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Bach & Beethoven with the New York Philharmonic

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Monday, 07 October 2024 19:29; Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Chris Lee

At Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall, on the evening of Saturday, October 5th, I had the great pleasure to attend a superb concert presented by the the New York Philharmonic, under the confident direction of the eminent guest conductor, Manfred Honeck.

The program began strongly with an impressive reading of Ludwig van Beethoven’s magnificent Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92. The Vivace, initial movement opens slowly and quietly—although not without intimations of drama—with a Poco sostenuto introduction; the movement’s main body, however, is propulsive, exultant and triumphant, if with some subdued passages, and with anticipations of Felix Mendelssohn. The especially celebrated Allegretto that follows has a majestic quality that prefigures the first movement of Franz Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony; it becomes more animated and fugue-like before its gentler conclusion. The ensuing, sometimes rambunctious Presto is energetic, even ebullient, with a Trio that is statelier and more grand in character; the movement closes abruptly and unexpectedly. The exuberant, Allegro con brio finale sustains an astonishing momentum, with strikingly contrasting softer sections.

The second half of the event was comparable in power: a masterly rendition of the extraordinary Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Op. 15 of Johannes Brahms—from 1858—expertly performed by the brilliant virtuoso, Víkingur Ólafsson. The Maestoso first movement begins extremely dramatically, but for all its impassioned turbulence, the music also often has a moody inwardness. The succeeding Adagio—to my mind, the most exquisite of the work’s movements—is even more introspective and lyrical, while the expressive, dynamic Rondo finale, marked Allegro non troppo, is imbued with an intense Romanticism. Enthusiastic applause elicited an amazingly beautiful encore from the soloist: Johann Sebastian Bach’s E minor Prelude, BWV 855, here arranged for piano in B minor by Alexander Siloti—Ólafsson has recorded this piece in an excellent album devoted to music of the composer.

I look forward to what promises to be a wonderful season for the ensemble.

"McNeal" at Lincoln Center with RDJ

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Thursday, 03 October 2024 13:53; Written by Jack Angstreich

Robert Downey Jr. & Brittany Bellizeare in "McNeal". Photo by Matthew Murphy & Evan Zimmerman

At Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater, on the evening of Saturday, September 30th, I had the privilege of attending a preview performance of McNeal, the latest play—about an American novelist that wins the Nobel Prize for Literature—by the outstanding playwright, Ayad Akhtar, starring Robert Downey Jr. and directed by Bartlett Sher.

Akhtar first drew my attention with his fine, second produced play, Lincoln Center Theater’s The Who & The What which premiered in 2014 and is informed by the author’s Muslim background. This featured too in the even more remarkable and provocative Disgraced, which premiered at LCT in 2012 and was restaged on Broadway in 2015. Another LCT production, Junk from 2017 was just as topical and even more dazzling. McNeal, which addresses sexual politics, as did Disgraced, seems to be a new departure for the writer in its narrative ambiguity, with dream, hallucination and fantasy interlaced with contemporary reality.

Akhtar’s drama is effectively orchestrated by Sher, who first became prominent in New York with LCT’s celebrated—if to my mind problematic—2008 production of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s South Pacific, which had a stellar cast that included Paulo Szot, Kelli O’Hara and Matthew Morrison—he did not succeed in overcoming the flaws in that musical’s book even as it was a vivid theatrical experience for its incredible singers. Sher’s commercial and critical success led to an invitation by Peter Gelb to direct for the Metropolitan Opera although I was ambivalent about his stagings of The Barber of Seville, Tales of Hoffmann, and Le Comte Ory, the pleasures of all of which nonetheless transcended failures of conception. I was more impressed by his realization of Nico Muhly’s Two Boys in 2013 and was enthusiastic about LCT’s marvelous production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The King and I in 2015 starring O’Hara and Ken Watanabe. Also delightful—apart from an awkward if easily overlooked ending—was the 2018 revival of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s My Fair Lady with Harry Hadden-Paton and Laura Benanti.

Downey, still exceptionally handsome as he approaches sixty, has been one of the most prominent stars in Hollywood since the success of the Iron Man films. My appreciation of him began with Robert Altman’s Short Cuts from 1993. He was also memorable in James Toback’s underrated Two Girls and a Guy from 1997–he had previously worked with the director in The Pick-up Artist—and appeared in such distinguished movies as Altman’s The Gingerbread Man from 1998 and Curtis Hanson’s Wonder Boys from 2000. Especially compelling was his turn in David Fincher’s amazing Zodiac from 2007. His work in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer from last year seems to me his crowning achievement as an actor but his ultimately moving performance in McNeal is nonetheless something of a tour de force—his likability and charisma create a rewarding dialectical tension with the apparent moral turpitude of his character. He is ably supported by a uniformly fine secondary cast including Andrea Martin—who was notable in James Lapine’s persuasive adaptation of Moss Hart’s Act One at LCT in 2014–along with relative unknowns Brittany Bellizeare, Rafi Gavron, Melora Hardin, Ruthie Ann Miles and Saisha Talwar. (Bellizeare is particularly effective in one of the most interesting roles in the play and her long scene with Downey is probably its strongest.) Among the technical credits, the relatively minimal sets by Michael Yeargan and Jake Barton and the lighting by Donald Holder are especially striking, while Barton’s video projections are simply superb.

October '24 Digital Week I

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Wednesday, 02 October 2024 22:16; Written by Kevin Filipski

In-Theater Releases of the Week

Lee

(Roadside Attractions/Vertical)

Kate Winslet gives her usual fierce performance in this conventional biopic of Lee Miller, an American free spirit who made her name in Europe and became one of the most important WWII correspondents/photographers. Director Ellen Kuras, best known for her gritty cinematography in films by Spike Lee and Sam Mendes, brings a weary verisimilitude to the horrors Miller witnessed and recorded, including the first glimpses of the Nazi death camps.

Winslet is unafraid to bare herself—histrionically and physically—and there’s excellent support by Alexander Skarsgård, Marion Cotillard, Noémie Merlant, Andrea Riseborough and Josh O’Connor, who plays Miller’s adult son in a not entirely successful subversion of the standard biopic interview arc. Too bad Andy Samberg, as a fellow war photographer, is merely adequate.

Daaaaaalí!

(Music Box Films)

French director Quentin Dupieux is a one-man wrecking crew, writing, directing, photographing and editing his parodic films but also running his flimsy ideas into the ground relentlessly so that, even though they’re short (this one clocks in at 77 minutes), his films feel stretched beyond endurance. His latest, a fake biopic about the Spanish surrealist painter, has a germ of an idea—a young Frenchwoman tries to get Dalí to participate in a documentary about his life, but everything goes wrong—but does nothing with it.

Dupieux’s desperate attempts at cleverness—Dalí is played by five different actors, none of whom makes an impression; and there’s brazen thievery galore from Dalí’s occasional cinematic collaborator, Luis Bunuel—add up to little. Holding it together is Anaïs Demoustier, whose natural likability keeps a modicum of interest, but even she (in her fourth Dupieux appearance) can’t conjure laughs where they are none.

Streaming Release of the Week

Mother Nocturna

(Buffalo 8)

In Daniele Campea’s portentous psychological drama, wolf biologist Agnese has been recently discharged from a mental hospital, which has not retarded the progress of her transformation, both physically and mentally, due to the moon’s pull on her. Needless to say, her husband Riccardo and their daughter Arianna are worried about what’s happening to Agnese and have to deal with their own emotional difficulties.

Campea writes and directs with more bluntness than finesse, his dark visuals and dream/nightmare sequences only occasionally giving the material a coherent dramatic shape. It’s up to the actors to provide the heavy lifting, and Susanna Costaglione (Agnese), Edoardo Oliva (Riccardo) and especially Sofia Ponente (Arianna) do their considerable best to make this self-serious drama less risible than it would otherwise have been.

4K/UHD Release of the Week

Despicable Me 4

(Universal)

One of Dreamworks’ biggest hits, the latest entry in the Despicable Me franchise balances those irritating minions with the amusing adventures of a family whose ex-supervillain father, Gru, is trying to go straight. Director Chris Renaud finds the requisite humor in the situation that will simultaneously appeal to the kids and their parents equally.

The visuals are vibrant, the voice cast is often hilarious (although Steve Carell is too hammy as Gru), and the laughs and sappiness coexist happily. The UHD transfer looks sumptuous; extras include two new mini-movies (Game Over and Over, Benny’s Birthday), deleted scenes and making-of featurettes.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

The Creature

(Severin)

A pair of ’70s Spanish features, which are crude if effective examples of filmmaking under Franco as well as just after his dictatorship was toppled in 1976, feature canines in lead roles as potent symbols of Franco’s inhumane regime that considered its enemies no better than wild animals. Director Eloy de la Iglesia’s unsettling 1977 drama focuses on a couple who adopt a stray dog after the wife miscarries; soon she shows an unhealthily close attachment to it, which her conservative husband discovers may have included unusual intimacy.

De la Iglesia milks this creepy plot device for all that it’s worth—including as a metaphor for Franco’s Spain—and actress Ana Belén persuasively plays the besotted wife. The film has a superbly grainy transfer; extras comprise an interview with assistant director Alejo Loren as well as an intro by and interview with French director Gaspar Noé, who’s a big fan.

A Dog Called Vengeance

(Severin)

Director Antonio Isasi’s post-Franco 1977 revenge flick follows Ungria, an escaped political prisoner who is relentlessly pursued by the title canine after Ungria kills his master in self-defense. Isasi follows the fugitive’s fate as relentlessly as the dog does, and the climax is a showdown between wronged man and vengeful beast.

As the unfortunate Ungria, Jason Miller provides the necessary gravitas, while the great Italian actress Lea Massari is equally good as Muriel, a willing stranger who helps Ungria whether in or out of bed. The film looks impressive on Blu-ray; extras comprise an interviews with actress Marisa Paredes (who was married to Isasi) and Maria Isasi, daughter of the director and Paredes.

CD Releases of the Week

Antonín Dvořák—Symphonies 6-9; Works by Smetana and Janáček

(LSO Live)

This four-disc collection—celebrating the 25th anniversary of the London Symphony Orchestra’s label, LSO Live—brings together the seminal recordings Sir Colin Davis made between 1999 and 2005 with the LSO of the final four symphonies of Czech master Antonín Dvořák, culminating with his masterpiece, No. 9, the New World Symphony.

A terrific version of Dvořák’s contemporary Bedřich Smetana’s monumental Má Vlast rounds out the stellar contributions by Davis and the LSO; also included is a wonderful 2018 recording brass-heavy Sinfonietta by another Czech composer, the great Leoš Janáček, by Sir Simon Rattle and the LSO.

Vagn Holmboe—String Quartets Vol. 3

(Dacapo)

Vagn Holmboe (1909-96) did not reach the storied heights of his compatriot Carl Nielsen as Denmark’s preeminent composer, but he still accumulated a solid, very impressive body of work. His 13 symphonies are a formidable accomplishment in their own right, and his 17 string quartets encompass a terrain as wide as the 15 quartets for which another contemporary, Dmitri Shostakovich, is justly celebrated.

In the third volume of its journey through Holmboe’s quartets, the Nightingale String Quartet performs two of his middle-period quartets (No. 4, from 1953-54, and No. 5, from 1955) alongside his penultimate quartet (No. 16, from 1981). Holmboe’s musical language is often pared down to the essentials in these works; as the Nightingale members demonstrate, these quartets never lack intensity or intimacy.

September '24 Digital Week III

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Thursday, 26 September 2024 00:44; Written by Kevin Filipski

In-Theater Releases of the Week

The Substance

(Mubi)

Although French writer-director Coralie Fargeat’s body-horror feature is simply ludicrous, it does have a few scenes that will stay with you, whether you want them to or not—but for the most part, this tale of an aging Hollywood beauty queen who takes an elixir in a desperate attempt to remain young and attractive is too pleased with its one-note plot device to be anything more than a demented little satire that glories in its constant sprays of vomit and, especially, blood, especially in a witless finale (comprising several fake endings) that’s a cross between The Elephant Man and Carrie, of all things.

Elsewhere, Fargeat genuflects at the altar of Kubrick, with countless visual allusions to (or ripoffs of) The Shining and an aural one to 2001, but they only show up Fargeat as a poseur. Much has been made of Demi Moore’s performance as the wannabe ageless Elisabeth Sparkle—she’s not bad, but the makeup and visual effects outact her. Much better is Margaret Whalley, who brings true sparkle to the role of Elisabeth’s younger self, Sue. Too bad both women are at the mercy of a filmmaker who never knows when to say enough, let alone cut. (Then there’s the ridiculously hammy Dennis Quaid, who seems to have been directed by Fargeat with a taser.) If you’re in the mood for a 140-minute directorial sledgehammer, then your mileage may vary.

A Mistake

(Quiver Distribution)

In what’s easily her best screen performance, Elizabeth Banks plays a successful surgeon who must own up to an error made under her watch during what should have been a routine operation that goes wrong.

Writer-director Christine Jeffs starts out by creating a methodical, pinpoint drama that mirrors her heroine’s personality and lifestyle, but soon goes off the dramatic rails with contrived occurrences (one involving her girlfriend’s dog and the other the young resident who made the mistake while under pressure) that prevents the film from becoming an illuminating character study, despite Banks’ intense portrayal.

4K/UHD Releases of the Week

Black Sabbath—The End

(Mercury Studios)

The final Black Sabbath show—before a delirious hometown crowd in Birmingham, England, in 2017—is everything fans could ask for: the goodbye of the most influential originators of heavy metal in a 100-minute concert crammed with their most famous (and infamous) songs, from the opening darkness of “Black Sabbath” to the closing chug of “Paranoid.”

Ozzy Osbourne is in surprisingly good vocal form, considering he has been pretty much unable to sing live since, riffmaster Tony Iommi churns out memorable blasts from his guitar and Geezer Butler’s bass playing is as propulsive as ever. Fill-in drummer Tommy Clufetos, much younger than the core trio, keeps the beat relentlessly. The hi-def video and audio are stupendous; lone extra is in-studio footage of the band creating a final handful of songs in The Angelic Sessions.

The Long Good Friday

(Criterion)

In his first major role, Bob Hoskins gives a dazzling portrayal of a London underworld leader who finds himself in a ramped-up turf war that includes the long tentacles of the IRA—as bombs explode and supplicants end up dead.

John Mackenzie’s brutal 1980 gangster flick colorfully depicts the eruption of violence, and it’s chockful of great moments, like the shower scene with a young Pierce Brosnan (in his film debut); alongside Hoskins is a terrific Helen Mirren as his loyal but fiercely independent moll. The film looks good and grainy in UHD—extras include An Accidental Studio, a 2019 documentary about George Harrison’s Handmade Films, which produced the film; an hour-long making-of feature; Mackenzie’s commentary; and interviews with cinematographer Phil Méheux and screenwriter Barrie Keeffe.

Blu-ray Release of the Week

Before Dawn

(Well Go USA)

In co-writer and director Jordon Prince-Wright’s earnest but oh so familiar war drama, naïve Aussie teen Jim Collins leaves his family’s farm in the outback to enlist in an army regiment going to France to fight in the Great War (WWI); he assumes he’ll only be gone a few months—but ends up trying to survive a years-long morass that showed the futility of the fighting.

Although much is telegraphed, there are a couple of powerful moments, notably in cutting from the trenches to the Collins’ home, with Levi Miller’s sensitive Jim holding it tenuously together.

DVD/CD Release of the Week

Rainbow—Live in Munich

(Mercury Studios)

This 1977 concert by hard rockers Rainbow in their best incarnation—leader and guitarist Ritchie Blackmore with powerhouse vocalist Ronnie James Dio front and center—features jams on nearly every song: the 105-minute concert comprises only eight tunes.

That instrumental-vocal interplay makes this a top-notch show, whether the extended, sizzling rendition of “Man on the Silver Mountain” or the epic one-two finale punch of the 27-minute barnburner “Still I’m Sad” and blistering 16-minute “Do You Close Your Eyes.” Two CDs include the audio of the entire concert; one DVD provides decent-looking video and three excellent audio options to choose from.

CD Release of the Week

Neave Trio—Rooted

(Chandos)

For this adventurous trio’s latest release, four composers whose music was heavily influenced by folk idioms are performed: Czechs Bedrich Smetana and Josef Suk, Switzerland’s Frank Martin and African-American Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Their works run the gamut from Smetana’s haunting G-minor Piano Trio (written after his beloved four-year-old daughter’s death) to Martin’s expressive Trio on Popular Irish Melodies; in between are Coleridge-Taylor’s lovely Five Negro Melodies and Suk’s evocative Petit Trio.

As usual, the Neave Trio (violinist Anna Williams, cellist Mikhail Veselov and pianist Eri Nakamura) plays these works with a gripping immediacy that makes you think you’re hearing them for the first time.

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