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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Wall Street Chamber Players

Lovely evening of unfamiliar works. One of the Players' better performances.

Beethoven, Trio for Piano, Clarinet and Cello in B-flat major, Op 11 (1798)
This jaunty trio rings with references to Mozartian opera.

Bartok, Selected Duets from 44 Duets for Two Violins (1931)

Brahms, Quintet for Clarinet and Strings in B minor, Op 115 (1892)
Devastating in its passionate nostalgia.

Kepler, Philip Glass

I'm always ambivalent about attending a live performance of any Glass music--and because Mike is a devotee, I get lots of opportunities to feel ambivalent. Granted, Glass can be luscious and deeply mesmerizing; his music can also become monotonous and sleep enducing.

Allan Kozinn's NYTimes review (see link above) helped place me in the right mindset for the Bruckner Orchestra Linz's performance of Kepler. Billed as an opera, the work is much closer to an oratorio. Rather than filling the stage with a dramatic narrative of love or war, the performance filled the stage with dramatic music and the drama of intellectual quest. (I suspect that a study of the score would reveal elliptical patterning.)

Besides baritone Martin Achrainer as Kepler, the only other singers are a six-member ensemble, who assume various roles, from planets to Kepler's enemies.

Recommend.

Pirate Radio, Richard Curtis

A fun rock-n-roll fairy tale set in the North Sea off the British coast, the film's energy derives primarily from its great soundtrack and its aura of rebellion against stuffy authority. Nothing brilliant, nothing surprising, but simply fun entertainment.

I take the bit about no brillance back: Emma Thompson makes a brief appearance as an aging but still sizzling temptress. Compare this to her role in An Education as the sexually repressed headmistress. Brillant.

Recommend.

Antichrist, Lars von Trier

Certainly the most difficult movie to sit through that I've seen this year, Antichrist features excellent performances by Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg as an unnamed married couple. The movie opens with the accidental death of their toddler son and thrusts them into the long period of grief and guilt that follow.
Much of the movie's difficulty is emotional, stemming from the movie's tight focus on the couple. Except for the brief appearances of that child, the film depicts no other characters but Dafoe's and Gainsbourg's. Other difficult elements are more physical and require us to anticipate and watch excrutiating acts of torture.
Von Trier explores the inherent evil in Nature, human and otherwise, asking us to consider if human evil is natural or a perversion. Though I was emotionally (and physically) drained after watching the film, I was fascinated by von Trier's efforts to combine a tale of anti-misogyny with those very misogynistic elements it would have us deplore.
We saw the film a 2nd time on 19 November; it holds up well.


Highly recommended--but with caveats.

An Education, Lone Scherfig

Though set in 1961 London, An Education depicts every 17-year-old girl's fantasy temptations without being a movie simply about every 17-year-old girl's fantasies. We're lured right along with her, just as willing as she to overlook inconsistencies in the older man's lines. Consequently, we're also just as horrified when we're no longer able to ignore his lies.

Carey Mulligan is excellent as Jenny; Emma Thompson provides needed ambivalence as the icy, distant headmistress of Jenny's school.

Highly recommend.

39 Steps

This long-running Broadway show is now on the road, and we saw it at New Haven's Shubert Theatre. The thriller-comedy reimagines Hitchcock's 1935 movie using only four actors. The laughs come from the multiple character/costume changes, and the thriller comes from a fairly thin mystery plot. It made for a fun, light-hearted evening.

Recommend.

Quartett, Heiner Muller

Director Robert Wilson and actress Isabelle Huppert were enough to entice us make the mad drive from New Haven to Brooklyn during late-afternoon traffic. I'm not convinced the evening was worth the effort.

The primary difficulty was my limited French. Yes, there were supertitles, but our excellent seats meant I couldn't see both the stage and read the text at the same time. And because Wilson's stylized production sought to divorce what the audience saw from what the audience heard (which I guess is what I experienced in the extreme), I had difficulty grabbing ahold of anything.

I feel so plebian, so philistine.

Recommend. Sorta. With Caveats.

A Serious Man, Joel and Ethan Coen

A Serious Man peaks under the covers to reveal every young (and, if the truth be told, older) academic's nightmare: the undermining of a career for reasons that nothing to do with teaching or scholarship. In the process, we become companions with a twentieth-century American Job, whose very Jewish travails occurs where else but Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Carter Burwell's soundtrack deserves notice.

Highly recommended.

God of Carnage, Yasmina Reza

Just days before the cast changed, we took a quick, last-minute train trip to NYC for a matinee performance of God of Carnage with the play's Tony-winning cast: Hope Davis, James Gandolfini, Jeff Daniels, and Marcia Gay Harden. And neither the play nor the performances disappointed. (As it happened, this performance was recorded for the archives at NYPublic Library of Performing Arts.)

Tightly written, the script has clearly drawn characters and wit woven throughout. Similarly, the acting was crisp and impeccable. That said, I must add that this play doesn't reach for much emotional depth.

Recommend highly.

And we caught a train that got us back home for dinner at home.

Whip It, Drew Barrymore

I remember as a young girl in Corpus Christi, Texas, watching Roller Derby on local television broadcasts. I never understood the rules; I just knew that participation was forbidden good girls.

And that's the premise of Barrymore's adaptation of Shauna Cross's novel. In this case, the good girl is a bored highschooler in small-town central Texas lured to Austin's roller derby circuit by the risk and the chance to be a bad girl.

Strong performances by Ellen Page and Marcia Gay Harden.

Recommend.

Phedre, Jean Racine (trans. Ted Hughes)

In the year of cougars, who could turn down a chance to see Jean Racine's Phedre, especially in a translation by Ted Hughes? The text did not disappoint, though Yale School of Drama's production did. The acting started at a high emotional pitch and had no where else to go. Plus there's the lethal problem of casting a young engenue (and what else will a director find at YSD?) as the fading leading lady.

Recommend. Caveats

Aida, Verdi

Lots of fun. No elephants.

Recommend.

Leonard Cohen

We so loved Cohen's May concert in Waterbury, that we splurged and caught his Madison Square Garden performance. We were not disappointed.

High recommended.

The Orphans' Home Cycle, Horton Foote

We thoroughly enjoyed Hartford Stage's production of Horton Foote's "The Orphans' Home Cycle," a 9-hour journey back in time to the rural Texas of my grandparents' childhood.

Highly recommend.

Ritual Incantations

We attended primarily to hear the solo performance of Mike's former student, Mihai Marica, a Romanian cellist who took his undergraduate degree at SCSU while studying music at Yale.
The new music (commissioned through grants from Music Alive, a program from composers-in-residence) was the most interesting, though the peculiar Mozart was surprisingly structured. The Beethoven kept everyone around.

Jin Hi Kim, NORI III for Percussion Quartet and Electric Komungo
Augusta Read Thomas, Ritual Incantations for Cello and Orchestra
Mozart, Symphony No 32 in G major (K 318)
Beethoven, Symphony No 7 in A Major (Op 92)

Recommend.

Lipsynch, Robert Lepage

Maybe because some lukewarm reviews had lowered my expectations, I thoroughly enjoyed this nearly 9-hour marathon performance. Interweaving narratives of nine characters across nine acts, the play becomes a powerful denunciation of sexual abuse, whether in the form of incest or the international sexual slave trade. It achieves this by exploring the power and limitations of language and the spoken word, often using visual effects to underscore the constructed nature of our reality.

Highly recommend.

Julie & Julia, Nora Ephron

A thorough delight. Starring two of my favorite actors, Amy Adams and Meryl Streep, the film provides a lovely afternoon's entertainment...plus enough inspiration to make me try anew recipes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Recommend.

American Buffalo, David Mamet

Very good production of one of Mamet's less dark (though still very shadowy) play.

Two cons and one junkie play how to steal of valuable coin. The play ends up presenting honor among thieves rather than any successful robbery of a nickel.

Recommend.

The Wall Street Chamber Players

The first performance of the season provided an amiable evening of all Mozart in the comfortable confines of a neighborhood home.
Piano trio in C major (K 548), Flute Quartet in D major (K 285), and Piano Quartet No 2 in E-flat major (K 493).

High recommend.

The Informant! Steven Soderbergh

I like capers enough that I would have gone to see this sooner or later. I ended up going early in its release because I heard an NPR interview with Marvin Hamlisch (not one of my favorites) about the ways the peppy soundtrack works against the corporate espionage of the narrative.

Recommend.

Brandenburg Concerto 5, J. S. Bach

A small ensemble from Orchestra New England performed the concerto on original instruments for SCSU students. Wonderful, intimate experience.

Recommend.

In I, Juliet Binoche and Akram Khan

We made extraordinary efforts to see this production. In addition to purchasing the tickets months in advance, we cut short our work days to drive to Brooklyn during afternoon rush hour. We knew to expect something out of the ordinary: a performance piece that asked an actor to dance and a dancer to act. And that erasure of boundaries was certainly daring. Moreover many visual elements, especially the moving wall that gradually creeped on the audience and created a sense of cramped foreboding, were engaging.

But the dancer and the actor forgot to engage a playwright. Where the narrative wasn't trite, it was disjointed.

After all the efforts we'd made to see it, I wished the producers had made the effort to create a more compelling narrative structure.

Recommend, with caveats

Baader Meinhof Complex, Uli Edel

Two and half hours long, and in German with English subtitles: recipe for a tedious evening. Instead, this movie completely mezmerized me with its story of 1970s young West German radicals determined not to repeat the complacency of their parents. The film traces how some moved beyond protests and verbal denunciations of the West German regime to terrorism.

Highly recommend.

Adam, Max Mayer

Adam delivers the coming-of-age story of its eponymous hero, a 29-year-old electrical engineer with Asperger's syndrome. Able to function only with the highly structured boundaries lovingly established by his now-deceased father, Adam's move towards full independence is propelled by his romantic engagement with his new neighbor, a very kind and attractive pre-school teacher curious enough, patient enough, and eventually, wise enough to help him develop necessary social skills and then let him go.

Unlike many films of its ilk, Adam avoids easy sentimentality. This is largely due to Hugh Dancy's portrayal of Adam, a performance that feels emotionally honest; I came away with greater understanding, not pity. The most awkward spots appear when the narrative stops so one character or another can explain Asperger's to another character--and to its audience. I wonder how necessary these pedagogical moments are, however, since most cinema-goers attracted to such a quiet indy film would be familiar with--and most likely sympathetic to--the syndrome.

Recommend.

Paper Heart, Nicholas Jasenovec

Presented as a documentary on "falling in love" that becomes a record of the budding romance between comedian Charlyne Yi and actor Michael Cera, Paper Heart fails to connect with the viewer in any meaningful way. Interspersed in Yi's personal story are interviews with couples and individuals across the country, each developing ideas about the nature of love.  Perhaps these were filmed as part of the documentary.  The scenes between Yi and Cera are clearly staged, if not scripted, because the director doesn't play himself; instead, he is played by an actor. 

Of course, the line between reality and fiction is a division that the film wants us to puzzle over. And we do, but not because either Yi or her relationship with Cera is very engaging.  In truth, she is extraordinarily tedious.  While Cera's naif persona is charming, her version of the innocent is downright irritating.  She truly seems to be an individual unable to read interpersonal signals--and except when she squeals with delight, she's unable to express or display emotion.  It's like watching a 7-year-old walk through the role of a late adolescent.  As a consequence, I find it difficult to believe that a friend--in the case, director Nicholas Jasenovec--would commit time and money to help her explore the question of love. 

Recommend with caveats.  

In the Loop, Armando Iannucci

A wickedly funny satire about the inner dysfunctions of government bureaucracies on both sides of the Atlantic, with shots at the UN thrown in for good measure, In the Loop takes no prisoners and leaves none of its targets unhit. For reasons we're never told--and assume are secondary to individual self-promotion running rampant in the corridors of apparent powerlessness--the British (NOT English) and American governments on rushing to war somewhere in the Middle East.  

My caveat: what happens on the movie screen should stay on the movie screen. Though we all have good reason to suspect such motives propel much decision making in Washington DC and London, the only way to remain sane after watching this movie is to forget about it.  

Highly recommend. 

Bruce Springsteen (Comcast Theater, Hartford, CT)

Great concert by one of the greatest.  

Highly recommend.

District Nine, Neill Blomkamp

An alien invasion with a twist: over a million starving aliens are rescued from their mothership and placed in a Johannesburg, South Africa, refuge camp, District 9. Twenty years later, their numbers having doubled and their ship continuing to hover over the city, the ominous MNU (MultiNational Unit) is charged with transferring them further from the city to District 10. The bumbling son-in-law of MNU's CEO--Wikus Van De Merwe (played by Sharlto Copley)--is put in charge. While rounding up aliens, he accidentally infects himself with a potent fluid with two important properties: besides allowing the lost command module to return to the mothership, it also infects Van De Merwe and gradually transforms him into an alien.  The ensuing chase and battle scenes center on who gets ahold of the fluid.  

Tonally, the film takes a bit getting used to.  Wikus is a South African Inspector Clouseau, and his human enemies are flat projections of evil.  The film incorporates elements of a documentary--sociologists, scientists, and family speculating on Van De Merwe's behavior, plus footage from surveillance cameras.  And though the humans and aliens can understand each other (but not speak the other's language), there is no backstory, or even a gesture towards a backstory, that is, not even the sociologists claims that she's been spending the past 20 years trying to learn as much as possible about the alien race.  Obviously, we're to understand that the humans have absolutely no interest in the aliens except as a source for a new level of weaponry.  

As an allegory on apartheid, it's a bit confused.

Recommend.

Funny People, Judd Apatow

To date, I've carefully avoided Judd Apatow films. The premises behind his films sounded juvenile and tedious, and any previews I saw confirmed my suspicions. And as I look over Adam Sandler's filmography, I realize that, except for seeing snippets of Billy Madison when the kids were watching the video, I've managed to avoid him, also.  Based on strong reviews, I decided to go against type and see Funny People.  As MS said: well, it wasn't a complete waste of time.

Sandler plays George Simmons--a successful comedian whose comic persona is very similar to Sandler's--who's been diagnosed with a terminal illness.  Alone, he snatches Ira Wright (played by Seth Rogen) from comedy club and grocery-store deli obscurity.  The reasons for this gesture are unclear, but I think we're supposed to think he's looking to buy a friend. Rather than the usual juvenile grossness shaping the film's primary narrative, the penis and fart jokes get sidelined in the comedy acts embedded within the buddy story of George and Ira.  

The movie's energy comes from this buddy narrative, as well as Ira's friendship with his roommates, Mark and Leo (played by Jason Schwartzman and Leo Koenig); however, the film crawls to a near halt when women (and the subsequent love interest) get introduced into the mix.  

So for now, I've had my Apatow and Sandler fix.  Doubt I'll need another injection any time soon.

Caveats.

(500) Days of Summer, Marc Webb

The opening scene of (500) Days of Summer made us laugh. Twice. And we didn't stop laughing.  That's pretty good.  

In fact, this very good romantic comedy hits just the right balance between romance and comedy.  The laughs don't come from absurd situations, but from recognizably familiar ones.  And the romance don't develop from sentimentally but from an ironic examination of the ways our culture cultivates romantic expectations.  

The film's ironic sensibility extends to its post-modern pastiche of genres and references.  Clearly set late in the twenty-first century's first decade, it incorporates Ikea, Wii, coffee shops, and cell phone conversations as normal aspects of our culture without making the plot depend upon them.   If any cultural phenomenon generate the narrative, it's references to film and music. In addition to the central reference to The Graduate, techniques borrowed from post-war European art film, Bollywood musicals, and documentaries are incorporated into the film.  Rather than making the movie self-important or pretentious, these meta-moments add to the film's self-mocking humor--and make it easy for the audience to accept the hero's enlightenment on day 500.

All in all, (500) is a delightful, clever film.

Highly recommend.

Revanche, Götz Spielmann

A fantastic film noir by Austrian director Gotz Spielmann, Revanche opens with a plot reminiscent of Fargo (1996) and A Simple Plan (1998): a brothel tough guy, Alex (played by Johannes Krisch), robs a bank in order to clear the debts his Ukrainian girlfriend, Tamara (played by Irina Potapenko), owes her pimp.  His simple, "infallible" plan goes wrong when a local village policeman, Robert (played by Andreas Lust), stumbles upon the getaway car.  

Though the film sprinkles several motifs from the other two movies--in particular, the scenes of Alex cutting and splitting firewood invoked the woodchipper in Fargo--it veers away from them with multiple ironic redemptions.  To list them here would reveal too much.  

In addition to the tightly plotted narrative, the film features great montage work and editing.  It merits a second viewing.

Highly recommended.

 

Departures, Yôjirô Takita

Departures is an elegant and small film about the most inelegant of big topics, death.  Daigo (played by Masahiro Motoki) is an unemployed cellist who returns with his young wife to live in his deceased mother's fishing-village home.  Desperate for work, he takes a job casketing, that is the ritual preparation of bodies before they are cremated.  Though lucrative, the job is held in low esteem by Daigo, his wife, and neighbors.  

As we learn from the film, casketing is a new profession, the result of families no longer performing the end-of-life rituals themselves.  Over the course of nearly a dozen casketing ceremonies, we watch as Daigo lends artistic beauty and dignity to the ritual, thereby providing comfort for the grieving families.  He learns not to force the families to keep their distance; he works, instead, to collapse that distance and bring them in physical contact with the corpse.  

Slow and somber--perhaps too slow in spots--the film ends with Daigo achieving his own reconciliation with his father (who had abandoned his wife and son thirty years earlier) when he steps outside the prescribed role of onlooking family member and gently cleanses his father's corpse.

Recommended.

Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg, Aviva Kempner

A documentary about the life and radio/television career of Gertrude Berg, creator and star of shows featuring the eponymous Molly Goldberg. Though we are not the film's target audience, there's much to like about this quirky retelling of one of broadcast entertainment's early successes.  Interweaving photographs, interviews, footage from Berg's television show, as well as unrelated movies, the film fills in a forgotten gap in the early days of radio and television serials. The film's narrative arc peaks when her co-star, Philip Loeb, is blacklisted and forced off the show, thereby explaining both the eventual demise of her show and its loss to the nation's collective cultural memory.  

Her shows captured the near-mythic story of a middle-class (recent) immigrant family living in a closely knit community of a Bronx tenement, where windows facing the airshaft served as the primary conduit for gossip, advice, and care.  By depicting Jewish traditions and showing Jewish families as patriotic Americans, she helped make East European Jews appear less threatening and more in line with mainstream values. 

In making the case for restoring Berg to the pantheon of broadcast pioneers, the documentary sometimes resorts to hyperbole, making me in retrospect suspicious of what seemed to be otherwise credible claims for her importance.   

I got the feeling that Kempner had a difficult time omitting anyone who'd agreed to be interviewed on camera. Hence the film's repetitive nature and tangents that didn't lead anywhere. Kempner probably hoped to bring her audience closer to Berg's world by using contemporaneous films to illustrate the condition of the turn-of-the-century NYC immigrant. Instead, the effect was to add a layer of unnecessary confusion, making viewers never certain if we were watching authentic or fictive images.  

For anyone interested in early broadcast history OR whose relatives grew up in the NYC boroughs. Recommend with caveats.    

The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow

The movie opens with its premise projected on a black screen.  "War is a drug."  And for the next two hours, we watch an adrenaline junkie stringing out a one life-threatening situation after another--and dragging his co-dependents along with him.  Primarily focusing on a bomb-defusing trio--James, Sanborn, Eldridge (played superbly by Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, and Brian Geraghty)--the film develops complex characters and doesn't resort to war-buddy or patriotic sentimentality.   

With a son preparing to start Army basic training within the month, I've been working to prepare myself psychologically.  In order to dislodge unsubstantiated preconceptions, I've been trying to absorb as much about this war as I possibly can.  This movie confirmed one of my greatest fears: not the dangers of war and combat but the dangers of bad leadership.  In addition to the war junkie who leads his men into unnecessary danger, we're also given brief glimpses of an officer whose moral bearings are skewed.  When he coldly disregards the military's conventions for treating prisoners of war, we're reminded why the American military is having such a difficult time ending this war.

This film is violent from start to finish, but not gratuitously.  Bigelow shows us a lot, but not so much that we think we can afford to turn away.

Highly recommend--but with a warning that the contents are disturbing.

Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare

I'm a devotee of free Shakespeare summertime productions. I never saw a live performance of a Shakespeare play before I was in college. And then the first one I did attend was a free, outdoor performance at Hermann Park's Miller Theater, one of the first produced by the Houston Shakespeare Festival.  I don't remember the play--partly because the acoustics were so poor that I couldn't follow the play at all--but I do remember the quiet joy of walking over to the park with cheerful friends, a light meal, a bottle of wine, and a blanket, and then feeling the cool gradually creep through the park.  In the summer, after sunset holds Houston's best hours, and the experience seemed a complete luxury. 

After only two summers, I moved away and hadn't see another Shakespeare production--in a park or theater--for another fifteen years, when I rounded up the neighborhood grade-school-aged kids (mine included) and took them to see Twelfth Night in a Lubbock, Texas park.  The whole evening was absolutely enchanting.  T & K still laugh when they remember the yellow stockings.

A summer or two later, my children and I had just moved to New Haven. Our first excursion was to see the Elm City Shakespeare Players' production of The Tempest in Edgerton Park.   Ever since, my summer hasn't been complete unless I've seen Shakespeare in a park.

Tonight, for the first time, I saw Shakespeare in a zoo, an apt setting for Midsummer Night's Dream: a peacock perched above the proscenium and trumpeted throughout.  This production was extremely audience friendly, with plenty of exposition added to ensure even the most novice audience member could follow the narratives.  Unlike my first experience with outdoor theater 30 years ago, the performers were well miked, allowing for everyone to easily understand the dialogue.  And, as I've come the love, the evening air was delightful, the audience appreciative, and the company of friends warm. 

Very family friendly; recommend.

Unmistaken Child, Nati Baratz

For a gentle two hours, we watch as Tenzin Zopa, a Tibetan monk, searches in the valleys of Nepal and Tibet for the reincarnation of his master, Geshe Lama Konchog. In an apt symmetry, Tenzin returns to the valleys where Lama Konchog often retreated, to the same village of his birth, from where the master had once taken the young Tenzin. So the master becomes the child, the child the master.

There is no omniscient narrator, only Tenzin at the beginning recounting his feelings of depair at the death of Geshe La. Thereafter, the viewer is an eavesdropper on the very intimate project of locating and identifying his beloved master. The film's most joyful scenes feature Tenzin playing with the child, clearing demonstrating his deep devotion to the master.

Not surprisingly the most visually "authentic" moments are in the mountain villages, accessible only by foot. Except for the occasional Nike shirt or modern gadget, these peoples live in ways that probably have not changed much in the past century. Equally "authentic" are the scenes in the Buddhist temples. Inside the monks' quarters, however, it's like a shrine to Walmart consumerism, not in the quantity of goods--though there's more than I'd expect--but in the quality of the goods: the same shoddily made stuff found at discount retailers in the west.

Though the cinematographer had great vistas, mysterious interiors, and fascinating faces as his subject, the quality of the film was little better than a home video.

Recommend.

The Stoning of Soraya M., Cyrus Nowrasteh

An extraordinarily compelling depiction of the barbaric practice of stoning, this film's strength lies in its subject matter. As befits the subject matter, there is nothing subtle in this film. The male antagonists are clearly identified within the first minute, and our understanding of them seldom strays from first impressions. The men, particularly Soraya's husband, Ali, seldom rise about caricatures. On the other hand, the female protagonists remain defiant victims throughout. Their virtues are never questioned and our sympathies for them never waver. An important source of the tension is the time and place: 1980s rural Iran, where Sharia law rules but memories of more western practices have not faded. Though I tried to resist, it's easy for a western observer to believe the unrelieved misogyny in Iran after the Islamic revolution.

The film's climactic stoning scene of the stoning is one of the graphic scenes of violence I've ever witnessed: Soraya, buried up to her chest in a pit, with only her torso and head above ground, in becomes a fixed target for the villagers' stones collected by the children. Rather than a general melee of stones, the film depicts a slow process, wherein the men closest to Soraya--her father, husband, and sons--are chosen to pelt the first stones: each man knows exactly the damage he inflicts. Eventually, the process devolves into a free-for-all.

This grim scene is followed by an unnecessarily clever, even comic, getaway for the journalist.

Despite its flaws, the film deserves our attention.

Recommend.

The Girl from Monaco, Anne Fontaine

A comic legal caper about a Parisian lawyer definding a client in a high-profile murder case in Monaco. The film makes it clear that he uses his spare time chasing skirts rather than preparing for court the next day. He's trail--and then accompanied--the entire time by a bodyguard hired by his client's family. Most of the attorney's energies are used to chase the local TV weathergirl, and yet the real chemistry is between the attorney and his bodyguard.

Recommend.

Whatever Works, Woody Allen

Another in a long-line of cinematic love-songs to NYC, Whatever Works features Larry David as Boris Yellnikov, ultimate New Yorker whose chance encounters with runaway members of a Christian Mississipppi family allows them to discover their repressed selfs and, hence, themselves. As the movie implies, only in NYC could individuals be given the opportunity to be true individuals.

For the first third of the film the look and the acting are flat. I became more engaged when the ever sunny Melody (played by Evan Rachel Wood) began to espouse Boris' nihilism--and the film continued to pick up speed with the arrival of first her mother (Marietta played by Patricia Clarkson) and then her father (John played by Ed Begley, Jr.). Marietta finds happiness as an art photographer in a menage a trois; John finds a gay lover. Even Boris, the self-proclaimed genius physicist, finds happiness with a psychic.

Recommend.

Public Enemies

I'm certain that the late hour and the two glasses of wine at dinner contributed to my reaction to this movie, but the movie must bear some of the blame. Unusual for me, I had difficulty following the plot and keeping up with the characters. The female characters were easy to distinguish, but their parts were generally minimal. And I could keep up with the two lead male characters played by Johnny Depp (John Dillinger) and Christian Bale (Melvin Purvis). The rest, however, were indistinguishable. Could it be because they all talked like gangsters and law enforcement officer, barely audible through clenched jaws? Or they all dressed alike? Whatever the cause, it certainly made me sympathize with the FBI officers who let Dillinger walk around, unrecognized, in their midst. And one more thing--and this must be the wine's fault--I blended Pretty-Boy Floyd and Baby-Faced Nelson into one character and couldn't figure out how he came back from the dead.
The depiction of violence and bloodshed didn't surprise me; I would have preferred less lingering, though.
Throughout, the movie teases us with promises of psychological insights into the three lead characters (Dillinger, Purvis, and Billie Frechette, played by Marion Cotillard) yet doesn't really deliver. Especially intriguing is Purvis' gradual disillusionment with J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, culminating (we're made to suppose) in his 1960s suicide. This point, however, seems to be one of the film's many liberties.

Caveats.

Away We Go, Sam Mendes (director)

So. My pregnancy with my first child may have been 24 years ago, yet most of the worries and anxieties remain fresh in my soul. Will I be a good enough parent? Will I guide this child to an adulthood beyond the cubicle? Will this pregnancy make me old and ugly? Will my marriage survive parenthood? Will I survive motherhood? I'm glad to report that the answers are Yes, Yes, Yes, No, and Yes.

Mendes' Away We Go captures these questions from the perspective of today's 30-somethings. Not quite fuck-ups, but certainly not carving out middle-class American lives, Verona and Bert search for the perfect place--and by implication--the perfect mode in which to raise their soon-to-be-born daughter. As they travel about the country, checking out locales, family, and friends, we're treated to great comic moments, usually at the expense of caricatures representing parenting extremes. But just as we begin to feel uncomfortably smug, we're asked to sympathize with those who face the sadder side of parenting, the loss and disappointment that's magnified when parents care so much and try so hard.

And like any good travel film featuring a pregnant woman, the story ends with a heavy dose of sentimentality.

Thus, three Ss--smugness, sympathy, and sentimentality--tie this film together for a nice summer treat.

Recommended.

Macbeth, Shakespeare

Transferred to the chaos and bloody rivalry of a pseudo-post-colonial African setting, Stratford's production of Macbeth provided a engaging interpretation of the play.  It made very effective use of total blackouts at significant moments, most particularly during the murder of Banquo, only to have the banquet scene commenced when the lights come back up.  Perhaps it was playgoer's fatigue, but I found the lines a bit too rushed and the action too hectic.  Nevertheless, it provided a fitting ending to a spectacular series.

Ever Yours, Oscar

Built upon the letters of Oscar Wilde, this reading by Brian Bedford (also playing Lady Bracknell in Earnest) provided intimate glimpses into the man of letters, both familiar and unguessed.  Not exactly the dramatic monologue we'd anticipated, the performance was nevertheless moving.  

Unlike most brief accounts of Wilde's biography, this performance heavily emphasized how the two-year prison term shifted Wilde's perceptions by including long passages decrying how young children were treated in English prisons and questioning why sympathetic wardens were dismissed for insubordination.  

Recommended--with the understanding that the performance is not exactly as promoted.

Bartholomew Fair, Ben Jonson

Any staging of Jonson's Bartholomew Fair is rare, so it's a treat to see a fine production of the play.  Held together with the thinnest of plots, the play primarily delights in its exploration of the sights and sounds of London street life.  The first scene's Puritan household is quickly abandoned for the fair with its pork roasters, tapsters, pickpockets, whores, cons, dupes, as well as the culminating puppet show. 

This must be a maddening play to produce.  Featuring at least half a dozen subplots, it requires 40 actors on stage. On the page, the text is extremely difficult to read and determine exactly what's going on.  Thus, it's wonderful to have a production that's done so much work for its audience.  The various threads were clearly laid out and easy to follow.  Often multiple encounters scattered across the entire stage vied for the viewer's attention, yet the staging kept the eyes and mind focused on the most significant bits.

The acting was uniformly strong, and the staging effectively conveyed the zany energy of the play. I was particularly impressed by Abigail Winter-Culliford's performance as Mooncalf, Ursla's tapster. Only 12, this young actor maintained an active presence both fore and aft through 75% of the play.    

Recommended.

Cyrano de Bergerac, Edmond Rostand

Here’s the first play at Stratford to which Mike and I had distinctly different reactions.  The play elicited vague indifference from Mike, while I thought the production was magical.  After discussion, it seems that he reacted primarily to Rostand’s play, and I reacted to the production.

Though I was familiar with the play’s primary plot—Cyrano lends his poetic abilities to Christian so the latter might woo Roxanne—I’d never seen a live version.  Much of Cyrano’s character is developed in the confusing secondary plots which establish some of the questions on which the play revolves: how much do principles determine behavior? How much do individuals hide their insecurities behind the veil of principles? How willing are we to forfeit happiness rather than risk being mocked?  Using the Anthony Burgesses translation with liberal use of the French original for spice, the performance captured the chaos of the taverns and battlefield, allowing the primary plot to rise above the confusion but requiring much attention to gather the secondary plots.

It's easy to consider the play as a product of the 17th century (when it is set) rather than a late-19th-century throwback reacting against the naturalism and realism then dominating the stage. With that in mind, its romance verges closer to sentimentality than I'm generally happy with. 

Colm Feore’s performance (as de Bergerac) clearly outshone all others this afternoon.  The staging was magical, beginning with the lone boy in sneakers transformed into a rapier-brandishing cavalier by the quick addition of a few props, and ending with de Bergerac’s final dying soliloquy.   

Recommended.

Julius Caesar, Shakespeare

In addition to excellent acting, this production featured effective costuming and sets.  And a "musical score" lent the play certain cinematic qualities.  

A couple of observations.

1. This play remains on the short list of Shakespeare plays read in high school--at least in Connecticut where I teach.  Consequently, some of the famous scenes can seem like flat set pieces.  Not so tonight. Mark Antony's oration felt fresh, and I found myself hanging on each word, knowing that with each line he was undermining Brutus' "honorable" plans. 

2. This production made Brutus and Mark Antony equally appealing.  I found myself wanting them to negotiate a peace rather.

Recommended.

 

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

I suspect that Stratford's production of the 1950s musical is as fine as it gets.  Nevertheless, I found the musical numbers tedious. Once again, my dislike for musicals is confirmed.

Obviously, Stratford includes it (along with West Side Story, this year) because it generates large attendance numbers and thus income.  But, why, why, why, must they mic and amplify the performers?  The theater's not that large, and surely the singers have voices large enough to fill the space.  

Caveats.

The Three Sisters, Anton Chekhov

In the past, Mike and I often noted that Chekhov wrote only one play with four different titles.  In retrospect, we found it difficult to distinguish in our memories between productions of the various plays.  This production--continuing a pattern established earlier this summer with Katona Josef Theatre Company of Hungary's Ivanov--is memorable.  

Much of the credit for this goes to the fine translation.  Then, the production works to distinguish each character from the others with recognizable traits and quirks.  For instance, Masha is first seen reclining, and she frequently takes that pose throughout the play.  Solyony, on the other hand, punctuates the scenes with odd clucking/crowing noises.  Most importantly, the production works to make sense of every line.  In doing so, the audience is repeatedly prepared for the lines long before the characters' words are delivered.

One of the great pleasures in attending this performance was the audience, which included a large number of students who are part of the Festival's Shakespeare Summer School.  They were thoroughly engaged with the play, audibly sighing, gasping, and even crying.  How could one fail to be moved when those about were so obviously touched?

Recommend.

The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde

This production of Wilde's savagely comic masterpiece makes clear just how good the play is. Although I've seen the play several times, I never grow tired of it.  In fact, I found that anticipating some of the well-turned lines provided an essential aspect of the play.   The play, which depends upon impeccable timing and high energy, was magnificently conceived and flawlessly performed. And because the Festival attracts savvy audiences, they contribute to the fun of the puns and double-entendres.

Beginning with the frothy, wedding-cake-like sets, and continuing with the fine acting, Stratford's production was precise without being stuffy.  

Tonight's production opens with the high energy of Mike Shara and Ben Carlson (as Jack and Algernon)--which becomes electrifying when Brian Bedford (as Lady Bracknell) takes the stage.  The energy somewhat wanes when Sara Topham and Andrea Runge (as Gwendolen and Cecily) are on the stage alone; however, they more than carry their weight when all the ensemble is on stage.

 

Cheri, Stephen Frears

A story of a woman in her fifties seducing a man in his twenties? What’s not to like? Lots. Like their affair, this movie is beautiful to behold but boring. Michelle Pfeiffer's efforts aren't enough to make this an engaging film.

Caveats.

Mary Stuart, Friedrich Schiller

This play provides a (somewhat) sympathetic presentation of the Mary Stuart (Mary Queen of Scots)--and a rather cynical exploration of England's 16th religious instabilities. Janet McTeer's portrayal of Mary was gripping. She managed to make Mary both compelling and very irritating. The rain scene in the 2nd half is particularly compelling. The downpour--and her ability to stand in the cooling, cleansing rain--is first interpreted by Mary as a kindness and relief from the misery of confinement. When, however, she realizes that the open patch will the arena for her much-sought audience with Queen Elizabeth, her ecstasy quickly turns to panic, shame, and eventually rage at how she'd been set up by her erstwhile allies.

Recommend, enthusiastically.

The Choir of Royal Holloway, University of London

What a lovely way to spend a Saturday afternoon on the New Haven green. The choir's program featured a enchanting combination of early music--William Byrd, Thomas Weelkes, Henry Purcell, and J.S. Bach--and contemporary music--Carson Cooman (American)and Rihards Dubra (Latvian)--with a few chestnuts thrown in for good measure.

Recommend.

Dido and Aeneas, Mark Morris Dance Group

Without a doubt, Dido and Aeneas is my favorite dance. I love Purcell's music--I never tire listening to it--and Morris' choreography captures its vitality. This is my third time to see the dance. The first time, in the late 90s, the dual role of Dido/Sorcesses was danced by Mark Morris. When I saw it a few years later, Amber Darragh danced the role. Tonight, it was again danced by a male, Bradon McDonald. Though neither Darragh nor McDonald combined the roles humor and tragedy as well as Morris, I'm grateful they've allowed the dance to flourish.

Earlier in the week, we attended a talk-back with Mark Morris and Joan Acocella. There I learned that Morris derived the dance's hand gestures from American Sign Language, making them a further addendum to the dance's visual language.

This was the first dance I saw at BAM Next Wave Festival. It was my introduction to modern dance post Martha Graham; I was immediately hooked. It was convinced me that life with M would be very interesting.

Highly Recommend.

Ivanov, Chekhov

A highly illuminating and imaginative production by Hungarian ensemble.

Recommend highly.

Really Real

Really bad.

Avoid.

Circus, Barabbas Theatre Company

We joined friends with children because it looked like a very family-friendly performance. It was. Circus was also one of the most erotic theatrical works I've ever seen.
Using the premise that a circus act was training a new member, the dramatic work combined narrative with acrobatics. Not, however, in the Cirque de Soleil mode.

Highly recommend.

Late: A Cowboy Song, Sarah Ruhl

Interesting, well-performed, look at homosocial love as a choice for a woman in an abusive marriage.

Recommend.

They Might Be Giants

The ultimate party on the green for all of New Haven's geek families!

Highly recommend.

Up, Pete Docter

Terrific animated film from Pixar that provides entertainment for adults and children alike. Visually compelling, strong narrative plot, and a moral lesson reflecting how the enthusiasms of youth need to be (1) tempered by the realities of adulthood AND (2) reinvigorated by the enthusiasms of the next generation.

Recommend.

Richard III: An Arab Tragedy

 Richard III is probably the best known of Shakespeare's British history plays, and its narrative of power grabs and shifting alliances certainly resonated with twentieth-century audiences, thus meriting many excellent updates to the major wars of the century.  I'm thinking, in particular, of  Richard Loncraine's 1995 film with Ian McKellan and Annette Bening.  As those wars fade into the past, it makes sense to find more contemporary updates.  

Sulayman Al Bassam's production provides a postmodern twist by translating Shakespeare's text into Arabic and setting it in an oil-rich kingdom.  This intersting and worthwhile interpretation remains faithful to the early-modern original while exploring familial, religious, and gender tensions underlying the quest for power in the Middle East. 

I had originally resisted seeing it---several recent adaptations of Shakespeare at BAM have been very disappointing--I'm glad we took time to go see this one.

Recommended.

La Cerentola, Rossini

A lovely production of an opera that was more musically interesting than I'd anticipated.

The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Wiliams

When we entered the theatre, I had no high hopes for "another" production of The Glass Menagerie. O my goodness. What a difference a fabulous production can make! Featuring the spectacular performance by Judity Ivey (as Amanda Wingfield) and excellent performances by Patch Darragh and Keira Keely (as Tom and Laura Wingfield), this production managed to be deeply moving and funny. It made me realize what a great play Williams wrote.

Highly Reommended.

Is Anybody There?, John Crowley

A very touching, well-made film set in a 1980s English seaside retirement home. Fine performance by Michael Caine.

Highly recommend.

State of Play, Kevin Macdonald

Suspense movie set in Washington DC newspaper. With Russell Crowe.

Recommend.

Exit the King, Ionesco

Engaging production of a very tricky play. With Geoffrey Rush, Susan Sarandan, and Lauren Ambrusco.

Recommend.

August: Osage County Tracy Letts

I really liked the way this production of Lett's gripping play captures the tenor of rural Oklahoma. Its penetrating exploration of how rural life traps and suffocates the "thinking classes" does not let the protagonists off easily. The play hands indicts these characters for falling too easily into thinking their so-called intellectual superiority granted them moral license.

The cast was superb.

Recommend. Enthusiastically.

Leonard Cohen Concert

Wonderful! Great! So glad we went!

Overheard on the way out of the theatre: "That's the most fun I've had on a weeknight in ten years!" My response: she's got some really crazy weekends!

Highly recommend.

Paris 36, Christophe Barratier

An odd, accordian-filled French movie with little point beyond capturing a moment in pre-WWII Paris.

Caveats.

Grant Us Peace, New Haven Chorale

An evening of music and readings.
Colin Britt, A Jubilant Song for Brass and Percussion
Gustav Holst, Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity, from The Planets
_________, Mars, the Bringer of War
Karol Szymanowski, Stawa Matka
Ralph Vaughan Williams, Dona nobis pacem

Recommend.

Summer Hours, Olivier Assayas

A solid film starring Juliette Binoche.

Trisha Brown Dance Company

Planes (1968)
A zlozony/O composite (2004)
Glacial Decoy (1979)
L'Amour au theatre (2009)

Her later work is more interesting than her earlier work.

Recommend with Caveats.

Lymelife, Derick Martini

Exellent independent film.

Highly recommend.

Adventureland, Greg Mottola

Very funny coming-of-age story.

Recommend.

St. Matthew Passion, Bach

Generally, I do not vote to see a performance more than once: there's too many others that I want to see. For Jonathan Miller's interpretation of Bach's St. Matthew Passion, I made an exception.

To begin, the music is sublime, and without doubt the performers in this ensemble are top-notch. The power of this presentation is escalated by making the chorus and soloists also actors. Thus, it moves from being a static oratorio to a shifting, moving opera of the highest caliber.

Highly recommend.

Ion, Euripides

A light and lively interpretation of a seldom performed Greek classic.

Wall Street Chamber Players

Alexander Borodin's Quintet for Spring and Piano in C minor (1862)
String Quartet No. 1 in G minor, Op. 10 (1893)

Trojan Barbie, Christine Evans

More interesting in conception than in execution. The script was rough, and something about the acting seemed tonally off kilter.

Caveats.

Watchmen, Zack Snyder

This film is three hours long; the first two hours are all backstory, and still there's not enough information for the narrative to make sense. For instance, as long as Dr. Manhattan is blue, it's okay to show full frontal nudity.

Caveats.

Sunshine Cleaning, Christine Jeffs

Another charming performance by Amy Adams.

Recommend.

Notes from Underground, Dostoevsky

Outstanding performance of an existentialist text that fails to justify its own cruelty.

Recommend.

La Sonambulist, Bellini

Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Rivera provide lovely performances in quirky opera with semi-successful staging by Mary Zimmerman.

Recommend.

Duplicity, Tony Gilroy

A great caper with Julia Roberts and Clive Owen. Lots of fun.

Recommend.

Wendy and Lucy, Kelly Reichardt

Michelle Williams provides a portrait of a quietly desperate young woman with few options and and just enough ingenuity to survive. Barely. This is an emotionally dreary and draining film.

Highly recommend.

Madama Butterfly, Pucinni

Lovely production of an opera with sappy music and a horrid, horrid plot. Butterfly is treated wretchedly.

Recommend with caveats.

Winter's Tale, Shakespeare

Produced by Sam Mendes, this production made clear sense of a very convulted play. The review in the Times Literary Supplement (in our mailbox when we returned from the play) faulted the actors for their vowells. Ha! The performances were intelligent and inteligible. Great combination of British and American sensibilities.
We saw three of the actors as we drove off, and M rolled down his window and expressed our admiration of the production.

Highly recommend.

The Cherry Orchard, Chekhov

Mesmerizing production by Sam Mendes. (See more at notes on Winter's Tale.)

Highly recommend.

Milk, Gus Van Sant

Great bio-pic about the rise and murder of Harvey Milk.  Excellent performance by Sean Penn.

Highly recommended.

Dead Man's Cellphone, Sarah Ruhl

Very good production of a very funny, even campy play. I'm not certain, however, that the play text coheres.

Recommend.

Synecdoche, New York, Charlie Kaufman

Lots of work, but worth the effort.  Yet another fine performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Recommend.  Caveats: don't have anything to drink before watching this thinking person's film.

Endgame, Beckett

ART's production of Endgame is the finest I've seen. It makes Beckett's text lucid and understandable without oversimplifying it.

Highly recommend.

Lucia di Lammermoor, Donizetti

Wonderful Mary Zimmerman production of a nicely lyrical but awfully orchestrated--does it make musical sense to combine tragic lyrics with heavy waltzes?--of this crowd-pleasing favorite.

Recommend.

Coming Home, Athol Fugard

A very moving play, especially the first act. The second act is less focused, but perhaps that's the point.

Highly recommend.

Frost/Nixon, Ron Howard

Interesting revision of a famous television event.  Don't believe it all.

Recommend.

The Reader, Stephen Daldry

Kate Winslet provides a great performance. Nevertheless, it's not clear what we're to under is the reason behindthe emotional distance of Michael Berg (played by Ralph Fiennes).

Recommend.

Orfeo, Christoph Gluck

Mark Morris' production of Gluck's lovely, lovely opera is fantastic. It's so mesmerizing that I'm completely caught off guard by the happy ending.

Highly recommend.

The Wrestler, Darren Aronofsky

With particularly effective performances by Mickey Rourke and Marissa Tomei, this movie presents a sympathetic (though not sentimental) look at the downside of what is admittedly a seamy world, professional wrestling.

Highly recommend.

Gran Torino, Clint Eastwood

This is an odd movie. Full of racist and sexist language, it is also about empowerment. It forces viewers to laugh in scenes that defy all politically sensitive conventions. Particularly funn is the scene where Thao Vang Lor (played by Bee Vang) applies for a job at a construction site using the techniques Walt Kowalski (played by Eastwood) taught him.

Recommend.

Doubt

Recommend highly

Revolutionary Road

Recommend.

The Seagull, Chekhov

Recommend.

La Rondine, Puccini

Women Beware Women, Thomas Middleton

We've yet to see a weak production by Red Bull Theater. That's saying alot, especially because they tend to stage underperformed (often for a good reason) plays of Shakespeare's contemporaries.

This is a highly imaginative production of Middleton's play.

Highly recommended.