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Film and the Arts
"Out of the Clear Blue Sky" Illuminates Cantor Fitzgerald
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 27 August 2013 14:15
- Written by Laura Blum
Out of the Clear Blue Sky is hardly the first documentary about 9/11, but its chronicle of bond trader Cantor Fitzgerald tells a uniquely epic tale of a corporate family. All of the 658 employees who began that dreadful day at company headquarters on the World Trade Center's top five floors lost their lives, representing nearly a quarter of the attack's total casualties.
Among the company's 302 survivors was CEO Howard Lutnick, who arrived -- at the moment the planes did -- after accompanying his son on his first day of kindergarten. Lutnick's brother, Gary, wasn't so fortunate. Nor was filmmaker Danielle Gardner's brother, Douglas. Her personal connection permeates the movie and adds to its raw intimacy.Within 48 hours of September 11, Lutnick was promising through widely televised sobs to take care of the Cantor Fitzgerald community: Cantor would now turn over 25 percent of corporate profits to the victims’ families for five years and treat them to 10 years of healthcare. Overnight the man with the "ruthless and cutthroat reputation on Wall Street" became "the face of the tragedy" to a nation in shock who shared in his grief and found solace in his generosity.
One week later, the erstwhile hero was being compared with Al-Qaeda. With 
entire corporate divisions wiped out, Cantor dropped missing employees from the payroll. Sympathizers saw the decision as a necessary evil to salvage what was left of the firm and generate cash to support the living, while detractors vilified it as unspeakable act by a cold-hearted Judas. In a media frenzy of denunciation, Lutnick was now the persona non-grata of the hour.
entire corporate divisions wiped out, Cantor dropped missing employees from the payroll. Sympathizers saw the decision as a necessary evil to salvage what was left of the firm and generate cash to support the living, while detractors vilified it as unspeakable act by a cold-hearted Judas. In a media frenzy of denunciation, Lutnick was now the persona non-grata of the hour.
With some 6,000 mourners to attend to and a decimated company to run, he had more urgent concerns than his Q rating. Out of the Clear Blue Sky plunges into the murky grey Ground Zero and beyond to chart how the employees, the chief executive and the company itself rose from the ashes in hopes of rebirth. In the process, it explores poignant questions. What does it take to bring back a business from near 
death? Which is more ethical, letting that business go or focusing on the bottom line?
death? Which is more ethical, letting that business go or focusing on the bottom line? Within 14 years of the catastrophe, Cantor Fitzgerald fulfilled its word to its employees, an $180 million obligation. Another $17 million went to a crisis relief fund managed by Lutnick’s stalwart sister, Edie. And judging by Gardner's interviews with surviving loved ones and colleagues as well as footage of gatherings over the course of nearly a dozen years, the emotional support provided by the forum can only be valued at priceless.
Special screenings of the film are scheduled in selected theaters around the country on September 11 at 7 pm.
August '13 Digital Week IV
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Monday, 26 August 2013 17:10
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Amour
(Sony Classics)
In Michael Haneke’s unflinching drama, an elderly Parisian couple deals with the wife’s incapacitating stroke. That they are cultured—former music teachers, they attend her former student’s Schubert recital the night before she starts her downhill spiral—is unsurprising, since the cynical Haneke would argue they suffer more due to such refinement.
Still, Amour works forcefully due to the utterly persuasive Jean-Louis Trintignant (husband) and especially Emmanuelle Riva (wife), who gives a devastatingly subtle portrayal that sidesteps her director’s mistakes (a trite dream sequence, two (!) symbolic pigeons). Although incapable of sentiment or warmth—Trintignant and Riva provide that—Haneke is smart enough to play to his strengths. The Blu-ray image is immaculate—you can even read CD and LP spines on the shelves; extras comprise a 25-minute on-set featurette and a 35-minute Haneke interview.
(Vivendi)
and
Super Storm
(Anchor Bay)
Two middling films deal with possible ends to our world. A fatal government gaffe must be righted by an on-the-outs scientist (Matthew Modine) in Cat 8, a three-hour made-for-TV movie that sacrifices originality for a slow pace and (too much) detail.
The low-budget sci-fi Super Storm dramatizes how the disappearance of Jupiter’s red spot causes powerful storms on earth, which only a small town has the apparent ability to stop. Neither of these is an essential genre flick; the hi-def images look OK. Cat extras include cast interviews.
Eddie the Sleepwalking Cannibal
(Doppleganger)
and Hatchet III
(Dark Sky)
Cinematic gore is so commonplace that to show it satirically makes your movie stick out, like these (partly) tongue-in-cheek slasher flicks. Eddie follows the title killer and a painter who befriends him with increasingly bloody results; there’s less wit than writer-director Boris Rodriguez thinks.
More graphic are the ridiculous amounts of severed limbs and heads in Hatchet III, which sprays geysers of blood for 90 minutes; but only those who actually enjoyed I and II might get any fun from a third go-round. Blu-ray transfers are fine; extras include on-set footage and interviews.
(Anchor Bay)
Mark Steven Johnson’s action thriller about an ex-NATO soldier and the Serb he shot during the Bosnian war—old wounds, literal and figurative, resurface as they meet years later in the American woods—sets up its ludicrous situation somewhat plausibly. But it soon goes off the rails as the men miraculously fighting after getting wounds that would stop lesser men—not to mention rolling jeeps!
John Travolta’s Serb is a well-meant caricature, Robert De Niro is always De Niro, and the stunts are impressive, but the movie is too far-fetched to provide a rooting interest. The Blu-ray image is excellent; lone extra is a making-of featurette.
The Odd Angry Shot
(Synapse)
This 1979 Australian feature was swamped by the first wave of Vietnam-set films like Coming Home and The Deer Hunter, but writer-director Tom Jeffrey’s straightforward drama about a group of Aussie soldiers who discover how difficult it really is fighting a war they have no rooting interest in (except that their home was much closer than America) is compelling and well-acted.
The Blu-ray image looks exceedingly grainy, to the film’s credit; extras include Jeffreys’, producer Sue Milliken’s and actor Graeme Blundell’s commentary and a stunts featurette
(Oscilloscope)
Matteo Garrone’s follow-up to his organized crime epic Gomorrah is this bizarre turn into Felliniesque grotesquerie, as a small-time crook and family man (the remarkable Aniello Arena) sees his life slowly going to pieces as he hopes he’ll be cast in the Italian version of TV’s Big Brother.
Garrone’s camera bemusedly follows the bizarre parade of eccentrics, but his sledgehammer stylization (which Fellini did better even in lesser films like Ginger and Fred) does little more than provide nearly two hours of cartoonishness. The movie’s bright colors are aptly rendered on Blu-ray; extras include Garrone and Arena interviews, deleted scenes and making-of featurettes.
Robert le Diable
(Opus Arte)
Giacomo Meyerbeer’s grand opera was a huge mid-19th century hit, and this 2012 Royal Opera production shows why: the combination of larger-than-life characters, emotional arias, gripping choruses and fantastic ballet interludes shows why opera was then considered the sum total of all arts.
Committed portrayals by singers Bryan Hymel, Patrizia Ciofi, John Relyea and Marina Poplavskaya highlight Laurent Pelly’s dynamic staging; Daniel Oren conducts a flavorful account of Meyerbeer’s score. On Blu-ray, the hi-def image and surround sound are exemplary; the lone extra is a short featurette.
Don’t Stop Believin’—Everyman’s Journey
(Cinedigm)
This audience-pleasing documentary introduces singer Arnel Pineda, literally plucked off the streets of Manila—after being seen by Journey band members on YouTube singing karaoke songs—to become the new lead singer of the cheesy rockers following beloved frontman Steve Perry’s departure.
Ramona S. Diaz’s surprisingly in-depth exploration of the vagaries of rock stardom is a winning portrait, even if you don’t need to hear the title song ever again. Extras are deleted scenes, interviews and featurettes.
The Good Wife—Complete 4th Season
(CBS)
What began as a show with a gimmick—a wronged political wife dusts herself off and begins her professional and personal lives anew—has remained solidly entertaining for one reason: Julianna Margulies, who gives the concept enough intelligence and allure to gloss over the show’s clichéd aspects.
Support from the likes of Christine Baranski, Archie Panjabi and Josh Charles also helps. All 22 episodes from the fourth season are included on six discs; extras include featurettes, interviews and deleted scenes.
NCIS: Los Angeles—Complete 4th Season (CBS)
The tenth season of the original NCIS and the fourth season of the surprisingly successful L.A. spinoff each put 24 season episodes on six discs: Mark Harmon continues to lead the original team, while LL Cool J and Chris O’Donnell front those out on the West Coast.
Your mileage will vary depending on your mood for the minutiae of undercover military investigative work; extras include interviews, commentaries, featurettes and, on NCIS10, deleted scenes.
On a Clear Day You Can See Forever
(Warner Archive)
Vincente Minnelli’s bizarre time-travel 1970 musical—savaged upon release—features a mis-cast Barbra Streisand, Yves Montand and Jack Nicholson, all looking embarrassed and confused. Not by Alan Jay Lerner’s songs, which are derivative but tuneful, but by the script and directing, both ridiculously ham-fisted, ensuring that the audience knows nothing and cares for no one onscreen.
Streisand sounds fine while singing, but Montand (Nicholson’s lone song was cut) smartly didn’t star in other musicals with Babs. The widescreen image looks decent on this Warner Archive release, but would look better on Blu-ray.
(Strand)
Mexican director Carlos Reygadas moves further into his own insular world with this inscrutable (and ugly-looking) film whose tenuous links between scenes have little discernible point.
The idea for the film (whose title is Latin for “Light after darkness”) apparently came to him while alone in the mountains, but he obviously didn’t have a revelation about how to explore that idea without pretentiousness. The movie’s obnoxious visual style might come off better on the smaller TV screen than it did in the theater.
CD/DVD Set of the Week
Richard Wagner—Ring Cycle
(Deutsche Grammophon)
Richard Wagner’s gigantic operatic tetralogy is rarely released in new recordings, probably because cost is so prohibitive: it’s likely easier to film existing productions for DVD and Blu-ray (as DG did with the Metropolitan Opera’s new staging). But this recording by Christian Thielemann and the Vienna State Opera does it the old way: 14 CDs of the four operas in superlative digital sound, along with two DVDs of four one-hour documentaries about the genesis, legacy and genius of Wagner’s masterpiece(s).
Thielemann and his Vienna forces sound luminous on the Ring's orchestral highlights, like the gorgeous E-flat opening of Rheingold, the Magic Fire Music from Walkure and the ecstatic climax to Gotterdammerung. The musical coherence allows only a few of the dozens of singers to stand out: notably Albert Dohmen’s Wotan and Anna Larsson’s Erda. The DVDs' semi-scholarly approach might be too much for novices and not enough for aficionados. This isn't a benchmark Ring, but it has its moments.
"Afternoon Delight" Takes Marriage Out for a Romp
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Sunday, 25 August 2013 15:27
- Written by Laura Blum
Afternoon Delight, as the title of Jill Soloway's debut feature suggests, has sex on the brain. That's not so much the case for its leading married couple when we first meet them. Rachel (Kathryn Hahn) and Jeff (Josh Radnor) live in the trendy, upscale Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, where they're raising their son Logan. Since his birth several years earlier, the fizz has gone out of their bedroom.
Also draining libidos are Jeff's job and Rachel's lack thereof. Creating apps 
connects Jeff to the world -- and bankrolls the Architectural Digest home -- while distancing the conjugal relationship. For her part, Rachel cashiered her dreams of being a war correspondent in favor of motherhood, jogging and attending JCC events.
No amount of wine-and-chat get togethers with other mothers or sessions with a self-absorbed therapist (Jane Lynch) can cure the unfulfilled thirtysomething's ennui. To compound matters, she realizes how good she has it. "How can I complain? "Women in Africa walk 14 miles for water and get raped."
For an erotic recharge, Rachel arranges a couples' visit to a strip club. There she's treated to a lap dance by blond bombshell McKenna (Juno Temple), whom she soon hires as a live-in nanny. Rachel gets her big chance at making the world a better place, but whether it's the young "full-service-sex-worker" or herself that she means to help is arguable. It gives little away to reveal that Rachel appears as surprised as we are when sabbath rites redeem her saga.
Having written and produced TV such series as Six Feet Under, United States of Tara and How to Make It in America, Soloway gravitates to material that's out there yet still fertile for probing resonant themes. Comedy and adult don't always mix easily in Afternoon Delight, yet the tonal clash is offset by precisely Soloway's concern with real challenges of romance, career, family and community.
Summer Music @ Lincoln Center Festival, Glimmerglass, Bard Summerscape, Encores—Off-Center
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Sunday, 25 August 2013 03:53
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Lincoln Center Festival
Performances from July 6-28, 2013
Lincoln Center, New York, NY
Glimmerglass Festival
Performances from July 6-August 24, 2013
Alice Busch Opera Theatre, Cooperstown, NY
Bard Summerscape
Performances from July 5-August 18, 2013
Fischer Center, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
Encores—Off-Center
Performances from July 10-27, 2013
City Center, 131 West 55th Street, New York, NY
Gone are the days when the summer allowed music lovers to catch their breath: in addition to the long-running Glimmerglass Festival (since 1975) and Lincoln Center Festival (since 1996), there’s also Bard Summerscape (in its 12th summer) and a new off-shoot of City Center’s valuable Encores!, titled Encores—Off-Center, all featuring chance-taking rather than reliably safe performances.
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| Lincoln Center Festival's Michaels Reise um die Erde (photo: Klaus Rudolph) |
German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen’s magnum opus Licht (Light), which comprises seven operas named after the days of the week, would tax any professional opera company. None of the operas has been seen in its entirety in America, so a staged version of Act II of Donnerstag (Thursday), titled Michael’s Journey around the World (Michaels Reise um die Erde), at Lincoln Center Festival was a coup—but if this festival won’t stage an entire Licht cycle opera, none will.
As usual with Stockhausen’s music, what’s essentially a staged trumpet concerto is much more palatable to view than listen to—if nothing else, the German avant-gardist knew how to maximize the dramatics of his performers. Last summer’s New York Philharmonic performance of Gruppen at the Park Avenue Armory was a blast in the same way as Michael: even when the music becomes redundant and impenetrable (which is often), the players’ amazing physical agility retains interest.
As archangel Michael, trumpeter Marco Blaauw had to maneuver through Stockhausen’s complex, tricky score in a bizarre shiny suit while being strapped to a mobile crane that flipped him around and moved him all over the stage to interact with the other instrumentalists (especially basset hornist Nicola Jurgenson in a wonderfully intimate and passionate duet) and the videos and projections in a too-literal but enjoyable production by Carlus Padrissa, with assistance from Roland Olbeter and Franc Aleu. Conductor Peter Rundel and the Ensemble musikFabrik gave Blaauw the sturdy musical backbone he needed for his remarkable feats of movement and musicmaking.
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| Glimmerglass Festival's Camelot (photo: Karli Cadel) |
Once Glimmerglass Opera, the Glimmerglass Festival has recently added Broadway musicals to its summer offerings at the lovely Alice Busch Opera Theater near bucolic Glimmerglass Lake, just north of Cooperstown. Last summer was The Music Man; next summer will be Carousel. This summer, it was Lerner & Loewe’s Camelot, in a modestly silly staging by Robert Longbottom—a tree made of blades too literally evoked King Arthur’s warring era—helped by a formidable trio in the leads.
David Pittsinger was a sympathetic King Arthur, regal and comic by turns; Andriana Churchman made an alluring and playful Guinevere, while Nathan Gunn was a dashing and irresistible Lancelot. That the musical’s not all seriousness and swordplay is to those of us who expected the target of wicked Monty Python parodies to be eternally dated: but Lerner’s book and lyrics nicely balance drama and humor, Loewe’s songs are always tuneful, and the entire show—even in Longbottom’s lazy staging—still blossomed onstage.
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| Bard Summerscape's Oresteia (photo: Cory Weaver) |
At Bard College’s Summerscape, two hours north of Manhattan, this year’s composer-in-residence (of sorts) was Igor Stravinsky, focus of the two-week Stravinsky and His World, whose orchestral and chamber concerts placed his work in intriguing historical, cultural and musical contexts. A fascinating tangent was the opera Oresteia by fellow Soviet Sergey Taneyev, composed in 1895 and given its American premiere at Bard.
Taneyev’s epic drama—three long acts adding up to nearly four hours from start to finish—set Aeschylus’s trio of classic tragedies to music that’s less than varied, but heroic or tragic by turns. Leon Botstein’s conducting the American Symphony Orchestra left something to be desired, plodding along more than Taneyev’s music warranted. Even less desirable was Thaddeus Strassberger’s production, set in what looked like a dirty basement wing of the Louvre, with paintings, frames and other bric-a-brac needlessly mucking up the works, highlighted by needless gore. Asking a director to clearly and coherently stage a classic drama isn’t so much to ask, is it?
The singers, who could sing their lungs out for a scene or two and then bow out due to a killing or other crime, were on firmer ground. Liuba Sokolova (Clytemnestra), Mikhail Vekua (Orestes) and Maria Litke (Cassandra) were best, giving their all to Taneyev’s stentorian vocal lines, and providing tragic stature to a work that only fitfully approached that goal.
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| Encores! Off-Center's Violet (photo: Joan Marcus) |
The new Encores! summer series, Off-Center, comprised The Cradle Will Rock, Violet and I’m Getting My Act Together…—all unseen (and unheard) for awhile. Composer Jeanine Tesori, also series curator, presented her own chamber folk-opera, Violet, about a hideously disfigured young woman: its country inflections and gospel tunes gave it a superficial veneer of Americana, but it took a true star to help the show take flight, and its one-time-only concert staging got that with the incandescent Sutton Foster.
I missed Getting My Act, but caught The Cradle Will Rock, Marc Blitzstein’s unabashedly pro-socialist agit-prop “play with music” from 1937. This version had its share of star turns, notably silky-voiced Anika Noni Rose, gruffly villainous Danny Burstein and boisterously heroic Raul Esparza. Director Sam Gold contributed nonsensical bits like young Aidan Gemme playing a cop and a professor; but the show remains, appropriately enough for a socialist tract, a true ensemble piece, and the forced parallels between yesterday and today (big business and political figures colluding to keep the little man down) didn’t ruin its pleasurable moments.
Lincoln Center Festival
http://lincolncenterfestival.org
Glimmerglass Festival
http://glimmerglass.org
Bard Summerscape
http://fishercenter.bard.edu
Encores—Off-Center
http://nycitycenter.org
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