April '14 Digital Week V

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.

The Demons

(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.

The Inspector Lavardin Collection

(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 21^st century 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.

DVDs of the Week

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.

The Black Torment

(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.

Gloria

(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.

Trap for Cinderella

(IFC Midnight)

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 12^th century mystic Hildegard von Bingen and 20^th 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.

Olga Peretyatko—Arabesque

(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’

Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill

Written by Lanie Robertson; directed by Walter Bobbie

Previews began March 25, 2014; closes August 10

Circle in the Square Theatre, 235 West 50^th Street, New York, NY

ladydayonbroadway.com

The Library

Written by Scott Z. Burns; directed by Steven Soderbergh

Previews began March 25, 2014; closes April 27

Golden Theatre, 252 West 45^th Street, New York, NY

publictheatre.org

Casa Valentina

Written by Harvey Fierstein; directed by Joe Mantello

Previews began April 1, 2014; closes June 15

Freidman Theatre, 261 West 47^th Street, New York, NY

manhattantheaterclub.com

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.

Chloe Grace Moretz in The Library (photo: Joan Marcus)

Screenwriter Scott Z. Burns and director Steven Soderbergh, collaborators on such straightforwardly effective movies like Contagion 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.

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 knew about.

April '14 Digital Week IV

Blu-rays of the Week

Alice

(First Run)

Surreal Czech animator Jan Svankmajer’s thrilling 1988 take on Alice 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.

The Bletchley Circle—Season 2

(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.

Death in Venice

(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.

DVDs of the Week
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.

The Trials of Muhammad Ali

(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.

CDs of the Week
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?"

Marco Bellocchio Retrospective @ MOMA

Marco Bellocchio: A Retrospective

April 16–May 7, 2014

Museum of Modern Art

11 West 53^rd Street, New York, NY

moma.org

Italian director Marco Bellocchio, now 74, has been making highly charged dramas that take the social, moral and political pulse of his native country for nearly 50 years, and shows no signs of slowing down. Although Bellocchio remains highly respected on the international festival circuit—three of his recent films were shown at the New York Film Festival in 2002, 2003 and 2009—he has fallen prey to that strangely mysterious disease that seems to afflict veteran directors considered past their prime in that it’s no longer a given that his films will distributed or released on DVD and Blu-ray.

Luckily for us, some of Bellocchio’s most trenchant films are screening at the Museum of Modern Art through May 6. Although Marco Bellocchio: A Retrospective is sadly incomplete, comprising only 18 of some 40 features, it does include some of his most important works, from his still-remarkable debut, 1965’s Fists in the Pocket, and the even more assured follow-up, 1967’s China is Near, to his latest provocative feature. 2012’s Dormant Beauty, an intelligent and thought-provoking exploration of Italy’s right to life debate (Terri Schiavo was the U.S. equivalent), informs the personal, professional and religious lives of several characters, played splendidly by Isabelle Huppert, Toni Servillo, Maya Sansa, Alba Rohrwacher and the director’s son Pier Giorgio.

Maya Sansa in Dormant Beauty (photo: Francesca Fago)

Accompanying the MOMA retro is a gorgeous hardcover book about Bellocchio. Morality and Beauty, edited by Italian cinema scholar Sergio Toffetti, contains essays and appreciations by critics, collaborators, actors and actresses and other directors about Bellochio’s lengthy cinematic career. The book itself is worth it not only for its insights into his artistry but also for its presentation: there are rare stills from many films, a complete filmography, and even Bellocchio’s own paintings and storyboards for several films. Morality and Beauty is an essential volume for anyone with an interest in one of our greatest filmmakers.

In Bellocchio’s films, from Fists to Dormant Beauty, there are no innocent bystanders: after his first two features, the director himself joined the radical Communist Union in 1968, and the characters populating his dramas are equally committed individuals, in every sense of the word. Bellocchio keeps returning to variations on his themes of obsessive love affairs or relationships often based on abuses of power.

As often as he tackles the incendiary worlds of political, economic and social status—which, in these films, are one and the same—Bellocchio often pushes the envelope even further. 1990’s The Conviction is the movie David Mamet’s Oleanna wishes it were: a professor hides from a young woman he was intimate with in a locked museum overnight the fact that he had the keys all along. Angered, she accuses him of raping her; Bellocchio raises pertinent—and unsettling—questions that remain difficult to answer.

Bellocchio’s most recent films are among his most refined, even as they unfold as hysterically fever-pitched melodramas hinging on notions of faith, idealism and mortality. My Mother’s Smile (2002) takes on the Roman Catholic Church in the form of an atheistic artist horrified to find his deceased mother on the fast track to canonization. Bellocchio shows no mercy depicting a church more concerned with public relations than saving souls.

Good Morning, Night (2003) is a dreamlike retelling of the 1975 kidnapping of Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro, told from the point of view of terrorist group’s lone woman. Bellocchio, who expertly shows how even radical causes can become domesticated, saturates his film with hallucinatory colors which match the strains of Pink Floyd’s atmospheric music.

Marco Bellocchio on the set of Vincere (photo: Daniele Musso)

2009’s Vincere, another stunning re-examination of Italian history, tells the little-known true story of Ida Dalser, Mussolini’s beautiful, intelligent lover who bore him a son before he became the fascist leader of Italy—whereupon both she and the boy were erased from Il Duce’s life and, consequently, history itself. Intense, gregarious, and thought-provoking from its opening credits, Vincere finds Bellocchio in his most freely expressionist mode, intercutting actual newsreel footage of Mussolini alongside this riveting tale of a real-life heroine fighting against all odds for her and her son’s lives.

Vincere’s frequent, jarring and extreme tonal shifts are reminiscent of Lina Wertmuller’s audacious Seven Beauties (1976), a similarly go-for-baroque masterpiece. Like Seven Beauties, which was anchored by Giancarlo Giannini’s superlative performance, Vincere works so marvelously because Giovanna Mezzogiorno leads us through Ida’s tragic tale. This fabulously expressive actress—whose face is illuminated by the most dazzling pair of hazel eyes in cinema—is the prime focus of Bellocchio’s camera, and her brave, emotionally naked piece of acting is the ultimate collaboration with Italy’s most fearless and fiery filmmaker.

Broadway Theater Roundup—‘The Realistic Joneses’ and ‘Mothers and Sons’

The Realistic Joneses

Written by Will Eno; directed by Sam Gold

Previews began March l3, 2014; opened April 6

Lyceum Theatre, 149 West 45^th Street, New York, NY

therealisticjoneses.com

Mothers and Sons

Written by Terrence McNally; directed by Sheryl Kaller

Previews began February 23, 2014; opened March 24

Golden Theatre, 252 West 45^th Street, New York, NY

mothersandsonsbroadway.com

Letts and Tomei in The Realistic Joneses (photo: Joan Marcus)

Will Eno’s brand of absurdism is an acquired taste. His promising short works nod to Beckett and Albee, but his full-length plays Middletown, Thom Pain and The Realistic Joneses are stretched unbearably thin. Although some find profundity and insight in his work, that seems like wishful thinking: his cascading lines of dialogue, instead of exploding into meaning, too often fizzle into meaninglessness.

The Realistic Joneses introduces two couples, both improbably named Jones, which are neighbors in a bucolic mountain area. Stable long-timers Jennifer and Bob welcome the slightly daffy newcomers John and Pony; at the start, John’s non-sequiturs and inappropriate outbursts are mocked by an incredulous Bob, whose wife Jennifer is the epitome of levelheadedness, especially when compared to the airheaded Pony.

Soon, however, John insinuates himself, in a rather unlikely fashion, into Jennifer’s good graces, while—even more ludicrously—Bob and Pony begin an affair. That’s about the extent of the plot: the play has been constructed as a series of blackouts featuring two, three or all four Joneses. And Eno’s epigrammatic dialogue repeatedly falls flat, whether it concerns a dead squirrel in the backyard, a fictional disease both men suffer from or even John mocking the dullness of Bob’s name, to which Jennifer quickly shoots back a riposte about dyslexics liking it—a quip more clever than funny.

By the time we reach the would-be deep finale showing the Jones quartet (the title’s “realistic” is another Eno joke) idly chatting, Eno’s shallow exploration of humanity has very little of import to impart. On David Zinn’s aptly cluttered set, director Sam Gold artfully paces this disjointed  sitcom, while the cast—Toni Collette (Jennifer), Michael C. Hall (John), Marisa Tomei (Pony) and especially Tracy Letts (Bob)—works hard, and at times effectively, to make it all seem more pointed than pointless.

Weller and Daly in Mothers and Sons (photo: Joan Marcus)

That Mothers and Sons is one of Terrence McNally’s most personal plays is obvious, dealing as it does with the AIDS crisis, gay marriage and clueless parents of homosexuals; its strengths and weaknesses stem directly from wearing its heart on its sleeve.

McNally’s schematic set-up—while visiting her long-dead son Andre’s lover Cal on the Upper West Side to get some closure, grand dame Katharine meets Cal’s husband Will and their adopted young son Bud—is merely an excuse for him to pontificate about subjects still near to his heart and own life. The no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners Katharine barks nastily at Cal upon her arrival, hiding her own fear and anger over her son’s death from AIDS 20 years earlier: her outbursts, while sometimes funny, are nearly always vitriolic. And McNally stacks his dramatic deck by making Cal, Will and Bud too good to be true—especially young Bud, a sentimental figure of vindication and love who singlehandedly transforms Katharine from nasty old lady to caring “grandmother.”

Mothers and Sons is preachy and didactic, but McNally doesn’t care; he wants to emphasize to audiences that the AIDS era was recent history that shouldn’t be repeated and that the current battle for gay equality is a clear next step for a cultured society. True, there are cheap shots at Dallas and Port Chester, and Katharine herself is self-contradictory: if she grew up in a NYC suburb, why was/is she so obtuse about her gay son? It’s obviously so that McNally can have it both ways, letting Katharine simultaneously rage against right-wing Texan rubes and be ignorant of her son’s sexuality, insisting that it was New York that turned him gay when he moved there at age 18.

Whatever its faults, McNally’s topical play has well-earned laughs and tears. Sheryl Kaller directs persuasively on John Lee Beatty’s gorgeous set—who wouldn’t want to live in this well-appointed apartment that overlooks Central Park?—and the acting quartet is beyond reproach. Grayson Taylor’s Bud is as adorable as written, Bobby Steggert ensures Will’s niceness doesn’t equal blandness, and Frederick Weller makes a strong, full-blooded character out of the stick figure of Cal.

Then there’s Tyne Daly, who makes Katharine as big a diva prowling the stage as the actress was as Maria Callas in McNally’s Master Class. Daly gives her lines bite and an added dollop of bitterness tinged with sadness that give Katharine an extra dimension not found in the script. If the play itself is a bumpy, manipulative ride, at least a master navigator is at the controls.

April '14 Digital Week III

Blu-rays of the Week

Best Night Ever

Cocaine Cowboys Revisited

(Magnet)

Best Night Ever could be called a female Hangover, except that there are actually scattered laughs in this inane attempt to ape that unfunny blockbuster—it also tries to be a found-footage movie, as one of the Vegas bachelorette party gals records everything. Game actresses are defeated by increasingly desperate material. An extended version of a documentary, Cocaine Cowboys Revisited is a thorough expose of Miami as the bloody battleground for violent drug dealers in the ‘70s-‘80s. Interviews with participants and archival footage bring viewers closer to what happened and why. Both discs have good hi-def transfers; extras include deleted scenes and, on Best, interviews.

Black Jack

(Cohen Media)

Ken Loach’s 1979 costume drama—an anomaly in his long career of politically aware films—is a pleasantly minor adaptation of a children’s adventure novel about a gruff adventurer and two children in mid-18^th century England. Though made on a shoestring, Chris Menges’ low-key 16mm photography glistens, thanks to Loach’s fastidious eye for detail, which helps overcome variable acting from mostly unknowns. The grainy Blu-ray image is soft but palatable; extras are a Loach commentary and deleted scenes.

Earthflight

(BBC)

With so many nature documentaries proliferating on TV and the big screen, new ones must distinguish themselves from the others—all of which have gorgeously-looking HD-photography—and the six-part Earthflight does just that. By putting tiny HD cameras on the backs of actual birds and showing them in flight all around the world, the programs find a new way to astonish viewers by giving a literal bird’s-eye view of the marvels in our world, both natural and man-made. Of course, the hi-def images look absolutely stunning, whether taken in Asia, Antarctica, Europe or North and South America.

Forgetting the Girl

(Ram Releasing)

What begins as a mildly intriguing portrait of a Manhattan photographer doing headshots for aspiring actresses—and who fails to personally connect with any of them, despite his efforts—turns into an unsatisfying slasher flick. For awhile, this study of a loner and loser with unresolved issues nods seems psychologically acute, then descends into routine blood and gore. Christopher Denham is extremely good as the protagonist, and Anna Camp—who appears in far too few movies and plays—is delectable as the one female who responds to him. The Blu-ray image is decent; extras include deleted scenes, director commentary and web videos.

The Making of a Lady

Murder on the Home Front

(PBS)

From a story by Frances Hodgson Burnett (who wrote The Secret Garden), Lady follows a young woman marrying a widower who immediately leaves home—she soon must deal with his cousin who decides he wants to take over the estate. Director Richard Curson Smith’s tidy 90-minute mystery, which slowly builds in tension, has slyly restrained performances by Linus Roache and Lydia Wilson. Murder—a slow-moving WWII drama about another young woman (a very good Tamzin Merchant) who works with a pathologist to solve murders in a London preoccupied with German bombings—is a handsomely mounted if unexceptional mystery. Both films have fine hi-def transfers; Murder extras comprise cast and crew interviews.

Paths Through the Labyrinth

(C Major)

Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki, a 1950s avant-gardist now one of our most renowned classical composers, is still going strong at age 80, with an astonishing array of orchestral works, operas, chamber music and film scores. Director Anna Schmidt’s superb documentary follows Penderecki for a year, still composing, conducting and living life as a major artist, along with admiring interviews with his wife; director Andrzej Wajda; and musicians Anne Sophie Mutter, Janine Jansen and Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood (whose own classical forays ape Penderecki). Well-chosen clips from Kubrick’s The Shining and Wajda’s Katyn illustrate how cinematic Penderecki’s own music really is. The hi-def image is stellar; extras are Greenwood and conductor Lorin Maazel interviews.

Philomena

(Weinstein/Anchor Bay)

This heart-tugging drama about an Irish woman’s search for the son she gave up 50 years ago while among the Magdalene Sisters in a Catholic convent stars a marvelously understated Judi Dench and an amusingly bitter Steve Coogan as journalist Martin Sixsmith, who wrote the brilliant book about her quest. Stephen Frears’ economical direction and Dench and Coogan’s interplay are the main draws of this mere skimming of Sixsmith’s account, in which Philomena’s son’s rich, varied and surprising life is developed in 420 pages—perhaps a sequel, Michael, will do justice to his life story? The Blu-ray image is first-rate; extras are Coogan and cowriter Jeff Pope’s commentary, interviews with Dench and the real Philomena Lee, and a Coogan Q&A.

DVDs of the Week

Bastards

(IFC)

In Claire Denis’ fragmented, convoluted attempt at film noir, a sea captain must deal with his brother-in-law’s suicide and the disappearances of his weak, estranged sister and niece, all while carrying on an affair with a woman married to a terrifyingly evil corporate capitalist. Although Denis’ eye remains unerring—her cinematographer is, as usual, the great Agnes Godard—her narrative sense has never been her strong suit, and the movie’s central mysteries are slowly, unsatisfyingly brought to a close. Still, a solid cast led by the always watchable Vincent Lindon and the amazing young actress Lola Creton helps smooth over many bumps.

The Children Nobody Wanted

Life According to Sam

(Warner Archive)

Children, an earnest, honorable 1981 movie about Tom Butterfield’s efforts to create a home for mistreated young boys in the small Missouri town where he attends college, gains credibility from Fred Lehne’s lively Tom and a young Michelle Pfeiffer as his lovely girlfriend. The difficult to watch Life, a documentary about children with the incurable disease  progeria, which causes rapid—and fatal—aging, focuses on Sam Berns (who sadly died last fall at age 17), a sparkplug who put a brave face on the disease. Sam extras include Berns’ speech and a PSA with Berns and Dave Matthews.

The Curse of the Gothic Symphony

(First Run)

Wherein a determined group eventually puts together a performance of British composer Havergal Brian’s Gothic Symphony, all 120 minutes, 400 choristers and 200 musicians’ worth! I find Brian’s music even more bloated than Bruckner, but kudos to those loyal fans who persevered and finally saw their dream come to fruition. Director Randall Wood presents their story engagingly, even including biographical tidbits of Brian himself, although the reenactments of events in the composer’s life are ludicrously staged.

In the Name of

(Film Movement)

In Malgoska Szumowska’s engrossing melodrama, a closeted priest hides his sexual proclivities while mentoring young men and resisting the advances of an attractive young local woman. Although contrivances start to creep in after an interesting opening, the natural performances help ground it in a credible reality that keep the film from going off the melodramatic rails. Lone extra is an Israeli short with a similar theme, Summer Vacation.

The Last Time I Saw Macao

(Cinema Guild)

This sleight-of-hand film combines documentary, mystery and visual essay to create a fascinating hybrid: beginning as a reverie about the disappearance of the protagonist’s close friend, it morphs ever more cleverly and ends up an illuminating if occasionally mystifying drama. Co-directors Joao Pedro Rodrigues and Joao Rui Guerra da Mata—who narrates his return to the Portuguese Pacific colony where he grew up to find his friend—provide beautiful imagery amid their narrative misdirection. Extras include an interview with the Joaos and a pair of their shorts, Red Dawn and Mahjong.

Broadway Roundup—‘Bullets Over Broadway’ Becomes a Musical; Denzel Stars in ‘Raisin in the Sun’

Bullets Over Broadway

Book by Woody Allen; directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman

Previews began March l1, 2014; opened April 10

St. James Theatre, 246 West 44^th Street, New York, NY

bulletsoverbroadway.com

A Raisin in the Sun

Written by Lorraine Hansberry; directed by Kenny Leon

Previews began March 8, 2014; closes June 15

Barrymore Theatre, 243 West 47^th Street, New York, NY

raisinbroadway.com

Braff and Cordero in Bullets Over Broadway (photo: Paul Kolnik)

The gleefully silly Bullets Over Broadway is this season’s lone movie-to-musical adaptation that actually works. Woody Allen’s original 1994 movie mixed pompous theater people, murderous mobsters, hilarious one-liners and even song and dance into a memorable stew of unbridled nonsense that won a Supporting Actress Oscar for Dianne Wiest (her second) as the ultimate theatrical diva.

Set during Prohibition in 1929 New York City, Bullets’ colorful kaleidoscope of giddy cinematic caricatures was set amidst Carlo di Palma’s tangy cinematography, Jeffrey Kurland’s canny costumes and Santo Loquasto’s lustrous sets, making it one of the most visually splendid of Allen’s movies.

And its plot is right up there with Allen’s cleverest short stories like “Retribution” or “The Kugalmass Episode.” Struggling playwright David Shayne finally gets financing for his first Broadway play, but with one condition: he must cast Olive Neal, the talentless girlfriend of the rich mobster bankrolling the show. A neophyte director protecting his own work, David also has to deal with the rest of his cast, especially legendary actress Helen Sinclair, with whom he’s falling in love, as well as Cheech, the henchman keeping an eye on Olive for his boss and who has many ideas about how to improve David’s play.

To make this madcap send-up work onstage, book writer Allen has the perfect collaborator in Susan Stroman, who did double duty choreographing and directing the immortal Contact, and who’s already expert at transforming movies into stage shows, having done the trick with Mel Brooks’ The Producers and Young Frankenstein and more recently with Big Fish. Stroman’s fertile imagination is definitely in its element with the show’s many song-and-dance numbers, all 1920s standards sung by the cast, whether or not the tunes themselves have anything to do with what’s happening onstage (Greg Kelly, who also orchestrated, has penned new lyrics that refer to the plot and characters).

Stroman’s originality is in evidence from the rousing curtain-raiser “Tiger Rag” to the pointless but giddy closing number “Yes, We Have No Bananas.” Stroman adroitly moves from high-kicking chorus girls to a magnificent gangsters’ tap-dance, and her magisterial pacing knows just when to reprise or cut off a number to keep the show’s momentum from faltering. And there are, of course, major assists from Loquasto’s dazzlingly sleight-of-hand sets, William Ivey Long’s flamboyant costumes and Donald Holder’s snazzy lighting.

The cast is also up to snuff. Vincent Pastore is great fun as the gruff mob boss who breaks into growling song, and Nick Cordero gives hilariously comic menace to the artist in hitman’s clothing that is Cheech. Old pros Karen Ziemba and Brooks Ashmanskas provide belly laughs as two delightfully daffy performers in David’s play, with Ziemba going above and beyond for delicious interplay with her beloved pooch Mr. Woofles (played by a stage natural named Trixie). Lenny Wolpe makes a funny teddy bear as Julian Marx, David’s agent, while Betsey Wolfe’s Ellen is a sweetly adorable—and crystalline-voiced—girlfriend for our playwright hero.

As the ultimate bimbo Olive, Helene Yorke shrewdly adopts the same grating voice as Jennifer Tilly in the movie, but does so much more with the character—that she sings and dances simultaneously badly and well helps immeasurably—that she takes Olive to a  higher level. Marin Mazzie, up against memories of Dianne Wiest’s Oscar-winning turn, makes Helen Sinclair her own, as much a comic diva as Wiest but with the added bonus of her own powerhouse singing voice—she even spins that immortal line, “Don’t speak,” in an original way. As David, Zach Braff tries a bit too hard to keep up with the talent around him but settles into an amiably goofy Matthew Broderick groove that fits snugly. But it’s Stroman’s dazzling showmanship that keeps Bullets Over Broadway buoyantly on-target.

Washington and Okonedo in A Raisin in the Sun (photo: Brigitte Lacombe)

 Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun is one of those touchstone plays, like Death of a Salesman or Long Day’s Journey into Night, that feels familiar even for those who haven’t seen it. So another Broadway revival only a decade after an ill-fated staging with Sean “P. Diddy” Combs is unsurprising, especially since a Hollywood superstar wanted to star in it.

Hansberry’s 1959 play about the Youngers, a poor black family in Chicago, still feels fresh and has a rigorous intelligence that blends comedy and tragedy in a pinpoint study of social, economic and political injustice. In his new production, director Kenny Leon catches those qualities for the most part; when his staging occasionally stalls, another potent or prophetic Hansberry line of dialogue propels the play forward.

Much has been made of 59-year-old Denzel Washington playing 35-year-old son Walter Lee Younger: actually, in this production, we are told he’s 40. Although Washington looks younger than his age, if not a man of 35 or 40, he has a youthful bearing that nicely complements the accumulating desperation of a man who feels he’s failing his family. Although Washington’s natural charisma makes him one of the most likeable actors around, his edgy side springs forth onstage, in Fences a few seasons back and now in Raisin.

As Walter Lee’s younger sister, the wonderfully named Beneatha, Anika Noni Rose gives a beautifully modulated portrayal of a young woman finding her own way in a crushingly anti-female and anti-black culture, choosing to study to be a doctor until she discovers her African heritage. Likewise, Sophie Okonedo—a Broadway novice—has a slightly mournful quality as Walter Lee’s harried wife Ruth that serves her in good stead: her lovely, subtle performance is at the heart of Hansberry’s timeless tale.