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February '17 Digital Week II

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Wednesday, 15 February 2017 04:30; Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-rays of the Week

Cameraperson

(Criterion)

Kirsten Johnson has shot many seminal images over the past few decades, and Cameraperson is her own “greatest hits” package gleaned from footage of films she has photographed for great documentaries like The Invisible War, Pray the Devil Back to Hell and the Oscar-winning Citizenfour, along with her own “home movies” of herself and family.

Though there’s a sense of randomness to this project, there are powerful glimpses of people in such far-flung places as Bosnia, Nigeria, and Brooklyn, providing further proof (if any was needed) that she’s made important contributions to many indispensable films. The Blu-ray looks first-rate; extras include interviews, roundtables and Q&As.

Mercy Street—Complete 2^ndSeason

(PBS)

The intrigues in and around a Union Army hospital in Alexandria, Virginia during the Civil War have escalated during this drama’s second season, which plunges further into the medical and personal lives and relationships among the soldiers and other army personnel, doctors and nurses, civilians and slaves.

After seeming out of place last season, Josh Radnor has grown into his role as Union doctor Jed Foster, aided by equally strong performances from Mary Elizabeth Winstead as nurse Mary Phinney and, as a Confederate couple dealing with treason and grown daughters, Gary Cole and Donna Murphy. The season’s six episodes look gorgeously realistic on Blu; extras are 20 minutes of deleted scenes.

Psychomania

(Arrow)

In the tradition of such biker flicks as Easy Rider and The Wild One, this 1973 British entry ups the ante with a group of zombie bikers terrorizing the local populace, but director Don Sharp has made a pretty muddy film with little drama, scares or thrills.

That it’s played relatively straight doesn’t help, as it keeps the film to one dull gear for nearly its entire 91-minute running time. The film has nicely filmic grain in hi-def; extras include new and archival interviews and a featurette.

Quarry—Complete 1^st Season

(HBO/Cinemax)

When Mac Conway returns home from Vietnam, he discovers that his gorgeous wife Joni is having an affair, thanks to a mysterious dude who also recruits him as a hitman: the early 70s in America is presented with shrewd surreality that underlines the relentlessly downbeat vision of adultery, betrayal and murder.

Logan Marshall-Green is perfectly cast as Mac, South African actress Jodi Balfour is a revelation as Joni, and the writing and direction ratchet up the intensity throughout. The hi-def image is quite good; extras include deleted scenes, featurettes, commentaries and music videos

The Tree of Wooden Clogs

(Criterion)

Ermanno Olmi has made immeasurably finer films—from his early Il Posto and The Fiances to later masterworks One Fine Day and The Profession of Arms—but this 1978 epic may be his most beloved: winner of the grand prize at Cannes, this nuanced and insightful drama follows a group of Italian peasants over the course of a year.

Finely wrought, with amazingly lived-in performances by an all-amateur cast, it has its creator’s characteristic humanity and generosity in abundance, despite its overlength. Criterion’s otherwise excellent hi-def transfer is a bit cooler color-wise than I remember it when I originally saw it, but that’s not a deal breaker; extras include Olmi interviews, a South Bank Show episode on the film’s making; director Mike Leigh’s intro and new cast and crew interviews.

Turandot

(Decca)

Giacomo Puccini’s final opera, completed after his death, is diffuse dramatically but contains some of his finest music, the latter of which is shown off in spades in this absorbing 2015 staging by director Nikolaus Lehnhoff at Milan’s La Scala.

Conductor Riccardo Chailly presides over a startlingly dramatic performance with grand and soaring vocals by soprano Nina Stemme (in the title role), tenor Aleksandrs Antonenko and soprano Maria Agresta. The hi-def video and audio are strong.

DVDs of the Week

Blush

(Film Movement)

In Michal Vink’s appealng study, teenage loner Naama finds herself irresistibly drawn to free-spirited Dana, and their relationship, which soon goes from friendly to physical, is yet another difficulty in a constricted family life that includes a rebellious older sister.

Superb performances by Sivan Noam Shimon and Jade Sakori as the two young women anchor a sensitive drama that explores its thorny subject with tact and subtlety. The lone extra is a short, This Is You and Me, directed by American April Maxey.

The Forest for the Trees

(Film Movement)

Neither the enervating mess of her sophomoric sophomore feature Everyone Else nor the overblown pretentiousness of her breakthrough Toni Erdmann, Maren Ade’s 2005 debut is an engagingly slight comedy about a brand new teacher in over her head.

It’s incredibly clumsy at times, with choppy editing and mediocre acting, but there’s enough of a glimmer of talent that makes it more disappointing that Ade hasn’t continued to make more—rather than less—interesting movies. The lone extra is Estes Avenue, a short by the U.K.’s Paul Cotter.

CD Release of the Week

Weinberg—Chamber Symphonies/String Quintet

(ECM)

Polish-Russian composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg (1919-1996), whose music has gained wider currency since his death, has had many champions, none more stalwart than violinist Gidon Kremer, who has played and recorded many Weinberg works, and whose stalwart ensemble Kremerata Baltica tackles five of Weinberg’s most imposingly satisfying pieces on a must-hear two-CD set.

Weinberg’s four chamber symphonies and piano quintet are performed with a superb ear for detail that doesn’t ignore the overall conceptions of these dramatic and yearning works. Weinberg has been one of the happiest discoveries of the past decade: may Kremer and others continue to bring forth his musical riches.

Budapest Festival Orchestra Delights at Lincoln Center

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Wednesday, 08 February 2017 14:19; Written by Jack Angstreich

This season, the Great Performers series of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts has been featuring a Ludwig van Beethoven symphony cycle with the superb musicians of the Budapest Festival Orchestra, one of the finest ensembles of our time, under the magisterial direction of Ivan Fischer, one of the best living conductors. (The appearances of these superior artists are a highlight of Great Performers, as well as of the New York concert season, each year.) The first half of the cycle was presented last fall while the last two concerts were given on the afternoon of Sunday, February 5th and on the evening of Monday, February 6th, at David Geffen Hall.

Both programs proceeded chronologically, with the first opening with a terrific account of the wonderful Symphony No. 1, the composer's essay in the genre most indebted to his great forbears, Franz Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, although the menuetto especially prefigures theechtBeethoven, already sounding like his celebrated scherzos.

The extraordinary soloist, Richard Goode, then took the stage for a sterling performance of the magnificent Piano Concerto No. 4, from the composer's middle, "heroic" period. The program concluded with the ultra-familiar Symphony No. 5, written not long after, but this proved one of the most memorable renditions I have heard in the concert hall, if only for the thrilling entry of student musicians from The Juilliard School and Bard College Conservatory of Music, swelling the size of the orchestra, during the exhilarating final movement.

The next day's concert was even more impressive, opening with a glorious, unexpectedly lucid account of the marvelous Symphony No. 8, which never sounded closer to Haydn and Mozart. Nor have I ever encountered the wit in this work more forcefully evoked—I dare say it is the most exquisite performance of this piece I have yet witnessed.

The concert closed exaltedly with a breathtaking, confident reading of the monumental Symphony No. 9. The excellent soloists included soprano Laura Aikin, mezzo-soprano Kelley O'Connor, tenor Robert Dean Smith and basso Matthew Rose but the real stars were the fabulous members of the Concert Chorale of New York—under the distinguished direction of James Bagwell—whom Fischer strategically placed throughout the audience, to moving effect. It was a truly magnificent finale.

February '17 Digital Week I

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Tuesday, 07 February 2017 15:53; Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-rays of the Week

Bells Are Ringing

Wait Until Dark

(Warner Archive)

Vincente Minnelli’s colorful 1960 musical Bells Are Ringing isn’t among his best confections, but there’s enough of Jules Styne’s lovely score and Judy Holliday’s charm to get by—along with a beguiling mix of old-fashioned romance and New York toughness.

Wait Under Dark, Terence Young’s 1967 hit Broadway thriller adaptation, gains traction from Audrey Hepburn’s sympathetic turn as the blind heroine, who outsmarts the bad guys led by a malevolent Alan Arkin in three roles. The movie often verges on self-parody, but Hepburn makes it work. Both films have superlative hi-def color transfers: Bells extras are additional musical numbers and a vintage making-of; lone Dark extra is a vintage making-of.

Come What May

(Cohen Media)

This arresting drama about a cross-section of Europeans dealing with the Nazi takeover of France in 1940 has been directed with skill and a fine sense of realism by Christian Carion, who based his story on his own parents’ travails during the war.

An excellent cast inhabits its roles with great authenticity, providing an emotional core to a war film imbued with light amidst the darkness: Ennio Morricone’s lush, old-fashioned score (with an assist from Schubert) and Pierre Cottereau’s pungent photography are standouts. The Blu-ray transfer is exceptional; extras include a Carion commentary and interview, on-set featurette and Morricone music featurette.

Def Leppard—and there will be a next time…Live from Detroit

Mumford & Sons—Live from South Africa: Dust and Thunder

(Eagle Rock)

Def Leppard, circa 2016, is still an arena headliner, as its Live from Detroit concert release shows: with veteran guitarist Vivian Campbell supplementing the original members (including frontman Joe Elliott’s still soaring vocals), ‘80s hits like “Photograph,” “Rock of Ages,” “Hysteria” and “Pour Some Sugar on Me” remain potent and some new tunes blend in well, but the best moment comes during an unexpected cover of David Essex’s “Rock On.”

Now one of the biggest live acts on the globe, Mumford & Sons hit South Africa for Dust and Thunder, a buoyant performance in front of thousands of sated fans, as they run through their folk-pop repertoire that includes many favorites and a few new songs, with the audience happily singing along throughout. Both discs have first-rate hi-def video and surround-sound audio.

Loving

(Universal)

The case of Loving v. Virginia—in which an interracial couple got legal married status in the racist state of Virginia by the Supreme Court in 1967—is humanized in Jeff Nichols’ beautifully understated drama, which omits melodramatics and sentimentality for a straightforwardly insightful look at an ordinary couple’s decision to love no matter the consequences.

In the title roles, Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga give master classes in underplaying, in restraint, subtlety and graceful humanity: although Negga got an Oscar nomination, it’s no surprise that the Academy in its usual benightedness saw fit to otherwise ignore Edgerton, Nichols, and one of the best films of 2016. There’s a superior hi-def transfer; extras are a Nichols commentary and short featurettes.

Vice Principals—Complete 1^st Season

(HBO)

Watching two vice-principals wage a campus battle royale when their boss decides to step down to care for his sick wife might seem the stuff of an unfunny Saturday Night Live skit, but it’s actually the premise of a mainly (and disastrously) laughless new series, in which co-creator Danny McBride and Walton Goggins try—and fail—to breathe comic life into a stillborn subject.

Even Bill Murray as the principal looks bored and bemused, while the nasty joking flies fast and furiously—but always desperately. The hi-def transfer looks good enough; extras comprise audio commentaries, deleted scenes and blooper reel.

Victoria—Complete 1^st Season

(PBS Masterpiece)

Another British-made glimpse at its own royalty, dressed up in sumptuous costumes and unerringly recreated sets, this eight-episode mini-series chronicles Queen Victoria’s first years on the throne, which she ascended as a virginal 18-year-old.

Jenna Coleman’s magnificent performance combines royal shrewdness and youthful charm into a portrait of a queen as compelling as Helen Mirren’s vastly different Elizabeth. The impeccable supporting cast is led by Rufus Sewell as one of Victoria’s closest advisors; the series itself looks set for a long run. The fine hi-def transfer combines sharpness and clarity; extras include interviews and featurettes.

DVD of the Week

Mountain

(First Run)

Zvia, a young Orthodox Jewish wife, discovers what’s beyond her own isolated married existence one night in a cemetery in Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives, where she witnesses a prostitute servicing a john; her curiosity leads her to make new—and quite unlikely—relationships.

Writer-director Yaelle Kayam’s impressive degree of insight and control ensure that her story never comes close to descending into exploitiveness: helping greatly is a strong, subtle performance by Israeli actress Shani Klein as Zvia.

Off-Broadway Review—David Ives's “The Liar"

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Friday, 03 February 2017 18:26; Written by Kevin Filipski

The Liar

Adapted by David Ives, based on Corneille’s Le Menteur

Directed by Michael Kahn

Performances through February 26, 2017

Ismenia Mendes and Amelia Pedlow in The Liar (photo: Richard Termine)

I cannot tell a lie: David Ives is the funniest playwright in America right now, as The Liar—his, as he calls it, “translaptation” of a 17^th century comedy by Frenchman Pierre Corneille—demonstrates again and again for two madcap, and side-splitting, hours.

Ives tinkered with Corneille’s play about a man who cannot tell the truth, and the lies he spins become ever more elaborate until even he can’t tell what he has and hasn’t said. Eager knight Dorante (an amusing Christian Conn) appears in Paris one day and immediately hires Cliton (peerlessly funny Carson Elrod, a longtime Ives collaborator) as his servant—Cliton is the exact opposite of his new master in that he always tells the truth.

Right after they agree to terms, two lovely ladies enter: both Clarice (adorable Ismenia Mendes) and Lucrece (headstrong Amelia Pedlow) turn Dorante’s head, even though he speaks only to Clarice, while Cliton talks with Lucrece’s flirty maid Isabelle…or is it her straight-laced twin sister—and Clarice’s maid—Sabine (both played with sass by Kelly Hutchinson)?

As usual with such silliness, Dorante’s lies pile up, Cliton’s truth-telling gets him slapped in the face (he mistakes Sabine for Isabelle on more than occasion), Dorante’s father Geronte (a doggedly goofy Adam Lefevre) plays matchmaker for his son and Lucrece, and Dorante’s swashbuckling friend Alcippe, betrothed to Clarice, challenges him to a duel. By the end of the play—no surprise—all is sorted out and three impending marriages are celebrated.

Ives’ always euphoric wordplay reaches even greater heights with its frothy rhymes and spirited iambic pentameter, all bouncing trippingly off the tongues of a smashing cast that’s been directed by Michael Kahn for maximum comic effect. It’s all frivolous, to be sure, but even in its innocuousness there’s more than a grain of truth to its implication that, for those in a position of power, lying is de rigeur. As Dorante himself admits to the audience:

Maybe Corneille will write me up a play.

Or maybe, with my gifts and disposition,

I’ll emigrate and be a politician.

But think, before you hit the subway booth,

How this was all a lie—and yet the truth.

Impossible? Don’t hurt your spinning head.

Just hie thee happily home and lie—in bed!

The Liar

Classic Stage Company, 136 East 13th Street, New York, NY

classicstage.org

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