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Film Review: "Stoker" Creeps, Sneaks and Scores
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 02 April 2013 18:49
- Written by Matt Oakes
Stoker
Directed: by Chan Wook-Park
Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Matthew Goode, Nicole Kidman, Jacki Weaver
Drama/Mystery/Thriller
99 mins
R
Korean director Chan Wook Park's Stoker is a product of great precision. Each shot is brilliantly articulated and poised with such deliberation that it's impossible to ignore the artistry and preparedness in each and every frame.
Mia Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland) plays India, a loner type whose father has just died, the Eve to Matthew Goode's biblical garden-dwelling snake. The stars align as India finds herself in a perfectly helpless state when her previously unknown uncle arrives and the game of cat and mouse beings. Although India initially pushes him away, she finds herself slowly seduced by the mystery that is her uncle Charlie.
Charlie, with his vampirically sparkling eyes and cloaked intentions, is an enigma off the bat. We as an audience know that something is amiss from the first time we glimpse him, standing over the funeral on a hazy distant hill, and yet when we met him there is an immediate air of allure seeping from the chiseled jawed, stony persona that makes up Charlie.
As Korean director Park's, who directed the cult hit Oldboy, first foray into the American film industry, he manages to maintain the same level of fierce detail and intelligent zeal that defines his predominantly visual storytelling. Park's fervor for intricate story-boarding, for which he is famous, is clearly evident onscreen as each shot perfectly transitions into the next with the effortlessness of a professional ballet troupe. Even with a thick language barrier between Park and his cast, he seems to have directed them in exactly the way that he intended down to the subtlest movement and the slightest sway of the camera. With Stoker, Park is a puppet master with a tenacious handle on the reins.
Even as the title cards play, a sense of Hitchcockian mystique that brands the film is established but it's not until everything is said and done that everything comes full circle and clicks into place. Moments that once seemed little more than fruitless experiments with visual artistry later become cornerstones to the masterful smattering of foreshadow. It's within this careful positioning of all the pieces tha a rarely accomplished feel of competition to the film emerges as does a lasting sense of wonder. Where ever these characters go from here, I would most certainly like to see that journey and yet it is not only the seen but the unseen that makes the film such a taut little piece of suspense.
In terms of the performances in the piece, Wasikowska's brooding India is just as shrouded in gothic mystery as her uncle Charlie. As the constant chiming of clocks and syncopated clack of metronomes click in the background, we can only make guesswork as to what exactly makes India tick. As the film opens on her 18th birthday, this is the tale of her transition into adulthood, a exploration of a troubled teen and who she chooses to become. Having been a gung-ho daddy's girl all her life, India's relationship with her mother, played by Nicole Kidman, has always been lackluster to her mother's dismay.
Kidman is the real tragic character here, playing a lonely, pitiable woman who really seemed to try to foster a relationship with her dismissive daughter but could never break down the icy boundaries between them. While I was at first under the impression that mother Evelyn would be painted as a villain, I found myself siding with this pleading, tragic character. Sure, maybe she should have tried a little harder in the past to be a better mother but there is an insurmountable misunderstanding between her and India that just cannot be summited.
Matthew Goode as Uncle Charlie is more than good and while it doesn't take a long time to figure out that he's a bona fide creeper, it's the unpacking of what makes him such an eerie presence that gives Goode an opportunity to shine. There is so much festering behind his impossibly blue-hued eyes that the scenes were he just stares at India or Evelyn or just out into space are totally hypnotic. While I don't want to give too much away here, it often seems that Goode channels that final moment that we see Norman Bates in the perfectly slow pan out in Psycho.
After all is said and done, Stoker adds up to a wonderfully paced creep-fest that knows exactly where to mine for the best elements of suspense. It's morbid revelry in the underbelly of family secrets offers up some tasty moments of macabre and underscores the film with a lurid fascination with the root of all evil. What lingers on after the credits roll is this creeping sense that malevolence may just be hereditary.
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March '13 Digital Week IV
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Sunday, 31 March 2013 15:00
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
The Big Picture
(MPI)
In this at times absorbing drama, the excellent Roman Duris is a husband and father escaping his current life after a horrible mistake occurs when he confronts a friend over his wife’s infidelity. Too bad that, once director Eric Lartigau’s effective set-up yields to the plot, the movie becomes much less significant; after the protagonist’s new identity is solidified, it all evaporates from memory.
Intelligently made and persuasively acted on well-chosen locations, the whole is less than its parts. The Blu-ray image is good.
(Image)
Continuing the sad decline of once formidable director Jean-Jacques Annaud—maker of Black and White in Color, Quest for Fire and The Bear—this epic Arabian adventure, while slickly made, nicely shot, acted and edited, is disappointingly routine.
It’s always great to see Freida Pinto—one of our most beautiful actresses—at work, but the visual richness only masks the script’s thinness, despite being based on real events. The hi-def image looks spectacular; extras include making-of featurettes.
Killing Them Softly
(Anchor Bay)
Andrew Dominik’s follow-up to his masterly The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is the antithesis of that magnificently slow-burning accumulation of tiny details: a quick-moving, brutal look at modern America through the prism of small-time criminals during the last economic meltdown.
Framed by the 2008 election, Killing might not resonate like the earlier film, but Dominik’s stylish eye makes this one of 2012’s most memorable films: the perfect ensemble features Brad Pitt, James Gandolfini and Ray Liotta. The hi-def transfer is terrific; extras are deleted scenes and a featurette.
(Criterion)
In their 1943 epic—also their biggest and splashiest production—directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger created an indelible dissection of the British imperial state of mind. Roger Livesey’s robust portrayal of the patriotic military man who parallels the history of England’s colonial empire and 20-year-old Deborah Kerr’s captivating trio of women in his life are unforgettable.
The Criterion Collection’s exquisite hi-def transfer returns glorious color to this classic; extras include a Martin Scorsese intro, Scorsese and Powell commentary, Thelma Schoonmaker (Powell’s widow) interview and featurettes.
Marvin’s Room and
The Shipping News
(Echo Bridge)
Adapting onstage and on-page hits are problematic, as these films demonstrate. From Scott McPherson’s play, 1996’s Marvin’s Room moves from comedy to tragedy without ever becoming compelling, for which we must blame director James Lapine, who wastes good actors like Diane Keaton, Meryl Streep and Leonardo DiCaprio.
Lasse Hallstrom similarly does a disservice to E. Annie Proulx’s best-selling The Shipping News with his scattershot 2001 version featuring by-the-numbers acting by Kevin Spacey, Julianne Moore and Judi Dench. The Blu-ray image isn’t bad.
(Mill Creek)
Two veteran directors in their decline made these middling films. Stanley Kramer’s Ship of Fools (1965) is a well-intentioned but lumbering drama that allegorizes Nazi Germany by an array of passengers in a ship bound for Germany in the 1930s.
Robert Rossen’s melodramatic Lilith stars Jean Seberg and Warren Beatty, who struggle through a psychologically damaging love affair. As two-fers go, this might fill gaps in the collections of Kramer and Rossen’s fans. The Blu-ray image is OK.
Waiting for Lightning
(First Run)
I have no interest in skateboarding, so I’m not the target audience for Jacob Rosenberg’s documentary about daredevil Danny Way, who attempts to skateboard off the Great Wall of China.
But I was wrong: this is a riveting study of a unique performer discussed with awe even by the likes of Tony Hawk. The footage of Way’s breathtaking stunts, culminating with his Great Wall attempt, is ridiculously entertaining. The hi-def image is first-rate; extras include additional interviews and deleted scenes.
Willow
(MGM/Fox)
I had forgotten about this fantasy collaboration between director Ron Howard and producer-writer George Lucas until this Blu-ray reminded me why it disappeared from everyone’s radar. This visually striking but empty film—which fails to create a brave new world—has uninspired creatures and special effects alongside forgettable performances. At least Val Kilmer (hero) and Joanne Whaley (villainess turned heroine) got married. (It didn’t last.)
The movie looks fine on Blu-ray; extras include deleted scenes with Howard’s remarks, and new and vintage featurettes.
DVDs of the Week
All Together
(Kino Lorber)
In this agreeably ramshackle comic drama, Jane Fonda shines in her first French-language role in nearly 40 years (since Godard’s Tout va bien) as the American wife of a Frenchman who join their aging friends to live together instead of at assisted living facilities.
It’s small potatoes, but delightful performances by Claude Rich, Pierre Richard, Geraldine Chaplin, Guy Beros and Fonda compensate, as does writer-director’s Stephane Robelin’s refusal to get sentimental til the end—when it works and all is forgiven.
(Anchor Bay)
Daniel Espinosa’s ingenious thriller follows a student who gets in way over his head when he starts working for organized crime, whose members are involved in drug dealing.
For awhile, the movie speeds along, cleverly hiding its narrative holes, but its ending asks us to swallow too much, even for a genre that thrives on implausibility. Still, it’s stylish fun—and two sequels will follow, along with the inevitable American remake.
Fatherland
(First Run)
Nicolas Prividera’s unorthodox documentary looks at Buenos Aries’ La Recoleta cemetery, which has as much history and stunning architecture as Pere Lachaise in Paris. Individuals read from letters and books from different eras of Argentine history as they sit among mausoleums, sculptures and other cemetery markers, while ordinary people who live nearby go about their daily lives.
This is a highly individual and anything but whitewashed study of a country whose volatile existence can be traced through those luminaries buried in this, their final resting place.
(e one)
This adaptation of Dickens’ famous novel stars George C. Scott as a relatively restrained Fagin—at least when compared to this outsized personality’s usual onscreen bluster—alongside who may be the most cherubic Oliver ever, Richard Charles.
James Goldman’s script is faithful but skimpy, and Richard Donner’s direction is merely functional: but the material remains powerful, and the supporting cast, including Michael Hordern, Tim Curry and Cherie Lunghi, props up the familiar tale.
Scavenger Hunt
(Cinema Libre)
The near-extinct California condor is the subject of Matthew Podolsky and Eddie Chung’s informative documentary about how usually opposing groups, the NRA and EPA, agree to help these amazing birds survive in the wild when it’s discovered that they’re getting lead poisoning by eating deer carcasses that are filled with lead bullets.
Extras are deleted scenes and outtakes.
Shakespeare Uncovered
(PBS)
This sextet of programs covering Shakespeare’s artistic and humanistic greatness invites actors and directors to give their personal thoughts on the Bard’s genius.
With Ethan Hawke discussing his dream acting job, Macbeth, Joely Richardson talking about Twelfth Night and As You Like It, and Trevor Nunn dissecting The Tempest, and so on, the series provides new insights for Shakespeare veterans as well as an accessible way in for those who find him too daunting to deal with.
CD of the Week
Holmboe—Chamber Music (II)
(Dacapo)
The gifted Danish composer Vagn Holmboe (1909-96) wrote music in all genres, although mainly orchestral (symphonies and concertos) and chamber music, of which this disc is a representative sample.
Never tied down by one format, his intimate works run the gamut on this disc from a solo cello sonata to a sextet for flute, clarinet, bassoon, violin, viola and cello, all showing off Holmboe’s effortless amalgam of modernism, classical structure and folk idioms. The five pieces on this disc are dazzlingly played by members of Ensemble MidtVest.
On Broadway: “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and “Hands on a Hardbody”
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Friday, 29 March 2013 05:00
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Adapted by Richard Greenberg from Truman Capote’s novella; directed by Sean Matthias
Hands on a Hardbody
Music by Trey Anastasio and Amanda Green, lyrics by Amanda Green, book by Doug Wright; directed by Neil Pepe
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| Vito Vincent and Emilia Clarke in Breakfast at Tiffany's (photo: Nathan Johnson) |
Breakfast at Tiffany’s, originally a novella by Truman Capote, is best known as Blake Edwards’ 1961 movie which took liberties with its heroine Holly Golightly—no one would believe that pure Audrey Hepburn was a prostitute. So the Broadway play, adapted by Richard Greenberg, is closer to Capote, but makes his story stilted and lifeless.
Naive writer Fred, recently arrived in New York, is a thinly veiled portrait of Capote; his befriending Golightly—the sexy, magnetic but ultimately ungraspable embodiment of the perfect woman—is pure fantasy, of course. The movie played up that aspect through Hepburn’s innate glamour, and never explained why all those men hang around her apartment.
Greenburg’s adaptation doesn’t shy away from Golightly’s moonlighting, but what it gains in verisimilitude it loses in eccentric charm. Both the setting—pre-Mad Men Manhattan (late ‘40s and ‘50s)—and the characters are not individualized enough to be made interesting onstage for two acts. Sean Matthias’s tentative directing doesn’t help: the scenes stumble on and off the stage, accompanied by Derek McLane’s agile but non-descript sets.
The show’s best cast member, playing a cat named Cat whom Golightly adopts, goes by the name of Vito Vincent, a fantastically good ginger tabby. Emilia Clarke—from HBO’s Game of Thrones—works hard as Holly, but nothing she does feels natural or organic, which is fatal for such an irresistible charmer. Cory Michael Smith’s Fred has a gawkiness that serves him well, but he and Clarke have no chemistry—they’re more engaged when Cat is onstage.
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| Hands on a Hardbody cast (photo: Chad Batka) |
The 1997 film Hands on a Hardbody documented an offbeat contest presented as a Texas auto dealership’s promotion: to win a new truck, contestants had to stand for as long as they could without taking one hand off the vehicle, and the last one standing wins the truck. It doesn’t sound like much in the way of drama, but here it is, adapted into a new Broadway musical with Phish’s Trey Anastasio composing the music with Amanda Green, who penned the lyrics, and playwright Doug Wright wrote the book.
This agreeably scruffy show doesn’t have a compelling reason to exist—how many ways can onstage contestants sing while circling a glistening red Nissan truck, confessing their hopes, dreams, disillusionments?—but it also sneaks up on you. The longer the contest lasts, the more we are intrigued by their quirky stories, although dramatic manipulativeness prevents the show from becoming a new They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, the classic 1968 marathon dance drama.
There are songs about faith in God (“Joy of the Lord”), being a Mexican-American (“Born in Laredo”) or working at UPS (“I’m Gone”), but Anastasio and Green’s music, mainly ersatz country-rock, has a numbing sameness, and Green’s lyrics—which at least never rhyme “truck” with a certain F-word—are barely serviceable (sample: “I work at the UPS/the job is pretty good I guess”). Wright’s book, while clever, can’t sustain its gimmick for two-plus hours.
Neil Pepe’s directing and Sergio Trujillo’s musical staging are inventive enough to keep interest from waning, and the cast does its best to make us care about these fuzzy individuals, each of whom gets a chance to shine solo. Hunter Foster (Sutton’s brother), Keith Carradine, Allison Case, Jacob Ming-Trent, Keala Settle and Kathleen Elizabeth Monteleone provide enough pizzazz to give this slight show a push in the right direction.
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Performances began March 4, 2013
Cort Theatre, 138 West 48th Street, New York, NY
Hands on a Hardbody
Performances began February 23, 2013
Brooks Atkinson Theatre, 256 West 47th Street, New York, NY
March '13 Digital Week III
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Monday, 25 March 2013 15:00
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Bachelorette
(Anchor Bay)
Leslye Headland, directing her own adaptation of her own off-Broadway play, dilutes it with crass humor and little insight. By pitching the performances so high—Kirsten Dunst, Isla Fischer, Lizzy Kaplan and Rebel Wilson are equally annoying—Headland undermines a potentially rich comedic statement; like Lena Dunham’s Girls, it superficially looks at superficial people.
The Blu-ray image is good; extras comprise Headland’s commentary, deleted scenes, bloopers and a making-of featurette.
Badlands
(Criterion)
In many ways, Terrence Malick’s 1973 debut—loosely based on the Starkweather killings in the ‘50s—is more impressive than the brilliant films that followed. In this deceptively simple but psychologically incisive dissection of alienated youth, Sissy Spacek and Martin Sheen are tremendously compelling; coupled with Malick’s stunning visual and verbal control, it all adds up to a true classic.
The Criterion Collection's Blu-ray image is gorgeous; extras are Making Badlands, featuring interviews with Spacek, Sheen and Spacek’s husband Jack Fisk, the film’s art director; interviews with editor Billy Weber and producer Edward Pressman; and an episode of the TV series American Justice about Starkweather.
Beautiful Girls
(Echo Bridge)
Ted Demme—who died an untimely death after 2002’s Blow—directed this diverting 1996 comedy-drama about a small New England town in which men and women hook up with and separate from one another.
The solid ensemble includes Matt Dillon, Tim Hutton, Uma Thurman, Michael Rapaport, Mira Sorvino, eternally underrated Annabeth Gish and wise-beyond-her-years 14-year-old Natalie Portman, even more precocious than in her debut The Professional. The Blu-ray image is OK; extras include cast interviews.
(Anchor Bay)
This out-of-control, frequently ludicrous thriller pitting a returned Iraqi vet against vicious drug cartel members begins decently but falls apart so quickly that even committed acting by Emilio Rivera, Joel Matthews and Ray Liotta can’t keep it together.
There’s a demented satisfaction watching such onscreen lunacy for awhile, but the suspect plotting is so unbelievable that it’s tough to stay with it. The Blu-ray image looks impeccable; the lone extra is a behind-the-scenes featurette.
Glacier and Voyageurs National Parks
(Mill Creek)
These shot-on-HD travel programs display the natural wonders awaiting visitors to two of our most unique national parks. Glacier NP, located in Montana, is filled with huge mountain peaks, thick forests and receding glaciers; Voyageurs—comprising land and water around Lake Superior—includes the Lower 48’s most pristine wilderness.
Discussed are each park’s history and geology, and included are interviews with historians and park rangers. The hi-def transfer looks so good you’ll want to visit both places immediately.
Hitchcock
(Fox)
That Alfred Hitchcock treated his actresses as mere props is no surprise at this late date, so this 90-minute feature about the making of Psycho is flimsy at best. Its fun stems from director Sacha Gervasi recreating Hitch’s most outrageous Psycho bits; most disappointing are rote impersonations by Anthony Hopkins (Hitch), Helen Mirren (his wife) and Scarlett Johansson (Janet Leigh).
Sienna Miller’s Tippi Hedren and Toby Jones’ Hitch in HBO’s The Girl (about The Birds and Marnie) are better. The Blu-ray image is excellent; extras comprise featurettes, a deleted scene and Gervasi’s commentary.
Hollywood Homicide
and Hudson Hawk
(Mill Creek)
This double feature pairs two big financial misfires. Josh Hartnett and Harrison Ford play mismatched cops in Ron Shelton’s amusing but forgettable 2003 comic caper, Hollywood Homicide, which at least has interesting peripheral characters played by Lena Olin and Lolita Davidovich, the director’s wife.
Then there’s 1991’s infamous Hudson Hawk, the slapdash criminal caper that nearly derailed Bruce Willis’ career. The Blu-ray images of both films is decent, not top quality.
Life of Pi
(Fox)
This diffuse if visually arresting adaptation of Yann Martel’s novel somehow won the Best Director Oscar for Ang Lee; it’s a clunky movie that lamely and explicitly explains its narrative and thematic intentions with a sledgehammer. It also won Oscars for Best Score for Mychael Danna’s unoriginal potpourri and Best Cinematography for Claudio Miranda, even if it looks like 90% of the visuals are special effects.
There’s a decent short here stretched out beyond endurance. The movie looks stunning, naturally, on Blu-ray; extras include an hour-long making-of doc and featurettes on the effects and the tiger(s).
(Criterion)
Charlie Chaplin’s problematic “masterpiece” is a black comedy about a Bluebeard who can’t seem to murder his latest rich wife. Although the scenes of Chaplin failing to off Martha Raye are quintessential slapstick, the movie’s obvious if effective screed against modern society’s upside-down morality and ethics is sometimes wince-inducing. However, Chaplin’s natural cinematic genius wins out.
The Criterion Collection’s hi-def transfer looks flawlessly film-like; extras include a half-hour featurette (from Warners’ DVD), a new one about Chaplin’s relationship with the press and an audio interview with actress Marilyn Nash.
The Other Son
(Cohen Media)
What could have been a heavy-handed Israel-Palestine allegory is transformed by director Lorraine Levy and writer Nathalie Saugeon into a gripping, intelligent drama about Jewish and Palestinian parents discovering that their sons were switched at birth.
Persuasive acting, lucid writing and sensitive direction create a memorable look at complexities in a part of the world usually shown in a black and white context. The Blu-ray looks terrific; extras are interviews, deleted scenes and bloopers.
(Sony)
Jacques Audiard’s aggressively sentimental anti-romance takes enough liberties with Craig Davidson’s short story that leaps of faith are needed to accept its improbabilities—including a miraculous survival underneath solid ice.
Happily, Matthias Schoenaerts is a stoically powerful loner with no responsibility to anyone, even his young son, while Marion Cotillard gives a forcefully naked portrayal of a woman whose physical destruction paradoxically leads to her emotional well-being. The movie looks superb on Blu-ray; extras include Audiard’s and writer Thomas Bidegain’s commentary, deleted scenes, and interviews.
DVDs of the Week
Gottfried Heinwein and the Dreaming Child
(First Run)
Wherein Austrian artist Heinwein—known for paintings depicting innocent children—figuratively meets his artistic mirror image when he designs sets for an opera based on late Israeli playwright Hanoch Levin’s The Child Dreams.
Director Lisa Kirk Colburn’s fascinating documentary explores the painful intersection of art, politics and historical amnesia. Three bonus deleted scenes include an interesting discussion between artist and visitor to his exhibition about Austrian complicity in the Holocaust.
(Artsploitation)
Hannah Hoekstra is remarkable as a horny teenager dealing with daddy issues. Of course, Sacha Polak’s film contains plentiful nudity, and Hoekstra is unafraid to show her body, but this young woman’s sexuality is part of her entire being, and the movie gets a lot right, despite numerous times when it could go wrong.
Thankfully, actress, role and writer-director combine for a trenchant and non-exploitative look at teenage sexuality. Extras are Polak and Hoekstra interviews.
Jay and Silent Bob Get Irish
(Industrial)
Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes’s concert tours are cash cows, and this two-disc set preserves their shows in Dublin, with a Vegas performance thrown in.
No Job for a Lady 
(Acorn)
Penelope Keith is delightfully screwy as a newly elected liberal member of Parliament in this 1989 British sitcom that shows how a middle-aged housewife deals with the entrenched good old boys’ network.
Although much of the humor is typical British reserve and Benny Hill bluster, there’s welcome pointed satire. The show’s 18 episodes vary in quality, but Keith, Mark Kingston as her husband and George Baker as her Tory opponent do their best to keep it moving.
South Pacific and Gypsy
(Mill Creek)
Two all-time classic musicals were adapted for TV with indifferent casting in crucial roles. The 2001 version of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific, despite solid musical credentials for Harry Connick, has a tuneless Glenn Close at its center; I can’t imagine seeing her in the recent Broadway revival with Kelli O’Hara and Laura Osnes.
Gypsy (from 1993) is closer to the mark, as Bette Midler is a boisterous Mama Rose and Cynthia Gibb a sweetly appealing Gypsy Rose Lee, but Peter Riegert (Herbie) and Ed Asner (Pop) are expendable.
(Sony)
Kathryn Bigelow’s explosive re-enactment of what led to Osama bin Laden’s killing has been accused of being pro-torture by—gasp—showing accused combatants waterboarded by the CIA. Whether that led to key info remains questionable, but Bigelow is more concerned with dramatizing writer Mark Boal’s masterly procedural on agents—strongly embodied by Jessica Chastain—who tirelessly searched for the Sept. 11 mastermind.
As in Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker, the sheer physicality of war is made palpable, and its subtle treatment is embodied in chilling last words said to the heroine (and us), “Where do you want to go next?” Extras are on-set featurettes.
CD of the Week
Viktor Kalabis—Symphonies & Concertos
(Supraphon)
This three-disc set is a true ear-opener: here's a Czech composer who died in 2006 and whose music is virtually unknown outside his own country. This compilation rectifies that situation in a big way: Kalabis' symphonies and concertos show a virtuosity and energy that makes one wonder why his music hasn't been heard more often.
(Supraphon)
This three-disc set is a true ear-opener: here's a Czech composer who died in 2006 and whose music is virtually unknown outside his own country. This compilation rectifies that situation in a big way: Kalabis' symphonies and concertos show a virtuosity and energy that makes one wonder why his music hasn't been heard more often.
These works are serious but never strident, accessible but never banal. And the performances—many of them recorded between 1962-1988, including some conducted by Kalabis himself—pinpoint the sheer attractiveness of the music: why the commanding Sinfonia pacis or the whimsical Concertino for Bassoon and Wind Instruments aren't part of the regular repertoire is beyond me.
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