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Film and the Arts
November '15 Digital Week II
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 11 November 2015 00:13
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
A.D.—The Bible Continues
(Fox)
With their sequel to The Bible, which proceeded from the Creation to the aftermath of Christ's resurrection, Roma Downey and Mark Burnett produce another multi-part mini-series, now starting with Jesus's crucifixion to the apostles' martyrdom.
The exceptional production values don't fully compensate for the mixed bag of actors, which runs the gamut from scenery-chewers to stiff zombies. A.D. makes an unpersuasive case for reviving sword-and-sandals spectaculars, even wasting such veterans as Greta Scacchi and Joanne Whalley. The hi-def transfer is spectacular; extras are several featurettes.
(Magnolia)
A televised meeting of the minds came during the 1968 presidential campaign when Gore Vidal and Bill Buckley—liberal and conservative intellectuals, respectively—squared off for a series of convention debates which ended up degenerating into nasty name-calling.
Morgan Neville and Robert Gordon's engaging documentary shows it wasn't their best moment but still made for riveting television. In a breezy 90 minutes, their lengthy and estimable careers in politics, the arts and celebrity punditry are illustrated alongside plenty of invaluable archival footage, while talking heads from Dick Cavett to the late Christopher Hitchens give the measure of both men and their era. The film looks good on Blu; extras are a directors' interview and added interviews.
The End of the Tour
(Lionsgate)
David Foster Wallace, who killed himself in 2008, has become the Kurt Cobain of authors, a genius whose early death robbed the world of his insightful writing; this adaptation of David Lipsky's memoir about his time with Wallace for a Rolling Stone magazine profile plays into that narrative but also humanizes him, thanks to playwright Donald Margulies' smart, resonant script.
Jason Segal and Jesse Eisenberg effectively portray both Davids—Wallace and Lipsky, respectively—and director James Ponsoldt drolly peeks behind the myth's curtain to show the real man. The film has a superb hi-def transfer; extras are a commentary by Ponsoldt, Margulies and Segal; interview with composer Danny Elfman; making-of featurette; and deleted scenes.
The Marquise of O
(Film Movement Classics)
Director Eric Rohmer's 1984 Full Moon in Paris presents yet another of his scatterbrained heroines who juggles men before deciding whom to choose. As usual with Rohmer, it's excessively talky without being particularly insightful, and low-key without any particular subtlety. Most interesting is an early appearance by that fine actor Fabrice Luchini.
By contrast, Rohmer's 1976 The Marquise of O, a German-language adaptation of Heinrich von Kleist's classic short story, is a winner in nearly every way, especially in its “stagebound” visuals and Edith Clever’s touching portrayal of the cluelessly pregnant heroine. Too bad Bruno Ganz is so disastrously uncharming as her insistent wooer: such great filmmaking doesn't need such a black hole at its center. Both movies look better than ever in new hi-def transfers; extras are archival interviews with actors and with Rohmer.
Home Fires
(PBS)
Even though there's a strong sense of deja vu in this six-part mini-series about women left behind during the early months of World War II in England—wives, widows, spinsters, all doing their part, as best they can, toward the war effort—the far stronger sense of place and showing how war affects so many different people in different ways is palpable.
Of course, the large and accomplished cast, led by Francesca Annis, Samantha Bond, Ruth Gemmell and Clare Calbraith, makes this impossible to look away from, even when one feels that one has already seen it, or at least something like it. The Blu-ray transfer is excellent.
(Deutsche Grammophon)
Rusalka
(Decca)
These Met Live in HD broadcasts start with Giuseppe Verdi's Macbeth, the least of his Shakespearean adaptations (Otello and Falstaff easily outclass this); but it has flavorful music, especially in Lady Macbeth's unsettling sleepwalking scene, performed here by the fearless Russian soprano Anna Netrebko as she does everything: grabbing it by the throat. She's the best thing in an otherwise proficient, uninspired staging.
Far better is Renee Fleming's signature role as the water nymph in Antonin Dvorak’s Rusalka, in which the most famous American soprano sings one of opera’s greatest hits, "Song of the Moon," in her lusciously creamy voice. Dvorak's beguiling and tuneful opera receives a stellar production. Both operas look and sound perfect in hi-def. Short backstage interviews are extras.
Toy Story That Time Forgot
(Disney/Pixar)
This latest Toy Story sequel might seem like a Disney money grab—it's only a 22-minute short that could easily have been an extra on a repackaging of the other films—but the short itself is funny and even poignant, and I enjoyed it cutting to the chase without an extra hour of often repetitive padding that the full-length movies abound in.
In any case, the gang's all here—the voices are Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Don Rickles, etc.—for some throwaway fun. The film looks terrific on Blu; extras comprise featurettes, deleted scenes and a commentary.
A Borrowed Identity
(Strand)
In Eran Riklis's adaptation of Sayed Kashua's novel Dancing Arabs, the complicated relationships between Israeli Arabs and Jews are unsparingly shown through the eyes of Eyad, an Arab student attending a high-class Jerusalem high school who falls for the sweet Jewish girl Naomi.
Through the persuasive performances of Tawfeek Barhom and Daniel Kitsis as the teens, Riklis expertly charts a sometimes comic, sometime tragic trajectory of two young people who, whether they admit it or not, have the weight of their families' history on their backs.
A French Village—Complete 1st Season
(MHZ)
In the first season of this overstuffed but absorbing French TV drama, a small French village's denizens deal with their country's surrender and subsequent Nazi takeover: watching men, women and children resist, collaborate or—as often likely—do both as the Germans infiltrate their homes and very lives makes for 12 episodes of captivating can't-miss TV.
The rich and harmonious ensemble—led by the glorious Audrey Fleurot, who played an ambitious public defender in the great French serial Spiral, as the wife of the town's lone doctor and acting mayor—is flawless: equally memorable are Nade Dieu and Marie Kremer as women caught in the occupation’s many traps. Here's hoping MHz releases the next several seasons soon.
(Warner Archive)
Based on a French farce by Georges Feydeau, this desperate 1968 attempt to find frolicsome comedy amid slamming doors, misunderstandings and adulterous escapades doesn't provide much froth, despite comic veterans like Alec Guinness and Robert Morley and even glamorous Gina Lollobrigida, obviously game for much more than she's allowed to do.
It's too bad that director-producer Peter Glenville has taken lavish costumes, sets and a fool-proof plot and turns it into 98 minutes of franticness in search of laughs.
CDs of the Week
Maurice Ravel—Complete Piano Works
(Honens)
Ravel—Piano Concertos
(Deutsche Grammophon)
Ravel—L'Enfant et les sortilèges/Shéhérazade
(Decca)
If any French composer embodied savoir faire, it was Maurice Ravel (1875-1937), whose elegant, civilized music can be heard in all its glory on three enchanting new recordings. On his two-disc traversal of Ravel's solo piano works, German pianist Hinrich Alpers plays with scrupulous restraint while giving these mostly short but still major works the breathing room they deserve, from the exquisite set of tone poems, Miroirs, to the lively Valses nobles et sentimentales. As a bonus, Alpers fleetly performs memorial works by Ravel contemporaries Casella and Honegger, along with four newly commissioned ones by current composers.
Ravel's two dazzling piano concertos are given buoyant readings by soloist Yuja Wang, with Lionel Bringuier conducting the Tonhalle-Orchester Zurich. Alongside Ravel’s masterpieces, Wang plays the F sharp major Ballade by Ravel's teacher Gabriel Fauré, which has the elegance of his pupil’s music as well as its refinement, which Wang's illuminating interpretation brings to the fore.
Maestro Seiji Ozawa, who recently turned 80, leads the Saito Kinen Orchestra in very fine renditions of two wonderful Ravel works: the one-act opera L'Enfant et les Sortilèges and orchestral song cycle Shéhérazade. Ozawa's affection for the composer is never in doubt, but it's his main singers who are most impressive: Susan Graham catches the exotic nuances of Shéhérazade, while Isabel Leonard—a guarantee of quality whatever she sings—makes an irresistible child in L'Enfant.
(Albany Records)
An occasionally playful and intelligent opera about Gertrude Stein, Ricky Ian Gordon’s 27 floats along well enough, but only infrequently catches in its music the culture shock that stamped Stein's Paris and the artists in her circle.
Stephanie Blythe makes a grand Gertrude and Elizabeth Futral a beautiful-sounding Alice B. Toklas, Stein's long-time partner: Alice's aria after Gertrude's death is the musical highlight. Michael Christie crisply conducts members of the St. Louis Symphony in this world premiere; too bad there’s no DVD or Blu-ray to highlight what looks like, from the CD booklet photos, 27's far from negligible visual component.
Broadway Review—‘On Your Feet’
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Sunday, 08 November 2015 23:47
- Written by Kevin Filipski
On Your Feet!
Songs by Emilio & Gloria Estefan & Miami Sound Machine; book by Alexander Dinelaris
Choreographed by Sergio Trujillo; directed by Jerry Mitchell
Opened November 5, 2015
 |
| Ana Villafañe in On Your Feet! (photo: Matthew Murphy) |
The jukebox musical began by marrying a slapdash story to a famous pop-song catalog, as in Mamma Mia (Abba) or Movin' Out (Billy Joel). A sub-genre soon arose, with songs commenting on the lives of the actual artists who wrote and/or performed them, like Jersey Boys(Four Seasons) and Beautiful (Carole King).
Continuing that trend, On Your Feet! tells the story of multi-million-selling Latina pop star Gloria Estefan, her husband/producer Emilio and their band Miami Sound Machine: it packs a lot of hits ("Conga" and "Rhythm Is Gonna Get You," for starters) into 2-1/2 hours, and a lot of cliches into Alexander Dinelaris's book—no surprise coming from a co-writer of the overrated movie Birdman.
The show tracks Gloria and Emilio's rise from the local Miami scene to dealing with record execs like the clueless mogul who scoffs at their attempt to crossover to English-language songs. Once they hit it big, there's no stopping them: at least until a 1990 bus accident knocked the grievously injured Gloria out of commission for 10 months, until she made her famous comeback singing "Coming Out of the Dark" on the following year's American Music Awards.
That comeback is the stirring climax of the musical, which otherwise is your basic rags-to-riches tale done with just enough tartness to avoid too much sentimentality. Even if the music becomes repetitive after awhile, those catchy hits just keep coming, with the appreciative audience treating the show like an actual Gloria Estefan concert. That illusion is helped immeasurably by one of the best Broadway debuts in recent memory.
Ana Villafañe, a remarkably talented actress whose strong singing voice booms out over the excellent onstage band, has created as memorable a characterization as Beautiful's Jessie Mueller did as Carole King. Too bad her costar John Segarra makes such an awkward Emilio; sure, there are the constant jokes about his heavily accented English, but Segarra makes Gloria's husband seem more robotic than simply uncomfortable.
Nearly matching Villafañe's exhilarating performance is Andrea Burns, who invests Gloria's anti-show biz mother with emotion, authenticity and authority. Burns also makes the most of her showstopping flashback, dancing and singing in a pre-Castro Cuban club: so much so that it makes one wish that she had a larger part in Gloria's onstage story.
With Sergio Trujillo's droll choreography and Jerry Mitchell's crafty direction combining to seamlessly weave the show's potentially clumsy flashbacks into the musical whole, On Your Feet!—despite some missteps—sticks the landing.
On Your Feet
Marquis Theatre, 1535 Broadway, New York, NY
onyourfeetmusical.com
Broadway Review—A.R. Gurney's ‘Sylvia'
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Friday, 06 November 2015 23:19
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Sylvia
Written by A.R. Gurney; directed by Daniel Sullivan
Performances through January 24, 2016
 |
| Annaleigh Ashford in Sylvia (photo: Joan Marcus) |
Sylvia is A.R. Gurney's most obvious (and probably only) crowd-pleaser: his kind-of shaggy-dog story, in which an affluent Upper East Side couple discovers that the stray that husband Greg brought home from Central Park is the wedge making them drift apart: Greg wants to keep her, while wife Kate does not.
The play's gimmick is that Sylvia, the adorable pooch, is played by an actress who speaks Sylvia's dialogue: sometimes to herself, other times to Greg and Kate, with whom she has actual conversations. The effect, while silly, is comically inspired and, depending on the actress playing the part, at times exhilarating.
When I saw Sylvia during its off-Broadway premiere run, Sarah Jessica Parker played her rather too cutesily: she was funny, of course, but not poignant. (I wouldn't be surprised if her replacement, Jan Hooks, found a better balance.) In this slick, brassy revival by director Daniel Sullivan, Sylvia is in the extremely capable hands of Annaleigh Ashford, an adroit physical comedienne who is also quick on her feet with a line or an ad-lib (especially, at the performance I attended, when an audience member's cell phone went off) and able to make us feel for her as...well, a human being.
Whenever Ashford barks—"hey hey hey hey!" is how Gurney has written it—it could be love, hate, anger, affection or irritation, and Ashford varies her tone and timbre to suit the occasion. The actress's showiness is out of necessity since it's a show-offy role, but Ashford smartly underplays as much as possible, and it's to her credit that she makes Sylvia (pooch and play) funnier and more affecting than it has any right to be.
Matthew Broderick long ago perfected his laconic, lazy-sounding line readings, which serves him well as Greg, whose midlife crisis (according to Gurney) comprises spending more time with a canine than with his wife Kate, who is played with her usual killer comic timing by Julie White. Even an underwhelming one-liner like calling Sylvia "Saliva" is done by White with a certain flair, even subtlety.
But subtlety is lacking in Robert Sella's portrayals in three minor roles, especially the two women he plays: a marriage counselor and old friend of Kate's. Perhaps Sullivan felt that Gurney's paper-thin play needed embellishing and so has Sella overact to the detriment of the small-scale joke at the play's center. But that isn't enough to derail this minor but entertaining comedy from one of our true living masters, with a true star turn by Annaleigh Ashford.
Sylvia
Cort Theatre, 138 West 48th Street, New York, NY
sylviabroadway.com
Theater Reviews—‘The Bandstand' & 'The Humans’ off-Broadway
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Thursday, 05 November 2015 22:53
- Written by Kevin Filipski
The Bandstand
Music by Richard Oberacker; book & Lyrics by Oberacker and Robert Taylor
Directed and choreographed by Andy Blankenbueler
Performances through November 8, 2015
The Humans
Written by Stephen Karam; directed by Joe Mantello
Performances through January 3, 2016
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| Corey Cott and Laura Osnes in The Bandstand (photo: Jerry Dalia ) |
A swing musical about the shards left from World War II—when men came home emotionally and physically shattered, and women found themselves widows—The Bandstand, with original songs and a book by Richard Oberacker and Robert Taylor evoking the era of Benny Goodman as it probes the mental morass of characters looking to finally put the war behind them, does a precarious, semi-successful balancing act between entertainment and psychological study.
Donny Novitski (and yes, there are Polish jokes) returns to Cleveland adrift. He survived the war, but his best buddy Michael, who played in a band with him near the front, died in battle. His survivor’s guilt makes him reluctant to visit Michael's widow Julia to tell her how he died. Meanwhile, he puts together a local band comprising other military men, and when he discovers Julia is a singer too, she joins the group; they also enter a radio contest to try and win a trip to New York City to perform on a national show and in a movie. The predictable trajectory of the story—romance! heartbreak! near-tragedy! happy ending!—is the weakest part of the show.
Oberacker’s music is a sturdy swing-music pastiche that purrs along nicely until the climactic number, an impassioned song called “Welcome Home,” comes out of nowehre, pouring out of Julia’s lungs and the men’s instruments, an affecting admittance of how damaged they still are. The polished cast begins with Corey Cott’s Donny, a nervy bundle of contradictions whose singing and music-making are nothing less than survival mechanisms. The rest of the band comprises Joe Carroll as drummer Johnny, Brandon J. Ellis as bassist Davy, Geoff Packard as trombonist Wayne, Joey Pero as trumpeter Nick and James Nathan Hopkins as sax player Jimmy, all of whom cannot only sing and act well but also persuasively play their instruments.
And, as Julia, there’s the magnetic Laura Osnes, one of our very best singing actresses—and someone who goes from strength to strength with every appearance—showing once again that she can summon not only great beauty but great power in her voice: her raw rendition of "Welcome Home" is guaranteed to leave every last audience member an emotional wreck.
Andy Blankenbueler’s stylish direction and lively choreography keep the show on the right track even when it bogs down in trite familiarity, such as introducing Donny's parents for no good reason and allowing the usually indispensable Beth Leavel to be saddled with unnecessary baggage as Julia’s sitcom-level mother. (She still sings beautifully.) But whenever Osnes and company let loose with another tune, most of the flaws of The Bandstand are forgiven.
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| The cast of The Humans (photo: Joan Marcus) |
In Stephen Karam’s The Humans, Erik and Deirdre arrive from Scranton to spend a snowy Thanksgiving with youngest daughter Brigid and her older boyfriend Richard in a Chinatown apartment they've just moved into. While oldest daughter Aimee came on Amtrak from Philadelphia, mom and dad drove with the girls' grandmother Fiona, seemingly in the early throes of Alzheimer's.
For 95 minutes, the family talks, argues, yells, apologizes, eats and, finally, calls it a night so the visitors can make it home. Karam writes believable conversational dialogue, knowing when to withhold information only to let it appear naturally later on. Several family secrets are spilled during the course of the evening, and Karam is able to make us feel that we too have lived with these people, getting to know them fairly intimately over the course of his one-act play.
But—of course there’s a "but"—Karam is a slave to contrivance, making The Humans similar to a TV sitcom trying to get serious and illuminate its characters' psychology. The convenient layout of Brigid and Richard’s apartment (perfectly rendered by designer David Zinn)—two distinct floors separated by a winding staircase—makes it too easy for characters to overhear others who think they are safe from prying ears. There always seems to be somebody (and it's always the person being discussed) who catches something he or she shouldn’t have.
Karam also drags poor Sept. 11 into this mix: Erik and Aimee went to the city that morning because—surprise!—Aimee had a job interview at the World Trade Center, and for awhile Erik couldn’t track Aimee down and thought she had perished. These people have enough in their daily lives to deal with without giving them some ginned up near-tragedy to add to their back story.
Finally, there’s the play's very structure: would a 60-year-old man and his 61-year-old wife take his sickly 79-year-old mother in a car for a three-hour plus drive in snowy weather to New York, only to plan to leave the same day after visiting their daughter for a mere hour and a half? (Forget that Erik has too much too drink so Aimee calls a car for them instead.) At the very least these people would stay over somewhere and start fresh in the morning.
Reservations aside, Joe Mantello’s always engaging staging and a top-flight ensemble—even among such veterans as Reed Birney (Erik), Jayne Houdyshell (Deirdre) and Cassie Beck (Aimee), Sarah Steele is a formidable presence as Brigid—help make The Humans seem more incisive and truthful than it really is.
The Bandstand
Paper Mill Playhouse, Millburn, NJ
papermill.org
The Humans
Laura Pels Theatre, 111 West 46th Street, New York, NY
roundabouttheatre.org
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