the traveler's resource guide to festivals & films
a FestivalTravelNetwork.com site
part of Insider Media llc.

Connect with us:
FacebookTwitterYouTubeRSS
You are here: Home Film & Arts

Film and the Arts

San Francisco Symphony Delights at Carnegie Hall

  • Print
Details
Parent Category: Film and the Arts
Category: Reviews
Published on Monday, 10 April 2017 18:51
Written by Jack Angstreich

An extraordinary season of orchestral music at Carnegie Hall continued with two excellent weekend concerts in April given by the superb San Francisco Symphony conducted by its impressive director, the estimable Michael Tilson Thomas.

The first program, which was devoted to twentieth-century music, was presented on the evening of Friday the 7th of April and opened with an strong account of the orchestral version of John Cage’s relatively accessible score for the Merce Cunningham ballet, The Seasons. Soloist Gautier Capuçon then took the stage for a memorable rendition of Dmitri Shostakovich’s wonderful Cello Concerto No. 1. Enthusiastic applause elicited a charming encore: Gregor Piatigorsky’s arrangement of the March from Sergei Prokofiev’s piano suite, Music for Children.

The second half of the evening was even more rewarding, featuring a sterling performance of Béla Bartók’s glorious concert staple, the Concerto for Orchestra. A warm ovation was met by a terrific encore: Henry Brant’s marvelous orchestral transcription of the beautiful third movement, “The Alcotts,” of the remarkable Charles Ives piano work, the Concord Sonata.

The following evening, devoted to the music of Gustav Mahler —of which this conductor is one of the foremost contemporary interpreters —if anything, surpassed the first. Before proceeding, however, Tilson Thomas spoke for a few minutes about Mahler’s Tenth Symphony and described recently visiting Kyoto’s Moss Temple, as well as reciting a few lines from The Book of Hours by Rainer Maria Rilke. He then led the orchestra in a moving reading of the magnificent Adagio from that symphony—its first movement and the only one that the composer lived to complete. The program closed exultantly, with an exuberant account of the astonishing Symphony No. 1.

Broadway Review: New Musical “Amélie”

  • Print
Details
Parent Category: Film and the Arts
Category: Reviews
Published on Sunday, 09 April 2017 15:58
Written by Kevin Filipski
Amélie
Music by Daniel Messé, lyrics by Nathan Tysen & Daniel Messé; book by Craig Lucas
Directed by Pam Mackinnon; music staging & choreography by Sam Pinkleton
Opened April 3, 2017
Walter Kerr Theatre, 219 West 48th Street
ameliebroadway.com
 
Savvy Crawford and Phillipa Soo in Amélie (photo: Joan Marcus)
Despite its renown, I’ve never much cared for the forced whimsy of the 2001 French movie Amélie, which is enervating and tiring in equal measure; only the luminescent Audrey Tautou as the eponymous heroine saves it from its own cloyingness. Likewise, in the labored musical version of Amélie, Phillipa Soo is sweetly unassuming, with an affecting, natural (and unforced) singing voice, but the adaptation even one-ups the original at being annoyingly eccentric.
 
After her beloved Princess Diana is killed in a car crash in the heart of Paris, Amélie—a shy young woman with a messy upbringing (her mom was killed when a suicidal jumper fell on top of her and her doctor dad misdiagnosed her with a bad heart)—resolves to be a do-gooder, making things right for acquaintances and strangers who need her special dispensations.
 
When she sees Nino, a strange young man, she stalks him in her inimitable way, and he eventually succumbs to her offbeat charms. The movie, directed with grotesque visual flourishes by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, resorted to close-ups of Tautou’s winsome face whenever it got too eye-rollingly self-absorbed. The musical approximates the movie’s oddball style through David Zinn’s clever sets and Amanda Villalobos’ cartoonish puppets, alongside stridently overwrought acting by the supporting cast, many doubling as Amélie’s friends, co-workers and Parisian neighbors.
 
Director Pam Mackinnon seems at a loss as to how to navigate such tricky thickets of pseudo-surrealism, and Daniel Messé’s score—with mediocre lyrics by Messé and Nathan Tysen—doesn’t overcome Craig Lucas’s patchy book. Messé’s songs are typical of today’s Broadway, poppy and treacly by turns, with not a single memorable (or hummable) tune in sight.
 
Moments in Amélie are uncomfortable reminders of other recent musicals, as if there’s a Broadway blueprint that needs to be followed to the letter: when Amélie’s female café coworkers break into sassy song, it’s like we’ve suddenly dropped in on Waitress. And when “Sir Elton John” materializes to sing a duet with Amélie—the tenuous connection is that the real Elton sang “Candle in the Wind” at Di’s funeral—the show stops dead and never really recovers.
 
As the young Amélie, the aptly-named Savvy Crawford has a scarily impressive stage presence, which somewhat compensates for Adam Chanler-Berat’s dud of a Nino. Again, Phillipa Soo sings beautifully and appears appropriately gamine while effortlessly negotiating the Montmartre set’s stairs. But Amélie the musical is ultimately as shallow as its cinematic forebear.
 
Amélie
Walter Kerr Theatre, 219 West 48th Street
ameliebroadway.com

Three Recent Films Transform Genre Stylizations Into Social Commentary

  • Print
Details
Parent Category: Film and the Arts
Category: Reviews
Published on Thursday, 06 April 2017 19:09
Written by Brad Balfour

Get Out
Writer/Director:Jordan Peele

Sleight
Director: J.D Dillard.  

The Transfiguration
Writer/Director: Michael O'Shea

Three films focused primarily on an African American cast or from an Black person’s perspective, employ the conventions of the horror/sci-fi genre to express several profound and/or disturbing ideas.

Though director Michael O'Shea’s debut feature “Transfiguration” riffs on vampire lore, it actually uses the mythology to address far more contemporary and disturbing behavior. Troubled teen Milo’s blood drinking fascination leads him to spiral out of control, but once he meets an equally alienated Sophie (Chloe Levine), their bond almost pulls them back from the brink. As this bond grows Milo's fantasy  descends horrendously into a nihilistic reality.

Brooklyn-born filmmaker O'Shea’s mulit-genre movie deals with love, loss and blood; as much a psychological study as it is an indie horror film, it’s been a surprise hit that garnered him critical acclaim for its debut at Cannes Film Festival and at SXSW as well.  Now it’s enjoying a theatrical release for a director’s debut more than a decade in the making.

Already in theaters as a surprise hit, veteran tv writer-turned-director Jordan Peele’s “Get Out,” takes quite the left turn employing horror and sci-fi tropes while subversively exploring social issues with an African-American bent.

In this speculative thriller from genre power house production company Blumhouse (which also backed “The Visit,” “The Gift,” and the “Insidious” and “Purge” series among others)  a young African-American man goes with his relatively new white girlfriend to visit her parents Missy (Catherine Keener) and Dean (Bradley Whitford) at her family’s upstate New York estate. There he realizes things are quite amiss and he becomes ensnared in a sinister plot’s that’s the real reason for his invitation. Now that Chris (Daniel Kaluuya seen in “Sicario”) and Rose (Allison Williams from HBO’s “Girls”), have reached this meet-the-parents dating milestone  — in a scene worthy of “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner” — things go awry — in ultimately the most horrible way possible.

Equal gripping and provocative, “Get Out” challenges assumption with equally doses of comedy and dread. And in this era of Trump, doesn’t seem as absurd or farfetched as it might have felt in the Obama era.

In cross-genre-fied “Sleight,” musician Jacob Latimore (“Maze Runner,” “Collateral Beauty”) plays a street magician left to care for his little sister after their parents’ deaths, who then turns to drug dealing to keep them fed and clothed — for him to make sure she gets good education. When he gets in too deep with the dealer he thought was relatively benign, his sister is kidnapped and he’s forced to use his magic, his science skills and brilliant mind to save her.

This suspense thriller fits several genres, but it’s a lot more deceptive than just switching from genre from being gansta to being superhero-ish. Of the three films, this one’s sketchiest but it’s also ambitious, making for both a slick fast-paced crime drama and tech thriller almost worthy of a sequel.

April '17 Digital Week I

  • Print
Details
Parent Category: Film and the Arts
Category: Reviews
Published on Wednesday, 05 April 2017 03:36
Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week 

Rogue One—A Star Wars Story

(Disney)
This latest episode shares the series’ tendency toward self-importance and overlength (135 minutes for such a thin tale of rebellion!), along with dollops of sophomoric humor in the form of a C3PO-like robot named K2SO. Like Episode 7’s heroine Rey, female rebel Gyn (nicely played by Felicity Jones), offspring of legendary Garen (the always welcome Mads Mikkelsen), has her own galactic adventures. Director Gareth Edwards doesn’t particularly distinguish himself, but doesn’t embarrass the franchise either, which is all that counts. The hi-def image is striking, unsurprisingly; the second disc of extras comprises several behind-the-scenes featurettes.
 
Ascent to Hell
(Gravitas Ventures)
This grisly ghost story takes place in a vacant NYC building that houses the disturbed specters of those killed in a fire a century earlier—shades of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire that claimed over 100 young women’s lives in 1911—which take it out on the business group looking to buy it.The movie grinds on predictably as it never finds a compelling or even non-ridiculous reason for the undead to take it out on their visitors.The movie does look good on Blu.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Being 17

(Strand)

This perceptive study of two antagonistic teens who discover there’s a real attraction between them was directed by the discerning but uneven André Téchiné and co-written by Céline Sciamma, whose originality in presenting young people sympathetically is seen in her own films Girlhood and Water Lilies. Kacey Mottet Klein and Corentin Filai are impressive and realistic as the boys, and Sandrine Kiberlain notable as Klein’s mom, dealing with her awkward but maturing son and his close friend. The film has a glorious hi-def transfer.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Brokenwood Mysteries—Complete 3rdSeason
(Acorn)
In the third season of this entertaining New Zealand-set detective series, sleuths Mike Shepard and Kristin Sims solve several crimes in their no-nonsense, deadpan manner, like the murder of a diabetic woman—running a scam “Lord of the Rings” tour with her husband—from a rare spider bite. The comedy is sometimes heavy-handed, but the knowing performances of Neill Rea (Mike) and Fern Sutherland (Kristin) help balance the levity and seriousness. The four 90-minute episodes look quite fine on Blu; extras are cast/writer interviews.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Ludwig

(Arrow Academy)

Luchino Visconti’s 1972 biopic about the mad king of Bavaria—who bankrolled composer Richard Wagner’s Bayreuth—has narrative problems, even in its four-hour original cut (for Italian television), but it’s an engrossing and intimate epic as offbeat as its subject and just as compulsively watchable, especially in Trevor Howard’s civilized Wagner. Arrow’s splendid hi-def presentation includes the entire film on two discs (and in its theatrical and TV versions) in sublime new transfers with an English-dubbed option, vintageLuchino Viscontidocumentary, archival portrait of actress Silvana Mangano, archival interview with screenwriter Suso Cecchi d’Amico, and new interviews with lead actor Helmut Burger and producer Dieter Geissler.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
DVDs of the Week
The Curious World of Hieronymus Bosch
(Seventh Art)
The great artist and favorite son of his namesake Dutch town was commemorated last year at the Noordbrabants Museum with an exhibition for the 500thanniversary of his birth, and David Bickerstaff’s documentary presents an exemplary overview of his work, legacy and genius, with illuminating comments by several experts (like idiosyncratic film director Peter Greenaway). It’s most interesting when we get to study Bosch’s bizarrely modern-looking paintings in close-up, which leaves one wondering why this wasn’t released on Blu-ray also. Lone extra is a short featurette about the Hermitage’s own Bosch-like painting.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
A French Village—Complete 6thSeason

(MHz)

It’s the fall of 1945, the war is finally over, but the difficult postwar wrangling between collaborators and former resistance fighters has begun: season 6 brilliantly dissects the ongoing personal and political wounds that continue to fester through inventive use of flashbacks for the various characters affected. As usual, first-rate writing and directing are complemented by superlative acting across the board, and these six episodes make one hope that the series’ final season arrives sooner rather than later.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Suspects—Complete 5thSeason

(Acorn)

This gritty British detective series opens its fifth season with a twist out of nowhere, as one of its main characters is killed off right at the beginning of the first episode, something that only the rare show can survive. But not only does it avoid the built-in trap of jumping the shark, the new characters are as intriguing and worth watching as the regulars: those newcomers are played by the eminently able Lenora Crichlow, Perry Fitzpatrick and James Murray.
 

More Articles...

  1. Film review—Documentary “Robert Klein Still Can’t Stop His Leg”
  2. Austrian Overtures & More at Carnegie Hall
  3. March '17 Digital Week IV

Subcategories

Newsletter Sign Up

Upcoming Events

No Calendar Events Found or Calendar not set to Public.

Tweets!