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Film and the Arts
October '16 Digital Week IV
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 26 October 2016 03:12
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Alice Through the Looking Glass
(Disney)
This belated sequel to the 2010 Tim Burton-directed smash can’t hold a candle to the original, mainly because director James Bobin substitutes his arbitrary garish bombast for Burton’s extravagant controlled whimsy.
The gang’s all here—Mia Wasikowska, Anne Hathaway, Sasha Baron Cohen, Helena Bonham Carter and a delightfully dizzy Johnny Depp—yet the overall effect is that of so much visual oppressiveness smothering the further fantastical adventures of Lewis Carroll’s heroine. The Blu-ray visuals are eye-popping; extras include featurettes, audio commentary, deleted scenes and a Pink music video.
The Executioner
(Criterion)
In Luis Garcia Berlanga’s sardonic 1963 classic, an undertaker falls for and marries the daughter of an executioner; he soon takes over his retired father-in-law’s job, which he doesn’t really want to do. Made during the height of Franco’s fascist regime in Spain, Berlanga’s blackly comic drama remains a potent brew of critical satire that holds up as well as Carlos Saura’s masterpieces like 1966’s The Hunt and 1970’s The Garden of Earthly Delights.
The B&W images look lovely on Blu; extras include a Pedro Almodovar appreciation, new program about Berlanga, and a 2009 Spanish TV program featuring archival Berlanga footage.
The Hills Have Eyes
Dark Water
(Arrow)
Despite its crudeness, Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes (1977) is the scariest movie he ever made: its straightforwardness, coupled with a realistically creepy vibe, combine to tighten the screws more tautly until the horrific finale.
Hideo Nakata’s Dark Water (2002), a finely-wrought thriller about a mother trying to protect her young daughter from malevolent spirits, is far better than the 2005 American remake starring Jennifer Connelly. Both films have nicely-detailed and grainy transfers; extras include interviews and featurettes, and Hills has three audio commentaries.
Santana IV—Live at the House of Blues, Las Vegas
(Eagle Rock)
Iggy Pop teamed up with Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme for his latest album Post Pop Depression, putting more muscle into his music than anything in years, as this Royal Albert Hall show from London in June shows: highlights are sizzling versions of “Lust for Life” and “China Girl.”
Carlos Santana reformed the seminal lineup of his namesake band for an album and tour last year, and this Las Vegas concert brought some of his famed alumni back into the fold: singer-keyboardist Gregg Rolie and guitarist Neal Schon add oomph to new tunes and Santana classics like “Black Magic Woman” and “Evil Ways.” Both sets, which include two CDs with all the live songs, also have first-rate hi-def video and audio. Santana IV extras are band interviews.
Lights Out
(Warner Bros)
The sinister spirit haunting their mother forces a young boy and his stepsister to try and stop a likely fatal outcome in David F. Sandberg’s tidy 80-minute horror flick that has a few good, and a few cheap, thrills—even more if you’re particularly susceptible to reacting to every little scare tactic in today’s schlocky horror flicks.
Teresa Palmer (stepsister), Gabriel Bateman (youngster) and Maria Bello (mother) give persuasive performances that help sell this to more skeptical viewers, like me. The movie looks splendidly dark on Blu; extras are several deleted scenes, which include an idiotic ending smartly excised from the finished product.
Gas-s-s-s
(Olive Films)
These 1970 “youth” films, despite many missed chances, have scattered moments of insight into the then-generation gap. The bumpy Fauss has Robert Redford as a charming but rascally race car driver who thinks nothing of using his friend Fauss (Robert J. Pollard)—especially when gorgeous Lauren Hutton falls for the latter.
Gas-s-s-s is a cardboard Roger Corman flick whose sci-fi premise (everyone over 25 has died in a gas leak) can’t hide a basic lack of coherence or comprehension, and which wastes then-promising performers like Cindy Williams and Talia Shire. The hi-def transfers are solid.
Peter Gabriel—Growing Up Live
(Eagle Rock)
Originally released in 2003, Growing Up Live is a valuable document of Peter Gabriel’s remarkable Up tour, his first in 10 years: now on Blu-ray, the brilliance of Gabriel’s artistry—both visual and musical—can be seen and heard anew, with highlights of this May 2003 Milan performance “Sky Blue” and “Mercy Street.”
In addition to the hi-def video and audio upgrade, also included on this multi-disc set are a DVD of Still Growing Up Live, a more intimate 2004 concert; backstage documentary Still Growing Up Unwrapped; studio footage of Gabriel and his band; and two performances on Jools Holland’s show.
(Olive Signature)
John Ford’s 1952 drama is one of his most old-fashioned, with John Wayne as an American boxer who returns to his Irish homeland and falls in love with spunky lass Maureen O’Hara: amusing and romantic but sappy and silly, it’s pretty shocking that Ford won his fourth Best Director Oscar for this. (Winton C. Hoch’s stunning color photography, however, definitely deserved its Oscar.)
Olive’s Signature series not only includes a sparkling hi-def transfer that shows off the film’s gorgeous Irish locations, but also includes an audio commentary and featurettes about Ford, O’Hara and the Republic Pictures company.
Short Cuts
(Criterion)
Robert Altman’s sprawling 1993 drama about the interactions among dozens of Los Angelenos before an earthquake pretends to be a Raymond Carver adaptation, but Altman’s jaded cynicism is light years removed from Carver’s jaded humanity. There are things that work, namely the acting of Julianne Moore and Jennifer Jason Leigh, but it is ultimately an Altman failure that rarely comes to grips with what it explores.
Still, Criterion’s two-disc set, featuring a spectacular new hi-def transfer—but drops the book of Carver short stories that were part of the original DVD release—has voluminous extras: deleted scenes; Tim Robbins and Altman conversation; Carver audio interview; To Write and Keep Kind, a 1992 PBS Carver documentary; and Luck, Trust & Ketchup: Robert Altman in Carver Country, a full-length making-of documentary.
George Gershwin—An American in Paris/Concerto in F
(Harmonia Mundi)
The Harmonie Ensemble/New York offers lively performances of several Gershwin favorites: the sprightly Of Thee I Sing Overture and 3 Preludes, fizzy An American in Paris and percolating Concerto in F, a towering piano and orchestra work heard far less often than Rhapsody in Blue.
Pianist Lincoln Mayorga plays the challenging solo part in the concerto with exceptional ease; leading the ensemble is Steven Richman, who puts himself and his crack band in the front rank of current Gershwin interpreters.
Broadway Review—Mary-Louise Parker in “Heisenberg”
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Friday, 21 October 2016 22:29
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Heisenberg
Written by Simon Stephens; directed by Mark Brokaw
Performances through December 11, 2016
 |
| Denis Arendt and Mary-Louise Parker in Heisenberg (photo: Joan Marcus) |
Let us now praise Mary-Louise Parker. Possibly the only actress who can make annoying seem endearing, Parker also has an estimable track record of rescuing inferior plays, such as Dead Man's Cell Phone, the disastrous Sarah Ruhl comic drama from several seasons back that Parker saved with her miraculous ability to be immensely charming and kookily funny, however ridiculous the material.
Heisenberg is another case in point. This mendacious two-hander follows the unlikely romance between a goofy 42-year-old American woman and a stolid 75-year-old British man (it would have been more interesting the other way around), who meet cutely at a London train station, reconnect even more cutesily at his butcher shop, and begin a physical and emotional coupling that has to be seen to be disbelieved.
Playwright Simon Stephens spends much of his play’s 80-minute running time flailing around, hoping that anything that he crams into his play—no matter how illogical or risible—will provoke a response from the audience. But the strain shows in his very title, the eponymous German physicist who coined the Uncertainty Principle.
But Heisenberg doesn’t so much demonstrate the Uncertainty Principle as it does the Anything-Goes Principle as Georgie Burns (obnoxious and irritating from the start) lies and wheedles her way into Alex Priest’s good graces by, basically, badgering him: She’s the prototypical Trumpian bully.
Stephens’ dialogue has its occasional bite or amusement, but then there are those long stretches when it doesn’t. After they first have sex, here’s what they say to each other:
GEORGIE: Move over. Thank you. Are you okay?
ALEX: I am yes.
GEORGIE: Ha. Me too. Me three. Me four. Me five. Me six. Me a million. I like sex. Don't you?
ALEX: I do. You know. I really do. I do. I do.
GEORGIE: I like your bed.
ALEX: Thank you.
Later, after they leave London for New Jersey to track down her supposedly estranged son, here’s a snippet of their conversation:
GEORGIE: It’s stopped raining.
ALEX: Yes. I like this spot. The Hackensack. What a completely brilliant name for a river. I like words that have their own little rhyme in. And I like that bridge. That is a remarkable bridge.
GEORGIE: The Pulaski Skyway.
ALEX: The Pulaski Skyway.
A little of this goes a very long way, and Heisenberg outstays its welcome very quickly. Director Mark Brokaw doesn’t do much more than have his performers occasionally move the odd chair or table that make up the bulk of the set design (as per Stephens’ specific stage directions). Brokaw has also put bleachers on the stage behind the performing space so that there are essentially two audiences watching this uninvolving romance unfold. It’s sometimes more entertaining checking out how others are reacting to what’s going on.
Poor Denis Arendt has little to do—he mainly reacts to whatever new lunacy Parker’s spouting—and does it solidly if unimaginatively. Parker is a theatrical treasure, making every silly retort or full-throated obscenity that comes out of her mouth so ingratiating that she makes us believe that this possibly insane woman could charm an average old man into bed. Well, almost.
Heisenberg
Samuel Friedman Theatre, 261 West 47th Street, New York, NY
manhattantheatreclub.com
October '16 Digital Week III
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 19 October 2016 13:27
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Beowulf
(ITV)
This ten-part, eight-hour mini-series “reboots” the Old English classic for the binge-watch generation, with impressive production values comprising first-rate costumes, sets and photography, and even a compelling storyline.
This epic has much to recommend it, not least of which is a cast—especially Kieran Bew in the title role and Joanne Whalley as his dead father’s scheming wife—that is persuasive throughout. The series looks fantastic on Blu.
Café Society
(Lionsgate)
Woody Allen’s typically jaundiced show biz romance is smartly set in the ‘30s, so there are not only some good (and not-so-good) jokes about Hollywood, but there’s also Vittorio Storaro’s absolutely gorgeous photography—maybe the most striking in any Allen film since Manhattan.
Jesse Eisenberg is too on the nose with his Woody impersonation, but Kristen Stewart is a sympathetic love interest and Blake Lively is as glamorous as any old-time movie star. The film looks splendid on Blu; lone extra is a red-carpet featurette.
Extreme—Metal Meltdown Live!
(Loud & Proud)
A quarter-century after its breakout hit, Boston quartet Extreme goes to the Hard Rock Casino in Las Vegas to play its breakthrough album, 1990’s Pornograffiti in its entirety, from the opening power-chords of “Decadence Dance” to the foot-stomper “Hole Hearted.”
Gary Cherone still has the voice for these tunes and guitarist Nuno Betencourt still shreds with the best of them. Highlights are blistering versions of “Get the Funk Out” and “Suzie (Wants Her All-Day What?)” and an audience singalong of the band’s only number-one hit, “More Than Words.” Hi-def video and surround-sound audio are excellent; lone extra is documentaryRockshow.
(Lionsgate)
Based on one of John le Carré’s tautest espionage thrillers, this adaptation isn’t exactly turgid, but it spends so much time setting everything up that it keeps sidetracking itself from its main plot—a British tourist couple, befriended by a European gangster, become unlikely spies.
Director Susanna White’s dark visual palette and Hossein Amini’s tight script distill le Carré’s essence well enough, while Ewan MacGregor, Stellan Skarsgard and Naomie Harris effectively play the lead roles. The hi-def transfer is first-rate; extras are deleted scenes and three making-of featurettes.
The Rape of Lucretia
(Opus Arte)
(Opus Arte)
Benjamin Britten’s oratorio-like opera—which premiered in 1946—is given an incisive staging by actress-turned-director Fiona Shaw in 2015 at England’s Glyndebourne Festival. The dramatically static work isn’t obscured by Shaw’s modern-dress production, which has an exceptional cast led by sumptuous soprano Kate Royal as Female Chorus Christine Rice’s shattering Lucretia.
Britten’s exemplary score sounds vibrant in the hands of conductor Leo Hussain and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Hi-def video and audio are perfectly realized; extras comprise a Shaw interview and opera featurette.
(Mariinsky)
One of Sergei Prokofiev’s later operas, this war drama hasn’t aged as well as his masterpieces, mostly since it was tailor-made for Soviet authorities’ approval; its unabashed hagiography of a Russian hero has a stolid libretto but contains some of Prokofiev’s most propulsive music.
Of course, when conductor Valery Gergiev and his Mariinsky Opera forces take over—as shown in this immensely effective 2014 St. Petersburg staging—even lesser Prokofiev operas shine through as terrific musical-theater experiences. Hi-def audio and video are solid.
Swiss Army Man
(Lionsgate)
This flaccid black comedy has a clever enough premise—a stranded man on an island befriends a corpse that washes ashore, leading to ever more surreal and ridiculous adventures—but foregoes characterization, coherence or insight.
Paul Dano overacts mercilessly, Daniel Radcliffe underwhelmingly underacts, and whenever co-directors/writers Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan get stuck, they turn, in desperation, to flatulence. The film has a top-flight hi-def transfer; extras include deleted scenes, featurettes and interviews.
I Capuleti e I Montecchi
(Accentus Music)
Alban Berg’s masterly 12-tone Wozzeck remains a touchstone of 20th century opera, and Andreas Homoki’s 2015 Zurich staging—despite some cartoonishness—brings out the tension in this relentlessly downbeat tale of madness and murder: Christian Gerhaher’s Wozzeck and Gun-Brit Barkmin’s Marie (who puts him over the edge) are dramatically and musically superlative.
In Capuleti, Vincenzo Bellini’s riff on Romeo and Juliet, the women singing the star-crossed lovers have juicy roles; in this 2015 Zurich production, Joyce DiDonato (Romeo) and Olga Kulchynska (Giulietta) sing with beauty and power. These releases have terrific hi-def transfers.
DVDs of the Week
Argentina
(First Run)
Carlos Saura’s exploration of music and dance indigenous to the South American country is another memorable example of Saura’s films that record sound and movement in all their glory, following 2010’s Flamenco Flamenco (Saura’s latest,J: Beyond Flamenco, recently premiered).
Performance high points are far too numerous to mention, moving as they do from traditional forms to modern and back again; it’s all been stunningly shot by cinematographer Felix Monti, so much so that it’s too bad thatArgentina hasn’t gotten a Blu-ray release.
(Lionsgate)
In this reverse Fatal Attraction, a gorgeous engaged woman sleeps with a hot bartender while in New Orleans for her bachelorette party: soon he is disrupting her life until the final, explosive—but very anticlimactic—finale.
Jaimie Alexander gives a forceful performance in this cliché-ridden drama as the woman whose one horny mistake makes her almost pay with her (and her fiancé’s) life; too bad Wes Bentley seems unhinged from the outset, and every twist and turn in James Agnew and Sean Keller’s script are lessened by Bram Coppens’s routine direction.
Hot Type
(First Run)
Director Barbara Kopple celebrates the 150th anniversary of the indispensable magazine The Nationby showing how the current editorial and writing group—led by their indefatigable editor Katrina vanden Heuvel—deals with the twilight of good journalism.
Talking heads from Rachel Maddow to Bill Moyers discuss the vital importance of a magazine that began in the post-Civil War era by Republicans and then became a must-read for liberals beginning in the New Deal era of FDR. Extras are three deleted scenes.
Nicola Benedetti—Shostakovich and Glazunov Violin Concertos
(Decca)
Any talented musician can play the first Shostakovich violin concerto, but it takes a musician of genius—like Nicola Benedetti—to bring out this masterpiece’s great qualities of yearning, sizzling virtuosity and incredibly taut dramatics.
Benedetti does the same for Alexander Glazunov’s concerto, a lighter affair than the Shostakovich, most concertos are—but still a delightful 20-minute workout for any virtuoso. Capably led by conductor Kirill Karabits, the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra provides the perfect accompaniment to Benedetti’s stunning playing.
Off-Broadway Review—Horton Foote's “The Roads to Home”
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Thursday, 13 October 2016 13:15
- Written by Kevin Filipski
The Roads to Home
Written by Horton Foote; directed by Michael Wilson
Performances through November 27, 2016
Primary Stages, Cherry Lane Theatre, 38 Commerce Street, New York, NY
primarystages.org
 |
| Harriet Harris, Rebecca Brooksher and Hallie Foote in The Roads to Home (photo: Jamez Leynse) |
In Horton Foote’s The Roads to Home, three interlinked one-act plays trod ground familiar to anyone who’s seen his work: there are fractured relationships and shifting family dynamics aplenty, along with the possibility (however slight) of starting anew. The trio of women at the heart of this play set in the 1920s—two middle-aged wives who are next-door neighbors, Mabel and Vonnie; and a younger woman from their Houston neighborhood, Annie—are quintessential Foote characters, with Mabel yearning for the sentimental comfort of hometown Harrison, Vonnie worried that her own husband is cheating on her, and younger Annie becoming dangerously unstable.
The first scene, A Nightingale, is set in Mabel’s house, as she and Vonnie await Annie, who visits every day rather than stay with her own children—her husband has to leave his office to retrieve her. Scene two, The Dearest of Friends, set six months later, finds Mabel comforting Vonnie, who believes her husband is having an affair. Both women’s spouses also appear, and Foote’s dialogue skirts farce as the disconnect between both couples is made apparent. Finally, the third scene, Spring Dance—set four years later in Austin—reintroduces Annie (she wasn’t in the second scene) at what turns out to be an asylum, where she was sent by her husband years earlier.
In his typically thoughtful manner, Foote paints brutally honest portraits of these women—and their men—which become quite moving by play’s end, especially when one realizes that the “home” of the title remains an unreachable destination, whichever road they find themselves on.
Michael Wilson directs sympathetically, and his cast is magisterial. Harriet Harris finds the humor beneath Vonnie’s heartbreak, Rebecca Brooksher makes Annie and her plight simply heartbreaking, and Devon Abner and Matt Sullivan provide needed laughs as Mabel and Vonnie’s slightly ridiculous husbands. And, as Mabel, Hallie Foote—the playwright’s daughter and most esteemed interpreter (she played Annie in a 1992 off-Broadway revival)—perfectly balances the playfulness, pathos and poetry in her father’s distinctive dialogue.
The Roads to Home
Primary Stages, Cherry Lane Theatre, 38 Commerce Street, New York, NY
primarystages.org
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