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November '16 Digital Week II

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts
Category: Reviews
Published on Tuesday, 08 November 2016 13:47
Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week 

The Durrells in Corfu—Complete 1st Season

(PBS)
In this breezily entertaining Masterpiece series, a widow, Louisa, and her four unruly children decide to leave stuffy old England for the Greek island of Corfu: unsurprisingly, drama and romance ensue as the five of them adjust to a very different way of living.
Despite its soap opera contrivances, Durrells is quite involving, thanks to glorious Mediterranean locations and persuasive acting, especially by Keeley Hawes, who invests Louisa with the three-dimensionality of a character in a great novel. The hi-def transfer is excellent; extras include making-of featurettes.
Einstein on the Beach
(Opus Arte)
I might be in the minority, but I find this 4-1/2 hour “opera” by Philip Glass and Robert Wilson to be one of the most enervating and sleep-inducing pieces of musical theater I’ve ever experienced: but if you’re on the Glass/Wilson wavelength, this 2014 Paris production will do very nicely—with the added bonus of pausing it whenever the many musical and dramatic repetitions rear their heads.
The performers (both dancers and singers) are remarkable in their ability to sing and move in unison, so there is that. The hi-def video and audio are first-rate.
 
Indian Summers—Complete 2nd Season 
(PBS)
As the friction between the Indians and their British occupiers grows more tense by the moment, the second season of this conventionalM asterpiece series creeps up and shakes viewers out of your complacency, as the violence becomes more common both politically and personally, with often fatal consequences.
The splendid acting includes Julia Walters as a magnificently malevolent matron, and Jemima West, Amber Rose Revah and Fiona Glascott as women who, despite their second-class status, find that their own actions make for a kind of historic change. The Blu-ray transfer is stunning; extras include a 45-minute making-of featurette.
The Initiation
(Arrow)
Daphne Zuniga plays dual roles—a panicky college student with awful nightmares and her twin sister—in this moderately scary 1984 horror entry about a few sorority pledges and their boyfriends locked in a store at night with a murderous mental-hospital escapee around.
Director Larry Stewart repeats his formula killings—bludgeonings with an axe or garden tools—but a game cast (which includes Vera Miles and vivacious Hunter Tylo, under the name Deborah Morehart) keeps things percolating for a watchable 95 minutes. The hi-def transfer is good and grainy; extras include interviews, commentary and extended scene.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Motley Crue—The End 
(Eagle Rock)
After three decades of playing schlocky cock-rock, Motley Crue said goodbye at a recent L.A. concert, pulling out all the visual stops that overpower their wan hard rock that, shockingly, many of their fans consider the crème de la crème of heavy music.
Mainly it’s the elaborate drum setup for Tommy Lee, which during his solo moves him up, down, around and upside down (he was already doing it in 1987, when I saw them, only without cutting-edge technology); singer Vince Neil, guitarist Mick Mars and bassist Nikki Sixx are adequate, and familiar tunes like “Girls Girls Girls” and “Doctor Feelgood” keep thousands of fans sated. Hi-def video and audio are first-rate; extras comprise band interviews.
Private Property
(Cinelicious)
This tense low-budget 1960 thriller pits two psychotic criminals (Corey Allen and Warren Oates) against a young married woman who obliviously allows them into her Southern California mansion while her husband’s away.
Shot on location at director Leslie Stevens’ own home, the terrorizing is forced at times, but Oates and Allen are especially effective villains and actress Kate Manx (Stevens’ wife) is full of a vivid aliveness that makes this creepy tale credible—tragically, she killed herself three years later. The film has been restored and the tangy B&W photography looks crisp in hi-def; lone extra is a new interview with technical consultant Alexander Singer.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
DVDs of the Week 
Indian Point
Among the Believers
(First Run)
Ivy Meeropol’s documentary Indian Point is a sober and even-handed look at supporters and protestors of the Indian Point nuclear plant—only 35 miles from New York City—in the wake of Japan’s Fukishima disaster. Though both sides make their points (for the most part) non-hysterically, all evidence points to an ongoing danger for all of us living nearby.
Hemal Trivedi and Mohammed Ali Nagvi's documentary Among the Believers trenchantly explores the never-ending War on Terror by showing the frightening indoctrination of children at the Red Mosque, a Pakistani fundamentalist organization; its matter-of-factness is its most chilling feature. Both discs’ extras comprise deleted scenes.
Saving Mes Aynak
(Icarus)
In Afghanistan, a priceless ancient place of archeological treasures—some 5,000 or more years old—is in danger of being destroyed by a Chinese company, who wants to harvest copper from directly underneath it.
Director Brent E. Huffman urgently chronicles the efforts of a local archeologist as he races against time, the Chinese and—of course—the Taliban to try and save a huge chunk of Afghan and Buddhist history from being obliterated. Extras are deleted scenes.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
CD of the Week 
Frank Martin—Ein Totentanz zu Basel im Jahre 1943
(CPO)

Swiss composer Frank Martin wrote this piece for choir, percussion and massive orchestral forces during World War II for a staged drama featuring Death as a sympathetic character; since it’s visual as well as musical, this CD provides only half the work. But thanks to a vivid, persuasive performance by the superb choristers, pummeling percussionists and first-rate orchestral musicians conducted by Bastiaan Blomhert, this recording gives of a flavor of the entire work, an interesting oddity from the most sophisticated of 20th century composers.

Off-Broadway Reviews—Adam Bock’s “A Life” with David Hyde Pierce; A.R. Gurney’s “Two Class Acts”

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts
Category: Reviews
Published on Monday, 07 November 2016 16:15
Written by Kevin Filipski
A Life
Written by Adam Bock; directed by Anne Kaufman
Performances through December 4, 2016
 
Two Class Acts: Ajax & Squash
Written by A.R. Gurney; directed by Stafford Arima
Performances through November 14, 2016
 
David Hyde Pierce in A Life (photo: Joan Marcus)
 
I don’t know what suggested Adam Bock’s best play, 2011’s A Small Fire, a brutally incisive tragic drama laced with humor about a middle-aged working woman, wife and mother who loses her senses one by one. His new play, A Life—partly inspired by the deaths of his parents in short order a few years ago—is a less successful mish-mash that combines touching moments with a lesser grasp on what seems far more personal material.
 
A Life introduces Nate Martin, a middle-aged gay man in New York City going through his latest breakup. For more than 20 minutes, Martin regales the audience with a humorous monologue about his own failed relationships, complete with explanations of how astrology has become a big part of his life. After this, Bock brings in Nate’s best friend Curtis, then—after a tragedy strikes Nate—a few civil servants, either callous or sympathetic, and his sister Lois. The play ends with a shorter Nate monologue where he explains how he’s made peace with the twists and turns of his life.
 
Despite its title and scant 75-minute running time, A Life is a cut-and-paste job of things its author wanted to put into a play, and it’s neither as imaginative or insightful as it wants to be. Bock himself said that he wanted to write a long monologue for a middle-aged gay man like himself, and figured that, since he likes astrology, that would be the topic—so into the play it goes. Also, a sudden and shocking plot development is more interesting for how the audience uncomfortably registers it than for what actually happens onstage.
 
Then there’s an uncaring medical examiner so disengaged from what she’s supposed to be doing that she even takes a personal phone call to discuss frivolous matters with a friend; Bock balances her with a more humane female partner and by two more characters (also female) who work in the city morgue.
 
Overall, a few lines of dialogue sing and zing, but too much is heavily weighed down by dramatic irony, which smothers Nate even more than the grave plot twist Bock shovels him into. Anne Kaufman’s tactful directing and Laura Jellinek’s cleverly realized set help somewhat, and David Hyde Pierce is the perfect actor to bring Nate to vivid life, which is more than can be said for A Life.
 
Rodney Richardson and Dan Amboyer in Squash (photo: Joan Marcus)
Still prolific at age 86, A.R. Gurney has, for his latest offering at the Flea Theater—the last at the company’s current location before it moves to new digs soon—written a pair of academia-related plays, Ajax and Squash, under the clever rubric Two Class Acts.
 
Too bad both of these modest one-act plays are merely agreeable. Ajax follows the initial antagonism and eventual relationship between a Greek lit professor and her precocious male student, whose modernized version of Sophocles’s tragedyAjax shakes up the classroom by transposing the action to today’s fraught political climate. Despite likeable performances by Rachel Lin (teacher) and Chris Tabet (student) and clever use of the Flea’s smallest space—audience members are seated at classroom desks—Gurney’s Ajax feels half-baked and, even more damagingly, half-witted.
 
Squash is marginally more engaging. Professor Dan Proctor is initially irritated, then intrigued, by his student Gerald’s pronounced sexual interest in him. (Gerald first glimpses Dan’s naked body in the school locker room after a game of squash.) Gurney makes some amusing jokes at the characters’ expense, but, after allowing Dan to explore his confused sexuality for awhile, hotfoots it back to heterosexual safety, with nothing apparently lost—or gained.
 
If Gurney doesn’t go deeply enough, his actors do, especially Dan Amboyer, who makes Dan’s wavering sympathetic (and funny). Stafford Arima directs with a light touch, which helps Gurney’s civilized but superficial writing.
 
A Life
Playwrights Horizons, 416 West 42nd Street, New York, NY
playwrightshorizons.org
 
Two Class Acts: Ajax & Squash
The Flea Theater, 41 White Street, New York, NY
theflea.org

Broadway's Kelli O'Hara Sings Classics at Carnegie

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts
Category: Reviews
Published on Friday, 04 November 2016 13:58
Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Chris Lee

A touchstone of the current season at Carnegie Hall was the opportunity to hear Broadway star Kelli O'Hara at Stern Auditorium in her terrific solo debut there, on the evening of Saturday, October 29th.

Looking glamorous in a red gown, she opened with "Ain't it a pretty night" by Carlisle Floyd from his opera Susannah, thrillingly segueing into a jazz arrangement of "I Have Dreamed" from The King and I by Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein, for the current revival of which (opposite Ken Watanabe) she won a Tony Award. (She recorded this on her first solo album, Wonder in the World.) 

She further mined the Great American Songbook, the most impressive component of her repertoire, with a contemporary arrangement of "Without a Song" by the superb Vincent Youmans, which was popularized by Bing Crosby (with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra) and Frank Sinatra. After "To Build a Home" by Jason Robert Brown from The Bridges of Madison County, in which she appeared on Broadway, she delivered Leonard Bernstein's "Make Our Garden Grow" from Candide, originated by the legendary Barbara Cook whom she then brought onstage. Cook sang a ditty by Vernon Duke a cappella and O'Hara then led the audience in "Happy Birthday" for Cook, who had just turned 89 that week.

kelliO'Hara then performed "The Light in the Piazza" from the musical of the same name by Adam Guettel (the grandson of Rodgers) which she starred in on Broadway to acclaim, followed by "I Wish It So" by Marc Blitzstein from Juno and then the lovely "I Cannot Hear the City" by Marvin Hamlisch from his musical Sweet Smell of Success, in which show she had also starred on Broadway. The ensuing, delightful "He Loves Me" from the very underrated, recently revived, She Loves Me by Jerry Bock & Sheldon Harnick preceded a beautiful rendition of "Finishing the Hat", one of Stephen Sondheim's finest songs (from Sunday in the Park with George), expressing her debt to the composer in whose Follies she also had a role in on Broadway. She surpassed this with "This Nearly Was Mine" one of the supreme moments of the evening and one of the greatest popular songs, from Rodgers & Hammerstein's South Pacific, another one of her Broadway successes. She recorded these last three for her second solo album, Always.

"The Sun Went Out" by her husband Greg Naughton led to his joining her for "Dance with Me" by his band, The Sweet Remains, who all entered the stage to accompany them as a bonus. O'Hara then brought up her father-in-law and the whole group  performed "That Lonesome Road" by James Taylor, a cappella.

A gorgeous mash-up of Charlie Chaplin's "Smile" and George Harrison's "Here Comes the Sun" was another high-point. Her collaboration with composer Ricky Ian Gordon was registered with "God's There" from Dream True. She followed up her own song, the charming "She Sings", with Dan Lipton & David Rossmer's “They Don’t Let You In The Opera (If You’re A Country Star)” which is also on Always.

Another fabulous surprise was bringing the exquisite Broadway star Kristin Chenoweth onto the stage for a show-stopping performance of "Oklahoma" from the eponymous musical by Rodgers & Hammerstein. "Make Someone Happy" (on Wonder in the World) by Jules Styne, with lyrics by Betty Comden & Adolph Green, from Do Re Mi, was another pinnacle and she rewarded the audience with two welcome encores, the magnificent "I Could Have Danced All Night" (on Always) from My Fair Lady by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe and "With a Little Help from My Friends" from Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles, assisted onstage by members of her family and friends.

November '16 Digital Week I

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts
Category: Reviews
Published on Wednesday, 02 November 2016 14:58
Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week 
Body Snatchers
(Warner Archive)
Abel Ferrara’s 1993 “reboot” of Invasion of the Body Snatchers adds a further level of paranoia by involving the U.S. military—but this crude, single-minded story doesn’t really get going until the final reels (it took three screenwriters to think this up?).
 
 
 
As the heroine, Gabrielle Anwar has a striking presence: it’s still surprising that she (Scent of a Woman notwithstanding) never became a star. Overall, this isn’t bad, which for Ferrara is pretty good. The hi-def transfer is decent.

Forces of Nature
(PBS)
For this latest scientific eye-opener via PBS and the BBC, four 60-minute episodes parse the unique beauties of nature through the often unfathomable rules that science tries to make understandable; the episode titles tell all: Color, Elements, Motion and Shape.
 
 
 
The genuinely eye-popping hi-def photography, coupled with instructive commentary about what makes our universe go round—from forces of gravity to movement of animals—make this a must-watch: all four hours of it. The hi-def visuals look simply spectacular on Blu.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The ID 
(Hutson Ranch Media)
A middle-aged woman living with her elderly father attempts to break free from his dire influence—with devastating consequence—in this sometimes frightening thriller by director Thommy Hutson and writer Sean H. Stewart.
 
 
 
Patrick Peduto is a bit too on the nose as the father, but Amanda Wyss—known to horror audiences for A Nightmare on Elm Street—gives a fiercely committed performance as the daughter. The hi-def transfer is impressive; extras comprise a making-of featurette, Hutson/Wyss commentary, deleted/alternate scenes and audition clips.

Men & Chicken
(Drafthouse Films)
This scattershot but amusing misadventure follows two half-brothers who are out to find their birth dad after the man they thought was their father confesses he isn’t in a video he makes for them before his death. 
 
 
 
The Hunt’s Mads Mikkelsen and David Dencik head a marvelous cast in this flat-out insane look at strange family relationships, even if writer-director Anders Thomas Jensen goes too far with his yen for vomiting and violence, however slapstick it is. The Blu-ray image is solid.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Norman Lear—Just Another Version of You 

(PBS)

One of television’s towering geniuses, 92-year-old Norman Lear—creator of, among others, All in the Family, Good Times, Maude and The Jeffersons—is profiled in this informative documentary about his life and career—and, most important, his influence on American culture far beyond the boob tube.
 
 
 
Lear discusses his own political and social viewpoints (which obviously informed his shows), and there are new interviews from some of his actors and vintage interviews with those—like Carroll O’Connor—who are unfortunately no longer around. Too bad it’s only 90 minutes: it could easily go on for another hour or so. The film looks fine on Blu; extras are deleted scenes.

Ugly, Dirty & Bad
(Film Movement)
Italian director Ettore Scola won Best Director at Cannes in 1976 for this grotesque, at times trenchant but mostly wallowing comic study of a large poor family near Rome and their newly wealthy patriarch, who decides to spend his money on an obese prostitute he loves.
 
 
 
As the father, Nino Manfredi makes the unlikeable protagonist likeable, but for nearly two hours, Scola rubs our noses in the grime of this family’s immorality, all to diminishing returns by his film’s end. The restored transfer is sharp and detailed; the lone extra is an informative Richard Pena commentary.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
DVDs of the Week 
Casella—La Donna Serpente
(Bongiovanni)
Elgar—The Dream of Gerontius
(ICA Classics)
Alfredo Casella, an accomplished mid-20th century Italian composer, penned his lone opera, La Donna Serpente, in 1928; this 2014 staging in Martina Franca, Italy, highlights its attractive and eminently singable music, but also the silly libretto which keeps it from being anything more than an entertaining curiosity.
 
 
 
Edward Elgar, England’s most famous 20th century composer before Benjamin Britten, was known for Big Statement works like the Enigma Variations or Pomp and Circumstance; The Dream of Gerontius is a massive choral work: this 1968 performance, filmed in the famous Canterbury Cathedral, has an array of brilliant forces, from conductor Sir Adrian Boult to singers Peter Pears, Janet Baker and John Shirley-Quirk, which give it a professional veneer. A second Elgar disc includes an hour-long 1989 BBC Boult profile.

Eva Doesn’t Sleep
(Film Movement)
Pablo Aguero’s potent piece of speculative fiction sprinkled with fact takes the measure of one of the 20thcentury Argentina’s most seminal historical events—the death of Eva Peron in 1952—and covers episodes over the next quarter-century surrounding her body’s burial.
 
 
 
With a giddy mixture of dramatization and documentary footage, Aguero shows how explosive were the clashes between opposing political factions following the death of a 33-year-old president’s wife who embodied the hopes and fears of millions of her countrymen and women.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
One Day Since Yesterday 
(Warner Archive)
Peter Bogdanovich’s career—recounted in Bill Teck’s sympathetic 2015 documentary—began inauspiciously with Targets, then flew into orbit with The Last Picture Show, What’s Up Doc and Paper Moon before thudding back to earth with duds Daisy Miller, At Long Last Loveand Nickelodeon (the latter unmentioned here).
 
 
 
There’s an inordinate amount of time spent on the mild 1981 romantic comedy They All Laughed, which the likes of Quentin Tarantino champion; the 980 murder of its star, Playboy playmate Dorothy Stratten, Bogdanovich’s then-girlfriend, gives a tragic twist to an otherwise undistinguished screen career. Bogdanovich, a chatty interview subject, has ties to cinematic greats like John Ford and Orson Welles, which will probably outlive his cinematic achievements, such as they are.

CD of the Week
Bohuslav Martinu—Ariane/Double Concerto
(Supraphon)

Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu’s one-act opera Ariane—one of his final compositions before he died in 1959 at age 68—is a captivating dramatic work that leads up to a marvelous final aria for the heroine, sung here with absolute control and poise by Slovakian soprano Simona Saturova.

 

 

 

Conductor Tomas Netopil and the Essen Philharmonic, who do wonders with Ariane, sound similarly muscular with Martinu’s masterly Double Concerto for Two String Orchestras, Piano and Timpani, an overpowering work composed on the eve of World War II, and whose three movements are bursting with intensity and dramatic vividness, especially in the passages played by piano soloist Ivo Kahanek.

More Articles...

  1. Off-Broadway Review—Rachel Weisz in David Hare’s “Plenty”
  2. The "Four Seasons" in Fall
  3. October '16 Digital Week IV

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