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Film and the Arts
March '16 Digital Week III
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 15 March 2016 08:41
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Carol
(Weinstein Co/Anchor Bay)
In adapting Patricia Highsmith's novelThe Price of Salt, Todd Haynes has made another pretty-looking movie that's stylish and glittery but little more than a surface depiction of an intimate female relationship that was forbidden during the straight-laced 1950s.
That the film has more in common with the look of films from that era than it does with depicting a believable same-sex relationship is further reinforced by Cate Blanchett's hammy overacting, Rooney Mara's one-dimensional presence and Carter Burwell's one-note score. Only Sarah Paulson, as Carol's former lover, breathes some needed life into the proceedings. The hi-def transfer looks exquisite; lone extra is a cast/director/writer Q&A.
Manhattan—Complete 2nd Season
(Lionsgate)
As the Manhattan Project continues its inexorable path toward the Trinity atomic-bomb test in the desert, a selection of fictionalized and composite geniuses deal with shifting loyalties and encroaching political and moral issues, even as a real character as Dr. Atomic himself (Oppenheimer) makes a too-brief appearance.
Tension is ratcheted up by degrees throughout season two, even if certain interactions stretch the bounds of plausibility; it's acted so forcefully by John Benjamin Hickey as an uncompromising scientist and Olivia Williams as his unstable wife, that it's never less than watchable. The ten handsomely-mounted episodes look smashing on Blu.
Paprika
(Cult Epics)
Another Tinto Brass softcore spectacular, his 1991 adaptation of the classic novel Fanny Hill—which has spawned innumerable screen versions—finds the dirty old director in his typically voyeuristic mode, glimpsing a naive young woman going to work in a brothel to earn money for her fiancee.
There are moments of amusement amidst the usual labored attempts at eroticism, but Brass fans will still enjoy his parade of fetishistic sex scenes. The hi-def transfer of the uncut version is soft but glossy. Lone extra is a featurette.
Victor Frankenstein
(Fox)
This labored riff on Mary Shelley's classic concentrates as much on Igor (Daniel Radcliffe) as on his eponymous boss (James McAvoy), who "cures" his assistant's hunched back by draining an overgrown cyst (who knew?).
Although director Paul McGuigan conjures a properly foreboding Victorian atmosphere, it's basically a lot of sound and fury signifying little, and an unpleasant gloss on the original, despite committed performances and arresting visuals. The movie looks impressive on Blu; extras include deleted scenes, featurettes and interviews.
DVD of the Week
Addiction Incorporated
(Virgil Films)
A solid overview of how tobacco companies finally lost their huge advantage—acting as if their cigarette products were not addictive—Charles Evans' absorbing documentary revolves around Victor DeNoble, a Philip Morris researcher who became Big Tobacco's first whistle blower in 1994 when he explained to Congress what was really going on.
How the government finally overcame the entrenched industry—helped by massive class-action suits, eventually settled out of court, that noted the rising health care costs because of smokers' illnesses were being absorbed by the rest of us—is acutely observed.
CD of the Week
Prokofiev—Piano Concerto No. 3, Symphony No. 5
(Mariinsky)
Valery Gergiev has championed fellow Russian Serge Prokofiev's music, conducting his operas, ballets, concertos and symphonies for decades, and this recording (made in 2012) of the composer's most popular concerto and symphony allows Gergiev to further his case that Prokofiev was among the most significant composers of the last (or any) century.
Soloist Denis Matsuev's sprightly playing in the third piano concerto perfectly meshes with the nimble orchestral performance underlining one of the greatest-ever keyboard showcases, while Gergiev and his musicians catch the simultaneous lightness and gravity of the towering fifth symphony in their lucid, even thrilling account.
The Orchestra of St. Luke's & Spanish Classical at Carnegie Hall
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Sunday, 13 March 2016 13:47
- Written by Jack Angstreich
Pablo Heras-Casado
The excellent performers of the Orchestra of St. Luke's, under the superb direction of Pablo Heras-Casado, returned to Carnegie Hall on the evening of Thursday, March 10th, in a program devoted entirely to music of the Spanish nationalist school. (The last appearance of the ensemble at this venue was likewise a sterling occasion.)
The concert opened with its most obscure work, the lovely Vistas al mar—beautifully played here—by the Catalan composer Eduardo Toldrá, originally for string quartet and later rescored for string orchestra. Pianist Javier Perianes joined the musicians for an exquisite account of the luscious, too rarely played, Nights in the Gardens of Spain, an Impressionist piece by the remarkable Manuel de Falla. The soloist rewarded the audience’s enthusiasm with a splendid encore, de Falla’s Serenata andaluza.
The second half of the program opened with another neglected work, a lucid performance of the enchanting The Bullfighter’s Prayer, by Joaquín Turina, originally scored for lute quartet and also later arranged for string orchestra. The flamenco singer Marina Heredia then took the stage for a captivating rendition of the de Falla masterwork, El amor brujo, usually vocalized by a classical mezzo-soprano — I would have preferred this as the soloist sounded underpowered in this grand hall. In response to the warm ovation, Heredia graciously returned to perform the traditional flamenco song, "De antaño”.
Off-Broadway Revivals—Shakespeare’s “Pericles,” Sam Shepard's "Buried Child"
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Thursday, 10 March 2016 15:38
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Pericles
Written by William Shakespeare; directed by Trevor Nunn
Performances through April 10, 2016
Buried Child
Written by Sam Shepard; directed by Scott Elliott
Performances through April 3, 2016
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| Gia Crovatin and Christian Carmago in Pericles (photo: Henry Grossman) |
One of Shakespeare's most problematic plays, the rarely-performed Pericles has divided critics, audiences and performers for centuries with its knotty language, incredulous plotting, dicey characterizations and the fact that the Bard most likely wrote it with a collaborator.
But this very messiness obviously appealed to director Trevor Nunn; unlike, King Lear, for example, Pericles can survive desecration: extensive cutting, turning dialogue into song lyrics and presenting the whole thing as a dance and music pageant doesn't hurt as much as it would Shakespeare's masterpieces.
The result is still a bumpy ride, but Pericles—which shares its incoherence and flights of fancy with fellow late romances Cymbeline and The Winter's Tale—stretches its patchwork wings, and Nunn's creative staging helps smooth over arid patches, helped along by Sean Davey's pleasantly melodic songs, Stephen Strawbridge's incisive lighting, Brian Brooks's accommodating movement and Constance Hoffman's colorful but never ostentatious costumes.
As Prince Pericles—who believes he's lost both his beloved wife and young daughter, spending 16 years lost in a figurative wilderness until the ending makes everything right as a kind of humane spin on the cataclysmically tragic climax of King Lear—Christian Camargo makes little impression through the first three-quarters of the play, even garbling the lyrical poetry. But the final scene, showing the combined physical and emotional toll his losses have taken on him, he suddenly springs to life and touchingly portrays Pericles' grief turning into exultant happiness.
If Lilly Englert is a too-petulant Marina, Pericles' beloved daughter, then Gia Crovatin makes Pericles' wife Thaisa come alive winningly, and there's solid support from Will Swenson and John Keating in several roles. But the real star of Pericles is Trevor Nunn, whose resourceful directing keeps this difficult and even risible late Shakespeare romance buoyant and, finally, moving.
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| Taissa Farmiga, Nat Woolf and Ed Harris in Buried Child (photo: Monique Carboni) |
Sam Shepard's Buried Child, which won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, has not aged well, at least in Scott Elliott's disjointed new production. This blatantly symbolic exploration of the ultimate dysfunctional family was an obvious tearing off of the band-aid that covered America's festering wounds from Vietnam, Watergate and other societal ills. Now, the play's metaphorical and surreal touches seem uneasily out of an especially grotesque Harold Pinter play, as parents and children escalate their attempts at treating one another badly for three intermissionless acts of nearly two hours.
It opens with couch-bound grandfather Dodge mumbling to himself in disgust as his wife Halie yells downstairs to him. This couple's estrangement is brought into further relief once the rest of the family enters: dimwitted eldest son Tilden, his one-legged brute of a brother Bradley, Tilden's son Vince and Vince's sweetly naive girlfriend Shelly (both of whom upset the apple cart to an extent), and Reverend Dewis, who shows up with Halie after their obvious night of carousing.
As power plays are carried out and secrets are unburied among these damaged people, Shepard's cryptic dialogue strains for the non-sequiturs of Pinter: at one point Shelly seems an allusion to Ruth in Pinter’s The Homecoming, poised to become a new matriarch of sorts. That is soon snuffed out, but Vince—first unrecognized by everyone when he arrives—seems poised to take over the family farm, as Halie retreats upstairs, his father Tilden and Uncle Bradley tamed and grandfather Dodge still in front of the sofa.
Shepard's blatantly metaphorical title is obliquely explained by a family history story told haltingly by Dodge, then needlessly literalized by Tilden walking upstairs with something cradled in his arms at play's end, it's both too much and not enough. Despite estimable acting by the men, notably Ed Harris as Dodge and Nat Woolf as Vince—on the debit side, Amy Madigan is too-shrill as Halie and Taissa Farmiga too innocent as Shelly—director Elliott never finds a coherent way to frame Shepard's strident piece of rotted Norman Rockwell.
Pericles
Polonsky Shakespeare Center, 262 Ashland Place, Brooklyn, NY
tfana.org
Buried Child
The Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 West 42nd Street, New York, NY
thenewgroup.org
March '16 Digital Week II
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 09 March 2016 04:23
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Coming Home
(Sony Classics)
His latest collaboration with muse Gong Li finds director Zhang Yimou in a melancholic mood with a story set during China's Cultural Revolution about a family torn apart when the father is jailed: upon his return 20 years later, his wife doesn’t believe that it’s him.
Gong heartbreakingly transforms from loving wife and mother to a woman unable to process a "new" reality in a sensitive drama that comments obliquely on Mao's destructive policies. The film has a splendid hi-def transfer; extras are a director's commentary and Toronto Film Festival Q&A.
(PBS)
Author Michael Pollan, who has written several books about our dangerous eating habits and getting back to healthy basics, has branched out into television with his Netflix series Cooked and this important two-hour film about how far we've strayed from good food in order to continue giving the public cheaper if less healthful options.
As always, Pollan's pertinent points are made with both humor and a seriousness that doesn't become sanctimonious; he valiantly defends proper eating habits against both governmental and corporate villains. The hi-def transfer is first-rate.
In the Heart of the Sea
(Warner Bros)
Ron Howard has never been a director to admire—even his Oscar-winning A Beautiful Mind was too gooey by half—but he deserves plaudits for his absorbing adaptation of Nathaniel Philbrick's book about a real whaling ship calamity in 1820 that was the basis of Herman Melville's classic novel Moby-Dick.
Howard admirably succeeds at showing the simultaneous majesty and horror of the unknown sea in this large-scaled, old-fashioned adventure. The film has a superb hi-def transfer; extras include several making-of featurettes and interviews, and deleted and extended scenes.
(Cineliciouspics)
French director Agnès Varda's long and varied career—her 1961 debut is the New Wave classic Cleo from 5 to 7, while her last feature, the 2008 self-portrait The Beaches of Agnès,is also among her best—includes the middling entries included here: 1987's Master, with Jane Birkin and Varda's son Mathieu, and a Birkin portrait, Jane B.
Especially coming on the heels of her masterly Vagabond, both films are indisputably slight, but it's interesting to see an artist strike out in different, if not always successful, directions. Both films have been restored and look sparkling on Blu; extras comprise new Varda interviews about both films.
Strange Brew
(Warner Bros)
Bob and Doug McKenzie were the spiritual godfathers of Wayne and Garth—it’s no surprise that Mike Myers, like Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas (who co-starred, co-directed and co-wrote this), is Canadian—but the McKenzies' fitfully amusing 1983 feature doesn’t have the silly comic gravitas of Wayne's World.
Moranis and Thomas work hard, and even manage a few good laughs, but their satirical look at their laidback homeland is more smile-inducing than gut-busting. The movie looks decent if soft on Blu; extras comprise three short featurettes.
(Drafthouse Films)
In Myroslav Slaboshpytsky's astonishingly fearless drama, there is no dialogue or subtitles to follow a group of deaf-mutes through a brutishly nasty world of passion, sex, dog-eat-dog violence and—in two unsettling, even upsettingly clinical sequences—abortion and murder.
Slaboshpytsky could be criticized for showing the worst of humanity within an insular community, but it's been directed so persuasively and enacted so fiercely by an accomplished deaf-mute cast (led by Griogriy Fesenko and Yana Novikova) that its rawness is impossible to turn away from. The film looks luminous on Blu-ray; extras are a director's commentary, Novikova interview and the director's 2010 short, Deafness.
CDs of the Week
Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here Symphonic
(Decca)
Since Pink Floyd's music already has a symphonic quality, it's unsurprising that these orchestral arrangements of the band's classic 1975 album work—to an extent: conductor/arranger Peter Scholes and the London Orion Orchestra sound best on the multi-part "Shine on You Crazy Diamond" suites.
Still, David Gilmour's peeling, powerful electric and acoustic guitar playing is missed despite the presence of two able guitarists; guest musicians include pianist Rick Wakeman and none other than Alice Cooper, who sings the title song and "Welcome to the Machine."
(Masterworks Broadway)
In this immensely entertaining 1966 musical loosely based on the classic Fellini film The Nights of Cabiria, Juliet Prowse’s endearing Charity boisterously blasts Cy Coleman's lively "If My Friends Can See Me Now" and "I'm a Brass Band," while costars Josephine Blake and Paula Kelly knock "Big Spender" out of the park.
Director-choreographer Bob Fosse's wife Gwen Verdon—who originated Charity on Broadway—isn’t entirely missed because this is audio-only: she was made for Fosse's slinky, suggestive dance moves. And happily, Prowse is a more than capable vocal replacement in this original London cast recording.
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