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Film and the Arts

April '17 Digital Week II

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Tuesday, 11 April 2017 23:02; Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-rays of the Week

Property Is No Longer a Theft

(Arrow Academy)

Committed left-wing Italian director Elio Petri made provocative, disturbing and enlightening political dramas in the 1970s before his untimely death from cancer at age 53 in 1982. His 1973 film is an unsubtle but irresistible riposte against capitalist society, as a lowly bank clerk insinuates himself into the personal life of a greedy local butcher, even stealing his mistress. Petri’s assured direction keeps the over-ripe performances of Flavio Bucci (clerk), Ugo Tognazzi (butcher) and Daria Nicolodi (mistress) from spinning out of control. Arrow’s terrific new set comprises a first-rate hi-def transfer and new interviews with Bucci, producer Claudio Mancini and make-up artist Pierantonio Mecacci, all of whom discuss working with the great, underrated director.

The Bye Bye Man

(Universal)

This hopelessly confused attempt at a psychological haunted-house flick has flat acting—including stalwarts Faye Dunaway and Carrie-Anne Moss—a hollow script and contempt for an audience that expects honest scares, not lamely risible “shocks.” Director Stacy Title once made an interesting little black comedy, The Last Supper, two decades ago, but her latest doesn’t approach that. The hi-def transfer is good; the unrated version is three minutes longer than the theatrical version.

Daughters of the Dust

(Cohen Film Collection)

Julie Dash’s enveloping 1991 historical drama highlights an obscure chapter in American history: the Gullah community, comprising former slaves and their descendants, who are living on the Sea Islands off the South Carolina coast at the turn of the 20^thcentury, decide whether to migrate to the mainland. Dash’s ability to vividly personalize history is on display throughout her memorable memory film; the enticing hi-def transfer and many extras—Dash’s commentary and interview, Q&A with Dash and actress Cheryl Bruce, and interview with Dash’s superb cinematographer Arthur Jafa—make this an essential package.

House—Two Stories

Dead or Alive

(Arrow)

The tongue-in-cheek horror movie House became a cult item in 1986, and was followed a year later by the far worse House II; the original at least had William Katt, John Wendt and a sorely underused Kay Lenz, while the latter was stuck with John Ratzenberger. Japanese cult director Takashi Miike made his ultra-violent Dead or Alive trilogy between 1999 and 2002; wildly ambitious and wildly uneven, these Yakuza movies are the ultimate triumphs of style over substance. Both sets show off Arrow’s excellent hi-def transfers, vintage and current interviews and making-ofs, commentaries, and hour-long appraisals of both House films.

Story of Sin

(Arrow Academy)

Polish director Walerian Borowczyk—who died in 2006—has seen his cult reputation grow ever larger, thanks to the availability of even his most obscure films on DVD and now Blu-ray, like the only film he made in his home country, 1974’s Story of Sin. This less-graphic-than-usual, consistently intriguing adaptation of Stefan Żeromski’s novel concerns a young religious woman soiled by her loss of innocence (a whale of a lead performance by actress Grazyna Dlugolecka). As usual with Arrow Academy, great care has gone into the presentation of an obscure feature by a barely-remembered Polish director: stunning transfer, audio commentary, new and vintage interviews and appraisals, and several Borowczyk shorts.

World Without End

(Warner Archive)

You’d think a forgotten 1956 sci-fi B movie wouldn’t be high on the list of hi-def re-issues by Warner Archive, but then again, this is a forgotten sci-fi B movie, the kind of thing that appeals to movie buffs who buy Blu-rays. A quartet of astronauts crash-lands on a distant planet, only to find they’ve returned to a post-nuclear Earth nearly 600 years in the future. Weak acting, cheesy script, cheap sets and effects and muddled philosophy are the draws here; the spectacular hi-def transfer will look terrific on movie buffs’ large TV screens.

DVDs of the Week

A Girl in Every Port

(Warner Archive)

Made after the Marx Brothers’ creative peak, this 1952 comedy wastes Groucho’s final leading role as a sailor (!) who—with his sidekick William Bendix—gets caught up in a convoluted mess involving twin horses and a blonde femme fatale (the juiceless Marie Wilson). Groucho gets to fire off several one-liners but few of them hit in this scattershot (to be kind) comedy. Watch Duck Soup, A Night at the Opera or even Horse Feathers instead.

Toni Erdmann

(Sony Pictures Classics)

I may be the lone dissenter when it comes to Maden Ade’s overlong and slender portrait of a practical-jokester father who surprises his successful daughter in Bucharest—only to bug her mercilessly. The problem is that dad is a mere plot device instead of a believable character; indeed, once he shows up, Ade seems to be trolling her own movie. Despite impressive acting by Peter Simonischek and Sandra Hüller, this ends up as irritating as Ade’s previous Everything Else. That Sony is releasing this on DVD and BD-R is a sign Criterion will put out a packed Blu-ray edition soon. Extras are an Ade commentary and AFI Fest Q&A.

CD of the Week

Beethoven—Complete String Quartets

(Decca)

The best recent boxed set of Beethoven’s complete string quartets is by the Takacs Quartet, which digs into these 16 masterly musical statements (17, if one counts the inscrutable Grosse Fuge) and makes them its own, especially its scintillating readings of the six late quartets, those incredible, forward-thinking works from 1825 and 1826, which reached their apogee with the quicksilver Op. 135. This attractively-designed set includes seven CDs of the quartet’s illuminating performances, a DVD of them playing Beethoven (Op. 59, No. 1), Schubert (“Death and the Maiden”) and Haydn (“The Bird”), and a Blu-ray Audio disc of what’s on the CDs in high fidelity pure audio.

San Francisco Symphony Delights at Carnegie Hall

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”

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

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.

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