Locke

Tom Hardy in a car and it’s fascinating

     Locke takes place in real time (85 minutes) and shows a hot guy in a cool BMW driving really fast from the midlands to London, while making a ton of phone calls.  Fortunately, he uses hands-free technology (it’s a pricey BMW, after all) and because British motorways (the equivalent of our interstate highways) utilize extraordinary, almost constant lighting on the M6, the main and only seen character can check some important files as well.

Max Ophuls’ Lola Montès

A 1955 French cult classic that 
foretold contemporary celebrity degradation

     I’ve wanted to see Max Ophuls’ Lola Montès since high school, but it never played at my college film society or urban second run art house.  TCM ran it as part of their weekly foreign film series and I recorded it thinking, well, we’ll see if it lives up to its hype.  Ophuls’ mastery of camera movement is almost unparalleled, except for Welles, Visconti, Altman, and Scorsese.  He’s one of those directors where, if the volume is muted and the subtitles ignored, the long, elegant takes are a choreography that realize the underlying themes that always involve the relationships between women and men.

Laura Lippman: and when she was good

     Laura Lippman has been a fave for a while now and she delivers yet again in and when she was good (2012).  The novel focuses on a single suburban soccer mom, who’s an extremely accomplished madam.  It begins with a casual

Le Week-End

Run, do not walk, from this movie

The Misleading Poster

 Roger Michell’s Le Week-End, written by Hanif Kureishi, starring Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan, and set in Paris, should have it all with that pedigree.  We’ve wanted to see it since it opened a few weeks ago at The Mariemont.  We

"Venus in Fur" at the Playhouse, "The Twentieth-Century Way" at Know

One must-see for now, one should’ve-seen that has closed

     David Ives’ Venus in Fur, directed by KJ Sanchez in a production that seems definitive to me, deals with levels of ‘acting’ and performance that are similar to Tom Jacobson’s The Twentieth-Century Way, directed intensely by Kimberly Faith Hickman.  The Playhouse has always rotated staff and guest directors for their productions and Know got smart under Eric Vosmeier’s recently concluded leadership by following a similar model.  Different directors bring

The 'Wich on Sycamore

Popular as a take out, we may 

have waited too long (our bad).

      Lunchtime during a photo shoot can be challenging.  Finding quality food that's fast and easily available doubles the trouble.  When Bob gave us the options, I wanted to go with The 'Wich on Sycamore for two reasons.  I hadn't been there and we haven't blogged about it.  

      The choices were abundant, from soup and salads to specially crafted sandwiches.  The four of us decided on four different sandwiches, all of which came with one of 10 side items.  The orders were placed and Jay was on his way to pick

Size Matters

A Star in Cincinnati looking for commercials in New York

     Ray McAnally has demonstrated his outsize talent locally in the past few years, but finally pulls full focus in the world premiere of his one-man show Size Matters at Ensemble Theatre.  Co-directed by D. Lynn Meyers and Ed Stern, this production moves smoothly and plays to McAnally’s strengths