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Film and the Arts
May '14 Digital Week I
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 06 May 2014 03:49
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
The Art of the Steal
(Anchor Bay/Starz)
The targets in Jonathan Sobol’s caper flick—the Guttenberg Bible and a Seurat painting—are not the usual Hollywood fluff, although the zany motley criminal crew led by Matt Dillon and Kurt Russell as double-crossing half-brothers is.
With Terence Stamp and Jason Jones making an amusingly ragtag Interpol team, the adversaries are offbeat enough to keep this 90-minute heist movie afloat, even if it evaporates from memory when it ends. The Blu-ray image looks good; extras include making-of featurettes and director commentary.
Hit the Deck
(Warner Archive)
This colorful 1955 musical directed by Roy Rowland might not be an obvious winner in the era of Guys and Dolls, An American in Paris and Singin’ in the Rain, but its killer cast (Debbie Reynolds, Jane Powell and Ann Miller) performs songs like “The Lady from the Bayou” and “More Than You Know” while hoofing it up to Hermes Pan’s choreography.
This musical about sailors may not be On the Town, but it’s endless Technicolor fun all the same. The movie looks splendid on Blu-ray.
Mobius
(Lionsgate)
Director Eric Rochant’s breakneck thriller features The Artist Oscar winner Jean Dujardin, typecast as a suave Russian double agent in Paris who falls for his latest mark, played by a stunning Cecile de France.
There are enough dizzying double crosses to make the viewer forget the many inconsistencies that are par for the course in the spy genre, and Tim Roth and John Lynch provide solid Anglo support. On Blu-ray, the fantastic locales and glamorous stars look their hi-def best; extras include interviews.
Mr. Jones
(Anchor Bay/Starz)
The storyline of this found-footage horror film—a couple looking for peace and quiet stumble upon an infamous sculptor whose malevolent works start terrifying them to within an inch of their lives—is acceptable.
Too bad that, after a strong set-up, the payoff has scant originality or scares, even if Sarah Jones and Mark Steger are a credible couple and director Karl Mueller stretch this out to 80 watchable (if forgettable) minutes. The hi-def transfer looks fine.
Parsifal
(Sony Classical)
Salome
(Arthaus Musik)
In his reverent Metropolitan Opera staging of Richard Wagner’s final, ethereal opera Parsifal, director Francois Girard has a formidable cast—Jonas Kaufman as Parsifal, Rene Pape, Katarina Dalayman and Peter Mattei—performing vocal magic under conductor Danielle Gatti’s sensitive baton.
Richard Strauss’ still biting Salome, from Oscar Wilde’s play about the teenager who danced for John the Baptist’s head on a platter, has a sexy Salome in Swedish soprano Erika Sunnegardh in Gabriele Lavia’s otherwise adequate 2010 production. Both operas look and sound smashing on Blu-ray; Parsifal extras include backstage interviews.
Toto—Live in Poland: 35thAnniversary Tour
(Eagle Rock)
Who knew that Toto—a band whose last hit was in 1982—was still performing for fans around the world? Based on the Polish crowd’s fervent response to this 2013 concert, apparently Toto is still a big deal.
Hits “Africa,” “Rosanna” and “Hold the Line” get huge responses, of course, but surprisingly so do deep album cuts like “Hydra” and “St. George and the Dragon”; original members David Paich and Steve Lukather (whose blistering guitar solos are the highlights of the show) are well-augmented by an army of session men and vocalists. The concert looks and sounds impeccable in hi-def; extras are interviews with band members.
Veronica Mars
(Warners)
I know I’m not the target audience for this by-the-numbers comic mystery based on a TV series I never watched, but Rob Thomas’s overlong movie version moves at a snail’s pace, has little dramatic urgency and true comedy, and is populated with cardboard characters, lazy plotting and phoned-in performances.
Many fans signed up to fund this through Kickstarter; let’s hope that they feel they got their money’s worth. The Blu-ray image is top-notch; extras include interviews and deleted scenes.
DVDs of the Week
The Address
(PBS)
In his new 90-minute PBS documentary, director Ken Burns shows how the most famous speech in American history—Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address—endures for each generation, as seen at a Vermont school for boys with learning difficulties, as the students create their own sense of self-worth and accomplishment by memorizing and reciting it.
By also allowing several students to narrate the speech’s historical context, Burns once again brings American history alive for a new generation. Lone extra is Steven Spielberg reciting the speech.
China Beach—Complete Season 3
(StarVista)
The third season of this groundbreaking Vietnam War television drama—about the unsung women who served our country—was originally shown during 1989-90.
Once again, the show owes its success to stars Dana Delany and Marg Helgenberger and the many period songs that evoke both nostalgia and emotion, from Cream’s “White Room, “Sunshine of Your Love” and “Strange Brew” to Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl.” Extras are interviews, commentaries, gag reel and deleted scene.
Falling in Love
Islands in the Stream
(Warner Archive)
Falling in Love, Ulu Grosbard’s saccharine 1984 romance with Robert DeNiro and Meryl Streep as marrieds who meet on their way to work each morning and fall in love, has little chemistry between its stars, which allows Dianne Wiest and Harvey Keitel to steal the movie.
In Franklin J. Schaffner’s musty 1976 adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s Islands in the Stream, George C. Scott gives a characteristically crusty portrayal of the flawed hero in a hackneyed story about family, art and war.
The Story of the Jews
(PBS)
Simon Schama, author of numerous books and host of television documentaries about art history, returns with his multi-part exploration of a most expansive subject: the history of the Jewish people.
A mere five hour-long episodes can’t hope to convey the fullness of that rich history, but Schama invests the subject—dealing with European anti-Semitism from the Middle Ages to the Holocaust—with his animated and deeply personal touch, which makes the series an intelligent and powerful viewing experience.
Suzanne Vega—Solitaire Standing
(MVD)
This 2003 Rome concert, comprising a baker’s dozen of Suzanne Vega’s classic songs, lasts barely an hour: Vega also recites four of own poems, which her friend Valerio Piccolo translates for the audience.
Vega is in fine form throughout, especially on her best songs like the opening “Marlene on the Wall,” “The Queen and the Soldier” and “Solitude Standing,” the title track from her 1987 breakthrough album that featured her two biggest hits, “Luka” and “Tom’s Diner” (which she saves for last, of course). The lone extra is a Vega interview.
April '14 Digital Week V
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 30 April 2014 00:51
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Big Bad Wolves
(Magnet)
That this gripping Israeli thriller was named best movie of 2013 by Quentin Tarantino gave me pause, since I don’t share his taste for trashy flicks: but directors Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado’s shocking revenge drama is riveting throughout—at least until an ending that reeks of desperation.
Showing how ordinary people can do horrible things—like kidnaping and torturing a man suspected of brutally murdering children—the directors show off endless style to spare. The Blu-ray image looks stellar; extras are making-of featurettes.
(Kino)
Director Jess Franco—never one to shy away from controversy—made his own Satanic nuns/witches entry in 1973, a couple of years after Ken Russell’s own blatantly pornographic Inquisition horror flick, The Devils.
In Franco’s version, nubile young nuns hike up their outfits and writhe around in their beds, often with political and religious leaders for hypocritical shenanigans. Although extremely risible, Franco’s belief in his film’s seriousness keeps it watchable; a few sexy actresses also help his cause. The Blu-ray image looks good; extras include a Franco interview and deleted footage.
Gimme Shelter
(Lionsgate)
Despite Vanessa Hudgens giving her all as a runaway teen trying to improve life for herself and her unborn baby, this crassly manipulative drama based on a true story is directed with a sledgehammer by Ronald Krauss, who sees spiritual uplift where others see dramatic clichés.
A frightening turn by Rosario Dawson as her drugged-up mother and an inspirational appearance by James Earl Jones as a good reverend help those not in thrall to the message keep watching. The Blu-ray image looks excellent; extras include deleted scenes with commentary and making-of featurette.
(Cohen Media)
Claude Chabrol’s two feature films starring his favorite detective—Chicken with Vinegar (1985) and the eponymously titled Inspector Lavardin (1986)—are impeccably crafted, naturally, yet are otherwise small-scale murder mysteries long on atmosphere but short on wit.
Jean Poiret’s inspector seems more at home in the two Chabrol-helmed TV mysteries included as bonuses—The Black Snail (1988) and Danger Lies in the Words (1989)—which are more entertaining than the features. The movies look good if soft on Blu-ray; extras on the features are audio commentaries.
Mr. Selfridge—Complete Season 2
(PBS)
The second season of this absorbing series about how American Harry Selfridge built London’s biggest department store at the turn of the last century is another superior soap opera, its plot threads showing characters like Jeremy Piven’s self-absorbed Selfridge and a glamorous Frances O’Connor as his wife in their overlapping professional and personal lives.
Especially for those who can’t wait for their next Downton Abbey fix, this is an excellent (and highly original) substitute. The hi-def transfer looks fine; extras include a behind the scenes featurette and deleted scenes.
Il Sorpasso
(Criterion)
The English title, The Easy Life, perfectly encapsulates Dino Risi’s brilliantly ironic comedy that careers into tragedy in its final moments, as playboy Vittorio Gassman and naïve student Jean-Louis Trintignant (both never better) aimlessly root around Tuscan and Roman roads one weekend.
Risi, an uneven director, made this singular masterpiece and decent films like Scent of a Woman (not the awful Pacino remake); Criterion’s release marries a typically splendid hi-def transfer with a plethora of extras like interviews with Risi, Trintignant and Gassman, documentary excerpts and a 2006 doc about Risi, A Beautiful Vacation.
Super Skyscrapers
(PBS)
This fascinating mini-series, which takes the measure of 21stcentury building, highlights a quartet of new skyscrapers that defy the usual blueprint of finding ways to go higher, literally and figuratively: Manhattan’s Freedom Tower and One57, London’s Leadenhall Building and China’s Shanghai Tower.
Covering the many months of planning and construction, the four hour-long programs provide revealing close-ups of how technology continues to revolutionize how we live and build in increasingly smaller spaces. The hi-def transfer is superlative.
The Best Offer
(IFC)
In Giuseppe Tornatore’s latest melodrama, Geoffrey Rush plays an unscrupulous auctioneer intrigued by a disturbed young woman who wants to sell her family’s heirloom artworks while (literally) hiding behind a family secret.
Rush makes a properly flawed hero, Sylvia Hoeks is beguilingly fresh as the mystery woman, but Tornatore never quite gets a handle on this intense and at times overripe material.
(Kino)
This old-fashioned atmospheric horror film remakes Rebecca (sort of) as the master of the mansion discovers he may have a murderous doppelgänger out there killing innocent townspeople.
In the lead, John Turner does a decent job, as does the rest of the cast; director Robert Hartford-Davis keeps the dramatic clichés to a minimum while moving along to an obvious but satisfying finish. The lone extra is a director interview.
(Lionsgate)
Chilean director-writer Sebastian Lelio’s immersive character study about a middle-aged divorcee who enters into a tentative relationship with an older man is centered on the remarkable Paulina Garcia in the title role.
By not making her a caricature or blatantly begging for sympathy, Garcia makes Gloria a nuanced and immensely sympathetic character whose sexuality is made plausible but remains in the context of this ordinary woman who’s really quite extraordinary. Extras are onset footage set to the film’s songs.
To Chris Marker An Unsent Letter
(Icarus Films)
Made by his frequent collaborator, photographer Emiko Omori, this look back at the singular artistry of meta-cinematic genius Chris Marker—creator of the classics La Jetee and Sans Soleil—has a personal, home-movie quality that will please Marker’s admirers.
The reminiscences—from fans, fellow artists and film historians—show a healthy, even humorous appreciation for Marker the man as well as the director, including a priceless anecdote about how the publicity-shy Marker made his own image disappear from a photograph on public display.
(MPI/IFC)
In Iain Softley’s unnerving thriller, Tuppence Middleton and Alexandra Roach give ferocious portrayals of friends torn apart by a fatal fire that one survives without any memory of what happened—or does she?
Softley lets the facts slowly but surely become uncovered, but his leading actresses—and the always sublime Frances De La Tour and Kerry Fox in small but pivotal roles—make this a tense nail-biter. Extras are interviews.
CDs of the Week
John Adams—The Gospel According to the Other Mary
(Deutsche Grammophon)
Composer John Adams’ “passion oratorio” is certainly a heavy-duty, serious piece: but, much like Peter Sellars’ diffuse libretto comprising bits from the Bible along with words from personalities as diverse as 12thcentury mystic Hildegard von Bingen and 20th century writer primo Levi, Adams’ patchy music moves from soaring chorales to dully minimalist vocal lines.
Despite the shaky dramatics, it’s beautifully performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Master Chorale, a vocally strong cast led by Kelley O’Connor and Tamara Mumford, all held together by conductor Gustavo Dudamel.
(Sony Classical)
Sure, she’s a charming, lovely, talented Russian soprano, but please don’t call Olga Peretyatko a new Anna Netrebko (not even Netrebko is Anna Netrebko any more): she has a vocal style all her own, as she proves repeatedly on this buoyant collection of virtuoso arias and songs from heavy hitters Mozart, Rossini, Bellini, Verdi, Gounod and Bizet.
Peretyatko’s creamy soprano sounds luminous on all 13 of this disc’s tracks, and conductor Enrique Mazzola and the NDR Symphony Orchestra provide her with accompaniment as sensitive and exacting as her singing.
NYC Theater Roundup: Audra McDonald as ‘Lady Day,’ Steven Soderbergh Directs ‘The Library,’ Harvey Fierstein's ‘Casa Valentina’
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Friday, 25 April 2014 20:04
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill
Written by Lanie Robertson; directed by Walter Bobbie
Previews began March 25, 2014; closes August 10
The Library
Written by Scott Z. Burns; directed by Steven Soderbergh
Previews began March 25, 2014; closes April 27
Casa Valentina
Written by Harvey Fierstein; directed by Joe Mantello
Previews began April 1, 2014; closes June 15
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| Audra McDonald as Billie Holliday in Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill (photo: Evgenia Eliseeva) |
Audra McDonald has already won five Tony Awards for her performances in the musicals Carousel, Ragtime and Porgy and Bess and the plays Master Class and A Raisin in the Sun—and she very well may win her sixth for the play-musical hybrid Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill, in which she plays Billie Holliday performing one last time at a Philadelphia club in 1959, just months before her premature death at 54 from various alcohol and drug-related maladies.
Lanie Robertson’s play intersperses 15 of Holliday’s songs—including her best known numbers like “God Bless the Child” and “Strange Fruit”—with her onstage patter, comprising small talk with her musicians, joking among her nightclub audience and confessional asides as she slides further into a drink-induced haze that only her impassioned singing can overcome.
At first, it’s disorienting to hear McDonald speak and sing with Holliday’s characteristic—and easily caricatured—vocal inflections, but soon she locks into the character and turns a mere impression into a heartfelt interpretation of a deeply scarred and scared human being. Although McDonald’s illuminating presence dominates, pianist Shelton Becton and his fellow musicians are also splendid, and a tiny dog named Roxie plays Lady Day’s beloved pup Pepi.
Walter Bobbie directs sensitively on James Noone’s set, which unerringly recreates a nightclub atmosphere with some audience members at tables set up in front of the stage; unnecessary wall projections of people in Lady Day’s life, from her parents to jazz greats like Artie Shaw, at least don’t detract. Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill might be a clever stunt, but Audra McDonald and Billie Holliday make it an unforgettable evening.
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| Chloe Grace Moretz in The Library (photo: Joan Marcus) |
Screenwriter Scott Z. Burns and director Steven Soderbergh, collaborators on such straightforwardly effective movies likeContagion and Side Effects, join forces for Burns’ first play, The Library, for which Soderbergh also makes his theatrical directing debut.
Burns’ familiar drama depicts the chilling aftermath of a small town school shooting, in which Caitlin, a sophomore in the library with other students when the killer came in, was grievously wounded. Now being rehabilitated, she’s been accused of squealing on others to save her own life, telling the killer where students were hidden with a gun at her head which has made her a pariah at school and in town despite what she went through.
In 90 minutes, Burns’ play touches on several strands, like the religious mother of a dead student who realizes she can cash in monetarily on her daughter’s saintly response to evil; or Caitlin’s parents, who ask her to change her story so they can also receive money a survivors’ fund that’s been set up; and Caitlin herself, whose body heals as her mental state starts fracturing thanks to skepticism—and worse—from everyone else, from her parents and the police to her fellow students.
The Library plays like one of Burns’ streamlined movie scripts, with little nuance and obvious—if plausible—narrative twists and turns. The talented cast is headed by Chloe Grace Moretz, the phenomenal teen actress from Martin Scorsese’s Hugo. Although Moretz is an appealing and intelligent presence, she always seems in control, even when Caitlin is breaking down mentally.
Soderbergh’s taut direction brilliantly utilizes Riccardo Hernandez’s stark set of tables and chairs and David Lander’s lighting that bathes the stage in deep reds, cold blues or blinding whites, providing a disturbingly clinical vision of Caitlin’s fraught post-traumatic journey that Burns’ play avoids dealing with.
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| Reed Birney (center) in Casa Valentina (photo: Matthew Murphy) |
Harvey Fierstein is no stranger to drag queens: he wrote the books for two hugely popular cross-dressing musicals, La cage aux Folles and Kinky Boots. So Casa Valentina, a play about straight men in 1962 who stay at a Catskills resort where they can dress and act as women in perfect harmony and tranquility, is the next logical step. It’s too bad, then, that Fierstein’s play is hijacked by his own preachiness, which forces obvious if unnecessary links between these men and gays of the same era and later.
During one weekend at the Chevalier d’Eon, a group of respectable, married men arrives, taken care of by the place’s owners: saintly Rita (Mare Winningham, always quietly triumphant) and Roger (the excellent Patrick Page), who also changes into his female alter ego Valentina. Roger/Valentina has invited transvestite activist Charlotte (a fantastically persuasive Reed Birney) to try and convince the other guests to join a sorority of cross-dressers which will—they hope—legitimize them in the eyes of the government and law enforcement.
The guests—nearly retired judge Amy, septuagenarian Terry, feisty and fresh Gloria, halting newcomer Miranda—must decide whether gaining security and safety is worth losing their hard-won privacy over. Fierstein underlines their plight to that of gay men in the past half-century, even having Charlotte make nasty comments about homosexuals that, with the benefit of hindsight, allows audience members to “tsk tsk” them: “We don’t hunt children, expose ourselves, or proselytize our practices. All activities of which the homosexual is guilty and to which society rightly objects.”
Fierstein morphs his play uneasily from the mildly amusing and touching comedy it begins as to a tragedy of sorts—that turns overly sincere and redundant in the second act—by way of a sinister blackmail plot about pornographic photos sent through the mail. Still, as staged by ace director Joe Mantello and enacted by a droll cast, Casa Valentina opens up a world to its audience few had known about.
Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill
Circle in the Square Theatre, 235 West 50th Street, New York, NY
ladydayonbroadway.com
The Library
Golden Theatre, 252 West 45th Street, New York, NY
publictheatre.org
Casa Valentina
Freidman Theatre, 261 West 47th Street, New York, NY
manhattantheaterclub.com
April '14 Digital Week IV
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 23 April 2014 04:12
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Alice
(First Run)
Surreal Czech animator Jan Svankmajer’s thrilling 1988 take onAlice in Wonderland is crammed with his singular visual inventiveness, showcasing his genius for dazzling stop-motion images.
Although it might be too offbeat for children, it’s a must-see for anyone who ODed on Disney’s more sanitized version. Although the movie looks enticing on Blu-ray, First Run dropped the ball by omitting the original Czech audio and forcing the child-friendly English track on viewers. There are also no extras, unlike the British Film Institute release.
(PBS)
Our quintet of intrepid female code breakers—who cracked Nazi spy codes to turn the tide of WWII—return for more post-war London sleuthing in these two entertaining full-length features.
Although the plotting is only intermittently arresting, it’s the women themselves—played by Anna Maxwell Martin, Rachael Sterling, Hattie Morahan, Sophie Rundle and Julie Graham—that hold our interest throughout. The Blu-ray image looks solid if a little soft; extras include interviews.
Copperhead
(Warners)
A lesser-known Civil War conflict is featured in Ron Maxwell’s static, occasionally gripping study of men on opposite sides of Lincoln’s declaration of war against the Southern states: Copperheads (named after the snakes) were against this obviously “just” war.
Although a handsomely mounted account of an obscure bit of American history, the movie creeps along for many of its 120 minutes, often undermining its potential power with derivative direction and lackluster performances. The hi-def transfer is first-rate.
(Opus Arte)
Porgy and Bess
(Euroarts)
Benjamin Britten’s final opera, 1973’s Death in Venice, receives a musically accomplished if dramatically inert 2013 revival by director Deborah Warner in London for the composer’s birth centenary; John Graham-Hall is persuasive as Aschenbach, the dying writer.
In San Francisco Opera’s 2013 staging of the Gershwins’ immortal Porgy and Bess, Eric Owens and Laquita Mitchell are histrionically and vocally imposing in the iconic title roles, highlights being “Bess, You Is My Woman” and “I Loves You, Porgy.” Both Blu-ray look impressive and sound even better; Porgy’s extras are interviews.
The Invisible Woman
(Sony Classics)
Ralph Fiennes plays novelist Charles Dickens as a Victorian-era rock star: an incredibly popular writer and speaker, Dickens lives for the adoration of his (mostly female) fans, and—even though he’s contentedly married with ten children—he embarks on an affair with a tempestuous young teacher, played with gusto by Felicity Jones.
Although Fiennes’ direction tends toward the undistinguished, the lush physical production surrounding two meaty lead performances helps make this unexciting soap opera watchable. The Blu-ray’s visuals look superb; extras include Fiennes’ and Jones’ commentary, interviews and Toronto Film Festival press conference.
The Pawnbroker
(Olive Films)
In Sidney Lumet’s heavily symbolic but powerful 1965 character study of a Jewish concentration camp survivor struggling in his new life as a Harlem pawnbroker—as he deals with people as emotionally adrift as he—Rod Steiger gives an understated performance, surprising coming from an actor not known for subtlety.
But despite Lumet’s uneven directing that culminates in a forced series of false climaxes, Steiger creates a psychologically credible portrait. Boris Kaufman’s moody B&W photography retains its grittiness on Blu-ray.
Sorcerer
(Warners)
William Friedkin’s 1977 adventure has received a critical reappraisal as a lost classic, but it’s anything but: instead it’s a wrongheaded if technically accomplished remake of H.G. Clouzot’s classic The Wages of Fear (Friedkin even dedicates his film to Clouzot).
There are tension-filled sequences, especially with the truck on a bridge, but since the characters all remain ciphers, there’s no one to root for in this this two-hour slog through the jungle. Tangerine Dream’s electronic soundtrack is alternately effective and overdone, like the film itself. On Blu-ray, the movie looks stunning.
La Maison de la Radio
(Kino Lorber)
Nicholas Philibert’s latest fly-on-the-wall documentary follows the daily interactions of dozens of employees at Radio France, the state-run Gallic equivalent of the BBC or NPR.
Talk-show hosts, news readers, weather forecasters, sports announcers, singers and performers, technicians and people behind the scenes are seen informing, entertaining and giving the news to millions of listeners, and Philibert films it all in his inimitable way, showing the teaming mass of humanity inside the radio conglomerate’s recognizably circular headquarters in the heart of Paris.
Russia’s Open Book—Writing in the Age of Putin
(PBS)
Juliet Stevenson narrates this hour-long account of Russian authors surviving and even thriving despite the black marks on their reputations in Vladimir Putin’s supposedly democratic Russian regime.
Instead of criticizing their fearless leader outright, Russian’s Open Book allows writers from Anna Starobinets to Vladimir Sorokin to speak for themselves, both in interviews and in excerpts from their provocative books, read here by the show’s host, British actor Stephen Fry.
(Kino Lorber)
In Bill Siegel’s arresting documentary, the world’s most famous man—known as much for his brash mouth as his pummeling fists—is shown as a polarizing cultural and political figure: from changing his name to joining the Nation of Islam, Ali’s very public mistakes and successes outside the ring are as important as his boxing achievements.
Interviews with Ali’s brother, daughter and ex-wife are touching, while others like Louis Farrakhan come off as self-serving: but all paint a fuller portrait of a complicated man. Extras are four deleted scenes, audio commentaries and a mock trial by school students.
Wrong Cops
(IFC Midnight)
Writer-director Quentin Dupieux’s heavy-handed, ineffectual comedy about cops abusing their standing in the community—we see them sell drugs and force a woman to provide her phone number in the first few minutes alone—is the kind of unfunny spoof that might have the crew in stitches on the set, but does little for an audience.
Good performers like Agnes Bruckner and Roxane Mesquida are mercilessly wasted; when Marilyn Manson doesn’t even register onscreen, it’s hopeless. Lone extra is a Manson featurette.
Joyce Yang—Wild Dreams(Avie)
and Tchaikovsky (Bridge)
Exuberant pianist Joyce Yang demonstrates a prodigious keyboard talent on these discs. On Wild Dreams, her easy facility for a wide range of solo piano music from Robert Schumann to Bela Bartok is highlighted by her impassioned playing of two Sergei Rachmaninoff works and Paul Hindemith's deceptively difficult passages.
On the Tchaikovsky orchestral disc, Yang dispatches one of the concerto genre’s true warhorses by showcasing the composer’s generous lyricism. Conductor Alexander Lazarev and the Odense Symphony Orchestra provide solid support and give an appropriately stormy reading of the tone poem The Tempest.
Shani Diluka—Road 66
(Mirare)
Sri Lankan pianist Shani Diluka’s programming idea for this recital disc is to play various pieces by American composers as complements to Jack Kerouac’s fragmented writings.
That Kerouac’s work directly correlates with the music is questionable, but Diluka’s tremendously precise playing—particularly on unheralded gems like Copland’s Piano Blues No. 1, Samuel Barber’s Pas de Deux and even Philip Glass's Etude No. 9—makes the program secondary to the glorious musicmaking. She’s also joined by soprano Natalie Dessay for the bittersweet finale: Cole Porter’s “What is This Thing Is Love?"
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