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March '17 Digital Week II

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts
Category: Reviews
Published on Wednesday, 15 March 2017 03:19
Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week 

All We Had

(Gravitas Ventures)
Katie Holmes’s directorial debut is an earnest, feel-good study of a single mom and her teenage daughter who teeter on the edge of poverty, how they beg, borrow and steal just to get by, and how a series of fortunate events allows them to lay down roots in a small town.
 
 
 
 
Holmes directs straightforwardly, while her performance as the mom and Stefania LaVie Owen’s as her daughter are quite believable, which helps whenever the movie falls into its not infrequent melodramatic traps. The Blu-ray image is excellent; no extras.
 
Canoa—A Shameful Memory
(Criterion)
A true resurrection by the Criterion Collection is this barely known 1975 drama by Mexican director Felipe Cazals, which powerfully recreates the events leading to the murders of a group of innocent young men who had the misfortune of visiting a region of their country where a cult leader, i.e., priest, held sway.
 
 
 
 
Though marred by awkward acting and melodrama, Cazals’ blunt-edged film still resonates as a cautionary tale about following in lock-step behind a charismatic leader. The hi-def transfer is satisfyingly natural-looking; extras comprise a Guillermo del Toro introduction and conversation between Cazals and director Alfonso Cuaron.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
45 Years 

(Criterion)

Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay give skillful portrayals of a long-married wife and husband whose relationship is upended when they find out that his long-ago girlfriend’s body was found after being missing for 45 years—that he never disclosed this earlier relationship to his wife before causes a possibly irrevocable rift.
 
 
 
 
Director Andrew Haigh insightfully shows how little things may upend decades of marital bliss in this finely etched character study, based on David Constantine’s short story. Criterion’s sparkling hi-def transfer is complemented by interviews with Rampling, Courtenay, Constantine and Haigh and a Haigh commentary.
 
Ghost in the Shell
(Anchor Bay)
In this now-classic 1995 Japanese anime—whose influence has been so large that a live-action remake starring Scarlett Johansson opens soon, if anyone cares about such things—a devious hacker called the Puppet Master is tracked down by a relentless government tracker and her team.
 
 
 
 
The vibrant animation—a canny combination of traditional cels and computer generated imagery—is seen in all its glory in this fine hi-def transfer; there are no extras included, except the steelbook packaging.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Mercadante—Francesca da Rimini 

Rossini—Armida

(Dynamic)
Although 19th century Italian composer Saverio Mercadante wrote many operas, they’ve been pretty much forgotten: at least until this 2016 Martina Franca (Italy) staging of Francesca da Rimini, under Fabio Luisi’s steady baton, excellent orchestral playing and choral singing, and fronted by head-turning vocal performances by soprano Leonor Bonilla and mezzo Aya Wakyzono.
 
 
 
 
One of Mercadante’s contemporaries, Giacomo Rossini, is far better known (The Barber of Seville), but his obscure Armida was brought out of mothballs for an impressive 2015 Opera Ghent staging, with fine singing by Carmen Romeu and Enea Scala. Both operas have superior hi-def video and audio.
 
Six—Complete 1st Season
(Anchor Bay)
The inner workings of the elite Navy Seals are dramatized in this eight-episode mini-series, as the elite group must go in and pry loose its former squad leader after he is taken hostage by Boko Haram in Nigeria.
 
 
 
 
By jumping around from hellish locations as far-flung as Afganistan and Chad—and by adeptly showing back stories like how the current hostage lost his position as squad leader—the drama dials up its intensity without losing focus on the men under fire. The hi-def transfer is splendid.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
DVD/CD of the Week 

Grigory Sokolov—Mozart-Rachmaninoff Concertos/A Conversation That Never Was (Deutsche Grammophon)
One of the most enigmatic artists in classical music, Russian pianist Grigory Sokolov doesn’t give interviews and hasn’t performed with orchestras in years: so how do you put out a new release of his musicmaking? Deutsche Grammophon has dug out two of his older recordings: his sizzling 2005 recording of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 and his even more dazzling 1995 recording of the fiendishly difficult Rach 3 (Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto).

 

 

 

 

Add to that Nadia Zhdanova’s documentary, A Conversation That Never Was, which recounts the pianist’s fascinating career through interviews with everyone but him, a less than definite portrait of a reluctant master.

Broadway Review—Joshua Harmon’s “Significant Other”

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts
Category: Reviews
Published on Monday, 13 March 2017 23:20
Written by Kevin Filipski

Significant Other

Written by Joshua Harmon; directed by Trip Cullman

Opened March 2, 2017

 

A scene from Significant Other (photo: Joan Marcus)
 

Like his Bad Jews, Joshua Harmon’s Significant Other is crammed with clever, even riotously funny dialogue, along with moments when characters mouth off crassly and snidely. But there’s an emotional weight to the new work that makes it more palatable than the sour earlier play.

 

We meet 29-year-old Jordan Berman (a name very close to the author’s), a gay man working in a Manhattan office, whose three closest friends are all female: sassy Kiki, fun-loving Vanessa and down-to-earth Laura, with whom Jordan roomed with in college. One by one, each woman meets a man and gets married; Jordan, meanwhile, is unable to begin, let alone sustain, a relationship. Significant Other begins at Kiki’s bachelorette party and ends at Laura’s wedding: in between Jordan becomes ever more desperate to find intimacy, especially when he realizes that the women will not be friends in the same way once they have husbands to prioritize.

 

But it’s when Laura—his best friend and soulmate—finally finds love that Jordan feels his own loneliness even more forcefully. Making him feel even more pathetic are visits to his loving, elderly grandmother, who both gives him positive reinforcement and makes him feel worse. There are also painfully funny scenes of Jordan trying to date Will, a coworker who agrees to see a bad documentary about the Franco-Prussian war with him, and a failed relationship with Zach, whom Jordan met while interning in Chicago, but who can’t let go of his own recent ex.

 

Harmon’s likably dark comedy chronicles how relationships constantly fluctuate, and the play’s often amusing conversations lay bare the frayed bonds within even the strongest friendships—like Jordan and Laura’s after her engagement. But the biggest sympathy for Jordan comes courtesy of Gideon Gick’s marvelously shaded performance, in which the shyness, neediness, and bruised but beating heart of this confused young man are laid bare wittily and compassionately.

 

Jordan’s quartet of women is beautifully embodied by four fine actresses. Sas Goldberg makes a sassy and vivacious Kiki, Rebecca Naomi Jones an appealing Vanessa, and Lindsey Mendez a sensitive and supportive Laura. Barbara Barrie is on hand to provide a lovely oasis of calm as Jordan’s grandmother.

 

Mark Wendland’s set design spiffily evokes the Manhattan apartments, offices and public spaces these people move through, complemented by Kaye Voyce’s adept costumes and Japhy Weideman’s expressive lighting. Add to all of this Trip Cullman’s knowing direction, which makes Significant Other anything but insignificant.

 

Significant Other

Booth Theatre, 222 West 45th Street, New York, NY

significantotherbroadway.com

Off-Broadway Reviews—The New Group’s “Evening at the Talkhouse” and “All the Fine Boys”

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts
Category: Reviews
Published on Thursday, 09 March 2017 13:13
Written by Kevin Filipski
Evening at the Talkhouse
Written by Wallace Shawn; directed by Scott Elliott
Performances through March 12, 2017
All the Fine Boys
Written and directed by Erica Schmidt
Performances through March 26, 2017
 
Matthew Broderick and Annapurna Sriram in Evening at the Talkhouse (photo: Monique Carboni)
 
With irony so thick you can’t even cut it with a knife, Wallace Shawn’s Evening at the Talkhouse dramatizes how the United States degenerates into barbarism (random beatings, escalating drone attacks, state-sanctioned murders) after the demise of all things cultural.
 
Shawn has always tended toward heavy-handedness in his playwriting, but his latest—which premiered in London in 2015, before Trump’s rise—pretends to be a corrosive political satire when it’s really just more sophomoric shock tactics like those in his earlier Aunt Dan and Lemon and The Designated Mourner.
 
One night at a local joint, artists who put on a play that flopped a decade earlier get together to commemorate the last gasp of an art form that fizzled out in favor of mindless, safe televised junk. Playwright Robert; lead actor Tom; producer (turned agent) Bill; costumer Annette; and composer Ted arrive for drinks, hors d’oeuvres and reminiscing about old times. Also there, hiding in the corner, is Dick, former matinee idol turned shriveled old man who lost out for the lead role in Robert’s play.
 
Their seemingly amiable discussions quickly morph into conversations about how casual violence is now considered normal, including how some of them—desperately short of cash—have become murderous operatives for the government, whether from afar by directing drones or as hired assassins in other volatile areas of the world.
 
It all ends up being pointless and muddled, despite Shawn’s dialogue huffing and puffing as it tries desperately to sound menacing and duplicitous. After awhile, a pall sets in, even as the cast tries its hardest to make everything seem creepily ordinary.
 
Director Scott Elliott has fashioned the performers into a convincingly bemused group. The always reliable Larry Pine (Tom) and Jill Eikenberry (Talkhouse proprietress Nellie) have their good moments, while Talkhouse server Jane is embodied with a terrifying sense of calm strength by Annapurna Sriram. As Robert, Matthew Broderick works his patented laconic delivery for all its worth: when he admits to his own personal decisions, it all sounds even worse through his casual Ferris Buehler intonations. Too bad Shawn’s play doesn’t measure up to its able interpreters.
 
Isabelle Fuhrmann and Abigail Breslin in All the Fine Boys (photo: Monique Carboni)
 
All the Fine Boys is a pointed if not particularly resonant play about teenage friends Jenny and Emily, circa the late 1980s, whose raging hormones lead them into close proximity to a couple of young men, with (for one of them) horrific results.
 
Playwright Erica Schmidt—who also bluntly directs—has these girls’ lingo, actions and relationships down pat (maybe it’s a sort-of self-portrait?), as they sit around bored, eating Pringles and discussing guys. When Jenny meets Joseph, a 28-year-old from the local church, and goes home with him, she hangs on to him for dear life after losing her virginity, while Emily more conventionally flirts with Adam, a 17-year-old high school senior.
 
Schmidt crosscuts between these two couples, as one becomes ever more strangely unsettling and the other haltingly romantic. But since the ending has been telegraphed the start—the girls arguing over what slasher movie to watch—any dramatic impact is muted. Luckily for Schmidt, Abigail Breslin fearlessly enacts Jenny’s confusion, neediness and self-abasement, even if she (alongside Isabelle Fuhrmann, who engagingly plays Emily) is too old for the 14-year-old she’s playing.
 
There’s also a nice supporting turn by Alex Wolff—who most recently gave a chilling portrayal of one of the Tsarnaev brothers in the film Patriots Day—as the guitar-playing Adam who makes Emily swoon.
 
Evening at the Talkhouse
All the Fine Boys
The New Group @ Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 West 42nd Street, New York, NY
thenewgroup.org

March '17 Digital Week I

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts
Category: Reviews
Published on Tuesday, 07 March 2017 15:54
Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week 

The Boyfriend

(Warner Archive)
One of Ken Russell’s most atypical films, his 1971 version of Sandy Wilson’s old-fashioned musical still contains the director’s often uncontrolled frenzy in abundance, even if—in this case—it’s at the service of a frivolous but fun story starring the enchanting Twiggy, of all people, who shows herself a more than competent actress, dancer and singer.
It’s nice to finally get this from Warner Archive in a superior hi-def edition, with a vintage on-set featurette as the lone extra; maybe someday we’ll finally get The Devils on Blu-ray?
 
 


Moana
(Disney)
Disney’s latest animated extravaganza follows its eponymous heroine as she leaves her Polynesian home with shape-shifting ex-demigod Maui in tow to help save her people by bringing a relic back to an island goddess.
Mixed in with interchangeable songs co-written byHamilton auteur Lin-Manuel Miranda are lustrous aquatic visuals that often overwhelm the feel-good feminist tale being told. On Blu-ray, the computer-generated visuals look terrifically; extras include featurettes, deleted scenes, deleted song, and bonus Easter eggs.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth 

(Warner Archive)

If you’re going to make a silly, incoherent movie anachronistically showing cavemen and women living alongside dinosaurs, then the stop-motion effects better be up to snuff: for that reason alone, this 1969 adventure makes the grade, with surprisingly effective sequences of predators vs. their human targets.
Otherwise, the amateurish acting, disposable directing and non-existent script make their marks throughout the sluggish 100-minute running time. The hi-def transfer is excellent.
 
DVDs of the Week
City in the Sky
(PBS)
This three-part documentary mini-series presents the inner workings of the airline industry by showing behind-the-scenes glimpses at ultra-busy airports like Atlanta’s or a fascinating look at the actual assembly of an Airbus A380, with its thousands of interlocking parts.
By naming the segments “Departure,” “Airborne” and “Arrival,” the series cleverly develops a narrative of sorts, based on the fact that, at any moment, around a million people are airborne at the same time around the world: hence the program’s title.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Oklahoma City 

(PBS)

Timothy McVeigh’s homegrown terrorist attack, which shocked the country in 1995, is recounted in this thorough and unmissable exploration of what triggered McVeigh, how authorities dealt with it—including pretty quickly apprehending him after the first impulse was to blame Middle Eastern terrorists—and the reactions of those who had to trudge through the rubble, including first responders and parents who lost—or thought they lost—their children.
One of the PBS series American Experience’s best episodes, director Barak Goodman’s impeccably researched and painstakingly put together study scarily demonstrates how McVeigh’s moment of madness had its origins in the white supremacist movement.
 
A Place to Call Home—Complete 4thSeason
(Acorn Media)
In the most recent season of this superior Australian soap opera, the year 1954 embodies two opposing political stances, conservative fearmongering and liberal hopefulness, which color the actions of all of the characters.
Jealousy, homosexuality, murder-suicide….the melodrama continues throughout these dozen episodes, aided by top-notch performances and a real sense of time and place. Fans will be pleased to know that a fifth season is currently in production.
 
CD of the Week 
The Film Music of William Alwyn, Volume 4
(Chandos)

One of the most accomplished if underrated British composers of the last century, William Alwyn wrote music in many genres—symphonies, chamber music, concertos, operas, solo piano and vocal works—but his music remains, except for a slew of welcome releases on Chandos in the ‘80s and ‘90s, relatively unknown. That even extends to the often imaginative and dramatic scores he wrote for more than 70 films throughout his career—he died in 1985 at age 79—and Chandos has already released fine recordings of several of his best scores.

This fourth volume, which includes his atmospheric suites (ably reconstructed and arranged by Philip Lane) for such ordinary British titles as On Approval and A City Speaks,continues the label’s winning streak of making this composer’s music available once again. Rumon Gamba conducts the BBC Philharmonic in exciting performances of works from ten different films.

More Articles...

  1. Off-Broadway Review—Janie Dee Returns in “Linda”
  2. Off-Broadway Review—Steven Levenson’s “If I Forget”
  3. February '17 Digital Week IV

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