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February '14 Digital Week II

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Tuesday, 11 February 2014 02:08; Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-rays of the Week

The Artist and the Model

(Cohen Media)

In Francesco Trueba’s wistful drama—similar in story to the recent French film Renoir, about the last days of the French impressionist—a French sculptor’s late career gets a boost by an unexpected arrival: a nubile young model.

Jean Rochefort’s sly, understated portrayal of an elderly artist whose entrenched ideas of art and life are unbalanced by a new girl is complemented by Aida Folch’s sultry muse; Italian screen siren Claudia Cardinale gives strong support as his sympathetic wife. Trueba’s unerring eye and Daniel Vilar’s luminous B&W photography are illuminated by an exemplary hi-def transfer. Lone extra is a short Trueba interview.

Austenland

(Sony)

This mildly appealing comedy parodies Jane Austen fandom in the guise of Jane Hayes (always adorable Keri Russell), so smitten with her favorite author, her heroes and heroines that she leaves everything behind in America to visit England and live out her fantasy: it doesn’t go as planned, obviously.

Diverting but incredibly lightweight, this trifle breezes by on Russell’s natural winningness; too bad it also relies on Jennifer Coolidge’s bull-in-a-china-shop persona. The Blu-ray looks very good; extras include a commentary and cast Q&A.

Diana

(e one)

This biopic is, almost unavoidably, chintzy soap opera, even if director Oliver Hirschbiegel tries taking the high road and avoid the tabloid gutter. The problem is that Princess Di’s sad story is tabloid fodder no matter how you tell it.

Naomi Watts gives an honorable performance even if she’s never quite able to show us the inside of Diana’s obviously tortured psyche. The hi-def transfer is fine; extras comprise cast/crew interviews and fashion booklet.

The Jungle Book

(Disney)

The last Disney feature made while Walt was still alive, this wondrous 1967 adaptation of Rudyard Kipling book about the orphan boy Mowgli is a rare instance in which everything—the dazzling animation, the immensely hummable songs, even the Disney-fying of Kipling’s dark story—coalesces into a family friendly classic.

And on Blu-ray—in a terrific hi-def transfer—one of Disney’s true classics looks as good as ever. Extras include commentary, interviews, alternate ending and intros.

Scorned

(Anchor Bay)

Annalynne McCord, as a vengeful girlfriend getting back at her man and best friend—who’ve been carrying on behind her back—gives an explosive performance that goes so gleefully over the top that director/cowriter Mark Jones or cowriter Sadie Katz’s crude revenge picture seems better than it is.

Viva Bianca makes an appealing other woman, Billy Zane is a blank as the adulterer, but McCord gives her all and keeps things watchable even as it careens further into ludicrousness. The Blu-ray looks good.

Successive Slidings of Pleasure

Trans-Europ-Express

(Redemption/Kino)

The films of Alain Robbe-Grillet—an experimental novelist best known for his screenplay for Alain Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad—are interesting more for their narrative games-playing than any psychological or dramatic coherence; 1966’s Expressand 1974’s Slidings are the first of his films to be released on Blu-ray.

Although some find depth in them, mainly they are attractive-looking, self-referential larks helped by the presence of Jean-Louis Trintignant and the gorgeous actresses Marie-France Pisier, Olga Georges-Picot and Anicee Alvina. The hi-def transfers are splendid; extras are amusing Robbe-Grillet interviews.

The White Queen

(Anchor Bay)

Although this handsome production about the internecine 15^th century Wars of the Roses copies what distinguished series like The Tudorsand The Borgias—including plentiful sex and royal intrigue—it pales in comparison to those.

An accomplished cast that includes Rebecca Ferguson, Amanda Hale and Janet McTeer works hard and often effectively, but often at the service of subpar storytelling: it’s a pity, considering the drama inherent in the source material. The hi-def images look spectacular; extras include behind the scenes and background featurettes.

DVDs of the Week

Dallas—Complete Season 2

(Warners)

The second season of this seminal evening soap opera’s reboot had to deal with the death of Larry Hagman, who created the venerable villain JR Ewing.

But the writers wrangled an intriguing plot out of Hagman’s (and JR’s) death, and the result is an entertaining guilty pleasure, even if holdovers like Linda Gray and Patrick Duffy are better at this sort of thing than newcomers like Josh Henderson and Jesse Metcalfe. Extras include commentary, extended episode, deleted scenes, featurettes and Hagman/JR appreciation.

Miss You Can Do It

(HBO)

A beauty pageant in Kewanee, Illinois, which features young girls who have physical disabilities, was created by Miss Iowa 2008 Abbey Curran to allow those with special needs (like Curran) to be appreciated for themselves.

Ron Davis’s heartwarming documentary gets up close and personal with Curran, several pageant contestants and those who love and support them; despite its laudable lack of sentimentality, it will bring a tear to the eye of anyone who sees it.

Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight

(HBO)

Stephen Frears’ docudrama about Muhammad Ali’s four-year battle to avoid going to Vietnam, which went all the way to the Supreme Court in 1971, matter-of-factly dramatizes how eight white justices (the lone black judge, Harry Blackmun, recused himself for non-racial reasons) dealt with this controversial and symbolic case.

Frears smartly shows the real Ali in interwoven film clips, and the story itself is reenacted persuasively by the likes of Frank Langella, Christopher Plummer, Harris Yulin and Fritz Weaver. It’s not earthshattering but shows us an important piece of our recent history.

The Summit

(IFC)

K2 mountain has attracted fearless mountain climbers precisely because it’s so dangerous to conquer—and this impressively mounted documentary explores how and why some survived (or didn’t) a particularly trying climb in 2008: 18 climbers reached the summit but only 7 survived to tell their stories.

Director Nick Ryan and writer Mark Monroe inventively juggle archival footage, emotional interviews and even hair-raising reenactments—that last is always a dicey proposition—to create a profound, even moving exploration of why certain people risk their own (and others’) lives for a thrill.

CD of the Week
Ottorino Respighi—Violin Sonatas

(Brilliant Classics)

Famous for his hugely popular Roman orchestral tone poems—The Fountains of Rome, The Pines of Rome and the Roman Festivals—Italian composer Ottorino Respighi also composed attractive chamber music, and this disc displays the melodic gracefulness that Respighi had in his bones.

His two youthful sonatas and six pieces for violin and piano, all sheerly pleasurable works, are performed by violinist Fabio Paggioro and pianist Massimiliano Ferrati with finesse and muscle.

Off-Broadway Review: The New Group's "Intimacy"

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Sunday, 09 February 2014 20:13; Written by Kevin Filipski

Intimacy

Written by Thomas Bradshaw, directed by Scott Elliott

Performances through March 8, 2014

Austin Cauldwell, Ella Dershowitz and Daniel Gerroll in Intimacy
(photo: Monique Carboni)

In the world of playwright Thomas Bradshaw, perversions lurk just beneath the dullness of quotidian life, like David Lynch’s specious Blue Velvet. But, as in Lynch’s film, there are scant insights, along with tedious reenactments of perversions that don't resonate and, even more damagingly, don't penetrate—in either sense.

Bradshaw’s latest, Intimacy, outdoes his previous play, Burning, by upping the ante; the earlier play preoccupied itself with anal sex, while Intimacy encompasses that and much more: vomiting, defecation, flatulence, two ejaculations, and sexual activities from self-stimulation to frottage, or dry humping, are all in a wisp of a plot linking three suburban families and pornography.

Matthew—a smart 17-year-old whose dad James grieves his wife’s death in a car accident by finding religion—spies on his hot next-door neighbor, 18-year-old high school senior and porn actress Janet. While her mother Pat knows about (and approves of) her activities, her father Jerry (despite his liberal attitudes) doesn’t know, at least until James shows him a magazine she’s in, which freaks him out. Meanwhile, Matthew begins hooking up with virginal schoolmate Sarah—whose bisexual father Fred works as a handyman at James’ house—and they start having sex without any penetration.

Bradshaw renders these relationships cartoonishly, especially at the end, when the play completely drops the pretense of any kind of reality (or surreality) and collapses under the combined weight of the playwright’s desperation and crudeness. The first act sets up the linkings among the characters, building climactically to Matthew’s decision to make a porn film and not only have Janet star but also, improbably, his dad (who’s funding it), her parents and Sarah’s dad. The second act pretty much comprises the scenes making up said porn film—titled, apparently without any irony, Intimacy—with a tacked-on coda that provides a tacky happy ending for its newly liberated and paired-off characters.

Perhaps Bradshaw felt that his play would work better by foregoing attempts at insight or psychological consistency, since he caricatures his septet of characters mercilessly. What we end up with is a septet speaking in banalities when not spouting platitudes, and given to ill-considered outbursts as when Pat ticks off what Janet calls “abstract statistics” about gun ownership: why would she have so much knowledge at her fingertips? Bradshaw never makes it a plausible part of her being, instead using it to get cheap laughs from a knowing liberal audience.

Then there are the many facile, easy ironies, like Pat discussing feminism while cleaning the toilet after Jerry has her look at his latest defecation because he thinks he might be physically ill, or when Jerry talks about porn and James starts in with a heartfelt prayer. Such toothless reminders that there’s never plumbing of any depths show that tactlessness and unsubtlety are the rule, which some audience members clearly appreciate: there are laughs galore for even the laziest piece of dialogue or dredged-up bit of plotting.

Not helping matters is how flatly, even indifferently enacted this all is by performers asked to literally bare themselves onstage—physically far more than psychologically. Even the incredibly brave (if foolhardy) Ella Dershowitz’s Janet, who walks around in the altogether, has her entirely bare body the subject of her dad’s Freudian fantasy as she keeps mentioning her “shaved pussy”: although we see the body part in question, the character herself isn’t laid bare in any meaningful way. And Scott Elliott’s smooth direction relies too much on visual "shocks" like snippets of actual porn shown on TV (including a clip of Deep Throat) and various bodily fluids flying everywhere.

In sum, Intimacy—though wallowing in scatology, obscenity, racism and pornography—remains, plentiful nudity notwithstanding, disappointingly impersonal—and skin deep.

Intimacy

Acorn Theatre, 410 West 42^nd Street, New York, NY

thenewgroup.org

Film Review: "The Monuments Men" is a Mess

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Thursday, 06 February 2014 23:30; Written by Matt Oakes

George Clooney's The Monument's Men is a monumess. A sloppily assembled patchwork of scenes, it's a great story with no backbone that flops from event to event like a fish out of water. Without the propulsion of any kind of momentum, the tale sags, leaving us dulled to the story's eventual important moments. With all the talent involved and Clooney behind the camera, we expect something with panache, wit and style and instead are served up this goofy slop of events thrown at the stage with all the disheveled precision of a pie-in-the-face. However intriguing the "true story" behind the film, it is apparently best left in books or relayed in insightful anecdotes as Clooney has all but snuffed the life out of what ought to be a monumental account. As Roger Ebert famously said, "Movies are not about what they are about, but how they are about it." Here, Clooney's how looks a lot like wingin' it.

As mentioned above, the biggest problem holding The Monuments Men back from glory is how frumpily the series of events are organized. Scenes flow into each other like class five rapids, positively clashing and jarring any sense of time or place. Tacking a scene set in France onto one in Germany or America, we never have a foothold on where we are or when exactly anything is taking place. Clooney throws date on the screen but they will hop to another moment in time and another character whose location and significance we can only guess. Only when Clooney's voiceover cuts through are we informed of the context of the content; a sure sign of narrative failure. When you're tasked with explaining to the audience what they're seeing, you know you're taken a wrong turn off the successful storytelling highway.

So as the film crashes from one scene to another, we're left trying to hold onto some semblence of structure and even the characters give us little to grasp onto. With the likes of Bill Murray, John Goodman, Matt Damon, Jean Dujardin and Bob Balaban assembled, one would expect stirring ensemble work but, for the most part, Clooney shies away from satisfying character development or captivating ensemble work. The only time he stops to really try and delve into characters are when they face death. What he fails to understand is that we already need to be invested at that point. You can't kill someone off and then try and make them important posthumously. These "oh wait" moments ring a clear signal of his inability to save the unfocused screenplay from itself and a blinding sign of his desperate attempts to course correct too late in the game.

Even with all these missteps, there are a number of intriguing and poignant scenes interspersed throughout but even they come across as too clunkily set and architecturally inorganic to propel the audience into a suspended state of caring. We want to know who these characters are but we rarely do. Goodman is just kind of there, Dujardin plays up his irresistible French charm and Balaban has some nice material to work his mousey persona on but none really amount to much more than appreciators of art. When Murray is given a dramatic moment to break down in the shower, he puts in some solid work but it makes no sense in the context surrounding that moment. It's like watching wrestling at the nail salon. It just doesn't gel.

Where Monuments Men's biggest disappointment is its squandered use of a killer cast. I will give credit to Cate Winslet, who will soon likely be an Academy Award winner, for her work as a Parisian art aficionado as her work is more notable than any of the gentlemen with whom she shares the screen.

And if you thought War Horse was old-fashion wait until you get a load of this. From the hokey John Williams-wannabe score (courtesy of Alexandre Desplat) to the almost played-for-laughs Nazi presence, it's just one long page in the book of cinematic taboo. While this may have worked better in 1965, it certainly doesn't fit 2014. Clooney has been able to manipulate time periods to his liking in the past but his attempt to do a period piece told in dated fashion works about as well as telling the Rwanda Genocide as a rom-com.

One thing is abundantly clear at this junction, Clooney's art junkie project was certainly not moved from its original release date to "fix up the effects." Columbia must have know they had little more than a hodgepodge of scenes and didn't know how to piece them together. The resulting papier mâchéd clunker of a wartime dramedy is a futile effort at grasping at straws. Worse yet, it's boring.

C-

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February '14 Digital Week I

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Tuesday, 04 February 2014 03:09; Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-rays of the Week

A Case of You

(IFC)

Once again it’s time to extol the virtues of Evan Rachel Wood, an actress incapable of a false note in any of her performances—especially here, since surrounding her is an inoffensive but forgettable rom-com that’s too cutesy to be effective.

A mopey Justin Long (who co-wrote with his brother Christopher and even more mopey co-star Kier O’Donnell), an unbelievably hammy Peter Dinklage and a phoned-in Vince Vaughan can’t ruin Wood’s golden appearance, happily. The hi-def transfer looks good; extras include interviews.

City of Angels

Two Weeks Notice

(Warners)

If you’re remaking a classic like Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire, I guess you should make it as unrecognizably sappy as possible, which is what 1998’s City of Angels does, underscored by Meg Ryan and Nicolas Cage’s lack of chemistry; best is a soundtrack featuring U2’s “If God Would Send His Angels” and the Goo Goo Dolls’ “Iris.” 2002’s

Two Weeks Notice, a paper-thin comedy, glides by on Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant’s star power, even if writer-director Marc Lawrence nearly sabotages it all with gimmicky silliness. Both Blu-ray transfers look fine; extras include commentaries and music videos (City) and commentary, making-of, deleted scenes and gag reel (Notice).

Dreamworld

(Sneak Attack)

Here’s another inconsequential rom-com about a faltering animator who falls for a slightly annoying but endearing young lady whom he accompanies on a road trip to Pixar.

Whit Hertford isn’t very interesting either in the lead or as co-writer, while Mary Kate Wiles is too eccentrically goofy to charm as much as her character is supposed to. The hi-def transfer looks decent; extras include a commentary, blog and short films.

Fanny Hill/The Phantom Gunslinger

(Vinegar Syndrome)

Of these mild ‘60s artifacts, Russ Meyer’s adaptation of Fanny Hill—nicely photographed in B&W—is easiest to digest, even if its attempts to ape Tom Jones are mainly inept: Leticis Roman’s inadvertently sexy heroine only intermittently scores.

Albert Zugmsith, who produced Fanny, also directed and produced Gunslinger, a western that starts promisingly but soon falls apart. The hi-def transfers look good; extras (on DVD only) are two interviews.

The Fifth Estate

(Touchstone)

Even a story as movie-ready as the Julian Assange/Wikileaks scandal doesn’t quite work on film, despite director Bill Condon’s obvious effort to rescue it from overfamiliarity: like Aaron Soprkin’s The Newsroom, we are asked to get emotionally involved in old news, however persuasively recreated.

Fancy computer-screen visuals seem a desperate bid to appeal to a younger crowd, while Benedict Cumberbatch’s amazing transformation into the arrogant Assange makes the film feel like a documentary at times, which is at odds with the bells and whistles. On Blu-ray, the transfer looks terrific; extras include special effects featurettes.

Jules and Jim

(Criterion)

Made in 1962, Francois Truffaut’s third feature surpasses his arresting debut The 400 Blows with its surehanded treatment of a difficult subject: a ménage a trois between two men and a woman (in the sensational form of Jeanne Moreau at the height of her allure).

Truffaut’s command of the medium was never greater—and he never approached this masterpiece again in his remaining two decades, sadly. Criterion’s luminous Blu-ray exquisitely shows off Raoul Coutard’s B&W photography; extras include commentaries, archival Truffaut interviews and segments from French TV programs.

Metallica—Through the Never

(Blackened)

Hungarian director Nimrod Antal provided the visual flash and muscle for the metal superstars’ 3-D concert movie, but he’s also to blame for a ridiculous-looking “frame” of surreal segments that lessens the show’s visceral power.

At least longtime fans will love the song selection, which skimps on recent stuff in favor of full-throated blasts of vintage Metallica. The Blu-ray image looks splendid, while the sound pummels; extras include a 75-minute making-of doc, interviews, Q&A and music video.

Mother of George

(Oscilloscope)

Despite director Andrew Dosunmu’s low-key approach, this story of a Nigerian wife in Brooklyn who goes to extremes to get pregnant (because her mother-in-law feels she’s beneath her beloved son) is too contrived for its full dramatic effect to work.

Still, there are lovely performances by Isaach de Bankolé (husband) and especially Danai Gurira (wife), and Bradford Young’s burnished cinematography looks award-worthy on Blu-ray. Extras include audio commentary, deleted scenes and featurette with interviews.

DVDs of the Week

Brutalization

Erotic Blackmail

(One 7 Movies)

Wakefield Poole’s Bible

(Vinegar Syndrome)

A pair of 70s exploitation films, Brutalization and Blackmail have little to offer except an early gang-rape sequence and the presence of Emmanuelle’s Sylvia Kristel in the former film (whose real title is the less sexy Because of the Cats).

Wakefield Poole’s Bible—which is definitely not your parents’ good book—lacklusterly dramatizes scenes like Adam & Eve and Samson & Delilah, but despite an attractive cast (Georgina Spelvin is Bathsheba), it’s more a curio than a truly erotic soft-core flick. Bible extras include Poole’s commentary, interview and deleted scenes.

The Courtship of Eddie’s Father

The Jimmy Stewart Show

(Warner Archive)

Bill Bixby and Brandon Cruz had great chemistry as a widower and young son in the beloved sitcom Courtship; the third season set (1971-2) also showcases superb guest stars like Carol Lawrence’s free-spirited Soviet, Sally Struthers’ free-spirited artist and Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara’s needy neighbor couple.

One of our most beloved movie stars, Jimmy Stewart never looked comfortable starring in his own sitcom, as this lone season (also from 1971-2) set shows: his endearing persona came off better on Johnny Carson.

Dolmen

Sebastian Bergman

(MHZ)

The tense, Brittany-set crime drama Dolmen—which follows an increasingly convoluted murder investigation by detective Marie, who’s returned home for her wedding after years away—is distinguished by its atmospheric locales and Ingrid Chauvin’s multi-shaded performance.

Similarly, Rolf Lassgard is stunning as a psychologically scarred criminal profiler in Sebastian Bergman, a gritty procedural that starts slowly but soon becomes addictive.

It’s Not Me, I Swear

(First Run)

Nuit #1

(Koch Lorber)

These Quebec-set films give a glimpse at French-Canadian cinema. Philippe Falardeau’s It’s Not Me (2008), a penetrating but lighthearted look at a 10-year-old boy’s tribulations, has a terrific performance by young Antoine L’Ecuyer.

Anne Emond’s Nuit #1 (2011), which looks at how a one-night stand affects both principals, is shallower than it thinks, but the acting—notably by the fearless Catherine de Lean—gives it some gravitas.

CD of the Week

Benjamin Britten—Britten to America

(NMC)
Early in his career, Benjamin Britten was composing music for radio shows, films and theater, and some of these rarities appear on an interesting disc that displays yet another facet of the composer whose centenary was commemorated this past year.

Although the fragmented nature of these works is unavoidable, there are moments of great beauty in his scores for two plays by W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood, The Ascent of F6 and On the Frontier,along with a BBC/CBS radio series, An American in England. Maybe these aren’t essential Britten compositions, but for Britten completists, this release should be something of a godsend.

Reviews

February '14 Digital Week II

Off-Broadway Review: The New Group's "Intimacy"

Film Review: "The Monuments Men" is a Mess

C-

February '14 Digital Week I

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