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Off-Broadway Review—Jessica Goldberg’s “Babe” with Marisa Tomei

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Monday, 09 December 2024 04:12; Written by Kevin Filipski

Babe

Written by Jessica Goldberg; directed by Scott Elliott

Performances through December 22, 2024

The New Group @ Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 West 42nd Street, New York, NY

thenewgroup.org

Marisa Tomei in Babe (photo: Monique Carboni)

Jessica Goldberg’s Babe records the interaction among a trio of characters in an independent record label’s office. Gus is the infamously abrasive founder who pines for the good old days and shrugs off being #MeToo’ed; Abigail is his loyal right hand for decades who might be the power behind the throne; and Katharine is a young new hire who immediately becomes a thorn in their sides.

Goldberg touches on pertinent—and, sadly, prevalent—themes that still dog the music business, notably the good old boys’ network that someone like Abigail has had to delicately navigate. But, although Goldberg gives her a familiar backstory—Abigail signed and had an intimate relationship with a singer named Kat Wonder, who became a huge star in the ‘90s before succumbing to her demons and dying far too young—it remains on the surface, even with a few flashbacks shoehorned in that bring Kat back.

That’s Babe’s biggest problem—all its characters are merely sketched in, underdeveloped. Their interactions and verbal showdowns are entertaining (Goldberg has an ear for clever dialogue) but dramatically insufficient; there’s never a feeling that something weighty is at stake. Katharine is simply a catalyst for Abigail to grapple with her professional relationship with Gus after he’s finally canned for blatant and unapologetic sexism. Abigail takes over but now must deal with the fallout, or even take the blame, for years of such policies. Yet even this potentially interesting twist is given short shrift.

Scott Elliott’s adroit direction, on Derek McLane’s nicely appointed set, smooths out some of the rough edges yet can’t erase the sense that Babe is merely an 85-minute demo for a more in-depth, dare I say longer, study. As Gus, Arliss Howard is properly grotesque and frequently hilarious, while Gracie McGraw plays Katharine bluntly and without much distinction, which also describes her few scenes as Kat Wonder.

As for Marisa Tomei, this resourceful actress does much right, like subtly showing the effects of being Gus’ second in command for so long. Abigail also has cancer (of course she does!), and the short scenes of her post-chemo are the play’s most effective, thanks to Tomei’s ability to look genuinely sick and vulnerable. But only at the end, when Abigail exhilaratingly lets loose as another of Kat’s tunes (by the guitar-driven trio BETTY) plays, do character and performer finally transcend the material.

Paavo Järvi Directs the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Wednesday, 04 December 2024 15:04; Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Chris Lee

At Lincoln Center’s wonderful David Geffen Hall on the night of Thursday, November 21st, I had the considerable pleasure to attend an exceptional concert presented by the New York Philharmonic under the superb direction of Paavo Järvi.

The event started splendidly with a sterling performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s extraordinary Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37, featuring the celebrated Yefim Bronfman as soloist. In a useful note on the program, James M Keller comments that “the composition of this work ended up stretching over a good three and a half years, not counting preliminary sketches, which reached back to 1796 — plus a further year, counting the time it took him to actually write out the piano part, and yet another five beyond that till he wrote down the first-movement cadenza.” The initial, Allegro con brio movement—which finishes powerfully—has a quiet urgency at the outset, with the piano entering forcefully after the music intensifies; a general solemnity is maintained throughout and even the composer’s own cadenza has a somewhat brooding—at times even insistent—quality. The Mozartean Largo that follows is more reflective but also lyrical, while the Rondo finale, marked Allegro, is more dynamic and also dramatic—although there are lighter passages—but concludes affirmatively. Enthusiastic applause elicited an excellent encore from the pianist: the Andante second movement from Franz Schubert’s Piano Sonata No. 14, in A minor, D.784.

However, it was the second half of the evening that was the true highlight: an absolutely brilliant realization of Carl Nielsen’s marvelous, too seldom played Symphony No. 5, Op. 50. In an interview preceding the premiere of the work, the composer observed:

I've been told that my new symphony isn't like my earlier ones. I can't hear it myself. But perhaps it's true. I do know that it isn't all that easy to grasp, nor all that easy to play. We've had many rehearsals of it. Some people have even thought that now Arnold Schoenberg can pack his bags and take a walk with his dissonances. Mine were worse. I don't think so.

The somewhat hushed, Tempo giusto opening has a slightly cerebral quality but subsequently the music becomes march-like, even martial, before a more tentative and questioning episode; a complex development leads to a thrilling climax before this Adagio non troppo section ends softly. In a description to a pupil, Nielsen said:

A solo clarinet ends this large idyll- movement, an expression of vegetative (idle, thoughtless) Nature. The second movement is its counterpole: if the first movement was passivity, here it is action (or activity) which is conveyed. So it's something very primitive I wanted to express: the division of dark and light, the battle between good and evil.

The Allegro beginning of the final movement is turbulent and the music remains agitated until a slower, more subdued—if somewhat querulous—section with some dance-like rhythms; this eventually becomes fugue-like, but then placid, while the closing Allegro section is weightyand ultimately triumphant. The artists deservedly received a standing ovation.

Dai Fujikura & More Performed by New York Philharmonic

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Tuesday, 03 December 2024 16:30; Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Brandon Patoc

At Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall on the night of Saturday, November 30th, I had the exceptional pleasure to attend a superb concert—continuing a strong season—presented by the New York Philharmonic under the brilliant direction of Kazuki Yamada in his debut performances with this ensemble.

The event started very promisingly with an outstanding realization of Dai Fujikura’s striking and powerful, impressively scored Entwine, which received its New York premiere with these concerts. In a useful note on the program, Lara Pellegrini provides some background on the composition’s genesis:

Dai Fujikura's Entwine was born of a particular moment, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. In November 2020 the director of the WDR Symphony Orchestra reached out to the composer — who was living with his wife and daughter under lockdown in their tiny London flat — with an urgent request. Could Fujikura, in the midst of the ongoing crisis, compose a miniature that spoke to some part of our global experience? The catch: the work was to be premiered later that season, an unusually quick turnaround for an orchestral piece.

“It was before the vaccine,” recalls Fujikura, winner of the 2017 Silver Lion Award for musical innovation from the Venice Biennale. “We didn't know anything. We didn't know when the pandemic would be over — or if it would be over.”

Fujikura explains:

While everyone else said, “We don't know what we are going to do; we don't know if our orchestra will even exist by the end of the year,” the countries of Europe had a different understanding. I am especially touched by this commission because, in this critical time, they had the capacity to think about creating something new. It is remarkable, and it is very brave.

He has commented further:

I was asked to write a five-minute orchestra work expressing the current world situation and to do it as soon as possible so that the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne could premiere it in 2021.

I started thinking. I began to see that the topic of this orchestra work should be about touch: the physical touch we can no longer take for granted, and how we can feel socially awkward now by stepping out of the door and having to make sure we are standing far enough away from the other people in the street.

I wanted to create an orchestral work where musical materials pass from one instrument to another, like one hand to another: sharing, gathering, even ending up in a crowd. Something we have all missed since the beginning of 2020, and something which we now realize is what all humans need to live from one day to the next.

To do this musically, the orchestra is the perfect conduit. I am hoping the piece will express the dream which we are all missing right now, and whose importance we now truly realize.

An amazing soloist, Yunchan Lim, then entered the stage for a dazzling account of Frédéric Chopin’s extraordinary Piano Concerto in F minor, Op. 21. Much of the initial, Maestoso movement—which finishes on a triumphant note—has a meditative—even moody—quality along with exquisite, lyrical passages, but there are more forceful and passionate moments. The ensuing Larghetto opens and closes softly and is even more inward and song-like; it has a brooding ethos but also episodes of great delicacy, while the Allegro vivace finale is effervescent and dynamic, although again with reflective interludes—it ends spiritedly. Enthusiastic applause elicited a terrific encore from the pianist: Variation 13 from Johann Sebastian Bach’s incomparable Goldberg Variations.

The second half of the evening was even more memorable: an enthralling rendition of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s magnificent Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Op. 27. The first movement’s Largo introduction is somewhat lugubrious in tone, its primary motif seemingly expressing a deep longing that pervades the movement; its main body has dramatic elements but also an intense emotionalism—after a stormy climax, it becomes more affirmative, finishing optimistically. The second movement is playful and propulsive with more plaintive measures; it becomes suspenseful and then largely more celebratory, closing very quietly. The Adagio that follows is hauntingly beautiful, dominated by a melody of unsurpassed loveliness—it concludes dreamily. The finale, which is exuberant at the outset, is sunnier in outlook on the whole, with a serene, pastoral interlude superseded by exciting music with a greater momentum; it ends vigorously. The artists deservedly received a standing ovation.

November '24 Digital Week III

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Wednesday, 27 November 2024 19:10; Written by Kevin Filipski

4K/UHD Releases of the Week

North by Northwest

(Warner Bros)

One of Hitchcock’s most memorable—if also one of his most nonsensical—films, this 1959 classic contains some of his greatest set pieces and silliest plot twists, holding itself together as a grandly entertaining yarn. Cary Grant is his usual suave self as the innocent man mistaken for an FBI agent, James Mason makes a dastardly villain and Eva Marie Saint is the perfect femme fatale.

But the real star is Hitch: the wit, the thrills, the pacing of three masterly sequences (the corn field, the auction room, and Mount Rushmore) epitomize the film’s all-time status. The film’s UHD transfer looks perfect; extras comprise screenwriter Ernest Lehman’s commentary and several behind-the-scenes featurettes.

The Terminator

(Warner Bros)

James Cameron’s 1984 sci-fi actioner made Arnold Schwarzenegger a superstar and Cameron an A-list director, although this feature about a murderous time-traveling cyborg who is assigned to kill an innocent woman for the future crime of giving birth to a savior is crudely, often laughably silly.

Linda Hamilton makes a sympathetic victim—she would become a femme fatale in the much more entertaining 1991 sequel—but Schwarzenegger is too robotic (even for him) and Cameron’s directing has cleverness without being particularly distinguished. The film looks splendid in 4K; extras are seven deleted scenes and three featurettes.

Streaming Release of the Week

The Shade

(Level 33)

Writer-director Tyler Chipman’s overlong psychological melodrama about a family dealing with mental illness and suicide takes an interesting germ of an idea but does little more with it than skim the surface, instead crassly visualizing the malevolence and repeating dream jump-scares, more desperately each time.

Not helping is the one-note acting by most of the cast—only Laura Benanti, as the troubled brothers’ single mom, gives an expressive, humane performance. Otherwise, this can be considered a nice try but ultimately a failed exploration of a serious subject.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

Manon

(Opus Arte)

French composer Jules Massenet’s Romantic-era opera about a young woman about to become a nun who elopes with her love became, in choreographer Kenneth MacMillan’s hands, equally lively and dramatic.

In this return to London’s Royal Ballet stage earlier this year, MacMillan’s brilliantly precise movements for the couple—embodied beautifully by Natalia Osipova and Reece Clarke—fit like a glove. Koen Kessels conducts the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House in a fine reading of Massenet’s marvelous music. Hi-def video and audio are topnotch; extras are interviews with the creative team, Osipova and Clarke.

Merchant Ivory

(Cohen Media)

A longtime award-winning producer/director team, Ismail Merchant and James Ivory made films—often written by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and scored by composer Richard Robbins—that included stories about India (Shakespeare Wallah, Heat and Dust) and historical biopics (Jefferson in Paris, Surviving Picasso). But their greatest successes were lush literary adaptations like A Room with a View, Howards End and The Remains of the Day.

Director Stephen Soucy interviews Ivory, who speaks candidly about his and Merchant’s professional and personal relationship—they were lovers for decades—and also talks with stars like Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant, Helena Bonham Carter and Vanessa Redgrave. The result is a loving if tad too reverent portrait of these not quite first-rate artists. The film looks excellent on Blu; extras are extended interviews, Ivory and Soucy discussions and Soucy’s short, Rich Atmosphere—The Music of Merchant Ivory Films.

Night of the Blood Beast/Attack of the Giant Leeches

(Film Masters)

This nearly forgotten pair of B movies from the Roger Corman producing stable, low-budget sci-fi thrillers 1958’s Night of the Blood Beast and 1959’s Attack of the Giant Leeches, are about as simplistic as their descriptive titles. Both films, which were directed by someone named Bernard L. Kowalski, are largely risible but are also effective timewasters if one is in the right mood.

The films look decent on Blu; extras include Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes for both films, commentaries on both films, the academy-ratio version of Blood Beast; and featurettes.

DVD Release of the Week

A Real Job

(Distrib Films US)

Writer-director Thomas Lilti made this amusing and often illuminating drama about a group of teachers at a typical French high school who deal with the messy everyday situations that come up involving their students, the parents and even one another, as told through the eyes of Benjamin, a young substitute teacher.

A superlative ensemble comprising Vincent Lacoste (Benjamin), Louise Bourgoin, François Cluzet and the always extraordinary Adèle Exarchopoulos, among others, makes this a sharp and penetrating look at classroom complexities in the vein of other French films like Laurent Cantet’s The Class and Nicolas Philibert’s documentary To Be and to Have.

CD Releases of the Week

Camille Erlanger—La Sorcière

(B. Records)

French composer Camille Erlanger (1863-1919), a student of Leo Delibes, wrote several operas that never gained a foothold in the repertoire, possibly because their grand style seems out of step with the subject matter, like this 1912 music drama set during the Spanish Inquisition. It does have a still-relevant religious tolerance message, and Erlanger’s music has its memorable moments, yet when the storytelling gets more intimate, the music gets less interesting.

However, this performance, recorded at Victoria Hall in Geneva, is splendidly realized: there’s magnificent singing by the soloists and choir along with the estimable Orchestra of the Haute Ecole de Musique de Geneve led by conductor Guillaume Tourniaire.

York Bowen/William Walton—Viola Concertos

(SWR)

This wonderful-sounding disc features one of the best from the small repertoire of viola concertos—the lyrical yet technically thorny concerto by William Walton (1902-83), which he wrote in 1929 for soloist Lionel Tertis, who infamously called it too modern and did not premiere it—Paul Hindemith did instead.

This significant work is paired with the concerto by York Bowen (1884-1961), also written for Tertis (and he did premiere it, in 1908)—a much less familiar work, it has its own lilting beauty. Diyang Mei is the formidable soloist in both works, accompanied by the exceptional German Radio Philharmonic under conductor Brett Dean.

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