the traveler's resource guide to festivals & films
a FestivalTravelNetwork.com site
part of Insider Media llc.
Connect with us:
Film and the Arts
January '15 Digital Week II
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 13 January 2015 20:34
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Archer—Complete 5th Season (Archer Vice)
(Fox)
In the fifth season of this animated spy spoof, Archer and his cohorts are no longer at the ISIS agency, instead becoming drug dealers attempting to sell cocaine.
With a top-notch voice cast—Aisha Tyler is incomparably hilarious as Archer's pregnant ex-girlfriend Lana and Jessica Walter devilishly sly as Archer's mother—and brightly-colored animation, Archer scores as a funny parody that strikes the right balance between crassness and cleverness. The hi-def images are striking; extras include a music video and interview.
(Fox)
For the final installment of the trilogy from the Ayn Rand novel that's become a conservative bible, the filmmaking and acting are even more amateurish than in the previous two parts: an epic tale of a dystopian United States saved by patriotic entrepreneurs is presented on an amateurish level just a notch below a bad high-school play.
The acting is lousy, the directing and writing inept, the photography and sets cheap-looking; I must apologize to Taylor Schilling and Samantha Mathis, whose mediocre acting as Dagny Taggert in the first two films is award-worthy next to Part 3's dregs. The movie looks good on Blu-ray; extras include short on-set featurettes.
88
(Millennium)
Director April Mullen's derivative mystery, cribbed from Memento, follows a young woman who finds herself in a diner bloodied, with a gun and no memory of how she got there. Her story is gradually pieced together through flashbacks; the scrambled chronology fights for screen time with much gore and flying bullets.
Katharine Isabelle, onscreen for pretty much all of the 88-minute running time, lacks the sort of forceful screen presence that makes viewers forgive lapses in logic, plotting and dialogue. The Blu-ray image looks decent; extras include making-of featurettes.
(Fox)
I had hoped David Fincher could do something with Gillian Flynn's trashy novel, but her equally moribund screenplay pulls him under, making this glossy but uninvolving adaptation of one of the least deserving bestsellers ever as close to a hack job as Fincher has ever made. There's a choppiness and lack of rhythm that's shocking coming from the director of Zodiac, the textbook example of expertly pacing a slow-moving story.
Flynn's satirical targets are obvious—blueblood New Yorkers, moronic Midwesterners, white trailer trash, the media, fatuous TV hosts, ambulance-chasing lawyers—and Fincher indulges his writer so much that this long movie quickly becomes tiresome. Even the casting is off: Ben Affleck's chiseled jaw and Rosamund Pike's ice-queen look don't make them act any better; only Carrie Coon gives a fully realized performance as Ben's twin sister. The hi-def transfer is superb; Fincher's chatty commentary is the lone extra.
The Manners of Downton Abbey
(PBS)
Here's more proof that Downton Abbey has become a cultural phenomenon: this one-hour special that's basically a making-of featurette has received a standalone Blu-ray release instead of being part of the full season release.
Host Alastair Bruce, the series' historical advisor, takes viewers behind the scenes to show how he and his staff ensure that the actors and production adhere to the necessary historical fidelity for the series' time period. The hi-def image is excellent; lone extra is a bonus scene.
My Left Foot
(Lionsgate)
Although Daniel Day-Lewis deservedly won his first Best Actor Oscar in Jim Sheridan's inspiring but unsentimental biography about Christy Brown, whose cerebral palsy and inability to use anything but his left foot didn't stop him from becoming a celebrated writer, there are also tremendously affecting portrayals by Hugh O'Conor as the young Christy and Brenda Fricker as Christy's headstrong mother.
Sheridan's sensitive direction makes this 1989 drama is a masterpiece from its first frame. The hi-def transfer looks quite good; extras are short featurettes.
DVDs of the Week
Playing Dead
(First Run)
In this bizarrely amusing French mystery, washed-up actor Jean takes a job playing victims in a crime scene reenactment at a Swiss ski resort, while Noemie is the local magistrate working on the case who is at first annoyed by Jean's annoying behavior but—surprise!—gradually warms to him.
Writer-director Jean-Paul Salome has cleverly created a weirdly entertaining movie with memorably oddball lead characters, enacted persuasively by Francois Damiens (Jean) and Geraldine Nakache (Noemie).
(TLA)
German writer-director Anne Zohra Berrached's concise, clinical study of a lesbian couple that wants a baby, only to discover that Germany's establishment health facilities can't (or won't) help: so they desperately look for sperm donors, which opens up a whole new can of worms.
Karina Plachetka and Sabine Wolf are nakedly vulnerable as the women, whose dilemma—including jealousy and depression—is beautifully handled by Berrached in a pointed 75-minute film that never approaches melodrama or maudlin.
Who Killed Alex Spourdalakis?
(Disinformation)
This devastating true story about an autistic teen's unfortunate death is a wholesale condemnation of a medical establishment that won't—or refuses to—deal with children suffering from a disease which needs special treatment.
Director Andy Wakefield tells this tragic tale through the eyes of Alex's mother and godmother, accused of his murder when they decide that neither they nor he can tolerate his condition any longer. Tough to watch, this is still a must-see and humane look at our medical system's heartlessness. Extras comprise filmmaker interview and featurettes.
Busoni/Strauss—Violin Concertos
(Hyperion)
The valuable series "The Romantic Violin Concerto" has brought dozens of unsung works out of mothballs for listeners to appreciate anew, and the 16th volume also does that with concertos by Ferruccio Busoni and Richard Strauss, neither of which are among either composer's greatest, but both are attractive and melodic with ample opportunities for a talented soloist to show off her chops.
And this first-rate recording has that in spades with accomplished violinist Tanja Becker-Bender, whose lively tone and exemplary technique are perfectly attuned to Busoni and Strauss, as are conductor Garry Walker and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.
Rachmaninov—The Piano Concertos
(Decca)
Sergei Rachmaninov was a master piano player and composer, and this two-CD, one-Blu-ray set, which brings together his four masterly concertos and equally worthyRhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, is one of the best editions available, simply because of its soloist: Russian pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy, who originally recorded these works in 1972.
Now that they've been remastered, Ashkenazy's interpretations can once again be heard in all their glory—his rendition of the formidable third concerto (the "Rach 3" of Shinemovie fame) leading the way—with Andre Previn and the London Symphony Orchestra providing rich accompaniment. The Blu-ray disc allows listeners the chance to savor these seminal recordings in the highest audio resolution possible.
January '15 Digital Week I
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 06 January 2015 21:26
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Elsa & Fred
(Millennium)
In a closely-fought battle between saccharine and star power, the former ekes out a victory against Oscar winning vets Shirley MacLaine and Christopher Plummer, who play an elderly couple who try and enjoy their unlikely romance despite her flights of fancy and his unceasing dourness.
Director Michael Radford, who has remade 2005's Elsa y Fred from Argentina, displays his usual professionalism, but a treacly finale set in Rome that reenacts La Dolce Vita's famous Trevi fountain sequence, defeats him and his still-glamorous stars. The movie looks first-rate on Blu-ray; lone extra is a making-of featurette.
Horns
(Anchor Bay/Radius-TWC)
I don't know Joe Hill's underlying novel, but Alexandre Aja's crass adaptation turns a decent story—a young man accused of his girlfriend's murder grows horns, causing all he meets to confess hidden desires or secrets—into a hackneyed melodrama that relentlessly hammers home its obvious symbolism.
Daniel Radcliffe is intensely committed in the lead, but even he can't find much meat on the bones of a metaphor that, exhausting itself after 45 minutes, spins in place for the rest of its repetitive two hours, padded with things like a ludicrous, homophobic subplot about two closeted cops. The Blu-ray image looks excellent; lone extra is a making-of.
Memphis
(Kino Lorber/Visit Films)
In Tim Sutton's moody character study, a blues musician whose creativity has stagnated drifts around Memphis in an attempt to reconnect with his muses, even if it seems like no matter what he tries or whom he deals with, his personal and professional lives remain maddeningly out of reach.
Although it's exceedingly slow, there's a surfeit of atmosphere in this impressionistic musical portrait that's dominates by Willis Earl Beal's magnetic performance. The hi-def transfer is outstanding; extras include a deleted scene and interviews.
(Millennium)
Cornball in the extreme, this would-be inspirational drama about a self-help author unable to remain anonymous and a cross-section of famous and ordinary people his words help is so disjointed and filled with sleep-walking actors from Sylvester Stallone and Kira Sedgwick to Danny Aiello and Tom Berenger that it falls completely flat.
Writer-director John Herzfeld—who once made the oddly entertaining ensemble film, Two Days in the Valley—does nothing right this time, and the desperation of everyone involved is seen in every frame. The hi-def transfer looks good.
DVDs of the Week
Divine Madness
(Warner Archive)
Director Michael Ritchie—who was at the tail end of his cinematic prime (The Candidate, Smile, The Bad News Bears, Semi-Tough)—filmed Bette Midler's 1979 Pasadena shows for posterity, with the great William A. Fraker as his cinematographer, and the result is an enteraining time capsule of an unabashed diva in her own prime.
Midler tells as many dirty jokes and stories as she sings her songs, even if she does show off her impressive pipes on "The Rose" (then a brand-new tune); too bad that the DVD version omits two songs from the original concert film.
(Kino Lorber)
Actress Valeria Golino makes an auspicious directorial debut with this engrossing character study about a free-spirited Italian college student Irene who regularly smuggles drugs from Mexico (via California) to help perform assisted suicides under the pseudonym "Honey."
With a powerful performance by Jasmine Trinca in the deceptively difficult title role, Golino has made a strong, intelligent drama that would be an impressive achievement for any director, let alone a first-timer.
A Will for the Woods
(First Run)
The deeply personal story follows Clark Wang, a man whose terminal illness prods him to explore the green burial movement in order to use his upcoming death as a way to help preserve the environment.
Directors Amy Browne, Jeremy Kaplan, Tony Hale and Brian Wilson, along with Clark and his partner Jane, have made a compelling documentary that's rich in humanity and hope, sadness and humor. Extras include extended, deleted and follow-up scenes.
Anne Akiko Meyers—The American Masters
(e one)
With this welcome sort-of sequel to her American Album,violinist Anne Akiko Meyers again displays her endless versatility and virtuosity in three very different works by Samuel Barber, Barber's student John Corigliano, and Corigliano's student Mason Bates.
Barber's glorious 1939 Violin Concerto has rarely sounded so of a piece, Corigliano's lovely 2010 Lullaby for Natalie (Meyers' first-born daughter) receives a heartfelt reading, and Bates' inventive 2012 Violin Concerto gives the soloist an extended technical workout: she passes all three tests with flying colors, complemented by Leonard Slatkin's sensitive conducting of the London Symphony Orchestra. Barber may be the lone "American Master" among this composing trio, but this album provides incontrovertible evidence that Meyers also deserves that title.
Nicola Benedetti—Homecoming, A Scottish Fantasy
(Decca)
This followup to Italia, which explored her Italian musical roots, finds violinist Nicola Benedetti reveling in the richness of her Scottish heritage, beginning with Max Bruch's Scottish Fantasy, a concerto in all but name that spins lilting melodies and singing violin lines from a bottomless well of Scottish folk song and Robert Burns tunes.
It's no surprise that Benedetti is also an unabashed Burns lover; the rest of the disc comprises Burns and folk settings for varying instrumentation, from small ensembles to the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, led by Rory Macdonald. Throughout, the constant is Benedetti's miraculous musicianship: while, as a bonus, her disc notes show that she's also a wonderfully evocative writer.
December '14 Digital Week IV
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 23 December 2014 22:09
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
The Good Lie (Warners)
This earnest, touching drama follows the true story of Sudanese young men who escaped their country's horrific civil war and traveled across the Atlantic to start afresh with the help of volunteers who eased their navigation of the bewildering but welcoming place called America.
Director Philippe Falardeau wisely keeps the focus on the new arrivals, even if that entails some melodrama and sentimentality, further maximized by the likes of Reese Witherspoon (featured on the cover to try and sell the movie) and Corey Stoll in supporting roles. The Blu-ray image looks first-rate; extras comprise deleted scenes and making-of featurette.
Tosca
(Decca)
Vincenzo Bellini's final opera, I Puritani, dramatizing the 17th century English Civil War, is given a sturdy 2009 production in Bologna, Italy; its stars, tenor Juan Diego Florez and soprano Nino Machaidze, have superb stage chemistry to go with their ability to easily navigate the composer's treacherously difficult vocal writing.
Giacomo Puccini's perennial audience favorite, Tosca, is brought to vivid life in this 2011 Zurich, Switzerland staging; its formidable central trio of Americans Emily Magee and Thomas Hampson and German Jonas Kaufmann provide the gripping center of Puccini's tragic tale of love and death. Both operas have impeccable sound and video on Blu-ray.
The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears
(Strand)
This followup to Amer, Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani's unsettling homage to the Italian slasher genre called giallo, ups the ante in its dissection of a man's mental, physical and psychosexual anguish when he discovers his wife has disappeared.
The directors fetishize everything, both in the film and in their visual style, comprising closeups, fragmented shots, split screens, dazzling lighting and editing; for awhile, it's intriguing, even hypnotic, but the technique soon becomes a dead end, and the repetition becomes numbing. The vividness of the filmmaking is given its hi-def due on Blu-ray.
The Man with Two Brains
(Warner Archive)
By the time of their 1983 romp, writer-actor Steve Martin and writer-director Carl Reiner had polished their silly but probingly sarcastic humor; if this mad-doctor spoof carries more comedic weight than the hit-or-miss The Jerk or Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, it's because Martin himself is more agile, more willing to go for broke on camera without losing the thread of his character and story, something he'd perfect in the following year's tour de force All of Me.
Kathleen Turner shows admirable pluck as the femme fatale from hell, willing to go along with Martin on his inspired flights of sheer lunacy, and if it all bogs down at the end, the first hour or so flies by effortlessly.
Running on Empty
(Warner Archive)
A fascinating subject—ex-radicals, on the lam from the FBI, try and build a family and new lives—is fatally compromised by Naomi Foner's superficial, soap-opera script (which somehow earned a 1988 Oscar nomination and won a Golden Globe), which substitutes sentimentality and contrivance for three-dimensionality and taut drama.
Sidney Lumet's direction is solid, and his cast, especially River Phoenix as the restless teenage son, Martha Plimpton as his restless girlfriend and Christine Lahti as his mother, does what it can, but the messy script moots any chance at intelligent and insightful character study.
1000 Times Good Night
(Film Movement)
The always stunning Juliette Binoche adds another indelibly etched portrait to her growing collection of flawed but beautifully human women in this tough, no-nonsense account of a war photographer who returns home to her beloved husband and daughters but still feels the pull of the battlefield.
Director Erik Poppe shrewdly centers the action on Binoche both at home and in the midst of unbearable carnage, and the final shot of her when again in the midst of inhumanity is shattering. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau makes a sympathetic husband, but it's Binoche's fierce, utterly compelling performance that commands our attention throughout. Extras are on-set footage and interviews.
Holiday CD of the Week
Renee Fleming—Christmas in New York
(Decca)
Wherein America's foremost operatic diva gets jazzy for the holidays, with swinging versions of Christmas songs from "Winter Wonderland" to "In the Bleak Midwinter," showing off a voice still in its prime, and giving us a listen to her first musical love, which she may do more of once she stops singing Strauss and Mozart.
With help from such illustrious collaborators as Wynton Marsalis, Chris Botti, Rufus Wainwright and Kelli O'Hara (with whom she duets on a dreamy "Silver Bells"), Fleming celebrates the season in her usual elegant style. Too bad that this disc wasn't paired with a DVD of her PBS special, which also includes Fleming's performances of Christmas carols with her talented sister and daughters.
Music Reviews: Sir Paul's Latest Re-issues; Jimmy Page's History Book
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Monday, 22 December 2014 23:03
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Wings—Venus and Mars
Wings—Wings at the Speed of Sound
(Hear Music/Concord)
The Paul McCartney Archive Collection has been taking its sweet time covering Paul's amazing post-Beatles career—two releases per year seems to be the norm—and the latest are Wings' mid-70s number-one albums, Venus and Mars and Wings at the Speed of Sound.
1975's Venus and Mars, which followed closely on the heels of Paul's critical and commercial post-Beatles breakthrough, Band on the Run(still flying high on the charts when this came out), consolidated Wings' commercial success, even though it sounded like a slight comedown after the exhilarating songs on Band.
But the usual variety of musical styles is on display throughout Venus and Mars, from the opening "Venus and Mars/Rockshow"—which would be the concert opener during 1976's Wings Over America tour and at Paul's 2010 shows—to the closing cover of the British TV soap opera Crossroads theme song. In between are the bright-sounding "Magneto and Titanium Man," which showed Paul's interest in Marvel superheroes long before they became movie staples; "You Gave Me the Answer," another of Paul's delightful music-hall pastiches; "Call Me Back Again," housing one of Paul's most agile vocal performances; the smash "Listen to What the Man Said," showing off Paul's genius for arresting arrangements; and "Letting Go," a downbeat number that's actually one of Paul's most personal songs for wife Linda.
Released the following year, Speed of Sound gave the band new songs to play on tour (Paul was playing his first American concerts since the Beatles last performed in 1966) and provided a democratic way of presenting the group as more than simply Paul's backing band by having each member—even Linda, on the facile "Cook of the House"—take a crack at a lead vocal. Guitarist Denny Laine's rocker "Time to Hide" has the strongest musical legs, although Jimmy McCullough's somber "Wino Junko" attained tragic relevance following the 26-year-old guitarist's 1979 death from a heroin overdose.
Speed of Sound's Paul quotient consists of two huge singles—"Silly Love Songs," with its irresistibly melodic bass line, and the guilty-pleasure sing-along "Let Em In"—and fun if inessential romps through various genres like the funky "She's My Baby," bouncy "San Ferry Anne" and romantic "Warm and Beautiful." Best of all is the surging rocker, "Beware My Love," which became a live highlight on the 1976 tour. (Too bad Paul's never seen fit to resurrect it for any of his recent concerts.)
Along with an impressive remastering job of both albums, these re-issues come with an extra disc of added material, comprising B-sides, demos, alternate cuts, etc. Disc 2 of Venus includes the chugging hit single "Junior's Farm," the great, unheralded stomper "Soily"—never officially released, although Paul felt highly enough of it to make it the group's final encore through the '76 tour—and an early version of "Rock Show," which has a few interesting changes.
Sound's second disc contains piano demos of "Let 'Em In" and "Silly Love Songs" (both of which are intricately structured even at this early stage), Paul singing "Must Do Something About It" (which drummer Joe English sings on the record) and an alternate version of "Beware My Love" with Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham, which gives it extra oomph.
Next up in the Archive Collection are one of Paul's best albums, 1982's Tug of War, and one of his less compelling efforts, the 1983 follow-up Pipes of Peace. I'm still waiting for 1979's underrated Back to the Egg, but I don't think even Paul likes it very much, so I'm not holding my breath.
Jimmy Page
(Genesis)
Not content with simply knocking out superb new re-issues of Led Zeppelin's studio albums—Led Zeppelin I, II, III, Zoso (IV) and Houses of the Holy are available, with Physical Graffiti, Presence, In Through the Out Door and Coda presumably on the way next year—Jimmy Page has also put together a massive photographic autobiography, simply entitled Jimmy Page.
This gorgous cover-table tome (512 pages and 6-plus pounds' worth) is essential for any Page fan, from his teenage days to the Yardbirds, Zep, The Firm, his '90s reunion with Robert Plant, and beyond: this elegant volume is crammed with hundreds of photos of Page and his cohorts onstage, offstage, backstage and in the studio, complemented by captions and an occasional explanation, along with lists upon lists of what I assume is every concert tour Page has been on.
Unlike Plant, Page desperately wants to embark on one last megatour as you know whom; since that most likely won't happen, he's contented himself with bolstering his legacy as Led Zep's founder and premier musical architect. This book, along with those reissues, goes a long way toward cementing his legendary status as one of rock's greatest instrumentalists and composers.
More Articles...
Newsletter Sign Up
Upcoming Events
No Calendar Events Found or Calendar not set to Public.