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NYC Theater Roundup: Publicworks at Central Park, “Stop. Reset." and "Old Friends” at the Signature

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts
Category: Reviews
Published on Sunday, 15 September 2013 03:03
Written by Kevin Filipski
The Tempest
Written by William Shakespeare; songs by Todd Almond; directed by Lear DeBessonet
Performances September 6-8, 2013

 

 
Stop. Reset.

The Old Friends
Signature Theatre Company, Pershing Square Signature Center

480 West 42nd Street, New York, NY
signaturetheatre.org
 
 
Since summer’s unofficial end is Labor Day weekend, the premiere of two off-Broadway plays and the first presentation of the Public Theatre’s ambitious Publicworks initiative in Central Park herald the beginning of the fall theater season.
 
Benanti as the Goddess in The Tempest (photo: Joan Marcus)
 
Publicworks includes several organizations from the five boroughs to create theater as much about participation as spectatorship. This was especially obvious in the Delacorte Theatre’s The Tempest, which kept Shakespeare’s framework but junked much of his dialogue—much to the show’s detriment, obviously—and added mediocre songs by Todd Arnold, also an obnoxious presence as the spirit Ariel: his jokey, snide asides both to his master, the magician Prospero, and the audience ruined the cathartic effect that Ariel’s freedom should bring at play’s end.
 
The Ariel mess highlighted Lear DeBessonet’s problematic staging: whenever there was a sense that Shakespeare’s original might not play to the masses, the Bard got jettisoned. Aside from the farcical drunken scenes of the monster Taliban and shipwrecked plotters, Trinculo and Stephano, nothing was played straight: the entire effect was that of a high school production where everyone from each class gets to be onstage (there were over 200 performers). DeBessonet even borrowed from Julie Taymor’s lackluster sex-change Tempest film that had Helen Mirren as Prospera: Alonzo became Alonsa and Sebastian became Sebastia, to no discernible point.
 
The organizations pressed into service—Brownsville Recreation Center, Children’s Aid Society, Domestic Workers United, Dreamyard Project, Fortune Society—provided entertaining dances or diversions, shoehorned into the more fantastical sequences of The Tempest. Amateur performers like Atiya Taylor (Miranda) and Xavier Pacheco (Ferdinand) were sadly—if only metaphorically—lost at sea; Norm Lewis declaimed and sang powerfully as Prospero, and a radiant Laura Benanti (playing, appropriately, a goddess) stole the show with a single song: why wasn’t she of all people given more to do? The ovations throughout notwithstanding, “helping” Shakespeare become more audience-pleasing isn’t how theater becomes more democratic.
 
Lumbly and Cordova in Stop. Reset. (photo: Joan Marcus)
 
By far the lesser of the two world premieres beginning the Signature Theatre’s new season is Stop. Reset., a confused fantasy-drama by Regina Taylor about a veteran publisher of African-American literature who must make the hard decision to enter the 21st century of e-books and other daunting digital technologies or continue the old-fashioned way.
 
Taylor, who also directs with a shaky hand, has hit on an obviously relevant subject: a world in which new things make everything else superfluous seemingly every few minutes. But she doesn’t seem to trust her own material: the early scenes of a publishing house a-flutter because the employees don’t know if they will be retained or fired in this digital world are amusing and believable. But once a mysterious custodian, J., enters the office to spin the story into ever stranger areas like time-travel and avatars, it’s obvious that Taylor’s loss of proportion has given way to desperate stratagems.
 
The visually fractured look of Neil Patel’s set—sleek panels that show videos, photos and endless verbiage, sometimes relevant but mostly not—captures better than Taylor’s dialogue and dramatics the fast-moving and on-going corruption of our culture. As publisher Alexander Ames, Carl Lumbly is commanding in a sketchily written role; likewise, as J., Israel Cruz Cordova nearly makes a coherent character out of authorial incoherence.
 
Foote and Buckley in The Old Friends (photo: Joan Marcus)
 
Playwright Horton Foote, who died in 2009, seems as busy as ever: The Trip to Bountiful, currently being revived on Broadway, won a Tony for Cicely Tyson’s magnetic performance, and a posthumous play, The Old Friends—originally written by Foote in the ‘60s, the same time it’s set—has its world premiere at the Signature. Like much of Foote’s work, it’s both reassuringly modest and tough as nails.
 
Set again in his fictional hometown of Harrison, Texas, The Old Friends deals with Foote’s old themes: fractured relationships, death changing family dynamics and the possibility (however slight) of starting anew. If the outline seems familiar, there’s a startlingly modern gloss to how Foote gently chides but has enormous affection for these people, rich or poor, sober or drunk, faithful or adulterous, honest or scheming: in this small town in Texas, Foote’s small cross-section of humanity is as singular as the more expansive Zola—or Shakespeare.
 
On Jeff Cowie’s beautifully detailed sets, Foote regular Michael Wilson directs a typically rich cast. Lois Smith, Cotter Smith, Veanne Cox and Adam LeFevre give full-bodied, thoughtful portrayals, but the standouts are Hallie Foote, typecast in her father’s plays (I doubt I’ve seen her in anything else), but bringing a sympathetically bruised quality to the perpetually disappointed Sybil; and Betty Buckley, whose drunken Gertrude is anything but a caricatured alcoholic. The Old Friends is (yet another) lovely epitaph for Horton Foote.
The Tempest
Delacorte Theatre, Central Park, New York, NY
shakespeareinthepark.org

 
Stop. Reset.
The Old Friends
Signature Theatre Company, Pershing Square Signature Center
480 West 42nd Street, New York, NY
signaturetheatre.org

Film Review: "Insidious: Chapter 2"

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts
Category: Reviews
Published on Friday, 13 September 2013 09:29
Written by Matt Oakes

"Insidious: Chapter 2"
Directed by James Wan
Starring Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Barbara Hershey, Leigh Whannell, Angus Sampson, Steve Coulter
Horror, Thriller
105 Mins
PG-13

Back in grade school, we learn about the five paragraph essay. It starts with an intriguing hook to invite readers into the text. Following from the content of the opening segment, we're supposed to know what to expect for the remainder of the work. We then have three body paragraphs basically giving some meat to the text before we wrap it all up with a conclusion that summarizes events while making some overarching statement tying together the various strands of the piece. Be it a subjective opinion or an objective truth, a paper has to say something or else, what's the point? A similar blueprint can be expected for film. Surely there are cases that call for deviation but when you fail to understand the most basic structure of story, there is no hope for transcendence nor is there any respite from piss poor narrative decisions. This is the case with Insidious: Chapter 2 - a half-witted, inconsistent mess of a horror sequel.

Read more: Film Review: "Insidious: Chapter 2"

"Space Battleship Yamato" Takes Aim but Misses Its Mark

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts
Category: Reviews
Published on Thursday, 12 September 2013 18:11
Written by Renzo Adler

Space.Battleship.Yamato still5Based on the hit 1979 Japanese animated series of the same name, Space Battleship Yamato, distributed by Eleven Arts, tries to ramp up the flash and glitz, but rather than paying tribute to its source material, it just gives lip service. First, a little context; Yamato was a phenomenon in its native Japan and is attributed to taking anime to new heights in scale and through its serious tone. While Yamato is fairly obscure in the West, it is one of the cornerstones of Japanese science-fiction. Yamato is often compared to Star Trek, but it’s narrative was more grounded in re-writing WWII in space than seeking out strange new worlds.

In the distant future, Earth has become a wasteland due to a radioactive bombardment by aliens from the planet Gamilas (in the original show they were blue skinned people with blond hair, but the movie makes them less humanoid). Earth receives information about a device on a distant planet called Iskandar that can rid our home of radiation, so our heroes dredge up the Japanese battleship Yamato (for you history buffs, it was Japan’s largest battleship in WWII and was sunk near Okinawa in 1945), slap a warp-engine onto it, and head off into space with a rag-tag crew of survivors and their stoic captain.

The movie awkwardly tries to marry the aesthetic of an animated series from the late 70’s, with the grungy look of science fiction today. The fiery Susumu Kodai (played by Takuya Kimura, formerly of the boy band SMAP) sports a bouffant ripped from the original series, while everyone else more or less wears their hair like a sane person from this decade, and the crew members wear tough looking bomber-jacket outfits adorned with bright, primary colored arrows.

If I had to sum up the problems of this film with a single word, it would be “rushed.” The original Yamato series, like Star Trek, was told over many episodes and sequel movies, thus giving the audience time to get to know the cast, whereas this film basically says “HEYHEREARETHECHARACTERSFROMTHESHOWHERE’STHEIRPERSONALTIESCOMEONWEGOTTAGO!” Instead of us getting a movie that's one chapter in the long voyage of the Yamato, we have to get through the whole journey in about two hours, while the characters are just quickly slotted into categories like “the hot head”, the “dumb but loveable brawler”, and “the love interest”.

The Yamato ship itself still looks fantastic and has this caviler feel to it while also being totally badass, like if you mashed together the Millennium Falcon and a Star Destroyer, but this is one of the rare instances where the visuals really shine since the film is bogged down by CGI effects that might have been impressive on a PS2 game, and the sets are bland square boxes that think darkened lighting is a substitute for actual grit and texture. This is a real shame, because the original series was drawn by Leiji Matsumoto, one of Japan’s greatest comic authors, yet the film lacks his distinct visual operatic charm.

The film is laden with superficial platitudes about sacrifice, and even though the crew is on a journey to save earth, they’re very much a Japanese crew, with a Japanese vessel, and they want to save Japan from foreign invaders with atomic weapons. While I did not grow up with the original Space Battleship Yamato (or Star Blazers, as it was called in the States), I get the feeling that even if I was familiar with these characters on a more intimate level, this film would still feel like a cash-in rather than a tribute.

Oh, and the end credits theme is performed by Steven Tyler, for some reason. Because when I think of anime classics, I'm supposed to think of Armageddon?

September '13 Digital Week II

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts
Category: Reviews
Published on Tuesday, 10 September 2013 02:00
Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-rays of the Week

DaVinci’s Demons—Complete 1st Season

(Starz)
In this clever evocation of Renaissance Italy, Leonardo DaVinci is shown as a genius tortured both inwardly and outwardly as he goes about his artistic and scientific pursuits including the inventions that still surprise and delight today.
 
The mini-series shows how DaVinci frightened those in power, both religious and secular, and his response; as history, it’s not much, but as guilty-pleasure drama, it works handily. The hi-def image looks fantastic; extras include commentaries, featurettes and deleted scenes.
 
Don Giovanni
(Bel Air)
Wolfgang Mozart’s greatest opera gets an intriguing 2010 outdoor production at the summer festival in Aix-en-Provence, France, featuring a seductive Don Juan played by Bo Skohvus with almost manic intensity.
 
Of the women he beds and casts off, Marlis Petersen and Kristine Opolais come off most sympathetically; Dmitri Tcherniakov’s adroit staging is complemented by Louis Langree’s sensitive conducting. On Blu-ray, the opera looks and sounds superb; a 30-minute featurette is the lone extra.
 
Frankenstein’s Army
(Dark Sky)
This sadistic horror flick finds a group of Russian soldiers near the end of WWII coming up against a foe greater than the regular Nazi army: a horde of metal-and-flesh creatures made by a deranged scientist with the familiar family name.
 
As such grotesqueries go, Richard Raaphurst has made a diverting if difficult to watch piece of gruesomeness; despite not going overboard with the gore, the entire gimmicky machinery grinds to a halt halfway through. The Blu-ray image is first-rate; lone extra is a making-of featurette.
 
From Up on Poppy Hill
(Cindegm)
This ravishing Studio Ghibli animated feature is not directed by Hayao Miyazaki but his son Goro (Dad co-wrote it): the familial legacy is apparent in an ability to dance on the line of succumbing to sentiment—but never crossing it.
 
The ridiculously gorgeous visuals are as breathtaking as ever on Blu-ray, where they look absolutely stunning. Extras include full-length storyboards, music video, featurettes, interviews and the option of the (preferred) original Japanese version or the dubbed English-language one.
 
Haven—Complete 3rd Season
(e one)
This eerie mystery series, based loosely on Stephen King’s story “The Colorado Kid,” follows FBI agents Audrey Parker and Nathan find themselves involved in nefarious dealings in the small Maine town of Haven, thanks to the return of “The Troubles,” which continue to affect the townspeople.
 
The plotting is rarely credible, but even at its most outlandish, agreeable performances make this an honest to goodness guilty pleasure. The hi-def image is unsurpassable; extras include a documentary featurette, audio commentaries, interviews, deleted scenes and a blooper reel.
 
Jon Lord—Concerto for Group and Orchestra
(Eagle Vision)
Deep Purple’s keyboardist (who died last year) composed this sprawling work in 1969, and this recording—by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra under Paul Mann’s baton—is an all-star affair, with Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson (vocals), all-star session man Guy Pratt (bass), Darin Vasilev, Jon Bonnamassa and Steve Morse (guitar), and Lord himself (organist).
 
At 45 minutes, this otherwise listenable mash-up of rock and orchestral music goes on way too long. The Blu-ray has the Concerto in 5.1 surround audio, a 50-minute documentary and interviews with Mann and Marco de Goeij.
 
Spartacus—War of the Damned
(Starz)
In the bloody conclusion to an epic mini-series, Spartacus’ slave uprising threatens the Roman republic, and only the sheer outnumbering strength of the Roman army might be able to stop it.
 
This swords-and-sandals remake is definitely (and defiantly) not like Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus: there’s a lot of brutality, violence and sex that couldn’t have been shown onscreen back in 1960. The Blu-ray looks marvelous; extras include featurettes, extended scenes and commentaries.
 
DVDs of the Week
I Killed My Mother
(Kino Lorber)
This 2009 debut film by then 20-year-old Quebecois director Xavier Dolan is a heartfelt but crudely sentimental exploration of a gay teenager’s complex relationship with his overbearing mother.
 
Although Dolan is awkward onscreen, he smartly allows his film to be dominated by Anne Dorval’s indelible portrait of a matriarch in a love-hate tug-of-war with her son.
 
Into the Arms of Strangers
(Warner Archive)
Judi Dench narrates this moving documentary about how thousands of Jewish children were rescued from the Nazi threat and sent to England for the duration of the war.
 
Director Mark Jonathan Harris grippingly chronicles the amazing true story of the Kindertransport, which includes rarely-seen archival footage and interviews with survivors, who recount their own emotionally wrenching tales of goodness in the face of ultimate evil.
 
The Loved One
(Warner Archive)
Tony Richardson’s adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s sly novel might have seemed racy and daring in 1965, but half a century has dulled its edge and muted its satiric depiction of Southern California as a land of shallow slickness, compared to more cultured Old World of Europe.
 
The movie is best seen as a time capsule (complete with Haskell Wexler’s exquisite B&W photography) that features cameos by stars of the day from Jonathan Winters and John Gielgud to Liberace and Milton Berle. Again, being relegated to Warner Archive, blunts the effectiveness of Wexler’s widescreen compositions; a lone featurette is an extra.
 
The Red Badge of Courage
(Warner Archive)
Even in its truncated form (it clocks in at a mere 69 minutes), John Huston’s 1951 adaptation of Stephen Crane’s classic Civil War story is a vivid look at war’s effect on young soldiers.
 
Harold Rosson’s B&W photography strikingly nods to Matthew Brady’s photographs, and Huston gets top-notch portrayals by Audie Murphy and Bill Maudlin as the men at war. It’s too bad this classic film has been relegated to Warner’s on-demand burn service.
 
Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow—Black Masquerade
(Eagle Vision)
This 1995 concert by guitarist Ritchie Blackmore’s post-Deep Purple band was filmed in Dusseldorf, before a raucous German crowd that enthusiastically approves of every famous guitar lick and riff from Blackmore’s axe.
 
Although vocalist Doogie White is no Ronnie James Dio or David Coverdale, the sturdy songs are the real deal, including the all-time classic “Smoke on the Water.” There’s even a vocal appearance by Blackmore’s wife Candice White, who provides ethereal vocals on “Ariel."

More Articles...

  1. Film Review: "Short Term 12"
  2. Film Review: "Riddick"
  3. September '13 Digital Week I

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