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Kevin's Digital Week 25: Of Myths and Monsters

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Friday, 04 June 2010 05:00; Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-rays of the Week

Ondine 
(Opus Arte)
The great German modernist composer, Hans Werner Henze, turns 84 in July, and is still going strong. This recording of his best-known ballet Ondine — from performances last year at London’s Royal Opera House—prove that his seminal collaboration with British choreographic master Frederick Ashton (which premiered in 1958 with ballerina extraordinaire Margot Fonteyn in the lead role) is a match made in musical and dance heaven. Ondine is one of Henze’s most vigorous and thrilling scores, and Ashton’s scintillating choreography matches it note for note. This first-rate performance, starring diminutive Miyako Yoshida as the water nymph heroine, has been captured on HD in all its visual and aural glory (the music sounds sensational), and there’s a short bonus interview with the frail yet sharp-minded composer.

Dialogues des Carmelites
(Opus Arte)
Although Francis Poulenc is known for some of the 20th century’s wittiest music—like his one-act comic opera The Tits of Tiresias -- it’s the stately tragedy that premiered in 1957, Dialogues des Carmelites, that’s his most affecting score. This powerful drama, set in a convent of Carmelite nuns during the French Revolution, ends with the sound of the guillotine. There’s no way to remain indifferent when hearing Poulenc’s intense music as the opera moves toward its inevitable tragic climax, and Nikolaus Lehnhoff’s stark, simple production (with black and white as dominant colors on a near-bare stage) visually reinforces that notion. Lehnhoff’s 2008 staging is nearly ruined by the television director, who ham-fistedly shortchanges Poulenc’s shockingly blunt ending by too much clever cross-cutting of close-ups of the nuns before they meet their deaths. Luckily, the music (in capable conductor Simone Young’s hands), despite such butchery, still resonates.

DVDs of the Week

Gamera
(Shout Factory)
Japan’s second most famous monster—after you know whom—returns in this newly restored version of the original movie that brought the extra-large turtle to prominence. As befitting a schlocky ‘60s monster movie, Gamera is silly throughout, with the usual parade of cheap-looking effects, but that’s immaterial in the broader sense: this creature—awakened from hibernation under the Arctic ice after a nuclear explosion—is befriended by an adorably cherubic boy, and so becomes one of the good guys. This black and white “classic” (the sequels were shot in color) looks about as good as it ever will, and the extras include an informative audio commentary by August Rangone and a retrospective making-of featurette.

Ghostwriter: Complete Season One
(Shout Factory)
In the nearly 20 years since its debut (and 15 years since its cancellation), the PBS mystery series Ghostwriter has nearly been forgotten among the crappy shows that have come and gone since. But since this is one of the smartest “all ages” programs ever (from the folks behind Sesame Street, the Children’s Television Workshop), it’s a pleasure to have it back again. Ghostwriter follows a group of Brooklyn teens who receive cryptic messages from their computers that help them solve neighborhood mysteries both innocuous and more serious. With guest stars like Samuel L. Jackson, Mark-Linn Baker and Spike Lee, the program still offers hours of intelligent entertainment, and the five-disc set (with all 28 episodes) includes a 12-page “casebook” for those who want to sleuth at home.

CDs of the Week

Shostakovich: Cello Works
(Praga Digitals)
Two Czech musicians — cellist Michal Kanka and pianist Jaromir Klepac — play three chamber works by Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975): the D minor cello sonata from 1934, an alternately somber and playful work that the men sink their instruments into with grit and clarity; two brief pieces from the 1951 Ballet Suite, which are dispatched with vigor; and, finally, Shostakovich’s last chamber work, the Viola Sonata, which sounds even more despairing and haunting played on the cello’s low registers. These are vital performances of some of the most inward-looking music of the past century, reminding us yet again of Shostakovich’s singular genius as a composer.

Czech Piano Trios: Florestan Trio
(Harmonia Mundi)
Over a century of Czech music is heard on this charming CD, with the excellent Florestan Trio playing works by Bedrich Smetana (from 1855), Bohuslav Martinu (1930), and Petr Eben (1986). Smetana’s Trio is a typical Romantic work reminiscent of Schumann and Brahms, but with his own voice peeking through. Martinu—who, along with Leos Janacek, is the heart of Czech music of the first half of the 20th century—is represented by his fleet, brief first piano trio, while Eben (who died three years ago) has penned a trio in an unabashedly tonal but muscular style. Pianist Susan Tomes, violinist Anthony Marwood and cellist Richard Lester give exciting readings of these works, which give us a tasty entrée into a neglected corner of Bohemian chamber music.

Theater Review: "The Glass Menagerie"

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Monday, 31 May 2010 00:00; Written by Lucy Komisar

Michael Mosley, Keira Keeley in The Glass Menagerie Written by Tennessee Williams
Directed by Gordon Edelstein
Starring Keira Keeley, Judith Ivey, Patch Darragh, Michael Mosley

Dreariness is the design motif of Gordon Edelstein's persuasive staging of Tennessee Williams' 1944 memory play about a family trapped in unhappiness and illusion. Dreary dark wallpaper hovers over the single bed with a rose spread in the New Orleans hotel room that the writer, Tom (Patch Darragh), Williams' alter ego, inhabits. The same claustrophobic space becomes the St. Louis tenement rooms he shared with his mother Amanda (Judith Ivey) and sister Laura (Keira Keeley).

The mood created by designer Michael Yeargan is quite different from what I recall in an earlier production, where "the writer" was not a continuing presence and an all-white and bright drawing room -- that said "New Orleans" more than "St. Louis" -- was a cheerful place that seemed to hold memories and promise of a better life.

In Edelstein's production, you know from the beginning that dark events will follow the dark décor.

Patch Darragh as Tom Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie Ivey is superb as Amanda Wingfield, a southern lady, gregarious, garrulous, full of herself and her past beaux, almost embarrassed to have had a daughter that lacks the social qualities she prizes.

Keeley is subtle and moving as Laura. Her limp, the result of childhood polio, has so eaten away at her sense of self, that her real disability is psychological. She is painfully shy, with a manner half frightened, half apologetic, as if she is asking pardon for inconveniencing others by her physical flaw. In 1944, possibilities for women were at best limited. And for Laura, contact with others was so terrifying and disappointing, that she fled from the secretarial school that might have led to independence and self-worth, and chose to live in an imaginary world peopled by little glass animals.

Darragh is brilliant as Tom Wingfield, the son who feels caged, working in a shoe warehouse to support his mother and sister. Amanda, a nag, is suffocating him. On the outside he seem withdrawn, but inside Darragh shows Tom to be boiling.

Peering down from the wallpaper, an unremarked portrait and presence, is the mustachioed man in a straw hat who fathered the children and then left them and Amanda 15 years before.

Judith Ivey (foreground) as Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie Is there a way out of this trap? When Tom brings home a work colleague, Jim O'Connor (Michael Mosley), Amanda imagines he is the "gentleman caller" that can transforms Laura's life. Jim is a charmer, a "power of positive thinking" guy. Is he the one, or is this just another illusion?

This sweet, sad production admirably captures Williams' youthful sense of entrapment but also, though it might not be what he intended, the desperation of women who saw themselves as essentially flawed and their salvations only in marriage.

The Glass Menagerie
Roundabout Theatre Company at
Laura Pels Theatre
111 West 46 Street
New York City
212-719-1300
Opened March 24, 2010; closes June 13, 2010
http://www.glassmenagerieny.com/

For more by Lucy Komisar: TheKomisarScoop.com

Photos: Joan Marcus

Kevin's Digital Week 24: Not-So-Odd Couples

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Thursday, 27 May 2010 05:00; Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-ray of the Week

Valentine’s Day
(Warners)
No one would mistake Valentine’s Day as a great date movie: even as star-studded journeys into sappiness go, Garry Marshall’s self-satisfied, tone-deaf would-be romantic epic suffers from a skewered kind of democracy, wherein each story is given equal weight even when so many deserve to languish on the cutting room floor while others should have been expanded into more than “cameo” status. But that’s the rub with movies like these: everyone is a (supposed) star, so no one can outshine anybody else. They actually should have scorecards included with the disc to mark who should stay and who should go.

Julia Roberts and Bradley Cooper have an interesting chemistry as two strangers on a plane, while Jessica Biel looks properly embarrassed as an agent with a loathing for the holiday who realizes her perfect man (Jamie Foxx) has been right under her nose--he’s her client. Anne Hathaway is hilarious as a nice girl moonlighting as a phone-sex operator, with a game Topher Grace as her bemused paramour. I don’t remember whom Kathy Bates or Emma Roberts played; would that I had also forgotten the Taylors, Swift and Lautner, who have zero onscreen presence. Valentine’s Day is overlong and overstuffed with second-tier stars, but if you’re in the right mood, one of the stories might hit home. The Blu-ray transfer is solid if unspectacular; extras include 14 deleted scenes (so the movie could have been even longer!), a gag reel and other cutesy stuff from director Marshall.

DVD of the Week

The Messenger
(Osciolloscope)
An affecting, low-key character study, The Messenger tells a simple story of two soldiers whose job is to notify families of the deaths of their loved ones in Iraq or Afghanistan while in combat. In its documentary-style realism, the movie is nearly subversive in showing that the military’s policy to inform next of kin is of paramount importance, even in what many think of as an unjust war. The Messenger is no Saving Private Ryan-type melodrama, but rather a warts-and-all account of how soldiers who have seen the worst on the battlefield but steel themselves to look into disbelieving people’s eyes and tell them their children or spouses are not coming home.

The soldiers are portrayed with uncanny authenticity by Ben Foster and Oscar nominee Woody Harrelson, and there’s another superlative performance by Samantha Morton as a grieving soldier’s widow. As good as Morton is, however, her scenes with Foster are the closest Oren Moverman’s restrained movie (co-written with Alessandro Camon) gets to sentimentality. But emotions are usually reined in, to the extent that when Steve Buscemi, of all people, appears as a father dumbfounded by his son’s death, you are struck by the unyielding honesty of the film. Extras include featurettes about the real soldiers who have done the work and the actors who portrayed them.

CD of the Week
Carole King & James Taylor: Live at the Troubadour

(DG)
Baby boomer pop stars never disappear: they keep on touring and performing their best songs from years gone by to equally ageing--but enthusiastic--audiences. And that’s what James Taylor and Carole King are doing on their lucrative “Troubadour” tour, which continues this summer. This CD/DVD set is a terrific souvenir of their concerts together in 2007, when the two legends traded tunes at the famous Troubadour, where they both made auspicious debuts some 37 years earlier, in honor of the club’s 50th anniversary.

Beginning with Taylor’s joyous rendition of his early tune “Blossom,” the pair runs through some 40-plus years’ worth of classic hits in 75 minutes, from “I Feel the Earth Move” to “Fire and Rain,” with underrated gems like “Something in the Way She Moves” and “Smackwater Jack” also brought out of mothballs. The singers sound great together and apart, and they’re backed by a crack band that includes ace guitarist Danny Kortchmar. Along with a CD of the entire concert, a bonus DVD contains the show in HD video and superb 5.1 surround-sound.

"Shrek Forever After": It's a Wonderful Strife

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Monday, 24 May 2010 23:27; Written by Frank Lovece

Directed by Mike Mitchell
Written by Josh Klausner, Darren Lemke, based on the book Shrek! by William Steig
Starring Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, Antonio Banderas, Walt Dohrn, Julie Andrews, John Cleese, Jon Hamm, Jane Lynch, Craig Robinson

Shrek and Rumpelstiltskin in Shrek Forever After Once upon a time there was the exquisite Shrek and the hilarious Shrek 2. Then darkness fell over the kingdom, and the heavy-handed, horribly sitcomy Shrek the Third strode hard upon the land. But then somewhere, a magic wand waved, and soon goodness and laughter and the sharp, polished wit of filmmakers trying once again to be fresh and funny rather than coasting on momentum and goodwill reigned. And there was much rejoicing. Yay. Verily.

"Fresh" might seem not the right word to describe a film that utilizes the most trusty plot device since that of Dickens' A Christmas Carol, namely the what-if-I'd-never-been born conceit of Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life. But a device is just a tool -- it's all in how you use it. Despite a tiny bit of shtick here and there in Shrek Forever After, director Mike Mitchell and company have given us a story of genuine, grownup romance and regret, suffused with a middle-aged longing that has nothing to do with the slow-burn, poor-put-upon-dad antics of the execrable third movie, which might as well have been a 1950s episode of TV's The Life of Riley -- talk about a revoltin' development.

No, here, instead, bitter real-life emotions anchor the jumping-off point, and yet somehow the tragedy of everyday life becomes not only roaringly funny but also gets camouflaged enough that kids too young to understand can simply enjoy the colorful characters running through the plot mechanics, and maybe years later will see how much deeper it all was.

Fiona and Shrek Shrek (voice of Mike Myers), once a feared ogre outside the fairy-tale kingdom of Duloc, has now become, to his exasperated irritation, a cuddly celebrity in the once faraway kingdom of Far Far Away (which is now within walking distance of Shrek's original swamp—let's just call it geographical magic). What with infant triplets, neighbors who barge in and make themselves at home every night, tour-carriage announcers invading his privacy and an endless battle with backed-up toilets, it seems more or less reasonable for him to blow his top at a birthday party where strangers and friends alike demands things from him constantly. When his wife, the ogress princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz), chastises and guilt-trips him for it, showing no empathy, it's no wonder he storms off -- or that he becomes easy prey for the Machiavellian Rumpelstiltskin (the Paul Reubens-like voice of Walt Dohrn, one of the lead animators).

That leprechaun-like goblin sweet-talks Shrek into a disastrous deal: The ogre can have one day all to himself, scaring people and being a carefree bachelor, in exchange for losing one day in his life. Of course, that turns out to be the day he was born, and so when Shrek's present is over, so is he.

Puss in Boots The deliciousness of what-if universes never gets old, and the filmmakers create a logical Dystopia that'd have made Fritz Lang proud. Rumpel is now king of a decaying kingdom, where inside the castle is a nonstop party that appears to be, hilariously, a lesbian witches’ rave -- there certainly aren't any warlocks around, and the animators could have drawn them easily enough. What a riot! The Gingerbread Man (Conrad Vernon, a co-director of Shrek 2) is now a gladiator fighting animal crackers, Puss in Boots (a scene-stealing Antonio Banderas) is now literally a fat cat, and Fiona's become essentially Xena, Warrior Princess, leading an ogre underground in revolution against Rumpel.

Throughout, the CGI characters have more expressiveness than ever, and carry such a grounded solidity that when a flying dragon lands, you can almost feel the weight. Unfortunately, the 3D effects at an IMAX screening fell flat, except for the startlingly lifelike InTru3D logo.

The studio has billed this as the final movie in the Shrek series -- we'll see. But if this is indeed the final Shrek, it all ends happily ever after