable Gary Oldman and perennially underrated Abbie Cornish are the highlights. The hi-def transfer is impeccable; extras include deleted scenes and featurettes.

Super Duper Alice Cooper

(Eagle Rock)

In an immensely entertaining portrait of the former Vincent Furnier, a Detroit pastor’s son who grew up from an asthmatic, lonely child to one of rock’s greatest showmen and elder statesmen, directors Reginald Harkema, Scot McFayden and Sam Dunn smartly utilize archival interviews, TV clips and concert segments as we hear the voices of the principal players.

Alice, his band members, manager, wife and admirers Elton John, Bernie Taupin and Iggy Pop alternately narrate warts-and-all accounts of the debauchery that made a rock’n’roll legend. The Blu-ray image looks OK, considering the substandard state of so much of the vintage material; extras include deleted scenes and rare interview footage.

The Universe—Ancient Mysteries Solved: 7^th Season
(History)

The ancient mysteries that are solved in this, another provocative season include the Star of Bethlehem, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and some possible explanations for both Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids.

As always, a group of select talking scientific heads, on-location photography and expansive CGI effects combine to present a tantalizing look at these seemingly inexplicable unknowns of our world; the hi-def images look terrific.

DVDs of the Week

Blue Movie
(Raro)

Italian director Alberto Cavallore’s weirdly hypnotic and hallucinatory 1973 sex movie, shot on 16 mm, has copious amounts of nudity and even some at the time taboo interracial sex.

But it’s the bizarre psychological dislocation and mental games playing that keeps this watchable (in the car crash sense) as it continually threatens to go off the deep end. Extras include a 45-minute retrospective featurette and seven scenes from the uncut version.

Child’s Pose
(Zeitgeist)

Although Calin Peter Netzer’s extremely well-crafted drama has a grasp of the minutiae of daily existence in its story of an upper-class woman who frenziedly ensures her grown-up son won’t be jailed for running over a teenage boy with his car, its deliberate pace slowly robs it of its cumulative power.

Luminita Gheorghiu’s persuasive performance as the mother and Nataşa Raab’s slyly understated portrayal of her son’s girlfriend, coupled with Netzer’s assured direction, keep one watching in spite of its damaging slowness. Extras include a deleted scene and on-set footage.

Max Linder Collection

(Kino)

Although he had the misfortune of being compared to the—to my mind—much greater Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd, silent French comedian Max Linder made a series of hilarious silent movies that don’t rely on genuine slapstick.

The four films collected here—The Three Must-Get-Theres, Be My Wife, Seven Years Bad Luck, Max Wants a Divorce—all have their moments, especially my favorite, Divorce, a one-note comic idea taken to its funniest extreme.

Pioneers of Television—Season 4

(PBS)

For the latest season of the PBS series showcasing important performers who made television what it is today, a quartet of episodes—Standup to Sitcom, Doctors and Nurses, Acting Funny and Breaking Barriers—takes the measure of the comic and dramatic actors and actresses of all stripes through interviews with legends ranging from Robin Williams and Bill Cosby to Diahann Carroll and Dick Van Dyke.

There’s also a healthy amount of clips from many of the shows, ranging from St. Elsewhere to Mork and Mindy, which make these nostalgic excursions memorable for any baby boomer who watched TV while growing up (and who didn’t?).

CDs of the Week

Elton John—Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
40^th Anniversary (UMe)

When Elton John released his first double album in late 1973, he was already one of the biggest rock stars on the planet, but Road shot him into the stratosphere: for a few years anyway. The 40th anniversary edition of Elton’s best record (although Tumbleweed Connection and Captain Fantastic nip at its heels) adds some head-scratching extras but it’s the album’s 17 tracks—whose dizzying array of styles and sounds run the gamut from the eerie strains of “Funeral for a Friend” to the insanely catchy closer “Harmony”—that keepRoad sounding fresh and new despite its familiarity.

The 4-CD, 1-DVD set features the original album, two discs of a 1974 concert, a disc of nine contemporary Road covers and bonus tracks like the holiday tunes “Step Into Christmas” and “Ho Ho Ho (Who’d Be a Turkey at Christmas).” But what are 1974’s “Pinball Wizard” and 1975’s “Philadelphia Freedom” doing here? The DVD of director Bryan Forbes’ 1973 documentary, Elton John and Bernie Taupin Say Goodbye Norma Jean and Other Things has been edited down presumably to excise people who are now enemies of the Elton camp.

Overall, the 40th anniversary Road doesn’t improve on the 30th anniversary (which had a revelatory surround sound mix). But for Elton completists—or if you somehow don’t have it yet—it’s a must.

Natalie Merchant

(Nonesuch)

For her first album of original material since 2001’sMotherland, Natalie Merchant once again assembles a cohesive artistic statement of sophisticated and strong pop music. Although the opening track, “Ladybug,” is uncomfortably reminiscent of “San Andreas Fault,” which led off her first solo album Tigerlily (1995), the remainder of the album harks back to her solo and 10000 Maniacs work without slavish imitation.

Standouts are two songs about the effects of war, “Seven Deadly Sins” and the haunting closer, “The End,” which features a most sensitive—and subtle—orchestral arrangement. Merchant’s voice, among the most distinctive in pop/rock/folk, still shimmers, and her lyrics sound effortlessly conversational at the same time that they reach for the metaphoric. This sterling self-produced effort makes one hope that Merchant doesn’t wait as long next time to record and release more of her finely-crafted original songs.

Hits of DOC NYC on Streaming & VOD

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Wednesday, 28 May 2014 16:17; Written by Nora Lee Mandel

A World Not Ours

The extended impact of the fourth annual DOC NYC, held November 14 – 21, is being felt as features are succeeding to wider distribution, in theaters, on PBS, and on such video-on-demand platforms Netflix and iTunes. Here’s recommendations of two memorable international documentaries to catch that are now thoughtfully bringing international issues to more American eyes:

A World Not Ours

Director Mahdi Fleifel is haunted by David Ben Gurion’s claim, as Israel’s first prime minister, about displaced Palestinians (to quote him more accurately than the film does): “They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that? They may perhaps forget in one or two generations' time." As the third generation who has not forgotten, and marked the 60 years since the Nakba – The Disaster – of 1948 by picking up cameras, he intimately and frankly documents over time the lives of his family and friends in Ein el-Helweh, the largest Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon. For all the media attention on the Palestinians on the West Bank, particularly in films such as seen in the Other Israel Film Festival, this is a significant portrait of the frustrations and isolation in this limbo where they have no political or economic rights.

Delving insightfully into the gaps between memory and reality, he explores his childhood impressions of summer play visiting his grandfather, who has lived there since the expulsion from his home at age 16. By the time youthful soccer games gave way to 2006 World Cup enthusiasm, the square kilometer that the United Nations Relief Agency organized in the same pattern as their original villages, had gotten further subdivided by growing families to teem with over 70,000 people. Now the octogenarian patriarch can’t stand the encroaching noise and crashing balls.

Fleifel is both a sympathetic insider and a clear-eyed outsider, whose identity card expired when he was four, but eventually gets him past checkpoints for annual visits. His father got a job in the Emirates in 1985 and elsewhere as a salesman while for many years filming home movies of their wide travels until they were able to settle in Denmark in 1988 – a place unknown to everyone in the camp. Ironically, his Danish high school class visited Israel so that he is the only family member who witnessed that their original farm in Saffouriehlooks like an archeological ruin.

Selections of archival footage and his narration provide useful context of political events outside the camp, from 1948 through the hopes of peace negotiations, and the fallout in the 1990’s from the Lebanese civil war that took the life of one uncle, hailed as a hero, and shattered the mental health of another left raising pigeons. But the unique heart of the film focuses on the impact of the larger politics on his best friend. Adopting the name Abu Iyad during his intelligence work for Arafat’s Fatah, he is dependent on their reduced subsistence allowance after the clashes with Hamas, fed up with the Palestinian Authority’s corruption, and desperate enough for an opportunity to a better life that even illegal status in economically depressed Greece looks good. Winner of DOC NYC’s Viewpoints Grand Jury Prize, this revealing documentary is getting a theatrical release before premiering on PBS’s P.O.V. series August 18, 2014.

God Loves Uganda

Director Roger Ross Williams reveals the context behind the rising tide of extreme homophobic legislation and homosexual persecution that has roused global condemnation, and taken a terrible, even fatal, toll on individuals in Uganda, as seen in interviews with gay activists here, and in Call Me Kuchu released last year. Resentful mainstream Christian ministers in the U.S. and Africa who have been actively ostracized by the ascendant evangelicals are the narrative guides. But what makes this documentary so eye-opening are the sweet smiles and fervent dedication of the wholesome, earnest Midwestern missionaries who are intimately followed as they are recruited, trained, and sent forth to enthusiastically proselytize from the International House of Prayer, a megachurch in Kansas City, Missouri.

They are inspired by centuries of colonial clichés about the dark continent of pagan souls ripe for the solace of Jesus effectively updated to American culture war priorities for an extensive fundraising operation. (Even more controversially, in Mission Congo, an hour-long film in the festival, directors Lara Zizic and David Turner investigated another religious charity, Pat Robertson’s Operation Blessing, for fraudulent misrepresentation of assistance in Congo.) While the participants here talk extensively about their heartfelt motivations, including how these years of commitment help them overcome what they see as their own failings, it is positively atavistic to see smiling young white folks today still providing only English hymns to African kids in grass shacks with no education, electricity, or modern health care, let alone catastrophic to see the damage from the far more blatant rabble-rousing against gays. PBS’s Independent Lens began showing the documentary in May, and it is now available on iTunes and Netflix.

Reviews

June '14 Digital Week II

NYC Theater Roundup—Ayckbourn’s ‘Arrivals & Departures’ & Wohl’s ‘American Hero’

June '14 Digital Week I

Hits of DOC NYC on Streaming & VOD

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