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Film and the Arts
May '15 Digital Week I
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 05 May 2015 21:20
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Accidental Love
(Millennium)
The back story to this feeble attempt at a political farce is more interesting than what's onscreen: it was made in 2008 as Nailed, directed by David O. Russell and with rising young stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Jessica Biel in the leads. For various reasons (but primarily because it was so bad), Russell quit, and the movie has been in limbo until now.
Directing credit goes to pseudonymous Stephen Greene, while Gyllenhaal (who looks like a kid) and a trove of familiar supporting faces like Kirstie Alley, James Brolin, Katherine Keener, James Marsden and Tracy Morgan are undermined by the material. Biel actually shows a flair for light comedy; too bad it's wasted on this embarrassing addition to the resumes of all involved. The hi-def transfer is OK.
(PBS)
This stylish mini-series set in 1930s London engrossingly captures the behind the scenes and onstage drama that occurs when a rising black jazz ensemble makes it big among the aristocracy and upper-class audiences.
Although the storylines filling five 90-minute episodes and a 60-minute finale start to resemble soap operas and trashy novels, wonderful musicmaking, strong acting (from Chiwetel Ejiofor, Matthew Goode, Jacqueline Bisset, Janet Montgomery and John Goodman) and director Stephen Poliakoff's credible era atmosphere more than compensate. The Blu-ray transfer is first-rate; extras include cast and crew interviews.
42nd Street
(Warner Archive)
In this splashy 1933 musical, Broadway music and dancing merge for a beautifully done last 20 minutes: unfortunately, there's that first hour-plus, which laboriously puts the movie's wooden characters through their routine paces.
No matter: what Lloyd Bacon's direction lacks in precision, it makes up for with panache, helped by tunes like "Shuffle Off to Buffalo" and the title song, set to Busby Berkeley's smart production numbers: that's entertainment, indeed. On Blu-ray, the restored film sparkles; extras are featurettes and two vintage cartoons, including Shuffle Off to Buffalo, which has a warning label about its era's ethnic stereotyping.
(Warner Brothers)
In honor of the 100th anniversary of Frank Sinatra's birth, this five-disc set collects some of his best and most popular onscreen roles, from his early musical appearances in 1945's Anchors Weigh, 1949's On the Town and 1955's Guys and Dolls; to the fun but sluggish gangster movies Oceans 11 (1960) and Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964).
The vivid color and ebullient musical scores of Town and Dolls make them the pick of the litter, and Sinatra has fun duking it out with Gene Kelly, Ann Miller, Marlon Brando and Jean Simmons. The Blu-ray transfers of all five films are excellent; extras include a 32-page photo book, vintage cartoons, featurettes, commentaries and a Tonight Show segment with Sinatra as guest host.
GoodFellas
(Warner Brothers)
Martin Scorsese's 1990 drama about mobster Nick Pileggi is considered one of the great gangster films and, although Scorsese's direction and Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesci and Ray Liotta's acting are stupendous, there's a sense that it is all too much, that Scorsese rubs our noses in the bad guys' gleefully violent lives.
Still, such superior cinematic craft is exciting to watch, and this may be the final truly accomplished and memorable film of Scorsese's career (despite later entries as Casino, The Aviator and the Oscar-winning The Departed). This 25th anniversary set features an improved hi-def transfer, 36-page photo book and new 30-minute documentary; older extras include two commentaries, featurettes and interviews.
Mr. Turner
(Sony Classics)
Director Mike Leigh smartly chose his collaborators for his impressively mounted 2-1/2 hour drama about the last 25 years of the great but controversial 19th century British artist J.M.W. Turner: cinematographer Dick Pope and actor Timothy Spall.
Pope's luminous photography suggests but doesn't ape Turner's rough-and-tumble canvases of striking beauty, while Spall's miraculous portrayal of the cantankerous genius avoids caricature and hamminess: even his growl, which in lesser hands would be an affectation, is a natural manifestation of the artist's personality. The superb hi-def transfer allows further appreciation of the film's visual luster; extras comprise Leigh's commentary, a deleted scene and behind the scenes featurettes.
DVDs of the Week
The Legacy
(MHZ Networks)
In this gripping high-class Danish soap opera, renowned artist Veronika Gronnegaard inconveniently dies after telling a family friend that she is Veronika's real daughter to whom she's bequeathing her mansion, to the consternation of her three "official" grown children.
The infighting among these squabbling siblings—whose emotional ebbs and flows never wane, whether the battles are legal or personal—is dramatized with blood and guts by the tremendous cast (which includes two performers familiar to eagle-eyed foreign-film fans, Trine Dryholm and Jesper Christiansen), which carries this bingeworthy 10-hour drama enough to keep us waiting with bated breath for the second season, already showing on Danish television.
(Icarus)
For centuries, cities sprung up at the confluence of rivers and over time, those rivers were buried underground as cities grew and the waters became more polluted and disease-ridden; as Caroline Bacle's timely and relevant documentary shows, reclaiming the rivers is the prudent and environmentally sound thing to do.
Places as far-flung as Toronto, Yonkers and London are working through the difficulties of bureaucratic red tape and natural barriers to make their original waterways more accessible to the public, with varying (but on the whole satisfactory) results so far. Extras comprise 14 additional scenes.
Miss Julie
(Lionsgate)
Liv Ullmann's restrained adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's tragic drama has the passion and complexity the director obviously learned from her mentor Ingmar Bergman, and features a thoroughly believable Samantha Morton as the housekeeper. Too bad that Jessica Chastain as Miss Julie and Colin Farrell as her aristocratic father's valet are too contemporary to disappear into their period roles, despite valiant attempts.
Ullmann's directorial efforts have been sadly overlooked on disc, especially her best films Private Confessions(not on DVD or Blu-ray) and Faithless (not on Blu-ray). Extras are Chastain and Ullmann interviews.
(Anchor Bay)
The seamy underbelly of suburbia has been done to death, and director Gillian Greene and writers Christian Magalhes and Robert Snow have little new or fresh to say in this scattershot black comedy triggered by the killing of a nerdy momma's boy's feline friend.
As a showcase for Blythe Danner, recent Oscar winner J.K. Simmons, Greg Kinnear and underrated Nikki Reed, it's watchable, but the movie is never as smart, funny or edgy as it pretends to be.
My Mistress
(Film Movement)
This unsatisfying taboo drama about a 16-year-old who befriends an unhappily married—and improbably sexy—neighbor who happens to be not only a gorgeous Frenchwoman but also an S&M expert provides few answers to why Emmanuelle Beart went to Australia to make it.
She and Harrison Gilbertson do what they can with Gerard Lee and director Stephen Lance's flimsy script, but their relationship, in and out of bed, is never made plausible. Beart looks stunning in her various latex outfits, at least. Extras comprise interviews, but—contrary to the box cover—there was no Beart interview on my copy.
New Broadway Musicals—"The Visit" and "Something Rotten"
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Monday, 04 May 2015 23:54
- Written by Kevin Filipski
The Visit
Book by Terrence McNally; music & lyrics by John Kander & Fred Ebb
Directed by John Doyle
Opened April 23, 2015
Something Rotten
Book by Karey Kirkpatrick & John O'Farrell; lyrics by Karey & Wayne Kirkpatrick; music by Wayne Kirkpatrick
Directed & choreographed by Casey Nicholaw
Opened April 22, 2015
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| Chita Rivera, left, and cast of The Visit (photo: Thom Kaine) |
That the ageless Chita Rivera is a living legend is beyond dispute, and that composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb have created challenging Broadway musicals like Cabaret, Chicago, Kiss of the Spider Woman (which starred a Tony-winning Rivera) and The Scottsboro Boys is unquestioned. But the trio's latest—and final—collaboration, The Visit, shows that even the greatest artists have off days.
Based on the classic The Visit of the Old Lady by German playwright Friedrich Durrenmatt, The Visit follows Claire Zachanassian, the world's richest woman, who returns to her dreary backwater hometown with revenge on her mind, offering billions to the town and its poor inhabitants if local merchant Anton Schell—her first lover who impregnanted the teenage Claire, abandoned and rigged a paternity trial against her, forcing her into a sordid life of prostitution and several wealthy husbands—is killed.
At first, everyone is aghast, since all assumed Claire returned with charity in mind to help the downtrodden town back to its feet. However, the denizens—including Anton's wife and children—slowly decide that money is far better than morality, and they start availing themselves of pricey items on credit. From there, Durrenmatt's play (and Gottfried von Einem's expressive 1971 opera based on it, which I saw in 1997 at New York City Opera in a less than felicitous production) becomes a shocking and blackly comic expose of hypocrisy and greed.
What the Kander & Ebb Visit originally was I don't know, since I missed previous productions. But it seems obvious that its two-act structure with 23 songs gave the story ample time to work out its deliberate and inexorable march from morality to mortality. But Terrence McNally's book crudely squeezes everything into a lone 95-minute act, offering characters so perfunctorily sketched that they border on caricature, and whose motivation is all but non-existent.
McNally's book does have a nicely inventive touch. The young lovers Clare and Anton, embodied by two dancers, move around and among the others (the efficient choreography is by Graciela Daniele), joining the aged couple in several striking tableaux. As embodied by the personable John Riddle and exquisite Michelle Veintimilla, they are the best members of a supporting cast that makes a powerful chorus but whose individual performances are one-note.
Kander and Ebb's songs, while not their best, manage to convey the lost love, abandonment, vengeance and dishonesty that accompanies these dark lives...and deaths. Having the blind eunuchs employed as Clare's footmen sing in falsetto (the voices belong to the talented Matthew Deming and Chris Newcomer) provides appropriately off-putting vocals that nod to Einem's more successful operatic adaptation.
Playing Claire, a woman of hard-won wisdom after a difficult lifetime of experience, allows the 82-years-young Rivera to sing, dance and act with unsurpassed skill. But director John Doyle unaccountably underuses her, letting her wander in and out of the set when she should be front and center throughout.
Doyle also has the townspeople dress in rags and heavy, dark eye makeup, which makes them look like rejects from a high school production of The Threepenny Opera. Doyle's staging consists almost entirely of moving the suitcases and coffin for Anton that Claire brought with her around the stage continuously; later, the color yellow, because it's in the script and the title of one of the songs, becomes an arresting but hollow visual motif against the dreary monochrome backdrop.
Doyle's original gimmick was staging Sondheim musicals with performers playing their own musical instruments; now that he's branched out, his limitations have become sorely evident, especially in his bland stagings of Benjamin Britten's opera Peter Grimes, Stephen Sondheim's Passion and now this unenthralling The Visit.
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| Brian d'Arcy James and Christian Borle in Something Rotten (photo: Joan Marcus) |
There's something to be said for a Broadway musical that takes 20 minutes' worth of solid material and stretches it out to 2-1/2 hours, which is what the 10-time Tony nominated Something Rotten does. While its hokey, anachronistic songs and juvenile humor were anticipated by Spamalot, The Producers and even The Book of Mormon, and its eagerness to please its audience (which duly responds in kind) seems desperate, there's undeniable, if disposable, fun to be had.
Twin brothers Nigel and Nick Bottom are playwrights in 1595 London, just as Shakespeare hits his stride with his latest, Romeo and Juliet. To finally surpass the Bard, Nick visits a soothsayer to try and steal William S.'s biggest future hit; Nick is told that something called a musical will become all the rage onstage, so the brothers go ahead and write the world's first: Omelette (said soothsayer misheard Hamlet).
And that's it. Those who laugh themselves to tears whenever Shakespeare plays are parodied or even mentioned—the show is awash in lines from the Bard's oeuvre, greeted with applause or laughter depending on how many audience members recognize them—or when Shakespeare himself (an agreeably hammy Christian Borle) struts onstage as the world's first rock star will find Something Rotten irresistible. The rest of us will find a fitfully amusing and exasperating musical.
There are solid comic turns from Brian d'Arcy James, who sings, dances and cracks wise as Nick; Brad Oscar, who's feverishly funny as the soothsayer Nostradamus; and Brooks Ashmanskas as Brother Jeremiah, a puritan whose endless double entendres are marred only by the actor's milking every single joke for maximum audience approval.
The book, lyrics and music by Wayne Kirkpatrick, Karey Kirkpatrick and John O'Farrell are pastiches of pastiches, some of which work while others mostly cause groans. Savvy director Casey Nicholaw's clever choreography winks at its audience with allusions to countless other shows, especially during the rousing but dragged-out showstopper "A Musical," which perfectly summarizes the unapologetically over-the-top Something Rotten.
The Visit
Lyceum Theatre, 149 West 45th Street, New York, NY
thevisitmusical.com
Something Rotten
St. James Theatre, 246 West 44th Street, New York, NY
rottenbroadway.com
New Broadway Musicals—"Fun Home" and "It Shoulda Been You"
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Friday, 01 May 2015 14:38
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Fun Home
Book & lyrics by Lisa Kron; music by Jeanine Tesori
Directed by Sam Gold
Opened April 19, 2015
It Shoulda Been You
Book & lyrics by Brian Hargrove; music by Barbara Anselmi
Directed by David Hyde Pierce
Opened April 14, 2015
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| Lucas and Cerveris in Fun Home (photo: Joan Marcus) |
That there's never been a musical quite like Fun Home is both its blessing and curse. Based on Alison Bechdel's autobiographical graphic memoir about her dysfunctional family, Fun Home has a book and lyrics by Lisa Kron and music by Jeanine Tesori, which pull the show in different directions, derailing its effectiveness at every turn.
Alison, a 40-year old graphic artist, puts her life into words and pictures; flashing back to her youth, Fun Home shows a nine-year-old Alison, her brothers and her parents: Bruce, their closeted father, a high-school teacher, predatory pedophile and funeral home director; and their mother Helen, whose coldness underlines her inability to deal with Bruce's behavior. A third Alison is a 19-year-old Oberlin College freshman, unsure of her own sexuality, who's befriended by—and soon becomes lover to—headstrong Joan; when she brings Joan home to meet her parents, Alison forces them to deal with her lesbianism head-on, causing her emotionally tortured father to make a fateful decision that haunts his daughter to this day.
For the most part, Kron's book adeptly distills Alison's coming to terms with her sexuality and her complicated relationship with her parents, even if motivation and psychology are often hazy. If all three Allisons are adroitly drawn—and played by three wonderfully individual actresses, youngster Sydney Lucas, college-age Emily Skeggs and adult Beth Malone—her family is more cursorily sketched, with Helen quite a blank (poor Judy Kuhn has little to do) and Bruce maddeningly indistinct.
Therefore, it's to the credit of that incredible chameleon of an actor Michael Cerveris that Bruce becomes the most sympathetic character onstage; the quietly commanding Cerveris even does wonders with Bruce's climactic song, an aria of lament and suffering that would lie there inert without his great, compassionate skill.
And that's the weakness of Fun Home: Tesori's score. The small ensemble plays beautifully, and when the music underscores the action, its restraint is dramatically effective. But when the characters break into song, there's a lack of variety, melody and emotion that prevent the numbers from soaring; similarly, Kron's competent lyrics would work better as dialogue, instead of being set to Tesori's music. With a couple of compelling exceptions—namely the kids' crowd-pleasing anthem, "Come to the Fun Home," and Bruce's aforementioned final song—the musical numbers rarely advance the story or provide any insight into these characters.
Even with Sam Gold's endlessly resourceful direction on David Zinn's gloriously lived-in Victorian house set, Fun Home is fatally unmusical.
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| Howard and Boggess in It Shoulda Been You (photo: Joan Marcus) |
Basically a song-filled sitcom, It Shoulda Been You is the Broadway equivalent of madcap shows like I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change, its farcical wedding day providing 100 minutes of hokey but harmless fun, thanks to a bunch of veteran comic troupers.
On the morning of Rebecca Steinberg's wedding to Brian Howard at a posh hotel, mania reigns among those present: Rebecca's big-boned sister Jenny, handling last-minute details for their domineering Jewish mother Judy, whom their father Murray avoids when he can; Brian's WASPy parents, alcoholic Georgette and dull George; maid of honor Annie and best man Greg, Rebecca and Brian's closest friends, respectively; wedding planner Albert, cleaning up messes; hotel workers Mimsy and Walt, commenting sardonically on the proceedings; and Rebecca's ex, Marty Kaufman, who arrives to implore her not to marry.
Slamming-door farce is not book writer Brian Hargrove's strong suit, so he concentrates on tired Jew/Gentile jokes, cracks about Jenny's weight, and the inevitable "gay reveal" so in vogue right now. Hargrove's banal "moon"/"June" lyrics and Barbara Anselmi's interchangeable songs don't help either, but at least their director (and Hargrove's significant other) David Hyde Pierce knows all about great timing, so the show ends up resembling an actual comedy. Pierce's talented cast also makes the most of its chances to shine, especially the ladies.
Tyne Daly is the ultimate overbearing Jewish mother as Judy, Lisa Howard is a funny and touching Jenny, Harriet Harris is an hilarious Georgette, and the always delectable Sierra Boggess shows off masterly comic chops and an exqusiite singing voice as Rebecca. Her showstopping "A Little Bit Less Than" proves that, even in an ensemble, some performers are more equal than others.
Fun Home
Circle in the Square Theatre, 1633 Broadway, New York, NY
funhomebroadway.com
It Shoulda Been You
Brooks Atkinson Theatre, 256 West 47th Street, New York, NY
itshouldabeenyou.com
April '15 Digital Week IV
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 28 April 2015 21:09
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Blind Woman's Curse
Massacre Gun
(Arrow USA)
1970's Blind Woman's Curse, Teruo Ishii's colorfully choreographed bloodbath, follows dragon-tattooed female yakuzas being tailed by a vengeance-minded victim who skins their tattoos off their backs: it's as lunatic as it sounds, but its relentlessly fast pace keep it moving.
Yasuharu Hasebe's 1967 Massacre Gun, about a mobster who retaliates after he is forced by his employers to execute his girlfriend, is crammed with poetically violent sequences and formidable widescreen B&W photography. Both films have been given striking new Blu-ray transfers; extras include an audio commentary on Curse and interviews on Gun.
(Bel Air Classiques)
La Favorite
(Opus Arte)
Already an Oscar-winning movie, Brokeback Mountain is now an opera, with a libretto by the original story's author, Annie Proulx, and music by composer Charles Wuorinen, whose blocks of unmelodic material aren't exactly tailor-made for this tale of two male sheep herders who fall in love, complicating their increasingly difficult home lives. Generous performances by Daniel Okulitch and Tom Randle, along with Heather Buck as one of their wives, made this sing pleasingly at its 2014 Madrid world premiere.
Gaetano Donizetti's La Favorite, one of the Italian bel canto master's lesser-known operas, has been given a thoroughly impressive 2014 revival in Toulouse, France, starring American mezzo Kate Aldrich in a career-defining performance as the heroine Leonor. Both hi-def transfers and music are excellent; extras comprise backstage interviews.
Cancer—The Emperor of All Maladies
(PBS)
Based on Siddhartha Mukherjee's encyclopedic book, this thoroughly involving three-part Ken Burns-produced mini-series is a simultaneously heartbreaking but heartening journey through centuries of medical, governmental and charitable attempts to attack the disease that humankind still cannot control.
Director Barak Goodman's compiling of interviews, archival footage and an arresting history of the disease and our increasing knowledge of it makes for a riveting six hours; that Edward Herrmann died of brain cancer after completing his narration for the film is but one sadly illuminating back story. On Blu-ray,the film looks fine; extras are additional scenes.
(Warner Bros)
Thomas Pynchon's rambling 2009 novel, nominally a detective yarn set in 1970, is all but unfilmable, with its countless asides and plentiful characters, and Paul Thomas Anderson's exquisitely wrought adaptation hasn't solved those basic problems (but who could?).
A strand of a storyline keeps getting interrupted, just like the book, but in Anderson's hands, it's even more scattershot and jokey, despite strong performances by a mumbling Joaquin Phoenix and revelatory Catherine Waterston, whose leggy beauty and fierce intelligence overwhelm the film and its talented but erratic director. The movie's L.A. location shooting looks sumptuous on Blu-ray; extras are extremely brief featurettes/trailers.
Last Days in Vietnam
(PBS)
Rory Kennedy's incisive, unforgettable documentary returns viewers to the final weeks in 1975 when a mere handful of United States military men and diplomatic envoys had to decide whom to help among their South Vietnamese allies as the enemy made its way unopposed to the capital Saigon.
Using riveting first-hand accounts by those who were in Vietnam and those who were in Washington (including Henry Kissinger), new and archival interviews and stunning video footage and photographs, Kennedy sears an era already familiar to those who lived through it into our collective memory; included are the 100-minute theatrical release and two-hour PBS American Experience version, which is obviously preferable. The hi-def transfer is excellent.
Wolf Hall
(PBS)
Based on Hilary Mantel's acclaimed novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, this absorbing six-hour mini-series chronicles one of history's great dramas: how Oliver Cromwell rose from obscurity to become King Henry VIII's closest confidante during scandals that centered on his marriages to wives Catherine of Algernon and her successor Anne Boleyn.
Intelligently scripted by Peter Straughan, well-directed by Peter Kosminsky and splendidly acted by a large cast led by Mark Rylance (Cromwell), Damian Lewis (Henry) and Claire Foy (Anne), this straightforward but fascinating historical fiction could also serve as a documentary about its era. The Blu-ray transfer is terrifically detailed; extras comprise making-of featurettes and interviews.
DVDs of the Week
Little Accidents
(Anchor Bay)
A small-town mining accident that kills ten men leads to recriminations, threats of lawsuits and the death of the teenage son of the mine's manager and his wife, who ends up finding solace in the arms of the lone survivor of the disaster.
If this all sounds too melodramatic to work, it is: writer-director Sara Colangelo never makes any of her film's relationships plausible, despite suitably authentic performances across the board, with Elizabeth Banks and Chloe Sevigny standouts as mothers dealing with the accident's fallout in differing ways.
(Lionsgate)
Xavier Dolan's passionate character study was shot in a nearly square aspect ratio for much of its length, presenting the clashing but loving relationship between a frustrated widow and her ADHD teenage troublemaker of a son as boxed-in and intimately as possible.
Later, when the son celebrates freedom as the image "stretches" to a more familiar large-screen ratio, it's a gimmicky moment that summarizes this alternately insightful and maddeningly cliched drama, held together by a transcendent performance by Quebecois actress Anne Dorval in the title role.
Music Releases of the Week
The Ides of March—Last Band Standing:
The Definitive 50 Year Anniversary Collection
(Ides of March Records)
This boxed set by a mainly forgotten rock-pop-R&B band from Chicago with one smash hit to its credit (1970's "Vehicle") comprises four CDs with dozens of singles and album tracks, and a DVD that features a 2014 concert from last year that reunited the band at Chicago's House of Blues, along with interviews, vintage television footage from Dick Clark's "American Bandstand" among other shows and a video for the band's new tune "Last Band Standing."
Guest musicians include Steve Cropper and Buddy Guy; the band's leader Jim Peterik went onto '80s fame with schlock-rockers Survivor, whose "Eye of the Tiger" and other hits are performed on the DVD concert, along with songs by .38 Special and Sammy Hagar that Peterik co-wrote.
(Mercury Blu-ray Audio)
The 1977 followup to the Canadian progressive-rock trio's breakthrough 2112 consolidates their sound with epic tracks like the title cut, "Xanadu" and "Cygnus X-1," all-time audience favorite—and first Rush power ballad—"Closer to the Heart," and agreeable filler in the form of "Cinderella Man" and "Madrigal."
The intricate instrumental interplay of drummer Neil Peart, bassist Geddy Lee and guitarist Alex Lifeson is wonderfully preserved on this Blu-ray Audio disc, whose remixing makes for an enveloping audio experience.
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