Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Superior Donuts, Tracy Letts

We were in NYC anyway, so we decided at the last minute to see Tracy Lett's Superior Donuts. Unlike August: Osage County, which was set in rural Oklahoma and peopled with my people, SD is set in Chicago and peopled with urban misfits living on the margins. The play is well crafted and the production well conceived. The best performance was Jon Michael Hill's as the aspiring young writer trying to get out of a hole of gambling debt. From the opening moment, the play and cast held the audience in rapt attention.

Recommended.

Monday, December 28, 2009

It's Complicated (Nancy Meyers)

There was no way I was going to miss a movie that celebrated the sexuality of the older woman, especially when that woman was played by Meryl Streep. And though Jane and Jake and Adam live in a Santa Barbara fantasy world of unlimited freetime and freespending--I'd gladly take the kitchen she's so eager to remodel, and her vegetable garden is picture perfect--the laughs (usually at the expense of middle-aged male hubris and middle-age female insecurities) were consistent and real.

Note: watching a film with a crowd is one of the great joys of seeing movies at the cinema. Too often, though, the theater is nearly empty, and I feel no sense of shared pleasure. Tonight was different. The theater was packed, and such a fine audience made a very funny movie all the more fun.

Highly recommended.

The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call (Werner Herzog)

For the past fifteen or so years, Mike has kept a running list of "The 10 Most Depressing Movies." I've seen a few but not many on this list. Based on the two or three I've seen, I'm willing to bet the first 110 minutes of this film could displace one and find it's place mid-way through the list.

Set in post-Katrina New Orleans, the film bleeds the city of the saturated colors associated with Carnival and presents a bleak, gray urban nightmare of drug/alcohol addiction, prostitution, and gambling.
That said, I have to admit that the weakest part of the movie are the final 12 minutes when the sun and a rainbox of color returns; everything turns around and the ending is tied up neatly and happily. What was that about?

Recommend with caveats.

Sunday, December 27, 2009

Brief Encounter, Emma Rice adaptation of Noel Coward

St. Ann's Warehouse is quickly becoming a favorite venue for innovative theatre. And the production brought in by Kneehigh Theatre (a Cornish theatrical group) re-enforces this bias.

Brief Encounter is a multi-media production adapted from both Noel Coward's 1930s play Still Life and the later film version Brief Encounter. Effectively using actors playing double roles, the production switches between theatre and film--and blurring the boundaries between each by letting the conventions of each penetrate into the other--to create a moving mediation on forbidden desire.

Highly recommended.

Saturday, December 26, 2009

Sherlock Holmes

Good acting, thin plot. (When will we get beyond the need to pay homage to The DaVinci Code?) No matter, it's satisfying to look at Robert Downey, Jr. for two hours.

Recommended with caveats.

Up in the Air

This movie received great reviews, and yet I had little hope for what could easily have been a romantic comedy with a redemptive ending. (I know, that's what we all hope for, but I seldom see it happen. Hence I find those movies very annoying.) I primarily went because I was interested in how the film handled the newly unemployed. Well, as I expected, those sequences were extraordinarily moving. As I didn't expect, the romantic comedy was much darker than I'd anticipated--and not at all redemptive. The banter between frequent flyers Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) and Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga) wittily captures the parallels between casual sex and the perks doled out to business travelers.
Recommend.

Saturday, December 19, 2009

A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams

For nearly sixty years, Marlon Brando's interpretation of Stanley Kowalski has cast a long shadow on how Americans perceive Williams' play. In fact, though Blanche Dubois is clearly the central character, it's often Brando's brooding Stanley that dominates the our memories of the play. So when a company of Australian actors tackle the play, they not only have to prove their qualifications but must return Blanche to her central role.

The Sydney Theatre Company, under the direction of Liv Ullmann, managed both in ways I'd not expected. Cate Blanchett brings much to the role, but it's the small things (like repeatedly putting on and taking off her eyeglasses) that maintain the tension between Blanche's strength and her fragility. The rest of the cast were also very strong, especially Robin McLeavy as Stella and Joel Edgerton as Stanley, who provide the necessary sexual energy that makes it clear why she's with him.

Highly recommend.

Monday, December 14, 2009

Precious: Based on the novel "Push" by Sapphire (Lee Daniels)

This unrelenting movie tells a bleakly hopeful story via amazing performances by Mo'Nique, Mariah Carey, and Gabourey Sidibe.

Highly recommended.

Saturday, December 12, 2009

The Blind Side, John Lee Hancock

Good feel-good movie based on a true story. (I thought the New York Times Magazine article was more interesting.)

Recommend.

Saturday, December 5, 2009

Yale Camerata

Every December, the Yale Camerata presents an Advent Concert in Battell Chapel. It may fall right in the midst of the busiest time of the year for us, and yet I never regret taking the time out for this delicious indulgence. Not only am I assured that the music will be impeccably performed, but I know I'll be knocked over by a work or two totally new to me.

On the face of it, this year's performance seemed rather uneventful: Orlando di Lasso's motet Videntes stellam magi, selections from Felix Mendelssohn's incomplete oratorio Die Geburt Christi, Joseph Haydn's Missa in tempore belli, Bach's "Dona nobis pacem" from his Mass in B minor, and the Camerata's standard sing along (and the only sing along I really enjoy), "See, amid the winter's snow." All were fine works of music impeccably performed.

Quietly poised in the midst of these was Bohuslav Martinu's Nonet from 1959. Both composer and composed were unknown to me. It was love with the first note, and I look forward to listening to more of his work. I'm intrigued by his ability to bring together what I consider the best sensibilities of twentieth-century composition.

Highly recommended.

R&J, Joe Calarco adaptation of Shakespeare

Mike saw the original New York production of R&J, and he was eager for me to see it with him. It is built around the conceit of a four students at a Catholic boys' school reading--and acting out--Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. The homoeroticism implicit in any all-male production gets foregrounded. Excellent acting and production.

Highly recommended.

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